Thursday, June 02, 2011

Picnic In The Park #12


Picnic-12, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 6/02/2011 06:13:00 AM

4 comments:

Eric said...

Is this or is this not James Stewart riding in the carriage with Dorothy Lamour? According to a story with a dateline of Sarasota, Florida that appeared in the February 17, 1951 issue of BILLBOARD, “Stewart, who is to play the part of a clown, will have his scenes shot in Hollywood where a miniature of the Ringling big top will be set up.” According to Joe Bradbury, in his very excellent history of Ringling-Barnum’s 1951 Season (which appeared in the May-June 1988 issue of THE WHITE TOPS), “Jimmy Stewart, who played Buttons, the Clown, had all of his shots taken in Hollywood” [Two of Ringling’s mechanical seat wagons were sent to Hollywood for filming some of the audience shots and the touching scene where Buttons is briefly reunited with his mother]; Tom Parkinson’s report on the Washington, D.C. stand, which appeared in the May 26, 1951 issue of BILLBOARD noted that “James Stewart was detained in California by the illness of his wife [a polite way of saying that she was having complications following the birth of twin daughters on May 7th] but is expected to join soon.” [It’s probably safe to assume that any scenes showing Buttons that were filmed in Washington, D.C. were done using a stand-in.] Mary Jane Miller’s weekly BILLBOARD column that described the wrap-up of filming in Philadelphia, mentions Betty Hutton, Gloria Grahame, Dorothy Lamour, Charleton Heston and Lyle Bettger, but not Stewart. Incidentally the Tom Parkinson BILLBOARD article (which was reprinted in Joe Bradbury’s article) has a lot of interesting information about the GSOE location filming: DeMille altered the running order of the program to fit his filming needs; Pinito Del Oro and Hubert Castle didn’t appear in those performances where filming was taking place because they had not been contracted by Paramount; in Washington and Philadelphia, Emmett Kelly worked for Paramount and clowned only under DeMille’s direction [With all the movie work he did, Kelly was probably a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild and was paid Guild wages!]; while on location, the movie crew had its own dining tent; it required 10 semi-trailer trucks to move Paramount’s film equipment from Washington to Philadelphia, etc.

02 June, 2011 09:07
Frank Ferrante said...

Contrary to another reader's comment the other day, I don't believe that ALL of Jimmy Stewart's scenes under the Big Top were his double. This is clearly NOT a studio shot. ~frank

02 June, 2011 09:15
Roger Smith said...

Emmett Kelly's screen debut was as the heavy, Ed Deets, a whiteface circus clown, in THE FAT MAN (Universal, 1951). Eric is right about Kelly's membership in SAG. The shop steward would have signed him on arrival. Look for early screen appearances here by Julie London and Rock Hudson. William Castle directed, with radio actor Jack Scott Smart in the title role.

1951 Hollywood was kind to Kelly, as he was quickly set for feature billing in GSOE.

02 June, 2011 16:28
Buckles said...

Odd how your tastes change over the years.
Today my favorite TV personalities are G. Gordon Liddy, Joseph A. Bank and Doug who has Mesothelioma.

03 June, 2011 11:52

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