A Conversation with Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr. - COLOSSAL PICTURES (1995)

[Music] [Applause] we are [Music] here's one of the early scenes in rio grande starring john wayne maureen o'hara and of course our featured speakers ben johnson and harry carey jr hey left face uh you're a fine body of men now put your bags down this is your home so make yourselves comfortable [Music] i bid you all welcome to fort stark recruits that you are but in no time at all you'll be soldiers sure when less than six months with good behavior and hard work you'll be wearing yellow stripes on your bridges here they are ben johnson and harry carey jr would you mind be putting a cap back on your head son no not at all doc did any abuse ever ride a horse yeah some the understatement of the year from ben johnson now answer the road call let's start the conversation with harry carey jr yes sir they've got dolby soil out there in parts of california that they make dobie bricks out of my dad said i looked like a glob adobe mud when i was born so he nicknamed me toby that's pretty good tell us a little about your father well my dad a lot of people you know because he's still on television and my father you know i'm i'm an old man now but my dad was started out in the business in 1909. so he practically was in on the invention of motion pictures and uh a lot of people still remember him because of two movies that are on all the time on television angel of the bad man and and red river and shepherd of the hills and that's harry kerry senior but he was a one of a kind he was just one of those exceptional people that uh i was very proud to be his son and we had a ranch outside it wasn't the size of ben johnson's dad's ranch but we had about we had three thousand acres up the other side of saugus california would you mind telling us a little bit about your father well my father he was a rodeo hand at an early stage and he was a world's champion i think three or four years and in my growing up i wanted to be a world's champion i didn't care if it was shooting marbles or whatever i just want to be the best at something so when i finally got in the picture business and got enough money ahead where i could buy a good horse and a trailer and a car then i quit the movies and went rodeoing and fortunately i won the world championship but when i got home at the end of the year here i've got my big silver shiny belt buckling big new saddle and everything but i didn't have three dollars [Laughter] i took all my friends with me you know and paid their way and but all i had was a wore out automobile and a mad wife [Laughter] but i thought if i'm a world champion and ain't got no money you better do something else so i went back into the picture business and i've been there ever since yeah you sure had been won the academy award you know he's uh he's the only man that ever was i guess because even will rogers didn't do it that that won the world's champion team roper and then then won the academy award nobody else has ever done that i don't know if that means anything or not but it's good it's good conversation you know ben didn't want to play that part in the last picture show well they sent me this script uh peter mcdonough just start out the beginning of this story he and polly his wife was with the new york times they came to monument valley where we were doing a picture called i think in autumn yeah to do an interview with john ford will the assistant wouldn't let him get in a half a mile to john ford so i finally mustered up courage enough and went and asked ford if he would give these kids an autograph i mean you know if he'd let him uh ask him some questions yeah that's about the movies and one thing so he did he let him in and he kept him around there for a couple of weeks so pete wrote a script called the last picture show well to repay me for what i had done for him he wanted me to do the picture so they gave me the script and i read it and it was the worst script ever lived in my life it was just horrible and every other word was a nice four-letter word you know so i sent it back to them and i said i'm not interested in the meantime they'd offered me a salary ten percent of the picture and i don't know what all and i still turned it down well finally one morning i took a show and got away from him and i went to houston one morning about daylight the phone rang it was john ford and he asked me says ben will you do me a favor so i said yes sir i wasn't smart enough to ask him what it was he says i want you to do mcdonovich's picture so i knew they had me hammed up so i called pete and i said if you let me take the script and rewrite my part take all the dirty words out of it i'll do it for a salary so they let me take the script i rewrote the thing and i took it for a salary and i didn't have to say one dirty word and i won the english academy award the american academy award the golden globes award the people's reward critics didn't have to say one dirty word [Applause] that's a great story isn't it harry didn't you play in uh weren't you in red river too yes i was i i uh how i got in red river was they had another guy to play that part uh paul something and uh uh if howard hawks got angry with him about something he he lied to him he hired a lied to the director and so he fired him and uh and john wayne got me that role of that dan latimer i think the name of the guy was in red river and so that's why i wasn't in the beginning of it when they all take off their hats and yell give the cowboy yell and everything go running off and you know take the cattle where are they going they're going to abilene i think they were anyway so what i did was i did it all on the sound stage here at goldens they had the cattle sedated or something they had them lying down yeah they did i mean otherwise they'll get them run off and i i was riding in among the cattle and singing to them you know i was thinking and riding old paint and then and then duke comes up well the first time we did it you know you remember the part that john wayne in red river was uh kind of uneasy very stern tough never smiled mean old main young man you know so when i'm doing this scene with wayne tell them about my wife wants a pair of red shoes when we finish the drive and everything that's my wife she smiled she always wanted a little pair of red shoes and i kind of figured i'd get them for he starts to smile so howard hawk said cut and he says duke don't smile and duke said i wasn't smiling he says yes you were smiling he said you know you're a hard-bitten tough man he said you'd never smile at this young man he said well i guess i was smiling because the kid was doing a good job and uh that's that's a true story but anyway uh that was a wonderful break for me you know just working on red river it was the last film my my dad told me oh he gave us a fine welcome what's the best way to this stockyard i'm straight through john you're not exactly i never had a scene in a movie with him everybody that ever done a western movie in hollywood took after his father's mannerisms old duke uh probably the most the other most yeah yeah and his his father started john ford way back i don't one of them was 18 or something yeah back in uh see my father had made a movie called bill sharkey's last game it was a two real movie in fort lee new jersey in 1909. and then he met an actor called henry b walthall who was the star of the original uh birth of a nation and uh so we he was in a bar in new york where the actors hung out and henry walthal was in there and he said hello harry what are you doing my father says nothing he said i'm looking for a job he says and henry wall thought that my father over and introduced him to the legendary uh d.w griffith and he met d.w griffith and he did like i think 50 shows for for my dad for d.w griffith and then he came out to universal and started making little westerns out there and and he gave john ford his first job as directing and my father played a character when he met up with ford they wrote the scripts himself and ford was 18 years younger than my dad and they they he played a character my father played a character called cheyenne harry and uh and then they'd write these things scenes at night and then they'd go out and shoot them the next day because of silent films and he he did 25 cheyenne harry's with he and jack ford and if you remember the searchers there's a scene in there my father had a habit when he was in a tight as ben says he'd do that you know he'd grab his elbow and john wayne did that at the end of the searches of the tribute and uh duke did that he saw my mother standing behind the camera and he did that at the end of the picture he reached over and did that as a tribute to my father you know i think about that quite a lot those guys didn't have to say nothing ain't no telling how good we could have been if we didn't have to say nothing [Applause] that's right we'd have been great actors if we hadn't had to say that no they just made it up last night we showed the wagon master down at paramount theater and you fellows were good enough to be there both of you have expressed uh very actually very complimentary opinions about that picture would you like to talk about that a minute tell us why you think wagon master well tell them then well i don't know i think it was the best western ever made really john ford said it was the best western he ever made there was so much realism in it there wasn't any phonies in it there wasn't any dirty words in it the way i figured travis these ponies ought to bring us thirty dollars ahead and twelve head of 30 dollars comes to uh uh 320 360. it does but that's better yet divided by two well that makes it uh uh quite a tidy sound yeah and uh we got the mormons across there um yeah all safe you know so i you know and uh of course it was my first lead in a movie god i thought i was roy rogers or somebody you know but i've been so fortunate to have people accept my character i never was a very good actor but i uh i worked with some good actors good shows good people watched them how they did it and then did it the way ben johnson would do it and fortunately people accepted my character i'm sure i'll say it so i'm just lucky that yeah wagon master was uh john ford right after world war ii he directed just at the end of the war directed a great film about the pt boats called uh they were expendable and he did it while he was on leave from the navy he was an admiral in the navy and and so they they asked him how much money he wanted says i want 300 thousand dollars which is about like 3 million now and he said i'm going to buy this home for the men that were in my unit fuel photographic unit he was uh uh what is now the cia was called the office of strategic services and ford was the head of the field photographic branch of the oss and so he bought this farm out there we used to keep our horses out there and my dad's old horse died out there ben was with me and and uh and i had a little horse that that we'd had at the old ranch a little uh little short stocky horse called and his name was mormon because he came from st george utah that's where andy reagan bought him and uh so i was out there currying him just just before wagon master and bro you know getting rid of saddling i was just taking this hay off his back and uh here comes the old man i thought oh he's going to ruin my afternoon you know here he comes and he's going to start riding me or something so he says is that your horse and i said yes sir and he said you want to ride him in a movie and i said yeah you know he said i'm gonna make a movie and he said with you and old ben and i said and and john wayne and he said won't you guys make a movie without john wayne and i said yeah he said no you and ben are the star and that's how we got that's how i found out about it and they hauled that little horse of mine up there and it's the only time i ever rode my own horse in the picture one of the blaze face yeah yeah he had four white feet are there any other incidents about making that picture that either of you remember that oh incidents there's too many we well i won't tell all of them but there was there was uh there was one time there was an english englishman a british an english actor there uh you've seen him in a lot of movies his name was alan mobrey and he'd say uh he'd call us colonials you know use bloody colonials so so he came over to ben and me and he said i say a little chaps he said i want to give a cocktail party for the stuntman so ben says well alan i don't know if you ought to do that should you get those stunt guys liquored up and uh he said you know it's kind of no no he said they've been awfully kind to me and very very nice and he says i want to give them a party so so he said i've got all the uh liquor and everything and and he's going to have it in his motel room there's only one motel then moab called called the u motel utah so ben and i were a couple of doors down from him so we go over and he's got this bar all set up in evan old allen in come the first two drunks of the sun guys and uh kennedy and hightower and then here comes edda reggie and cliff lyons and then post parks and then billy jones and uh god that they toured the whole tournament got in a fight they knocked the screen door off and allen remember he's just playing well he thought that was great you know [Laughter] they just flattened the whole damn thing you know now ben and i were pretty young and and ford didn't like you to drink when you were on a picture i mean even after work he didn't like if he fought you in a bar then the next day just be hell wayne made that mistake quite a few times so so ben and i never drank when we worked for john for it and uh but we'd had a couple uh the night of the stunt guys and we had we were so scared to come to dinner because he was over there that we sent post parks it was the greatest teamster i've ever seen in my life and post went over and said well the boys are afraid to come to dinner because they've had a couple of drinks and fort said tell them to come over we went over that was the end of it but that was alan moby's party that's very good yeah i've heard a lot of stories in the last couple of days i hadn't heard this one no they're all true yeah they're all true well we're fortunate to be showing that same movie again sunday afternoon folks if you'd like to see it you'll remember these stories that you heard later this afternoon we're going to have will penny and ben was had a featured role in that picture is there any that was a good that was a good uh movie it was a good picture a lot of realism in it uh authentically it was it was good it was around livestock cattle and horses and it was something that i was quite comfortable with and even if i say so myself i think had done a pretty good job anyhow that didn't fire me well tell them uh tell them there's a lot of uh publicity again about marlon brando especially this last tragedy they had but tell them about when you first worked for marlon brando well we did a picture called one-eyed jacks we go to monterey california on location and marlin had a scene the first scene in the picture was marlon brando sitting on a rock and then there's a big wild rose bush here and it's full of roses so brando's sitting on this rock and he picks this this rose bud off there and he's twirling it around and he's thinking about his gal and he's looking out across ocean there and he picks the pedal off and throws it down he does that for about a half or three quarters a day and finally an assistant comes in to him and says mr brando don't you think we better get this shot and he says yes sir so i'm sitting in the shade over there so he hollers at me and says come here so i go over there he says you gather up all your friends that want to leave and go for three days and uh i'll be sitting right here when you get back so if you need any money we'll go to officer and get some money so i gathered everybody on the set they were all i could find it wanted to go we left for three days came back brando is still sitting on the rocks and he's still picking these roses off and a looking off across there and that there's a pile of wild rose bushes how is this ceiling off of here you know and he's still a so then you know when we all got back he says all right says we're going to take this shot first rattle out of the box after three or four days yeah so things like that there was more film shot on that's picture than anything i think in any picture david three or four dumpsters of this film off every day from that picture it almost broke paramount just buying film for it you know i know it it was a question of seven months well carl molden and i they called us in how i got that job uh stanley kubrick was supposed to direct it but he called up carmaldin brand on myself and to talk to us about the movie so we went in where four of us sat around this big table and i sat there for about an hour i ain't said nothing you know and uh pretty soon brando over there he looks across me and he said ben had you been jack polance and shane and there's a man coming in out here horseback you're going to have a gun fight with what's the first thing you would have done whatever made me say it i don't know but i said well the first thing i wouldn't have done is stop and put on them gloves to have a gunfight so he looked over at old kubrick and he said put him on the payroll now this is a month and a half before the show started so they put karl malden and i on the payroll a month and a half before the show started and then we was on it six months that's right so you know things like that that's when you got your new swimming pool yeah oh i got it i got another great story to tell you about that i was a stunt man i was doubling fred mcmurray in a picture called smokey it was burl lives we just lost berlin burleigh's first picture so i rode ten hit the bucking horses one afternoon and i charged the business manager old duke ghoul for every one of them well he fired me we got in that evening for me so i went and told old uh mcmurray i said well duke fired me for charging him for riding these bucking horses so mcmurray says will you go ahead and get your other shirt and your suitcase and go on get in the car and leave i'll be right behind you so i did i got my other shirt and went and got in the car and i looked down and here comes mcmurray with his two suitcases he gets in and old duke ghouls are standing there the business manager and uh freddie throws his suitcases in gets in duke comes up and he said mr mcmurray where are you going he says i'm going with ben he says well we need you he says if you need me you need bins well i knew i had a mod he did it i knew i was going to rob him from then on so we go along and finally uh dookie says well bien he says you can stay but in front of duke old fred says now don't even get up and go water a horse get on one or nothing unless you charge this little so-and-so you know well that helped me a bunch and i and i wouldn't i wouldn't even i sit around and i'd get right in front of duke and i i'd sit in mcmurray's chair you know and get right down there so about uh this was daryl xanax he was that's right i was involved in the studio yeah so after we got back about two weeks the phone rang the secretary mr zane's secretary says uh uh mr zannick i always said mr johnson could you come to studio and i said well yes ma'am well mr zanek would like to see you so i go over i thought well you know get another doubling job or something there's a kind of a dirty word in this and i'll have to use it but he gets up behind this big long desk and comes all the way around and sugar cans with him he said i just wanted to meet son a [ __ ] could beat duke ghoul out of that much money that's so great i robbed him oh yeah [Laughter] i remember a photograph i believe it was in life magazine back when that movie was being filled about the most professional man in the movies and they were talking about you do you know what i'm talking about do you remember that well no not really oh there was an incident where you were hanging from a tree well what happened when they hung me when they hung me in the town square i was sort of a bad guy mina scared myself in there but they hung me by one leg they did in the town square and i passed out i don't blame you brando went on he got carried away with his directing and acting and they forgot me hanging over there i don't know if they've done it on purpose or not but i passed out why sure all that let me down well there i was just like a in a dead auction but it was the most professional man yeah it was really it was real you said that uh wagon master was your first starring role what about connie joe young that was those two pictures was my first starring role no no no it's mighty joe young then the searchers i mean then yellow ribbon yeah but historic star wars star while he was starting coasters terry moore yeah yeah we don't talk about it well it was a good one of the funniest things uh of course here i am dope won't you talk i want you to finish your story there was a funny thing happened in mighty joey there was a good cowboy friend of ours by the name of slim hightower him and i had a scene to do and we had our horses tied to the picket line and we had us a fire out here in the coffee pot and a couple old candries are drinking coffee out there our saddles are laying over here and our horses is tied here to picket line well at a given time the ape is supposed to come in and tear up everything well we're supposed to get out of there so we're drinking the coffee and i look up to see the apa coming and i you know nudge old high and so we run we got our saddles and throw them on our horses i got on and i got out of there and i looked back and when slim saddled his horse when he throwed his saddle on the cinch went over the picket line and he just said he just sees this old horse up to that picket line and it's the funniest thing i ever seen old slim's eyes was about that big and this horse was jumping that high but he couldn't go nowhere sam didn't know what was wrong oh yeah they didn't know so the ape got slim yeah yeah for those of you that don't remember because a lot of young folks here mighty joe young was an ape like king kong and uh uh but i talk about passing out from from not having you know enough oxygen or whatever it is we made a movie called the three godfathers which i think they're running tonight that and at death valley i don't think even ben knows about this but uh at the end of it anyway uh so john ford i don't know whether he was getting even with my dad because my dad did something to him or whatever was but he was so mean to me on that picture that i kept wanting to quit and john wayne kept saying no he was mean to me on the stagecoach so don't you know hang in there you know and uh i'd say but you know he doesn't like what i'm doing yes he does he said he only picks on the people he loves i said well he must love the hell out of me then because and uh so uh it goes on you know then the day of the death scene well there's a place in death valley called the devil's golf course and it's all salt dried up salt at goes on for 100 hundreds of miles and it was 135 degrees and we'd only work until 11 then we quit go back to work at 3 30 or 3 o'clock well this was about 10 o'clock in the morning and i mean it was hot so i've rehearsed this scene so much this death scene that that i was lying on the floor and i was rooming with word bond we shared this cabin and he'd say get up off the floor you rehearse that damn thing enough you know what i was rehearsing my death scene and i had it down so bad i mean not the dialogue so much as the whole feeling of it and i was gonna really put it on for him so he said lie down there and let's run these this scene so i laid down there in the on the assault flats and pedro roman dara says kneel beside me with the bible and and john wayne is standing like this and he's holding his hat over the sun so it doesn't shine in my face now he let me down asleep right in the lord my my solo key [Music] i should die before i pray pray the lord my soul [Music] i stole the take god bless mom bob [Music] amen [Music] and i did it and right after i finished it i thought i didn't know i could be that good i thought and ford went well now we're in trouble he said here we are halfway through the picture and i can't replace him and he said audie murphy begged me for this part and you know because wadi murphy was a war hero and he kept throwing audie murphy at me all during the pit but now he said you know i wish i thought he was doing this death scene i thought it was terrific and he thought so he said so then he's got really nasty you know and he called me that he said you're yellow that's the trouble you you're yellow so i sat up finally i thought well i'm going to die anyway so i said i said you can call me a lousy actor but i said don't call me yellow then he said well lie down there and die so he said everybody get away from him so he ran everybody off and they left me there like this maryland said that's why i got i'm kind of you know crazy sometimes when the time it came back i mean i was ready and i could barely talk and i could barely move my mouth i didn't have any saliva in my mouth i was just and i and i did it the way he wanted it well now about a month goes by and they call me up they said we want you to come down i don't know if you know what looping is but it's dubbing and when the sound isn't right on a on a film if there's noises or airplane noises something you have to synchronize your voice with the picture and and you you do it in a studio so they called up and they said uh harry why don't you come down do some wild lines they call them wild lines you just say which way did they go and you do that about three times like it so anyway i drove down there and ford was there i didn't think he'd be there you know and there he is so he says come on and let's go do this so yes sir i'll follow him up and john wayne is there and i'm you know you stand in front of this microphone and and they go like that and then you wait till the number gets to the end and then you start talking so they ran it they said let's look at it first so they ran it it was the death scene he wanted me to die again dub dub the death scene so i wanted to say you know that's not fair i mean after what i went through and then now you want me to do it you know you were standing in here in front of a microphone and you know he practically killed me to get me to do it so so we started it forts is gone you know so i start that same kind of breathing that i did out in death valley and this is a month later and i start this real trying to emulate what i'd done on that screen and all of a sudden i just felt all blood going on my head and uh and i and i started to pass out i was just weaving it so john wayne grabbed me and he took me over to the there was a stairway that went up to the projection booth and he turned me upside down on that stairway so that i get the blood back in my head and so forth that what's the matter with that the way it is now i don't know why i didn't say that in the first place and they said uh well there's wind noises mr ford and he said well the wind was blowing so he says go home he uh there's a scene in three godfathers where uh they bury us you know that was sandstorm is and and we're all in our bedrolls or i got these tarps overs and the sand just blows and covers itself with this sandstorm so the wayne i think i think john wayne wake gets up first and you know it gets the bottle that comes up out of the sand and he goes kid kid you know and he yeah because i'm dying i mean i i'm dying all the way through the picture he goes kid so then i sit up huh my shoulder he kind of throbs i look at where the picket line was and i don't see the horses so then i looked around and i said where's the horses so he says don't wake up and sit up and look all over death valley he said the film costs a lot of money and he said just look where the horses were and say where's the horses he said don't look all over the countryside so i thought i didn't say it but i thought well if if a guy looks to where the portions were and they're not there you're going to look around see where the hell they went you know i didn't say anything so i got and i couldn't stop doing it i got up and i went you kid kid they woke me up i sat up and i looked over there and i looked all around he says don't look you know he goes through the whole thing again yes sir right now so they have to cover us all up again you know sam so i sat up again looked and i looked all around where'd you pick up the horses so he had a rock there's a second the first rock this big and he threw it at my head and uh i mean i he wanted i mean he threw it right at my head well i could see it coming you know so when i duck pedro ramon dar is a mexican star he's standing right here and that rock hit him i won't tell you where it hit him [Laughter] when i ducked it hit pete and in a horrible spot and he went insane this mexican went absolutely ape he went completely crazy he's running around finally fort said oh shut up you know that was a bad day well you all think john ford was such a great guy now that's what we've had to put up with all of our all of our movie career was things like that you're about to see a film clip of him at his articulate vest 11 take one take one more one with more than one tank boy shoot mr ford you made a picture called three bad men which was a large-scale western you had a quite elaborate land rush in it [Music] how did you shoot that with a camera would you agree that the point of uh ford apache was that the tradition the tradition of the army was more important than one individual god i mean and i worked for you know hawks and hathaway and all those other guys but i i'd never uh build wellman but i don't know he was still my favorite who was your favorite director well of course he was my education in the business but i'd rather work with george stevens yeah i heard he was george stevens was one of the better directors in town well he was and of course he had a fellow that worked with him with uh fred gill who directed the second unit on shane and uh he's the one that started laurel and hardy way back there none of you in here old enough to remember that but that's who started laurel and hardy george stevens was a great comedy director for hal roach a long time ago what did it take to film the bar room fight scene we worked on that about a week well let's keep the smell of pigs out from where we're drinking i was the first tall actor that allen ladd ever were letting the scene with him and they built a platform up about this high for alan to when we had her fight in a bar uh alan he's running around on this platform and i'm down here in this hole when he comes by i try him every time but it was uh it was you know you couldn't tell it really in the movie couldn't tell he was up on this platform he was only five feet five yeah you can stand under my arm like that harry you played eisenhower in uh played cadet eisenhower yeah yeah yeah what do you remember from that movie oh that was a wonderful experience uh john ford had it he i was working on a movie with john derrick and joan evans at republic uh and dan duryea and uh and uh so i was in the back lot of republic on the western street and i hear all this commotion you know uh bill whitney was directing it and and i heard all this commotion and and uh finally i heard john ford's name and they said john ford john four died looked around here comes john ford well you know we're making a little b western and here comes the you know the master himself you know or everybody just practically fainted you know when he showed up so he says where's dog everybody's yelling so he has me come out on this boardwalk there he said take your hat off he says isn't that your hat and i said yes sir he says i thought that was your hat so uh he knew he remembered everything you know so i took my head off and i had quite a lot more hair than i got now and uh so he takes all my hair and he pulls it back like that i had a whole bunch of red curly hair he pushes it and i didn't know what he was doing he was looking at me and he said yeah he said that's good so i thought well i don't know i'll find out someday and he finally said how'd you like to play cadet eisenhower dwight david eisenhower [Music] congratulations 1915 ah that was the class the stars but he had this thing in his head that eisenhower was getting bald when he was when he was a cadet at west point and he wasn't i saw a picture white house an hour when he was at wet point he had more hair than uh you know than a young kid and uh so anyway but but that was the whole idea i think if i'd had a full head of hair i don't think i'd have gotten that part the writing in the rio grande was something to see i did you all the oil before you rubbed those two horses oh yeah the roman writing mister what time do you blow the horn around here for folks to eat do you think you'd like to try that before you eat you mean ride like an imagine romans yes yo let's go yeah ben and i did that and uh we were in john ford's office and it was only about three or four weeks before the movie was starting and and he said do you know you boys know what roman writing is we said yes he said well i want you guys to learn it so ben says well he said we've got to break a couple he said i don't want to hear all that he said just learn it so they had to break a couple of teams and then we had to learn to do that rowan right ben learned it very fast and took me longer because i was scared he was it was hard for me to learn it but i learned it and we then we got to where you felt comfortable you know after a while didn't you up there you know this funny thing happened about that and then here comes claude jarman they put him in with us well about two or three weeks claude was riding better neither one of us because his old feet was about that long and when you stand on one of them old horses would be like putting a saddle on him you know there he was you know yeah but to do that your legs has got to be in shape oh boy you got to be quite a bit younger than we are today then tell us how you arrived in hollywood that's your first job well i was working on a ranch in oklahoma called the chapman barnard ranch my dad's up in the osage up in northern northeastern part oklahoma and uh howard hughes made a picture with jane russell called the outlaw he came to oklahoma and bought a load of horses off this ranch where i was working and at that time i was making forty dollars a month as a cowboy and he hired me to take these horses to hollywood to do this picture with well i they've rigged up a car on the train that's how i got to hollywood and the carload of horses and the first week i was on howard used payroll i made 175 dollars a week opposed to 40 a month i wasn't too smart but i knew that was more in 40s right [Music] and i uh i stayed with him and i worked for howard hughes for six years then i went under contract to john ford for six years and then when i got out from under ford's contract then i started making some money because when i was with him he kept me loaned out all the time he got all the money and i didn't get him you know yeah that's right we made more money when we were away from him yeah yeah you did stunt work for a long time and you stunted for a number of a actors and b actors in the westerns would you like to talk about that from there well where i was lucky when i come into business you know i wasn't a very good actor but i could ride a horse pretty good and all them guys wanted me to double them i double joe mcrae uh jimmy stewart gary cooper john wayne i taught bill elliot to ride a horse [Music] when he did the red rider bill elliott is the only actor that i ever taught to ride a horse that took time out to really learn how to ride a horse most of them look like a sack of walnuts on the horse but bill bill learned good and um he was he was a good fellow well he loves it too yeah man great last time well i guess probably i knew that when i was born i i don't remember learning it i just i've known it all my life yeah you'll all be late if you try that man to begin with you and i have met before yes sir in the arena in palm springs california back about 1950 50 51. that's where he got hurt you were in the calf roping i was in the bull i never was able to write an andy riggable but i want to ask you about two fellows you may have rodeoed with one of them his name is phil rollins who is a director and another one is lawson four lawson ford's in las vegas he's in the construction business phil rollins is under contract to warner brothers studio as a director producer or whatever phil is doing real good and so is uh so's i rode with both of those jackpot rope with them around riverside california yes sir they were good friends of mine yes i just wonder if he was still living they're still living and they're still working good good thank you you bet but of all of that john ford bunch uh ben and i are the only ones left now some of the girls are left you know mourinho harris vera miles joanne drew uh are still with us uh but uh we're the only ones the guy has been well we're tougher than other guys that's why we've been watching some of our westerns that we have in movies at home but we don't know all the characters i mean we recognize paul fix and i understand y'all might be ken folk to him but who's this tall skinny guy to play most hank ward you know his name okay i can't figure that out old hank he was a great guy yeah he was i just recently didn't experience it he died about a year and a half ago two years ago two years ago hank was a good cowboy yes he was and see oh we were working on a movie with john wayne uh i did a lot with ben but this was one ben wasn't it was called big jake and uh i played a mean old man i had the money or if i ain't back within 18 minutes from now or if somebody tries to follow us to the meeting place or tries to keep us from leaving after we get the money we'll kill that little boy and hank like ben says was a good cowboy been a bronc stomper you know he'd done it all you know he's riding in madison square garden when he got a job in a stage play in new york and uh anyway wayne if he didn't do something right he'd just blow up and ball you out you know so here come and and we'd all been with him ben and me and hank and all the same bunch of guys have been with john wayne since he became a superstar you know and but he that's why it ball you out so hank's supposed to run into this yard or maureen o'hara has got a big beautiful ranch house there she he's supposed to run in and said there's somebody coming i can't remember what the line was he couldn't remember it either but but anyway he's supposed to run in and yell that the bad guys are coming so he comes in now he's as good a cowboy and a gooder rider as you'll ever find hank but here he comes in and that's where he's going you know and wayne saw it see and he comes in the horse but don't stop and uh then he yells you know here comes the bad guys or whatever wayne goes well hey cry and he just jumps all over hank because he didn't ride in fast enough you know well it wasn't hank's fault he didn't have any spurs on and they gave him a bum horse you know so i had a little sorrow horse that could run good and i that they'd given me and uh i said here you know jump on this one you know he does he gets it the boy he came in and he slid that horse from here to that wall [Laughter] and duke goes that's more like it you know well i don't know y'all get a kick out of this i i get a kick out of hearing myself tell it anyway my first line in the movie did i i didn't tell you no no no you didn't anyhow my first line in the movies was way back in the early days of republic studios i think i was doubling bill eliot or somebody anyhow we made those little pictures in about eight or ten days and this morning when we come in the director called me over and he said ben i've got a line here that i want to give somebody uh you know are you interested would you like it and i said yes sir well he turned around to the secretary and he added the right type out this line so i took it and i studied that damn thing for eight days and eight nights because i really want to be prepared when the time come you know and i'd wake up two or three o'clock in the morning and i'd get this thing and i'd study it some more well about the tenth day the director says all right ben it's your turn you're on and all i had to do was run this old horse from outside come in here and slide him in here and with a telegram and go give it to bill elliott and my line was i have a telegram for you from the united states treasury department well here i come in and like dog says i slid my horse 40 feet and i got off and didn't fall down or nothing i run up to bill elliott with my telegram and i says i got a telegram well hell that's all i could remember yeah we had a guy there used to be a stunt man he didn't do so much western in fact very little westerns but he happened to be on one western house but he played prize fighters all the time i remember kirk douglas made a movie years ago when he played the middleweight champion that goes bad called champion the name and johnny dahim was always the guy that the champion had knocked out i think that was johnny dayheim but he was the greatest put on artist in the world i mean he'd uh he came the first time i met him he came up to me and he said aren't you harry kerry's son you know this is about 1953. i said yeah so he goes well he says that's not true what they say about you is it and he'd do that you know i went well depends on what it is he says well you know and he walk off so anyway i found out what he was up to finally they needed a guy like you yeah to ride in and say they're burning the brady ranch so we said now don't you forget your line john they're they're they're brandon their birdie ranch so he says leave me alone leave me alone you know so uh so i said don't forget john they're breeding the brady bun [Laughter] so uh here he comes running in you know [Laughter] they're birdie and the breedi branch we guess how we got even with it fellas those are hard to do you were 20 years old again and a choice knowing what your career has been now what would you choose as a career as a business for yourself for myself i'd be a racehorse trainer no i'm not so sure i'd have gone into acting because i didn't i thought you know when you're young uh and i was kind of born into it i'm kind of like dad of course and and when you're young you just think uh you you don't realize that you don't look like tyrone power or robert the you know the movie stars of those days but i didn't realize that i was not a leading man or a born leading man or anything like that and uh and i just thought you know after i started to work i worked on a little movie for bill burke and then i worked at warner brothers with richam and then i worked at john wayne and red river and i thought that's all there is to it you know no problems but then i had a lot of rough years where where the work was slim and and the money wasn't so hot and uh we had kids and and so i i think i'd if i had to live over again i think i'd think twice about it i've been on somebody's payroll since i was 11 years old but there was never a time i couldn't go home and get some good advice something to eat a good place to lay down so i've always patted in my life and i've i try to convey this on to the young people i do a lot of benefit shows for the kids all over the country and there's three things that i've patted my life by and that's honesty realism and respect and take public speaking when you're young [Music] and and life's been real good to me of living those those few things did either one of you ever consider uh producing or directing well i don't know if i'd want to be a director because well i couldn't put up with them actors no no could you no that's right he took the words out of my mouth uh unless i could raise hell with some of those guys and tell them you know like ford did he'd cut a guy down the side pretty fast i thought he was a big shot you know but i've been around actors a lot and young guys and i don't know if i could stand stand it i'd have to be too too stern and and i don't know how to do that you know when he cut john wayne down oh my goodness worse than anybody else worse than anybody else yeah he could be really nasty to john wayne the old duke he's just as scared of him as me and nobody yeah harry has a book called company of heroes where he talks about all these people that both of them have talked about today and talks about themselves and i would like to say that i think we've been in the company of heroes today well thanks god [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Devil Cat Studios

Views: 190,102

Keywords: Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr, Colossal Pictures, abilene, tx, texas, don snyder, tom rigby, simplex, john wayne

Id: H6MmRmJ2I58

Length: 60min 18sec (3618 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021