John Wayne NOT in CAREFUL PLEASE with Lloyd Hamilton
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 7:52 am
Lets just say we're putting a myth to bed before it spreads:
I was glancing over at the other minor silent comedy newsgroup this morning and saw someone getting all hot and bothered that they had "discovered" John Wayne as an extra in CAREFUL PLEASE starring Lloyd Hamilton. John Wayne once reminisced in an interview that he had done bit parts in several Hamilton comedies when he was starting out, and that has led this person to look at CAREFUL PLEASE on the Looser than Loose DVD and determined that it is the Duke in several freeze frames from the looser Than Loose Transfer:
http://www.dukewayne.com/showthread.php ... ht=Careful
Well, as the owner of the razor-sharp original Bell and Howell Show-at-Home printdown that the rather middling dupe of CAREFUL PLEASE that Dave Stevenson used for his LTL video transfer was made from, I pulled the print and looked at it carefully in slow motion, and I hate to say I disagree that it is John Wayne in that scene. The face peeking out from the window with Dick Sutherland sorta looks like the Duke in that less-than-stellar video transfer, until the guy actually puts his whole profile out the window a few frames later, the resemblance to Wayne dissapears, the chin is all wrong. Secondly, in the inside shot, the same man is seen fighting with the other men, he is against the back wall facing toward the camera in the background. The main issue is the height problem. Wayne was 6'4", Lloyd Hamilton was 6'. Hamilton is standing near the fight, and is the tallest guy in the room, tall as Dick Sutherland(also 6') and taller than all the other extras, including the one purported to be Wayne. At 6'4", Wayne would stand out like a sore thumb in that room if he was there.
The last problem is the timing. CAREFUL PLEASE was released February 7, 1926, which means it went into production no later than December,1925, and could have certainly been produced earlier. Wayne was at USC at the time, and did not even get into the movies until Tom MIx got him a summer job as a prop man at Fox in the late Spring/Summer of 1926. CAREFUL PLEASE is just a hair early to be one of the Hamilton comedies Wayne had a bit or extra role in, especially when he remembered doing the Hamilton comedies after he was already at Fox.
So many of the Hamilton Comedies made between 1926-28 are currently missing, so there are indeed many currently unseen ones in which he could appear in. I'm afraid it is far more wishful thinking than fact that Duke Wayne appears in CAREFUL PLEASE.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
I was glancing over at the other minor silent comedy newsgroup this morning and saw someone getting all hot and bothered that they had "discovered" John Wayne as an extra in CAREFUL PLEASE starring Lloyd Hamilton. John Wayne once reminisced in an interview that he had done bit parts in several Hamilton comedies when he was starting out, and that has led this person to look at CAREFUL PLEASE on the Looser than Loose DVD and determined that it is the Duke in several freeze frames from the looser Than Loose Transfer:
http://www.dukewayne.com/showthread.php ... ht=Careful
Well, as the owner of the razor-sharp original Bell and Howell Show-at-Home printdown that the rather middling dupe of CAREFUL PLEASE that Dave Stevenson used for his LTL video transfer was made from, I pulled the print and looked at it carefully in slow motion, and I hate to say I disagree that it is John Wayne in that scene. The face peeking out from the window with Dick Sutherland sorta looks like the Duke in that less-than-stellar video transfer, until the guy actually puts his whole profile out the window a few frames later, the resemblance to Wayne dissapears, the chin is all wrong. Secondly, in the inside shot, the same man is seen fighting with the other men, he is against the back wall facing toward the camera in the background. The main issue is the height problem. Wayne was 6'4", Lloyd Hamilton was 6'. Hamilton is standing near the fight, and is the tallest guy in the room, tall as Dick Sutherland(also 6') and taller than all the other extras, including the one purported to be Wayne. At 6'4", Wayne would stand out like a sore thumb in that room if he was there.
The last problem is the timing. CAREFUL PLEASE was released February 7, 1926, which means it went into production no later than December,1925, and could have certainly been produced earlier. Wayne was at USC at the time, and did not even get into the movies until Tom MIx got him a summer job as a prop man at Fox in the late Spring/Summer of 1926. CAREFUL PLEASE is just a hair early to be one of the Hamilton comedies Wayne had a bit or extra role in, especially when he remembered doing the Hamilton comedies after he was already at Fox.
So many of the Hamilton Comedies made between 1926-28 are currently missing, so there are indeed many currently unseen ones in which he could appear in. I'm afraid it is far more wishful thinking than fact that Duke Wayne appears in CAREFUL PLEASE.
RICHARD M ROBERTS