Ben Johnson

Discussion of the actors, directors and film-makers who 'made it all happen'
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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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The Oscars were this past Sunday, so I thought this would be a good photo to post. ;)

A photo of past Oscar winners, including Ben, at the December 1975 opening ceremony for a new building for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Front row: Claire Trevor, Harold Russell, Red Buttons, Patty Duke
Second row: Eva Marie Saint, Walter Matthau, Rod Steiger (obscured behind Maximilian Schell)
Third row: Ginger Rogers, Laurence Olivier, Maximilian Schell. Peter Ustinov is partially obscured behind Schell.
Back row: Jack Lemmon, Shelley Winters, Karl Malden, Sidney Poitier, Ben Johnson

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Here's a pic from Chisum. Whenever I think of this movie, the first thing that comes to mind is the title theme song. "Chisum, John-uhn Chisum..."

Here it is on youtube:

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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One-Eyed Jacks.

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Here's one from The Undefeated.

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Wagon Master photos this week, starting with this familiar pic -- and yet I only recently acquired a copy of it. ;)

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Another from Wagon Master.

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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And... one more Wagon Master pic. That's Cliff Lyons doing the fingerpointing this time. :)

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mrsl
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Re: Ben Johnson

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.
Some great photos gal. When I think of Chisum (my favorite of the Older John Waynes), I think of the cameraderie between Duke and Ben and how Ben keeps mumbling grouchy things about Duke and Duke keeps asking him what he said . .. DUH??? And even though I have my own copy in my collection, El Dorado is playing last month on Encore and no matter where I come in on it, I watch til the end, that's another favorite.
Anne


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* * * * * * * * What is past is prologue. * * * * * * * *

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Doug O'Neal (Carol Johnson's second cousin) has come through again! His uncle sent him a sound file of a three-minute radio interview with Ben on the radio program "George Fisher's Confidential Close-Ups." This interview was recorded on the last day of the Wagon Master shoot, so it's an amazing piece of early Ben history. ;) Despite being a computer dummy, I was able to upload it to a soundsharing website and now you all can listen to it too. :) Here's the link:



Enjoy! :)
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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Candid photo -- probably early 70s. Ben in a turtleneck!

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Lobby card that shows Ben doubling for Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan's Desert Mystery.

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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I had a blast at the TCM festival. :) And it's taken me this long to find time to get back to doing stuff for the Ben page. But I have a doozy for you! ;) A contact sheet of stills from The Getaway turned up on ebay so I pounced on it of course, and thanks to the scanner, I was able to enlarge the 12 photos of Ben that were on the contact sheet. The photos are by stills photographer Mel Traxler. Mel Traxel (1916-2000), an Oregon native, served in the U. S. Army in World War II. Upon his return, he began his work in the motion picture industry, where he remained until he retired in 1983. Some of the major films Mel covered were My Fair Lady, The Great Race, Funny Lady, The Cowboys, Bullitt and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

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This one's my favorite. :)
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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Ben died 19 years ago today. Here's a short but beautiful essay about him by Belgian film journalist Luc Honorez, published in the April 10, 1996 edition of Le Soir. Ben's Belgian fan Christine let me know about it a while back and she and Eric (who is French) helped with the translation.

You can read it in the original French here: http://archives.lesoir.be/ben-johnson-l ... 0AY5D.html

Here's the translation:

Today we note the 19th anniversary of Ben's passing. Here is a short essay by Belgian film journalist Luc Honorez published in Le Soir on April 10, 1996. You can read the original French essay HERE. Thank you to Christine for bringing the essay to my attention and to Christine and Eric for helping with the translation.

Ben Johnson, Father on Horseback

by Luc Honorez

A phantom horse gallops in Monument Valley and goes from tomb to tomb -- they are not visible, except on the movie screen of our memory: that of John Ford, John Wayne, Ward Bond and, today, the late Ben Johnson,who died like one of his screen characters, a good guy who was visiting his mother in a retirement community in a suburb of Phoenix where he collapsed, at age 77, victim of a heart attack.

In May 1995, at the Cannes Film Festival, accompanied by Claire Trevor and Duke’s son Patrick Wayne, Ben Johnson paid homage to his mentor John Ford, who noticed him in 1948 while he was still only a stuntman, during the filming of Fort Apache. John Wayne needed a double, Ben Johnson was that man.

For six years, Ben Johnson was an actor in Ford’s Westerns: Fort Apache, 3 Godfathers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, Wagon Master, etc. He never had the leading role but, with his face weathered beyond his years, his quiet, unsentimental manner, his air of authenticity (he was the son of a roping champion and horse trainer), Ben Johnson, born in Oklahoma, spanned almost 60 years of American film, most frequently on the trails of the Old West. And, without much fuss, he became a mythical performer, whose figure you looked for in films that took place on the plains and in the mountains.

All the westerners -- that is, filmmakers seduced by the myth of the West -- would use him as a lucky charm, as his natural reticence would then highlight the charisma of the genre’s stars. He played in George Stevens’ Shane, in One-Eyed Jacks, directed by and starring Marlon Brando, and above all, he was the travelling companion of Sam Peckinpah, with whom he roamed the rampaging, desperate roads of the end of an era in Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Junior Bonner, and The Getaway. And Clint Eastwood wanted him as a co-star in his return to the American western in Ted Post’s Hang ‘Em High.

Ben Johnson became a paternal figure in American cinema -- Spielberg hired him for his second film, The Sugarland Express -- and the nostalgic reminder of a time when the American continent still had no borders and was conquered by everyday men. Johnson was fabulous beside Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman in Richard Brooks’ Bite the Bullet (1974), an account of old cowboys whom time has passed by, who want to win a horse race: the scene where Johnson died, still filled with dreams even though he’s nothing more than the living dead in a time that wants nothing more of him, is unforgettable.

Ben Johnson himself became, in 1971, the father of all film lovers in playing the old Texan proprietor of a local movie theater that is about to close down in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, a film that marked an entire generation with its nostalgic tinge and which won an Oscar for Ben.

Dying while visiting his mother, the actor seemed to play a scene from one of his films, something like “The Last Ben Johnson Show.” This extraordinary second fiddle will keep playing in our imagination long after he’s gone.
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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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Dillinger.

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pvitari
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Re: Ben Johnson

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I wish I had physical copies of these publicity stills from Fort Bowie, but I only have digital ones. Fortunately they're a nice big size. Can't remember where I found them, though!

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