MEMORIES OF THE EARLY DAYS OF THE FILM INDUSTRY IN TEXAS

by: Harry Preston

(An extract from his upcoming autobiography "Omar Sharif Loved My Cheese Cake")

During the early '50's, the Texas film industry was still in its infancy. Even today, as it was forty years ago, most feature film productions originate in Hollywood. Locally-funded and produced features have always been few and far between in Dallas and with very few exceptions, have been low-budget horror films.

I know only too well. I've done a few myself... When my film career started in 1954, Dallas was still stumbling forward into the movie business, with local producers taking advantage of Texas being a right-to-work state, meaning there were no union rules to dictate salaries. Crews, actors and really everyone worked for whatever the budget could bear.

Many local actors worked for free (and still do) to achieve a screen credit and start their hopeful climb up the Hollywood ladder. Today Dallas producers are still churning out low-budget (and no-budget) films in the hopes of cashing in at the box office and walking into the sunset rich and famous, a dream that never dies and which seldom materializes.

Some perfectly outrageous efforts have been made in Dallas which have become cult classics. "Mars Needs Women," one of many films produced by Larry Buchanan, has survived to become a legend in Dallas film circles. In the early Fifties, Larry would often meet me at the old B & B Cafe where he shared stories of his struggles to get funding for his pictures. One of Larry's few films that featured a known performer was "A Bullet for Pretty Boy" which starred Fabian and an aspiring young Dallas actress who was not only extremely beautiful, but displayed above-average talent. Larry advised her to head for Hollywood, which she did and the rest is history. Not many people know that Morgan Fairchild's first appearance on film was in one of Larry's low-budget quickies in Dallas.

Another purveyor of pot-boilers in the Fifties was Brownie Brownrigg who specialized in drive-in movies like "Poor White Trash" and "The Naked Witch."

One of Brownie's efforts "Don't Look in the Basement" became the only film in history to achieve an "X" rating for violence, and had to be re-edited before it went into theatres. By today's standards this film is about as shocking as a Sunday School picnic, with a cast of would-be actors whose performances were pitiful. Like so many other early Dallas productions, the film failed to get distribution until in desperation, Brownie sold it to Sam Arkoff for $25,000. By the time it played itself out, Mr. Arkoff made over twelve million bucks off this turkey. Which only proves how sensational advertising and promotion can lure the unsuspecting public into the theatres and turn an outrageously bad picture into a cult classic that ultimately brings in the big bucks.

The movie industry is a subtle seductress, holding out the promise of fame and fortune. At first it was exciting and enthralling for me but eventually creatively frustrating, particularly when Ollie Jones marched into the Big D Studio one day in 1952. Going over some paperwork at the front desk, I looked up to see this short, dumpy middle-aged woman staring down at me.

"C'n I talk to someone about a movie?" she asked in a broad Texas accent, settling into a chair and breathing heavily. "You see, I've started shooting this picture," she continued, "but I need a little hep." Hep?

Like many Texans, Ollie was prone to leave out certain letters from words. Learning to speak and understand Texanese took me quite a while, y'all...

As her story unfolded it appeared that this well-meaning and totally unsophisticated woman had decided to fund a Western movie to star her daughter, Norma, who had been a child performer in vaudeville. Ollie had bought a god-awful script from Sherwood King, an ex-Hollywood writer who talked this gullible woman into buying something called "Fatal Doublecross." It should have been titled "Fatal Disaster."

The story was time-worn, filled with clich� and as predictable as a soap opera. At my insistence Ollie agreed to my doing a rewrite. A week later the script was finished. Ollie hired me to direct the film which had already been shooting for a week with the cameraman directing the cast of local amateurs. Some of the footage was salvageable, but in essence, we had start from scratch.

Local actor Robert Glenn, a Vincent Price type, played the villain. Aware of Robert's classical acting background, I wrote a scene especially for him that included a quote from Shakespeare to add a little class. Shooting began at a boy scout camp in Oak Cliff, west of Dallas. With the exception of Robert Glenn, the cast was pitifully inexperienced. The handsome hero, Bill Laughlin, was a cowpoke from Austin whose emotional range went from A to B.

However, the ultimate amateur was Ollie's daughter Norma who never had been a threat to Shirley Temple. She may have been a cute kid but she had grown into a very tall, gawky woman with a complexion like a moonscape, hair like a Brillo pad, and a figure as flat as her voice. Nevertheless, Ollie was convinced that Norma was destined to be a movie star. After all, she had been taught a tap routine by Peggy Ryan at Universal. She would tap-dance in the movie, and she did. It turned out to be one of many unintentional comedy highlights in the picture.

It didn't take me long to realize nothing could possibly save the picture because Ollie's collection of cowpokes were not actors. Even Norma herself, despite her years in vaudeville, hadn't the vaguest idea of how to deliver lines. She tried, God bless her, but her attempts at high drama came off as high camp.

I quickly learned the wisdom behind the old Hollywood saying: take your money and run.

The cameras rolled every morning, then at noon we broke for lunch, which usually consisted of frozen pot pies that Ollie baked every morning at home and brought out to the location in the trunk of her old Cadillac. She had put the film together on a shoestring. She had no money for proper catering, no money for anything other than the barest essentials. It soon became clear to me that this was not the way to make a movie. Each evening after shooting, we would return to the studio and view the previous day's rushes at the Peak Theatre around the corner

Although most of the acting was unbelievably bad, my climactic scene with the villain worked. It had some dramatic intensity, thanks to Robert Glenn. It stood out from the rest of the script like a jewel, but Ollie didn't share my enthusiasm. After the lights went up, she turned to me brusquely.

"Hey, Preston," she hollered. "No more Shakespeare shit in this film, y'hear?"

After three weeks, principal photography was mercifully over. Rather than edit in Dallas, Ollie and Norma took the footage to the West Coast where Consolidated Film Laboratory handled the post-production.

They returned three months later and held the premiere at the Peak Theatre, by which time I had moved on to become news editor at WFAA-TV (Channel 8), the ABC outlet in Dallas.

Being the first Western ever funded and shot in Dallas, "Fatal Doublecross" attracted almost everyone in the local film industry. That night the Peak theatre was packed, and as the credits rolled, quiet settled over the expectant crowd.

After ten minutes, during an embarrassingly bad exchange of dialogue between Norma and Bill Laughlin, a few titters could be heard.

When Norma climbed awkwardly on a horse and galloped across the prairie, her one hand desperately gripping her white Western hat and her face reflecting abject terror, the titters escalated into a roar. When she began her tap routine, white pleated skirt flying and her unfortunate face creased in a desperate grin, (Look, ma, I'm dancin'...) people almost fell out of their seats.

That was the only time "Fatal Doublecross" was screened. Ollie crept back home and slid the three cans of 35mm black-and-white film under her livingroom sofa, sadly aware that this klunker hadn't a hope in hell of ever being distributed.

Thirty-eight years later, after Ollie and Norma had both died, "Fatal Doublecross" was laid to rest in the film archives at Southern Methodist University where it remains to this day, one of many examples of the well-intentioned but hopeless attempts by the early film pioneers in Texas.

Harry Preston, a veteran author/screenwriter, formerly with MGM in Hollywood, now lives in Garland, a suburb of Dallas, where he teaches screenwriting at Richland College and works closely with the Texas film and literary communities. His web site