| Clyde Beatty’s 15-chapter serial DARKEST AFRICA (1936) was directed by B. Reeves “Breezy” Eason, who was one of the top action directors of the 1920s and 1930s. (He directed the chariot race in the 1925 silent version of BEN-HUR.) Eason was utterly ruthless when it came to risking the lives of horses, stuntmen, and even his stars. (In his books, Beatty recounts some of dangerous situations Eason put him into.) A lot of the SPCA rules regarding the treatment of animals during the making of movies came about as a result of the carnage that would occur every time Eason directed a big action sequence. |
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
CLYDE BEATTY SAVES THE DAY! Chapter 3
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2 comments:
Eric,
A great way to celebrate Mr. Beatty's birthday.
Now if we could get Manuel King aka Baru, that is alive and well in Houston, Texas to comment on his experiences with Clyde in the making of Darket Africa this would be the icing on the cake.
Manuel is a great friend and I am sure there are some great stories working with Clyde in this serial.
If I am correct this was Republic's pictures first serial under there new title as Republic.
It was consolidated film Industries that did film processing for all the poverity row companies and when they could not pay Consolidated they just took them over.
Well happy birthday Clyde Beatty.
Harry
Beaumont, Texas
PS to those going to IMDb.com:
OK, most of what this site has is pretty good information. But enter and click on CLYDE BEATTY to see how wrong their contributors can be. The bio by Jon C. Hopwood is today's case in point.
Hopwood begins by claiming Beatty was a big-game hunter who became a "lion-tamer". He uses lion-tamer throughout. Beatty spent his career correcting even people like Mike Wallace from saying lion-tamer. Then the writer states Beatty was the first such performer to appear in a circus, proving if you want to write something like this, do your homework.
Hopwood enters that Beatty married Lorraine Abel in 1951, but for a trivia point he has him as a brother to Jane Beatty. God help us, the woman's name was Jane Lorraine Abel, for 14 years known as Jane (Mrs. Clyde) Beatty.
Now IMDb says they will update and-or correct errors, once their people research your efforts for correctness, but they failed their homework on Hopwood.
I think I better do this for Mr. Beatty's birthday. Give them time to see if they print my corrections, then re-visit Mr. Beatty's page. Alas, Wikipedia also has it wrong.
IMDb did use the updates I provided for Parley Baer's page.
But...lion-tamer. I'm with Charlie Brown when he laments, "I can't stand it."
Roger Smith
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