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William S. Hart was an already well established western star when he took the lead in Sherlock of the Sagebrush (1920), the first of a long-running film series that placed Arthur Conan Doyle’s massively popular “consulting detective” in a Wild West setting.
“Patton, man! What a movie, what a character...and Vietnam, man, film-wise it begins and ends with Apocalypse. So with this next picture it’s like Francis is my white whale, dig?” - Quentin Tarantino at the 2016 Cannes International Film Festival discussing his new project set during the US involvement in Indochina.
(and a tip of the hat to schnappbacks)
Among the terabytes of data released by the so-called Sony Pictures Hack of November 2014 were these pictures of preliminary tests by award-winning makeup artist Eddie Senz depicting actor Jeffrey Tambor as - per the notations on each image - "bunker Adolf" and "Paraguay Adolf" for the Untitled Ratline Project.
Also leaked was the current draft of the screenplay, which tells the story of Hitler's escape from his besieged capital in 1945 and journey to South America via the shadowy Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen (ODESSA). In hot pursuit of der Führer are a pair of OSS agents* - accompanied by a sultry and seductive operative of Russia's GRU** - with orders to 'kill or capture'...
* George Clooney and Matt Damon are said to be attached to the project
** Scarlett Johansson is said to be the front-runner for the role
Two-time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor Anthony ‘Doc’ Savage reprised his role in the US Third Army’s 1946 conquest of the Alpine Redoubt on the silver screen, playing himself in director Fritz Lang’s Festung Europa (1952). He is seen here in art director William Cameron Menzies’s depiction of the Thule Society ‘temple’ which was the setting for the film’s climactic battle. While there were in fact highly placed members of the Society sequestered within the Redoubt, there was no ornate and elaborate temple complex and according to ‘Doc’ himself 'They (the Thule Society "priesthood") were just a buncha cringing whackos. Hell, the nuns I had in parochial school were scarier!'
A selection of frames from Apocalypse Now (1974) directed by George Lucas and released by American Zoetrope. Written by John Milius with the working title The Psychedelic Soldier and inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, the film starred Steve McQueen as Captain Willard, a US Army Ranger attached to MACVSOG, whose surrealistic and seemingly pointless mission into Cambodia is plagued by the spectral presence of a Viet Cong sniper dubbed "One-Eyed Jack", played by Tad Horino.
Remarkably, Lucas and a small crew traveled to the Republic of Vietnam in 1971 and, posing as Irish documentary film-makers, were able to film US and ARVN combat operations for the project. Producer Francis Ford Coppola balked at sending the complete crew and cast into a war zone and the scripted portions were consequently shot in the summer of 1972 among the hills of Santa Clarita north of Los Angeles, a reasonable match for Vietnam during the dry season.
'Are you really Dillinger?' the kid asked.
Johnny nodded, 'the same.'
'And you've been hiding out here for ... how long?'
'Since before everybody got the same idea, son.'
The kid beamed and shook his head. He was a handsome pug, this long-legged hobo. He'd have done good in the movies before they went to hell. Not really a kid, either. His name was Jimmy Stewart.
They were up around the fire that burned most nights in the middle of Agry. It'd been a ghost town five years ago, when Johnny came to get away from the G-Men. Now its population was up to gold rush numbers.
As American servicemen were poured into the so-called Holy War in Mexico, more and more kids drifted in. Inverting W.C. Fields' catch-phrase, the draft-protesters cried 'give this fucker an even break'. Nearly a million young men disappeared from the record books. They aped Henry Fonda and Woody Guthrie in Blowin' Down This Road, gathering in abandoned railroad sidings and backwoods towns. Several states had chosen to tolerate these shadow communities, but there were still Sheriff's Deputies with baseball bats.
'Don't you want to be a soldier-boy, son?'
'Not in this war, Mr Dillinger. I don't mind what Cárdenas does in his own country. It's not the fight I care for. That one's in Europe and the Pacific.'
Most Americans felt that way. The war was Coughlin's crusade and plenty, of all political persuasions, wanted out of it. The President was just a jumped-up radio preacher filling the shoes of a martyr. Some wanted America to tend its own garden and win back its lost children; some thought it'd need all its armies for the big war that seemed more likely every day.
In the firelight, Stewart's face was set. Johnny thought he looked a little like a hero. Hollywood had missed something.
excerpt from The Pierce-Arrow Stalled and... by Kim Newman
The Hays Office has not approved this Xenophone TRUFAX submission to The Alt-Historian
