John Wayne NOT in CAREFUL PLEASE with Lloyd Hamilton

[Richard M Roberts]

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

[Richard M Roberts]

Well, it appears that I’ve ruffled some feathers over at that other minor silent comedy newsgroup regarding my refuting of the mistaken idea that John Wayne appears as an extra in Lloyd Hamilton’s CAREFUL PLEASE. Ms. Elly Reid (the person who makes the claim to have spotted Wayne in the film and is making the posts on the other group) first complains that she is not allowed to rebut me on the silent comedy mafia newsgroup to begin with. Oh well, I am not allowed to rebut her on that other minor silent comedy newsgroup either, we all have our crosses to bear….

Now, her main argument against my comments appears to be that it is just MY OPINION that John Wayne is not in the film, as opposed to what, her being told by God as Gospel Truth and the Ghost of John Wayne who visited her in the wee hours of the night and told her that he definitely appeared in CAREFUL PLEASE? Sorry Elly, you’re ideas are just YOUR OPINION as well, but there is indeed a difference between your opinion and mine. Mine is actually an informed opinion based on close visual inspection of the only surviving original print material (CAREFUL PLEASE was not known to exist until I turned up the 16mm Show-at-Home original in which all lesser-quality dupes that are in circulation were made from, including the one of which the even muddier Looser Than Loose video transfer was made (without my permission to do so, I may also add)). Coupled that with the fact that, as a film historian and collector of some repute, I have been helping, along with many others out there, my buddy Scott Eyman in supplying him research material for his new book, which will most likely be THE definitive book ever written on John Wayne, and indeed have been going through quite a lot of early Wayne material over the last two years, and my well-documented talents as an identifier of extras, bit players, etc. is a matter of record. Ms. Reid is a member of the John Wayne Fan Club.

Yet, while even comparing credentials, Ms Reid might want to consult her own paper on John Wayne’s early film work, which can be read here:

http://dukefanclub.weebly.com/uploads/1 ... ecoach.pdf

in which the concept of Wayne appearing in CAREFUL PLEASE even does not jibe. In the two interviews in which John Wayne ever mentioned Lloyd Hamilton, he mentioned that he had bit roles in Hamilton’s comedies AFTER he began working at Fox as a propman. In the interview she quotes Wayne as saying “I finally got bit parts in a few other films. Ham Hamilton was the director of those films. He was a friend of Ford’s and the latter asked Hamilton to give me a chance at acting if he had any bit parts to cast me in”.

Wayne did not meet Ford until after he began working at Fox which is indeed after he began working with Tom Mix as a propman, which easily puts the timeline into the last half of 1926, putting CAREFUL PLEASE way chronologically out of reach with its late 1925 production and it’s early February 1926 release date (Interestingly, she does not list CAREFUL PLEASE or any of Hamilton's 1926 releases in her list of potential candidates for a Wayne appearance in a Hamilton comedy). John Wayne’s memory regarding chronology and his career in interviews was usually pretty on target, so there is no reason to doubt his memory in the order of events, and even referring to Hamilton as Director rather than Producer doesn’t mean much as Hamilton was the star comedian with his own unit at Educational, with certainly a large degree of control over his films no matter who was listed as the Director.

I may also add that Ms Reid may want to correct her timeline coloring that indicates that the Lloyd Hamilton comedies were produced on the Fox Lot. Hamilton was indeed the head of his own unit at Educational Pictures, which shot all of their comedies from the mid-20’s onward on their own lot at 7250 Santa Monica Blvd. Though Fox later distributed the Educational Comedies from 1933-38, in the 1920’s they had nothing whatsoever to do with Educational’s production or distribution.

Ms Reid also tries to muddy the waters about John Wayne’s height, again, making her credentials as an authority on John Wayne a bit suspect. One of the main reasons John Wayne is easy to spot in crowd or extra scenes is because HE WAS A REALLY BIG GUY! Take a look at any stills of him in a group from any period in his life, at 6’4” (indeed, his documented height) and a lanky, but broad-shouldered build, he towers over even his fellow football players in BROWN OF HARVARD, which is why he is easy to spot there. The only guy in Wayne’s pictures who ever looked taller then Wayne was Jim Arness, who, at 6’7” is only slightly taller then Wayne when they worked together in BIG JIM MCCLAIN (1952). And as final proof as to Wayne’s actual height, I can add my own testimony as I met and spoke with Mr. Wayne several times in my life. I’m 6’8” tall, and when standing he came up reasonably close to eye-contact level. He was definitely around 6’ 4” tall.

So, even if Wayne spends all of his hypothetical scenes in CAREFUL PLEASE with knees bent, as Ms Reid is now trying to claim (he doesn’t), he would still be towering over the averaged height (which was less than it is considered now and then was somewhere around 5’ 10” for men if not a bit shorter)stuntmen and bit players in the scene. The Duke would stick out like a sore thumb. He doesn’t, he isn’t there.

She even tries to muddy the waters about Lloyd Hamilton’s height. Sorry Ms. Reid, as the person who wrote the first comprehensive article about Hamilton in GRIFFITHIANA in the early 1990’s, one of the people who compiled the first comprehensive Lloyd Hamilton filmography, and the person who has the largest private collection of his films in existence, I have to disagree with you about Hamilton’s height. Though his early school records list his height as 6’1” tall, all indications of his height as an adult and an actor (especially after he seriously broke his leg in several places, an injury which plagued him throughout the rest of his life and probably made him stand a bit shorter) were listed as just 6'. And, as I also said, Dick Sutherland, the other large actor playing the Heavy in CAREFUL PLEASE with Hamilton was also documented at 6', and they appear to be almost exactly the same height in that film.

Hey, I’d love to have John Wayne be an extra in CAREFUL PLEASE, I have the only pristine original print currently known to exist on the film, I’d be happy to sell the stock footage, and I’m sorry if Ms. Reid feels my tone is disrespectful. Let me see if I can get the message out in a more diplomatic form:

“ She’s Dreamin’, the Duke Ain’t There! “


Well…..I tried.



RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Gary Johnson]

WHAAAT???? Richard ruffled someone's feathers? Will wonders never cease.

(Did she really say Wayne crouched during his entire scenes? Silly....)

[Louie Despres]

I love it when Richard gets fired up!!

[Ed Watz]

Set 'em straight, Richard!

[Richard M Roberts]

Now Ms. Reid is considering the possibility that John Wayne copied his walk from Lloyd Hamilton? Okay, now we're talking big time clueless Wayne scholarship here. Has she ever heard of Yakima Canutt?

I also notice that she has now deleted her attempted "rebuttal" of my original post.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Chris Seguin]

To quote the great Harry Nilsson, from The Point, "you see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear".

Hey, it's kinda nice to be back here --- it's been a while for me! :)

Chris

[Joe Migliore]

Chris Seguin wrote:

To quote the great Harry Nilsson, from The Point, "you see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear".

My favorite part of that album is John Wayne's uncredited tuba solo.

[Richard M Roberts]

Just out of idle amusement, I looked over at Ms. Reid’s John Wayne fan club page today and I see that, at least in her mind, the CAREFUL PLEASE craziness continues. I see that she has deleted her old paper that I referenced that showed that even in her own timeline and research that there was no way that Wayne could have appeared in CAREFUL PLEASE, and has replaced it with this:

http://dukefanclub.weebly.com/is-this-john-wayne.html

Note the paragraph now where she still tries to muddy the waters as to dates when Wayne and John Ford and Lloyd Hamilton could have gotten together. The facts are this. Wayne recalled first meeting John Ford on the set of MOTHER MACHREE while Wayne was working as a propman handling geese in the picture. MOTHER MACHREE’s principal photography and production dates are from August 24 to October 14, 1926. CAREFUL PLEASE was shot sometime in November-December 1925. It is absolutely impossible that Wayne could have been in a Lloyd Hamilton picture nearly a year before he met Ford if he was introduced to Hamilton by Ford.

And one more correction, Lloyd Hamilton and John Ford were not close friends. Checking again with my buddy Scott Eyman, who wrote the premiere book on John Ford, PRINT THE LEGEND, just as he is now writing what will most likely be the premiere book on John Wayne, in all of the voluminous correspondence, family papers, and et all he went through in researching that book, Lloyd Hamilton’s name did not come up once. At the same time, in researching Lloyd Hamilton, which I have been doing for over thirty years, in all of the papers, photos, personal correspondence et al I have gone through and or have in my personal collection, not one mention of John Ford.

Also, go down to the screen shots that Ms.Reid has at the bottom of her webpage and take a look at Screen Shots 5 and 6, which are from the fight scene in CAREFUL PLEASE and take a good look at the guy in the cloth-cap and open-necked shirt, the guy Ms. Reid mistakenly believes to be Wayne. These shots alone, even in these blurry frame grabs from less than stellar material show that it isn’t Wayne. The jawline and ears are wrong, it looks more like Nat Pendleton than John Wayne.

Enough time wasted on this nonsense. John Wayne ain’t in CAREFUL PLEASE, period. All the hopes and meanderings of an obsessed Wayne fan with weak film history chops hoping to make a name for herself by making a before-unknown John Wayne appearance ain’t gonna make it so. Life goes on.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Richard M Roberts]

Now it gets truly psycho:

http://dukefanclub.blogspot.com/2012/04 ... s-and.html


One does not even really feel like answering such a frothing-mouth bit of nonsense, except maybe a few points. I know I need not repeat my credentials to anyone around here, and my credentials are certainly listed around the internet, including the information regarding my turning up the print of CAREFUL PLEASE, which I introduced in my show at the 1999 Cinecon soon after I turned it up. They could even check with the fine folk at Looser Than Loose if they'd actually like to find out where the original source for their materials came from. As to my not putting up digital scans of the the film, I do not have a digital transfer of the print as of yet, I've checked into getting a copy from someone whom I allowed to do that transfer on some years ago, and they are working on getting it to me. I'm certainly not going to spend any money to make one to prove this nonsense when I think the proof is already there.As I said in my previous post, all one really needs to do is look at the screen shots 5 and 6 posted on their own website from the inferior materials to see that it's not John Wayne.

Apart from that, all the personal insults, threats, and a lot of WHAT IF's completely ungrounded in fact or reality have not given them one further shred of proof or confirmation or credibility to their theory that it is indeed John Wayne appearing in CAREFUL PLEASE, and if they wish to use Anthony Balducci as their prime Lloyd Hamilton historian, that's their problem. But it does show how crazed they are to pathetically try to prove their point. Oh yeah, they're really winning the arguement.



RICHARD M ROBERTS