Settle down, Peridot. Russ wasn't make this personal, I suggest you don't either.
Move on....
Display MoreSir, I beg your pardon, but Richard Boone was asked to play Doyle Lonnigan in The Sting by Paul Newman. He turned it down because the part was small. Newman had the part rewritten to be larger in hopes of tempting Boone to play it because Paul Newman and Richard Boone had enjoyed making Hombre together. After the part was increased in size, he asked Boone to reconsider. Boone turned it down. The part was rewritten again. Boone was going to do it, but he was so rich from making HGWT that at the end he decided against it. It was a disappointment to Newman.
Sir, if you must cast aspersions on a dead man you should know what you're talking about. Richard Boone was a hard drinker, it's true. His abuse of alcohol had nothing to do with this issue or this particular role. Allow me to suggest that you read his biography, Richard Boone, A Knight Without Armor In A Savage Land before you spread any further libel.
Was Richard Boone an alcoholic? After studying his life I'm still not certain. Many men suffering from WWII PTSD self-medicated with alcohol. In the Navy Richard Boone had three ships destroyed under him: the Hancock, the Enterprise and the Intrepid. They were torpedoed, taken out by ack-ack and kamikazied. In addition his plane was shot down and he fought in hand-to-hand combat before he was rescued. Boone never spoke about this to anyone but his son, Peter, but for a single quip, 'We began to think somebody was trying to kill us.' Boone tried to get help from the VA but was stymied by the red tape.
Richard Boone discarded his WWII medals. My husband's father did the same thing with his own WWII medals. For those of you who thought John Kerry was in the wrong, this is a common occurrence with some men. RB's mother rescued his medals. My father-in-law's mother rescued his ones, both from the trash cans. Mothers, saviours of the world. My father-in-law burned his uniform behind the house in the incinerator. He swore that he would never leave home again.
Do you expect a man like Richard Boone to win a beauty contest? Richard Boone was in 2 near-fatal car accidents, both involving him going face-first through the windscreen. One wonders how that might affect the looks of anyone else. When these accidents happened there were no seat belts in cars. Boone was lucky to survive them. His chest broke the steering column of his car in the first accident. Had it not done so he would have likely have been impaled and killed. This was a common occurrence in accidents at that time.
Boone was not a vain man. When he broke his nose in the second of these accidents he failed to have it repaired for years. Look at his films and television appearances, it's easy to spot on Boone's magnificent nose.
After Richard Boone completed Have Gun - Will Travel, he never had to work again a single day in his life. Every job he accepted he did so because he wanted to work: he liked the script, he wanted to work with the other actors, or he wanted to help establish a film industry in Israel, his pet project.
Is it appropriate to judge our ancestors and predecessors? In a word, no, social changes make it wrong to do so in every case. There's a great deal more than to pontificate, but this is not the appropriate platform. Suffice it to say that you are mistaken in many ways, sir.
