From Author Ben Bryant’s Hollywood memoir, “Three Stages”
- Posted on 17th June 2014
- in celebrity books, celebrity stories online, celebrity story, Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood books, Hollywood memoirs
- by Ben
In this
Hollywood memoir
there are lots of tales about my brief military career. Being a draft-dodging USAF reservist involved many inconveniences – none of which were as inconvenient as being sent to Viet Nam – but it had its advantages as well – in addition to not being sent to Viet Nam.
“As part of my military commitment I was in the reserves for five and a half years after active duty. We were euphemistically (and humorously) referred to as Weekend Warriors because one weekend a month we put on our uniforms and reported to the Air Force base hospital in Riverside for so called training. This was pretty much a joke since our training consisted mainly of drinking beer and shooting pool. However I did meet some interesting people. Among them was the actor Max Baer Junior. Max did the pilot for Beverly Hillbillies at about the same time as I did Swingin’ Together [pilot for a Bobby Rydell series] and we promised each other that if either of our pilots went to series we’d get the other a job on the show.
“I never heard from Max again.
“Another interesting guy was an agent with William Morris and among his clients was Henry Mancini. He invited me to lunch one day and we visited two recording sessions. Mancini was scoring a Blake Edwards movie called Experiment in Terror with a huge orchestra. Mancini was extremely cool, standing in front of over a hundred musicians, hardly moving as he cued them. We then went to another stage where the John Ford western The Man who Shot and Liberty Valence was being scored. There were two acoustic guitarists (one of whom was Laurindo Almeida) hunched over their instruments quietly playing as the conductor, Irvin Talbot, waved his arms and danced about like Lenny Bernstein conducting Stravinsky.”
I forgot this when I was writing the book but an old gentleman in cowboy boots and funky jeans was pacing around the perimeter of the huge, empty sound stage. I later learned that he was the iconic director, John Ford. He never said a word, just walked around and around the stage.
Director John Ford
“Also in my unit was Jack Jones, the pop singer. He was the hottest male vocalist going in the early ‘60s and we were Air Force buddies. When we went for our Warrior (Ha!) Weekends we had three choices. We could drive back to LA Saturday night and return Sunday morning, we could sleep in the unbelievable shitty barracks or go to a local motel. Jack and I often chose the motel and when he signed in as “John A. Jones” with a male companion (me) there were often raised eyebrows.
“I went to one of his recording sessions in ‘61 or ‘62 and he was recording You Make me Feel so Young with a really kicking big band. I’d sung oratorios with full orchestras but this was something else. I was green with envy.”
Tags: Henry Mancini, Jack Jones, John Ford, Max Baer Jr.
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