Ben Johnson

[pvitari]

The Last Picture Show as directed by Sam Peckinpah... there'd be more than just one fight in it. :) And we'd see Jacy and Bobby doing a lot more too. :) No looooonnnggg slowwwww panning shots... telephoto lenses and quick cutting! You could turn it around... The Wild Bunch, directed by Peter Bogdanovich! ;) LOL.

I love those few times when Ben drops crumbs about his "actor process" and how he crafted his performances -- since he virtually never talks about it (and would never use those words, I suspect). He always said he was just playing himself and was glad the audience accepted "my character." I also really like his statement about the "eerie background" in the scene at the stock tank -- he's right about that.

I don't think McBride was saying that Orson Welles was always hammy -- only that he was so in that one movie The Long, Hot Summer. Orson Welles was one of the GREAT actors (and directors) but he would have been miscast as Sam the Lion. But he certainly was right about the Oscar going to whoever played that role. :)

[JackFavell]

I agree, Ben was very astute about that grey ominous background.

[tinker]

That is a great story about Ben getting the role. He like so many others seemed to have an interesting and odd relationship with Ford. It was very notable that Ben thanked John Ford in that wonderful oscar acceptance. Best ever acceptance speech? I wonder if Ben ever said what he really felt about Ford. He always seems to have this wry smile when he talks about him in interviews.That comment about the background surely indicates he knew and understood a great many more things about the art of movie creation than he said.

I think I read somewhere ( one of Peter Bogdanovich's books?) that Ben introduced Peter Bogdanavich to Ford. Peter and his wife were hanging around the set of Cheyenne Autumn and got chatting with Ben who when he found out that they had not met Ford took them up to introduce them. It makes me think of the vagaries of fate and what might have got missed if....but I do think fate was working overtime to make sure Ben played Sam the Lion.

dee

[JackFavell]

Ben was perfect for the role, Bogdanovich was right to hold out for him.

[movieman1957]

I watched that episode of Bonanza called "Top Hand" that MissG posted. Ben was fine but I thought it was a rather weak outing. Too much chasing horses when they could have spent more time on the conflict between Ben and the younger hand who wanted his job. Some good riding and stunt work but that doesn't save it.

And if an episode of anything had too much music and too much of the same music this was it. Oh, and who thought it was a good idea to replace the famous theme and star shots. (It was years before this episode but that didn't make it better.)

[pvitari]

I have a fun post today at the Ben Johnson Screencaps Page but you're going to have to go there to see it. :)

Ben's hat from The Last Picture Show is currently in the possession of Doug O'Neal, Carol Johnson's second cousin, and he sent me some photos of the hat as well as photos of two award plaques that had once belonged to Ben. They're all posted at the page so please go there and enjoy! ;) http://benjohnsonscreencaps.shutterfly.com

[JackFavell]

I think that's what I liked about it, Chris! The horses and riding, not the overuse of music, lol. I think I also liked it because of the lack of Bonanza cast in it. Sorry guys. Anyway, I really enjoyed the whole thing. I thought it was a rather strong entry from the ones I've watched before.

[movieman1957]

I think that's what I liked about it, Chris! The horses and riding, not the overuse of music, lol. I think I also liked it because of the lack of Bonanza cast in it. Sorry guys. Anyway, I really enjoyed the whole thing. I thought it was a rather strong entry from the ones I've watched before.

The boys were there so little that you could come in at most points and never know it was a "Bonanza" episode. Those were some beautiful horses though. Good stunt work too. Glad you enjoyed it.

[JackFavell]

Well, it had Ben... so yup.

That hat is kind of amazing, Paula, like it still has Ben's imprint on it, I can literally see him when I look at it.

[pvitari]

Merry Christmas or Festivus or Winter Solstice...whatever is your holiday of choice. :) (Belated Happy Hanukah!)

This year's Christmas post is the program from the Ben Johnson Celebrity Team Roping and Cutting Horse Competition held in Fort Worth on April 12, 1987. This program has something like 65 pages (plus covers) so it was a real job to scan it all in ... phew! ;) But I'm glad I did... now you all can see what a program was like from one of Ben's pro-celebrity rodeos. Actually I have programs from two other pro-celebrity rodeos and someday I'll scan them in too -- fortunately they are somewhat smaller.

I love the cover illustration, by Western artist Renne Hughes. Pretty much says it all about Ben... and a good picture for Christmas. ;) Here is the cover and two pages inside with pictures of Ben. You can see the entire program here: http://benjohnsonscreencaps.shutterfly. ... bilia/1062 You will recognize the names of many of the participants, including Buck Taylor, Dale Robertson, Bruce Boxleitner, Tess Harper (who would work with Ben a few years later in All My Heroes Are Cowboys), James Drury, Denver Pyle and many more. :)

[JackFavell]

Awww, that is a great drawing. Happy Holidays!

[pvitari]

Corky lobby card. This 1972 film stars Robert Blake as a guy whose only wish is to race stock cars -- but he has a troubled past and is a troubled personality and frankly, why any guy would want to run off to race cars when a gorgeous young Charlotte Rampling is pining away for him at home is beyond me. Ben's role is a brief one -- he plays a sympathetic stock car track owner who also likes to race in the events at his own track.

[pvitari]

Just posted screencaps of Ben's scene in the 1986 TV mini-series Dream West and also about a hundred additional screencaps of the other cast members and various other scenes in the mini-series. Ben's cameo is as the mountain man and trailblazer Jim Bridger, who really would have been around 40 years old at the time -- Ben was 68. :) Just love his fringed coat and Indian ornamentation. Richard Chamberlain did a good job as the main character John Charles Frémont but I think the actor who really stole the show was Alice Krige as Frémont's wife Jessie, an incredibly strong-willed and supportive woman who had no qualms about taking on her father, the powerful Senator Thomas Hart Benton, or Presidents Polk and Lincoln, in defense of her husband, who was not always politically astute, you might say. :)

These screencaps look really soft, but really, the DVD looks a lot better, so if you're interested in this mini-series, it's worth the money.

Batch 1

Rip Torn as Kit Carson and Richard Chamberlain as Frémont






----->

[pvitari]

More screencaps from the rest of the mini-series.

Batch 2







































BAD make-up job! F. Murray Abraham as Abraham Lincoln


Dim lighting hides bad old age makeup ;)

[pvitari]

An interview with Ben by Michael Hill, editor of the Washington Post's TV Week section, published on April 13, 1986 in conjunction with the broadcast of Dream West.

Ben was REJECTED for Silverado??? What WERE they thinking? If you can call that "thinking."



Ben Johnson Plays Himself The Best of All

By Michael E. Hill. The Washington Post

WHAT DO "Shane," "One-Eyed Jacks," "The Last Picture Show" and "Dream West" have in common? Answer: Ben Johnson.

Perhaps a better way to put the question: Name five good westerns Ben Johnson hasn't been in? Johnson's story may be one of Hollywood's definitive examples of typecasting. Born on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma, Johnson was working as a $30-a-month cowpuncher when Howard Hughes made "Outlaw." Hughes bought a number of horses from the ranch Johnson worked on, and the cowhand was hired to ramrod the herd from Oklahoma to Hollywood. Johnson canceled the return ticket.

"The first week I was on Hughes' payroll, I made $175," he said. "That's one reason that made me stay. I didn't know anybody made that much money."

That was the mid-'40s. Johnson worked as a stuntman before becoming an actor, lending his air of authenticity to scores of westerns, all without benefit of a single acting lesson.

"Everybody in town's a better actor than I am," he said, "but none of them can play Ben Johnson better than I can."

He also found time to marry Carol, his wife of 44 years. "If I can get her to stay," he said, "I guess I'll keep her."

This week he's playing mountain man Jim Bridger in the CBS mini-series "Dream West" (through tomorrow night on WCBS / 2). "That's been my kind of part through all the John Ford movies," said Johnson, recalling his longtime association with the legendary western film maker. "I usually played a trailblazer. That's the kind of part I liked."

Asked to name his favorite westerns of the ones he has played in, Johnson mentioned "Shane," "Wagonmaster," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," "One-Eyed Jacks," "Rio Grande" and "The Wild Bunch," a body of work that spans 20 years. He forgot to mention "The Last Picture Show," in which he won a supporting-actor Oscar on the strength of a handful of strong scenes. But he did mention "Dillinger," one of the few movies to put him in city clothes.

Westerns declined in the late '70s and '80s, Johnson said, in part because the few that were being made are lacking. He mentioned the disastrous "Heaven's Gate" and the successful "Silverado." He was rejected for "Silverado." "They told my agent they wanted actors who'd never been in westerns before," he said, suggesting it showed on the screen. "A lot of actors can't ride well. When you pay someone that much money, they should be able to get in and out of a scene."

But of course, few actors could play a cowboy as naturally as Johnson, who's made a healthy living by following Ford's advice and just playing himself. "The last thing John Ford said to me before he died," said Johnson, with a certain solemnity, as if he were reading his own epitaph, "he said to me, 'Ben, stay real.' "

NBC-TV this spring will broadcast "Liberty," a three-hour movie dealing with the drama of the men and women who created and constructed the Statue of Liberty. The cast includes Frank Langella, Carrie Fisher, Chris Sarandon, George Kennedy, LeVar Burton, Claire Bloom and Corinne Touzet. The film will interweave real-life and fictional characters in the story illustrating how the famed statue was created by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi and finally constructed in New York Harbor.