Jimmy Stewart - new article on his service

[treehugger]

Originally Posted by haroldeye

Michael Caine got his first break when as an extra he told a director that 'You wouldn't do it like that'. The director asked him to explain and Caine told him about his service in Korea. The director then had a part written for Caine.

The point is that having been in the forces they know how to look. Uniforms worn properly, ranks used in a correct manner. And perhaps they knew enough to rein back some of the directors flights of fancy.

Explains a lot about why I've always liked his performance in The Eagle Had Landed. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074452/...nm_flmg_act_93


Plus Sutherland, Williams, Duvall, Geeson, Quayle... And a young Jenny Agutter doesn't hurt, either.

[Sir Honkers]

Originally Posted by haroldeye

Michael Caine got his first break when as an extra he told a director that 'You wouldn't do it like that'. The director asked him to explain and Caine told him about his service in Korea. The director then had a part written for Caine.

The point is that having been in the forces they know how to look. Uniforms worn properly, ranks used in a correct manner. And perhaps they knew enough to rein back some of the directors flights of fancy.

It's a nice story but in my experience, in the real world of film-making, an extra who told a Director he was doing it wrong, well his next role would be on the back of a garbage truck...and not in a movie about garbos.

[Historian]

Originally Posted by Loosegoose

As Laurence Olivier is reputed to have told Dustin Hoffman during the filming of The Marathon Man...'My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”

or, the other side of the coin, as David Niven is alleged to have said to the men he was about to lead on a mission during WW2, "Look chaps, you only have to do this once, but I'll have to do it all over again in Hollywood with Errol Flynn"

Niven always looked the part playing military officers- hardly surprising as he'd been just that (Lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry) before becoming an actor, and then rejoined the army in WW2, serving in GHQ Liaison Regiment (or 'Phantom'- a special reconnaissance commando unit), and ending the war as a Lieutenant-Colonel. Niven came from very much a military background- his father, William Niven had been an officer in the Berkshire Yeomanry and was killed at Gallipolli in WW1, and his maternal grandfather, Captain William Degacher, died at Isandhlwana in the Zulu War

[Historian]

Laurence Olivier was in the USA at the outbreak of war, where he was initially involved in some propaganda work for the British government (there are some suggestions he may have been recruited as an agent by SOE), before returning to the UK with the intention of joining the RAF- he was already a qualified pilot with a couple of hundred hours civilian experience.

Instead, he followed his friend and fellow actor Ralph Richardson into the Navy as pilots with the Fleet Air Arm, however he never saw front-line service, quickly acquiring a reputation for extreme recklessness which allegedly saw him write off three aircraft in training crashes, and the FAA were only too keen to agree when the suggestion was made that he could better serve the war effort by making patriotic films...

Richardson's career as a naval aviator fared little better- although like Olivier he'd qualified in civilian life, he quickly gained an equal reputation to his friend due to- as one colleague put it- 'the large number of planes which seemed to fall to pieces under his control', and was largely employed in desk jobs. In 1944, when the Navy were requested to release Richardson and Olivier to work full-time in re-establishing the Old Vic theatre company in London, the Admiralty agreed with what Olivier described as 'a speediness and lack of reluctance which was positively hurtful'

[Mal Hombre]

Olivier had a reputation for over enthusiasm,Even when acting,He was known to be a menace with a sword in His hands