Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal
I saw Russ Tamblyn in Beverly Hills last July!
It was here at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences building at 8949 Wilshire Blvd. It was opened in 1975.
(I don't find that we've seen this Beverly Hills building on NLA before. Too obvious?)
Cinema Treasures
They had a summer series of restored Academy archival film prints and they showed a magnificent 70mm print of West Side Story at their Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.
AMPAS
In attendance were Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris (both 81), Maria Jimenez Henley and producer Walter Mirisch (95).
http://www.oscars.org/events/west-side-story-1961/?
This link includes several Q&A segments about the filming (most of it done in West Hollywood's Samuel Goldwyn Studio (now The Lot). They talk about the casting and the New York filming etc.
Russ Tamblyn just finished the filming of the Twin Peaks revival series.
*Speaking of Venetia Stevenson in the photo above, she is interviewed in the recent documentary: Tab Hunter Confidential.
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I had a note from someone on my photo-stream who had seen this image from the set of West Side Story to tell me the guy
on the extreme right (kinda cut in half, unfortunately) was his uncle Tucker Smith who played 'Ice' in the movie. This happens
from time to time. Anyway I felt compelled to share this little personal story with him.
2nacapt: That's my uncle last in the line. Tucker Smith "Ice"
Michael Ryerson PRO 7m:
2nacapt Wow, that's really cool. I'm glad you saw this pic. Such a great movie. I have a longish story to tell you about the movie.
I was in the Marine Corps in 1965 and on a ship (with a flight deck) going overseas. The Navy showed movies every night on the
flight deck but they kept the sailors and Marines separated (for obvious reasons). They did this by first showing a movie for the crew
of the ship (the USS Ogden) and then clearing the flight deck before showing a movie for us. Not always the same movie.
I don't know why that was but Marines being Marines we were always on the lookout for being short-changed somehow.
One night the Navy sees West Side Story, which was still pretty famous having won all those awards, and then they get ready
to show us some shitty costume drama (Quo Vadis, I think, which was actually a pretty good movie but we didn't know that at the time)
and a fight breaks out, chairs are being thrown around, a couple of bloody noses, when our officers show up. There's a big pow-wow
back on the fantail. The Marine officers want to just shut it down but the Navy officers prevail and we get to see West Side Story.
We're 18-19 year old kids, full of testosterone, and we're snapping our fingers and humming the main theme at each other for days
afterwards. In Vietnam we kind of dispersed, went on to different units, and pretty much lost touch with each other. There were
200-300 Marines on the Ogden and every once in a while I'd run across someone who'd come over on her. We always greeted
each other with those first five notes of the main theme, and then we'd laugh. One night, a long time later, we were taking
incoming from North Vietnam and we'd scrambled into a slit trench to wait it out. Bunch of guys, some I knew some I didn't.
We're in there about ten minutes and then I hear somebody down the line rhythmically snapping their fingers and I lean out
and look down to my right and I see some guy from the Ogden looking at me and smiling, holding his hand up and snapping his fingers
...'from your first cigarette to your last dying day...' I'm sorry your uncle died so young. For some of us that movie was a special thing.