If I'm not mistaken, that is Eldridge, the woman that was killed by her boyfriend during production of "The Alamo." This was discussed early in this thread. Check it out!
Posts from Jay J. Foraker in thread „The Alamo (1960)“
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After 100 years, facts start getting mixed up, and who really knows exactly what the "Facts", are. There seems to be several versions of facts out there.
I think Duke did the best he could at the time, and put together a very good rendition.Chester
Folks here are still trying to sort out the facts. There seems to be a different version every time I turn around. More and more, Hispanic versions seem to be finding currency.
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Welcome Peter - You'll find your at a very friendly website here at the JWMB. Prop up your feet and join us often.
BTW - I live in San Antonio where the Alamo is located. I am so glad it was the Duke that honored our city with the film which received its world premiere in October of 1960. -
Thats all right Jay. Just don't ask me the date the Liberty Bell cracked.
LOL:lol. Makes me feel better! -
Pardon my faux-pas
. My mind was not quite engaged when I posted! -
The 175th anniversary of the beginning of the seige of the Alamo is being commemorated now. The fall of the Alamo was on March 2, which is marked as Texas Independence which is celebrated as a Texas holiday.
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The bearded fellow was character actor John Dierkes who played Jocko. He was also in "The Thing" with Kenneth Toby, but didn't even get screen credit for that movie!
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Now Keith, would you think that if you have the 212 minutes on VHS which I also have a copy myself on this side of the pond, they (meaning the studio/family) would have one themselves? I just can't believe that you and I are the only ones who have it and no one else does.
Cheers
Hondo
Count me as one of the lucky souls! -
Jay, would this Englishman you mentioned be the singer Phil Collins? I know for a fact that Collins is a huge Alamo buff and in the last few years has become heavily involved in the festivities in March. I guess he's been an Alamo fan since he was a kid.
That was the name as I recall - I remember saying to myself, "Isn't that the singer?" -
Welcome, Robert. I wish you much success in your endeavor with "The Alamo." It is one of my favorite John Wayne pictures. I consider myself most fortunate to have seen the original road show engagement here in San Antonio within a week after its premiere.
Please keep us posted. -
This may be slightly off-topic, but here goes -
We have an organization in San Antonio that does reinactments of the siege of the Alamo every year around this time (from the end of February to early March). There was an item the local paper the other day about an Englishman who was a fan of "The Alamo" from his youth and came here to participate in the reinactment. Guess who he got to portray - Davey Crockett! -
They are on my VHS two-tape copy!
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What's with the extreme prices? I'm extremely happy with my original LP, thank you!
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This interview was new to me. I enjoyed how he related that San Antonians feted him from dawn to dusk for several days during the world premiere of "The Alamo."
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Well, October is almost gone and I never saw any announcement that "The Alamo" was going to be shown on the big screen at the Woodlawn Theater. This has been the most frustrating non-event for me in recent times!!!!
Cheers - Jay
Jay, the reason it was canceled was because the Woodlawn Theater was not in good enough shape to show it. I guess it needed alot of work. It was set up for stage plays, not movies. They didn't have enough room for a wide screen. The folks putting it on were to say the least, peeved. They were under the impression that the theater would be all fixed up and ready to go and it wasn't. They had a number of people connected with the movie coming. Dean Smith, Jim Brewer and Rudy Robbins were all slated to be there as was Churro and Theresa Champion. She was the flamenco dancer on the table in the cantina and her husband Churro was the guitar player for her. Invites were also sent out to Aissa Wayne, Joan O'Brien and, Linda Cristal. There were alot of disappointed people connected with this but, they are still hoping that maybe next year things will work out and it'll be a go.
Well, just out of curiousity, has anyone heard any more rumblings of a theatrical showing of "The Alamo?" This has been the most ON-OFF event that I've encountered in recent history!
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Hey, Todd - San Antonio is about 76 miles down IH-35 from Austin. That route is getting heavily traveled, though, so expect some busy traffic if you're driving.
Cheers - Jay
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Well the most entertaing for me is Duke's long version,but by far the most accorate is the last version.I only wish Ron Howard had not pulled out of the project that would have been interesting.
I agree! I think the remake would have been a lot better if Ron Howard had helmed the pic.
Cheers - Jay -
I have to relate something else that came to mind concerning the premiere hoopla - the guy who was the master of ceremonies (or whatever he was called), during a televised celebration at what was then Wonderland Mall just prior to the movie's premiere. was a local weatherman for one of the TV stations. He later got run out of town on a rail because he got caught running around with the TV station's owner's wife.
Cheers - Jay -
This ran in the San Antonio Express this past Sunday. The author was staff reporter Paula Allen who runs regular articles on San Antonio history.
As we remember the Alamo in re-enactment and other observances of the siege and climactic battle of March 6, 1836, there are also San Antonians who remember "The Alamo" - the John Wayne movie version that premiered here in 1960 and occasioned a historic discombobulation of the city's schedule.
A major Fiesta event and Alamo battle observances took place in October that year, and at least two members of Wayne's entourage emerged somewhat worse for wear, if not actually wounded.
Though the movie - produced and directed by Wayne, who also starred as Col. David Crockett - was filmed on location. The set was in Brackettville, 125 miles west of San Antonio, at the Alamo Village recreation built by James T. "Happy" Shahan on his Black Angus ranch.
"The Alamo" was filmed at the more-or-less replica Alamo compoubnd from September through December 1959, but the movie opened in the hometown of the real thing, Oct. 24, 1960. "For citizens of San Antonio, the week of the premiere seemed like a nonstop carnival," says Frank Thompson in Texas Hollywood: Filmmaking in San Antonio Since 1910" (2002, Maverick Publishing).
Organized by a committee of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, the official events of the Alamo World Premiere Celebration stretched over four days, from Wayne's boots on the ground at a red-carpet airport reception through the actual opening of the movie.
The star, his wife, Pilar, and son Jack [this should be Patrick] - who played James Butler Bonham - were joined by "Alamo" co-stars Richard Boone (Sam Houston), Frankie Avalon, Linda Cristal and Chill Wills for the latterday siege of San Antonio. Hollywood visitors ran an event gauntlet from square dance to River Walk boat ride to a San Antonio Symphony performance to a tribute to the Alamo defenders, all calculated to show off the city's tourist attractions.
Whenever the stars came out, they were followed by a national press corps. Regular people also were able to catch a glimpse of Wayne and others at some events, but the biggest opportunity was a one-night, Oct. 23, reprise of A Night in Old San Antonio, the Fiesta festival sponsored by the San Antonio Conservation Society.
Tickets were sold to 4,000 members of the public, along with the celebrities, 250 "honor dignitaries," reporters and society members, a crowd of about 5,000 packed La Villita. NIOSA was chosen by chamber officials to "show visiting writers how San Antonio successfully blends the old with the new," says the San Antonio Light, Oct. 21, 1960.
NIOSA kept its culltures-that-built-San Antonio theme with ethnic and traditional entertainment - mariachis, a German oompah band, an African-American choir, cowboy musicians and folk performers. Food at he off-season repeat also was familiar Tex-Mex and frontier fare: anticuchos, corn on the cob, tacos, tamales and empanadas. The old San Antonio experience "brought tears to the eyes of ("Alamo" score composer) Dimitri Tiomkin," says the San Antonio Express, Oct. 28, 1960. "Taking in all the sights in La Villita, Tiomkin confessed, 'I've never seen anything like this.' "
The event might have been too successful. Wayne and other celebrities were supposed to be able to mingle with the crowd, but "the very well-known stars," according to the Express, "were virtually unable to move through the little city." A photo in the San Antonio News, Oct. 23, 1960, shows Wayne "surrounded by policemen and San Antonians (as he) makes a fast run through La Villita (toward) a hasty exit."
Co-star Boone "got hit between the eyes once by a flashbulb tossed by a fan." A "mob at the press club gate" would not permit the stars' exit, writes chamber President Walter N. Corrigan in an otherwise complimentary letter to the Conservation Society, kept in the organization's library. "Pieces of Mrs. Wayne's $800 gown" also were torn off in the melee, say Corrigan, who hastens to add that the contretemps "in no way reflects on the Conservation Society but on a small mob of kids and star worshiping women."
The premiere was held the next day not downtown but a the suburban Woodlawn Theater, says Thompson, because it was "the only place in town equipped to show the huge 70 mm Todd-AO picture."
While the $12 million movie initially lost money, the premiere celebration was a hit. "They really liked us!" excllaims a headline in the Oct. 28 Express, quoting a chamber statement noting that "The amount of advertising San Antonio is achieving from this project is beyond calculation," thanks to "the generous, unstinted contributions of their time and money by thousands of San Antonians."
Just though you folks would like to read this bit of nostalgia.
Cheers - Jay -
There is always the possiblity that I missed an announcement - I miss a lot of things.
They're not listed in the phone book.
Cheers - Jay
