Читать книгу Vignettes - Life's Tales Book Two - William M.D. Baker - Страница 4

After my discharge from the Navy in June, 1946, I spent some time in and around Sonora visiting my dad and doing one thing or another. One of those things was working on a movie crew making a movie starring Van Johnson and Janet Leigh. The movie takes place in the days following the Civil War when a Missouri farming community lives in a state of constant tension due to conflicting pro-North and pro-South sentiments. Into this situation ambles ex-Union soldier Henry Carson (Van Johnson), who briefly camps out at the farm of unforgiving Confederate sympathizer Gill MacBean (Thomas Mitchell). Suspecting that Carson is up to no good, MacBean is sure of it when the handsome stranger begins courting MacBean’s daughter Lissy Anne (Janet Leigh). Things come to a head dramatically when the heretofore easygoing Carson comes face to face with a band of hooded, night-riding barn burners who’ve been fomenting discord among the farmers.

The setting for this movie was in the foothills outside of Sonora where we built the shell of an Ozark house with a walk-around porch and three sides of a barn. A few hundred yards from the house the ground was scraped to a depth of about a foot to form a pond. A walkway was built across the pond for Johnson and Leigh to walk on in the scene where they wade across the pond in a moonlight night. Then, a nearby stream was diverted to fill the pond. The house and the three–sided barn were set afire, filmed, put out and charred remains filmed in follow on shots.

This was a fun job. At one point, one of the big-shots gave me a “screen test “ of sorts, including singing a line or two. I wasn’t discovered, but Van Johnson knew I was there, he said, “Hi”.

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