I remember on Regis Philbin's early morning show he was talking about his failed series "Dan August" he quipped, "Why didn't they title it 'Charlie September'?". R.I.P. Burt.
I'm not big on over-emotionalizing toward people I've never met, however my dad looked quite a bit like Burt Reynolds, and our family liked several of his films.
Shit, this sucks. This guy was a big part of my cinematic childhood. I couldn't tell you how many times I've watched Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and The Cannonball Run.
After a few guest shots on television shows, Burt Reynolds got his first recurring role in a series co-starring opposite Darren McGavin in "Riverboat". The hour-long NBC adventure series was set on the Enterprise, a riverboat which plied the Mississippi during the 1840s. McGavin was "Captain Grey Holden," and Reynolds played pilot "Ben Frazer." (Dan Duryea had played "Captain Brad Turner" in the first two episodes, before being replaced by McGavin.)
The early Sunday evening series was counter-programming against CBS' "Lassie", so it was renewed for a second season. Reynolds and McGavin, however, did not get along, and Reynolds was replaced by Noah Beery, Jr. for "Riverboat"'s second and final season.
Burt Reynolds made his feature film debut in 1961's ANGEL BABY. Set in the American South, the film found evangelist "Paul Strand" (George Hamilton) meeting a beautiful, young mute named "Jenny" (Salome Jens), affectionately known as "Angel Baby." When Paul prays for her, Jenny's voice miraculously returns ... and the two fall in love, sparking jealousy in Paul's older wife (Mercedes McCambridge) and Jenny's predatory lover (Reynolds).
In discussing the film, Burt Reynolds remarked, "The toughest part about ANGEL BABY was doing a fight scene with George Hamilton, who at the time was a contender for the title of World's Most Uncoordinated Human Being. Yet he had to beat me up, something that was almost impossible for him to fake. In the dumbest fight scene ever, he sort of lifted me, and I leaped into the bushes, hoping it looked like I was thrown. But it just looked like he lifted me and I'd jumped."
Hubert Cornfield, the film's original director, was replaced by Paul Wendkos after a week of filming due to disagreements with producer Thomas F. Woods. The film's score, by Wayne Shanklin, has not had a release.
ARMORED COMMAND is set in northeastern France, during World War II, where a U. S. Army patrol finds a wounded girl, "Alexandra" (Tina Louise), lying on a road in the Vosges Mountains. While the patrol stays in the area looking for Germans, sergeant "Mike" (Earl Holliman) and private "Skee" (Burt Reynolds) vie for the girl's attentions.
Noted Reynolds: ARMORED COMMAND was "one of the first pictures in which Howard Keel had a non-singing role. He should've sung; we needed all the help we could get." Byron Haskin directed the 1961 film, which had an unreleased score by Bert Grund.
That's a bit of sad news, but not totally surprising, 82 & not in the best of health for some years now. I loved him on the screen & he seemed to own the seventies. I'll look at my DVD of The Longest Yard over the weekend.
In 1961, "Gunsmoke", which had been a half-hour series since its inception in 1955, expanded to an hour. The following year, the producers decided that the show needed another strong male character to take some of the acting load off of James Arness' "Matt Dillon". Burt Reynolds was brought into the show as "Quint Asper," a half-breed blacksmith. Reynolds stayed for three seasons, after which he was replaced by Roger Ewing as townsman "Thad Greenwood."
Amanda Blake, Burt Reynolds, and Milburn Stone in "Gunsmoke"
In his first lead role, agent Burt Reynolds in sent to investigate the murder of a fellow agent in Saigon in 1965's OPERATION C.I.A. Paul Dunlap scored this Allied Artists release, which was directed by Christian Nyby. Here's the trailer:
Reynolds said that OPERATION C.I.A., "looked every inch of its $70,000 budget. The heavy was played by the hotel bell hop, because he had a deep voice. The prop man screwed up once and used live ammo. I fought a cobra that hadn't been milked of its poison. And near the end, I did a fight scene in a river that was contaminated with pollutants. Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered even if I'd had a spleen to purify my blood. As it was, the toxins got in to my system and went to town."
After filming that fight scene, Reynolds went to Alabama to participate in a march with Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. One day he woke up in the hospital, with lymph glands the size of softballs. At first it was assumed he had Hodgkin's disease. Finally it was revealed his mystery illness was schistosomiasis - snail eggs in the bloodstream. By luck the cure was only discovered two years earlier.
Reynolds called OPERATION C.I.A. " my worst film ever. If it played on a plane, people would be killed trying to jump out."
Burt Reynolds only agreed to make NAVAJO JOE because he was under the impression that Sergio Leone would be directing. When he found out it was Sergio Corbucci, he tried to pull out, but the contracts had already been signed and it was too late. For his part, when Corbucci was approached to make the film, Marlon Brando was touted as the star. By the time production started, the lead had been given to Burt Reynolds. (Although Corbucci is in the upper tier of Eurowestern directors, having helmed DJANGO, THE GREAT SILENCE, and THE MERCENARY, NAVAJO JOE is not among his best films.)
The first day of shooting, Reynolds reached the location, in the Spanish desert in Almeria, dressed as a Native American and wearing a red-haired wig. It was raining, so Sergio Corbucci suggested that Reynolds go for a walk around the area. During the walk, Reynolds met a young Spanish boy who asked if he was a Native American. He walked with the boy to a small Spanish town and he was invited for a drink by the boy's family in their house. When Reynolds returned to the set, the film crew was gone; they had left him in the desert, so he had to spend the night with the young boy's family. Next morning, Reynolds was a bit angry with the crew, but that seemed very funny to Corbucci. That incident set the tone for Reynolds' and Corbucci's relationship: they did not get along at all.
In the film, Reynolds plays a Native American warrior called "Navajo Joe" who seeks revenge on a gang of sadistic outlaws who have massacred the people of his tribe.
Producer Dino De Laurentiis made NAVAJO JOE with the intention of replicating the success of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) after that movie had become a box-office hit in Europe. De Laurentiis wanted to find an American actor to rival Clint Eastwood's popularity. Burt Reynolds had appeared in TV westerns and was part Cherokee Indian, and De Laurentiis persuaded him to sign on.
Although the film was released in Europe in late 1966, U.S. distributor United Artists kept it off of American screens until December 1967, after the first two Clint Eastwood "Dollars" films had been released in the U.S. Ennio Morricone's score received its most complete release in 2007 from Film Score Monthly.
For his screen test for ABC network President Tom Miller, for the television series "Hawk", Burt Reynolds did a scene with Louise Sorrell as a psychiatrist, and Gene Hackman as the heavy. Once Reynolds had the role and production started, the pilot episode featured Sorrell and Hackman. In the show, Reynolds starred as Iroquois detective John Hawk of the New York City District Attorney's office.
The show was filmed on the streets of New York City, as opposed to a studio lot. Things looked so real, that one night three NYPD cops joined in one scene and billy clubbed three extras they mistook for fleeing thieves. The last three days of each week, Burt Reynolds worked round the clock on the show. He would be up all night with one crew, then do another twelve hours with a second crew. He never billed the studio for the overtime, as he believed the studio would not have been able to afford the show if he had. All this for a reported $6,000 a week in salary.
Upon its debut on 8 September 1966, the show received good critical notices, but pulled up short in the ratings against "The Dean Martin Show" (#14 in the ratings) and the "CBS Thursday Night Movie" (#29). The show was canceled after 17 episodes.
At his peak, I always thought of Burt Reynolds as a sexy, macho, Cary Grant type. Grant's films like BRINGING UP BABY, THE AWFUL TRUTH, TOPPER, etc. could easily have been re-made in the new age of the 70s-80s with a new "take" on the style via the featuring of Burt Reynolds in the leading role.
Unfortunately, this particular style genre of filmmaking was over, commercially, and Reynolds was relegated to making Hal Needham-style "good ole boy" movies. So much for comedic "class" in movies. And where to find an equal leading lady for this style at the time? Carole Lombard was long gone.
I loved the Burt Reynolds persona.....I think I've seen nearly all of the Reynolds movies.....enjoyed quite a few at the time....but, offhand, I can't think of a single one which I'd rate better than average in my hindsight view.
Here was a performer who, from the beginning of his big stardom, never seemed to reach the promise of a legendary career that everyone had hoped.
Nonetheless.....Burt Reynolds seems always to have been a part of our lives, I loved seeing him onscreen, and, despite his various illnesses and age, I thought he'd go on forever.
Someone had the idea to make a film about the making of a film, at the same time that a real film was being made. In 1967's FADE-IN, Barbara Loden stars as "Jean," a Hollywood assistant film editor who romances a cowboy called "Rob" (Burt Reynolds) who is working as a driver on her movie, the actual 1968 film BLUE that starred Terence Stamp, Joanna Pettet, Ricardo Montalban and Sally Kirkland, all of whom appear in the background.
Director Jud Taylor demanded his name be taken off the picture after Paramount’s major re-cutting without his involvement. Thus, FADE-IN became the first film to use the Directors Guild of America "Alan Smithee" pseudonym. After bad reactions at sneak previews, Paramount left the film on the shelf for six years and finally sold it to CBS TV, who screened it as a TV premiere on 8 November 1973. Reynolds, who tried to buy the movie while it was on the shelf, opined: "It should have been called 'Fade-Out.'"
The producer of FADE-IN, Silvio Narizzano, directed BLUE on the same Utah locations, beautifully shot by William A Fraker. FADE-IN was scored by Ken Lauber.
