Stuff That I have Noticed # 65- Two Boys’ Shared Dream

• Posted on 14th February 2023
• in Entertainment, entertainment books, Film Production, Production Management
• by Ben

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In 1953 two high-school boys kept toying with a dream. They were going to make a movie with Bob (aka Cobb) as cinematographer and Ben as director. They were seniors and neither of these lads knew the first thing about movie-making. 

Ben was going to college to major in Phys-Ed and become a football coach while Cobb was planning to study engineering.

Ben was recruited to play fullback on an athletic grant at Whittier College which had a noted Phys-Ed department headed by the young coach, George Allen. (Yes, that George Allen.) Cobb decided to join Ben at Whittier and try out for the freshman team. Both made the squad but Bob yearned for his native Texas and after the first semester transferred to Texas Tech.

Life itself rarely follows the immature visions of teenagers and Ben and Cobb’s were no exceptions to this dictum. And yet…

After a couple of years in the state of his birth Bob was back in Hollywood working at ABC TV as a film librarian and learning basic film editing while Ben was completing his third season of football and, unbeknownst to himself at the time, finishing his participation in the greatest game.

Even though Bob was technically in the movie business he was a long long way from being a cinematographer. And “coach” Ben was about to take a seemingly accidental turn in as great an opposite direction from coaching as possible.

Since his boy soprano days Ben had been a singer but never thought of that skill turning into a profession. He had changed his major to music and was done with football ergo he had to drop out of college for a year to earn the money to finish. His dad, a “hot-wire” lineman with the LA power company, got him a job as a “grunt” on a line gang which paid $90 a week, not bad for a youngster in 1956.

One day the following spring he ran into a high-school friend also a singer who had “turned pro”. Bruce suggested that Ben go to the open audition for the LA Civic Light Opera production of South Pacific starring Mary Martin. This seemed like a fun thing so he took a day off and did it. There is a long and unlikely story about this in Three Stages but to cut to the chase, Ben got a job in the show, joined Actors’ Equity and suddenly was a professional singer making ten bucks a week more than he did digging power pole holes.

So at this point in their young lives both Bob and Ben were working in the periphery of the disciplines of their high school fantasy but neither gave that any thought nor did they discuss or even think about it in the ensuing years.

Both guys moved gradually upward in their new pursuits, Cobb became a real film editor and Ben made a decent living as a singer/actor.

Eleven years out of Hollywood High Ben moved to Manhattan to pursue a career on Broadway and Bob founded Group One Productions and in addition to editing began to shoot film.

Again, neither recalled the old dream.

After seven years as a reasonably successful singer/actor in The City the whole performer thing began to lose its charm for Ben and he was drawn to the production side of movie making and (Coincidence Alert!) Bob was hired to direct the filming of Carole King’s 1973 concert in Central Park. Bob called Ben and asked if he’d like to be production manager on the (twelve camera) project.

Ben of course agreed but, as Bob was aware, had zero experience in production. Talk about jumping into the deep end of the pool! But he actually pulled it off and was now ready to go full out on the backside of the camera.

For the next twenty years Cobb and Ben pursued separate movie careers. Bob won four Cinematography Emmies and Ben became a successful producer and First Assistant director in New York, gradually evolving to directing in the early 2000s. While Cobb became the head of the Cinematography department at North Carolina School of the Arts.

Ben teamed up with producer Eric Brown in 2003 and directed his first feature length documentary Nyack to Ninth Avenue. While he was editing it Eric learned of Ben’s wife, Elizabeth’s project which became the Better & Better Series.

They shot Better & Better in 2004 on three spectacular locations with, wait for it … Bob as the Director of Photography and Ben as Director.

This was Bob’s last and Ben’s next-to last big shoot. They had fulfilled their teen-aged dream and, at the time, neither was aware of it.

Cobb left his body in 2009 and Ben is still truckin’.