It's the Dearly Departed podcast, featuring your host, historian Scott Michaels and filmmaker
Mike Dorsey. Okay, Scott, we're doing it. We made it past
the twenty seven club. We're at episode twenty eight. We did it,
yay, And they said it wouldn't last. I probably said that every time
you said that too. And now we're gonna die in a towering inferno because
that is the subject of this episode twenty eight is the Towering Inferno from nineteen
seventy four. I yeah, I was. I was a huge fan of
disaster movies. Loved it and and I thought when we were talking about subject
matter because of the I don't know what it's like an inferno out there as
it was one twenty three last week, I just figured out that's actually I'm
in the mood for this. Now I'm in the mood for this, so
so uh yeah, but I had I was a little while ago. I
was going through some old papers, my old scrap book, and I happen
to find I used to collect movie ads. I used to literally cut out
movie ads and pay some of my scrap book. I don't know why.
It was just such a weird thing to do, but I did. And
the movies I really liked, And of course I liked the disaster movies as
Earthquake, and I like JN. Frankenstein. But there's the Towering Inferno and
h and at one of the read just the first paragraph of this review that
I clipped. It was a magazine called The Scholastic Voice, whatever that means.
And he says, never find your delight in another's misfortune, wrote a
wise Roman named Puli pu pu Bilious Publilius Cyrus. But pu Blilius lived before
disaster movies, which delight us by turning catastrophe into entertainment. If he were
alive today, he would probably be lining up at the rest of us to
enjoy the latest fun flick with its all star, all star casting broiled in
some super cataclysm and with good This pretty much defines my career, really,
I love. Gene Siskel wrote. Our attitude toward the film's cardboard characters is
let him burn. Well, you know, I'm there on a lot of
cases. You know, there's a lot of these people. I would say
that. You know this movie, there's a lot of scenery being shoot up
in this movie. There's a lot of just insane, over the top acting
and and but we'll get into all those us in a little bit. But
this movie, when he came out, I mean, it was, you
know, your typical ninety minutes was a movie back then, and this one
was two hours and almost two hours and forty five minutes of movie. And
that's a hell of a time for something. It's like this as action packed
drama that it really appeals to a younger audience, you know. I mean,
I feel like people in their teens and like me at that point.
And it was just that's a long time to sit and watch a movie.
It's not a fast paced movie, not a fast paced movie at all.
It's a towering running time. You might say, there you are. Yes,
they burned, they burned a lot of film filming it, and and
yes they did. And I think twenty five people in the movie died of
burns. Cast members and the cast they staid with the cast of three thousand
people were in this movie, extras, etc. That's what I read.
And they used fifty seven sets. They built fifty seven sets for this movie,
which is insane. I think they spent eleven million making it. And
uh, and it was an interesting way that that that that he got it
made or when Alan, I mean you probably did you did you as fasciating
I did? I did, and I'm I'm tempted. I was gonna.
I was. Let's go into news first. Oh sure, getting disolutely,
I get it. We're getting I forget we do that, I do,
I do. Um. We have news, and we have we have hate
mail, we have some hate we have a little bit of hate mail.
Yeah, just let's let's hear the hate mail hate mail, all right.
So the ones that I saved and I saved disappointedly few because once somebody said
about our Jaws podcast, um, dumb and that. But they did point
out that our podcast was longer than the movie itself, which is kind of
funny. That's hilarious. This one was about. This one was about something
we did together, that the uh that James Dean donald turmised video that we
did that we retraced the steps of James Dean's last drive out to the crash.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And this guy says, uh, thanks
for the totally completely uninspiring video. Every time every detail I was hoping you
would cover was ignored. How unprofessional amateurs, How juvenile way to waste the
mic time what I could have been doing something really stimulating, like watching paint
dry. It's like, all right, you know, I'm going to post
an actual video of paint drying and tag that guy. You know we should
we Actually that'd be a that'd be a good third sort of box on our
on our podcast is simultaneously having having paint dry. You have your eye of
an option. That's hilarious. Now the other the other ones, you know,
I haven't gotten too many that the long video one was kind of funny,
and this one was kind of funny too. The other ones, you
know, I get people send me gifts in the mail. Well, I
got a lot of really odd sort of packages in the mail one and I
save them up and I opened them up on a video and and there's all
kinds of you know, last time I opened it up, someone sent me
a dress that was owned by Am Bancroft and the yeah, it was very
cool. I mean these things, you know, really original autographs people sent
me. I did one the other day that I'm going to post at some
point this week, stuff that they have in their collections that you know,
what am I going to do with this and they send them to me and
it's so nice and so kind. So I do these on video and what
you see is my hands opening the video. Well, somebody wrote, you
should you should lather that beautifully tatted arm with cocoa butter before each use.
It's giving your skin tips, man skincare you know, you know, it's
just lather it up in fact, lather while we're watching. And this one,
I gotta we probably shouldn't even use this one, but I'm gonna read
this. This is a real postcard. Somebody's at me. I just wanted
to say thank you for all you do. I love you for your honesty.
You're like the only person that I would save in a fire. Umph.
I wish you were here, meaning this hotel Coronado. I swear to
guard I'd show my appreciation. I'd suck you off because you mean so much.
Well, all right, there you are. We at that. You're
like the Coronado. How long are you going to be there? It's just
I just you know, I would save you in a fire, and I'd
suck you off because you mean so much. There you are and uh and
with that the towering inferno, folks, um is that the end of the
hay mail. Yes it is. I I will be more more careful about
saving them next time. But yeah, yeah, thats um uh. There's
a little bit of news. News of the week. My movie Lost aremona
Buchenwald, my documentary that I spent the Corona times updating, just got released
by Freestyle Digital Media and it is out on iTunes and all the digital download
all the place you can digital rent things digitally and download them except Amazon unfortunately,
because Amazon has clamped down on documentary distribution. But it's everywhere and it's
on paid per view, like eighty percent of the cable and satellite carriers.
It's on there. So Lost Aremon of Buchenwald. It's a historical documentary about
my grandfather who was a B twenty six pilot who ended up in Buchenwald concentration
camp. It was very bizarre and unusual story. So it's all about him
and his the group he was with, how they got through all that.
So there's an amazing documentary. I love that documentary very much. So no,
it's it's it's a It means a lot that people get the attention and
they deserve for the things they did for us and they, you know,
a lot of people fell by the wayside, and a lot of people that
were involved in wars back then didn't talk about it, you know, I
had, I had relatives since I know we're in Germany, and they it
was just we don't talk about that, and it just that makes it even
more mysterious, like what do they do? You know, that is almost
like a universal theme that you always hear from the veterans, especially World War
Two, as they do not they don't talk about or they talk about a
little bit, but not all. You know, you don't get the whole
story kind of a deal. Yeah, if it wasn't for your documentary,
and you wouldn't know the details of it, and those details shouldn't die with
the people that you know, they should people should know what happened. So
I don't. I think it's a fascinating documentary. I love it and I'm
glad you did it. Thank you. I think some of several of the
men that were in it, all eight men that are in it have passed
away since I filmed it, because I started, you know, first originally
filmed it, like started ten years ago, all right, So the Towering
Inferno it's time for the main feature. It's time for the main feature.
Uh. Towering Inferno, the nineteen seventy four disaster film by Irwin Allen,
whom we did. His movie he did two years previously, The Poseidon Adventure,
And I see I see this as being like the Poseidon Adventure if the
ship was like vertical basically, right, it's just a similar plot, you
know, so many similar scenario, similar character, similar music. Now it's
it is very uh, it's very let's go with it. You know,
it's working. Let's go with it, all right. And it's a giant
and ensemble cast of stars and lots of people die and you know what stars
are going to die and all that stuff, and um, yeah, the
thing that's really stood out well, first, yeah, there's a there's a
spoil alert. A lot of people die. If you haven't seen this movie
yet, there's a lot of people to die. But I'm gonna say one
of the most shocking things about this movie because technically these special effects were good.
There's only a couple of scenes that were like, you know, but
I think considering the time they did this, they really did outstanding work.
And it just seems like the characters hold up for the most part. You
know, there's a lot of overacting, but a lot of scenery chewing.
But one of the things I never really understood about this movie is it the
hair. The hair was so bad. I've never seen so many bad two
pays and bad wigs on people. Then in this movie, it's shocking.
It's like a crylic People are wearing acrylic and it's just it's unbelievable. It's
just hairpiece upon hairpiece upon hairpiece. And they there's like three people in the
credits they got credit for hair and that's what they came up with. I
just feels I just thought it's nineteen seventy four. Yeah, I don't know.
No, that was bad hair pieces that they was conscribed somebody, those
were those were designed to look that way. Somebody did screen tests with the
hair and was like, yeah, go with that right, And that would
have burned up in a fire. That surprised, like with the flames they
weren't just like curling up because they know it's just because it was just synthetic
and it was so all right. But but that's part of the fun of
it now in retrospect, but very little of the movie is is you know,
it's really laughable. There are a few laughable scenes because they're so hokey
and so so long ago and campy, but but a lot of this movie
holds up well. And uh yeah, and I think, well, do
you know the story about how how how it came to fruition this movie?
Yeah. So they there were two books they were coming out about a towering
inferno. They had two different titles, and Warner Brothers and Fox both each
went out and got the rights to each of them. So they were going
to be two competing movies about high rise buildings on fire. And that's when
Irwin Allen, who was at Fox, convinced Warner Brothers and Fox to combine
forces and just make once and look, let's not cannibalize each other's sales by
putting out two movies at the same time on the same subject. And and
I didn't realize that's what they did, but I remember in the opening credits
they credit two books as the source material, and that was my tip off
of like, well, that's very unusual. It's usually just one book.
And that's that's what it was. And the different studios took different rights to
get their money back and they went in, you know, even Stevens on
the budget, and there it is. Yeah, I heard that Allen was
bidding on the Tower and the Glass Inferno. The other one wasn't published yet,
so Alan lost lost the Tower to Warner, but he bought the Glass
Inferno and brought it to Fox and went to Warner and said, look,
yeah, let's not this would be stupid. Let's combine. So I just
like the first two studio production. I don't know if that's in history,
but I know their logos don't show up at the beginning of the movie.
You don't see the Warner brothers and the Fox logos. They don't show up.
So it's interesting. That's a real I don't know if thats how often
that happens in life. That's kind of interesting. And he's basically saying,
look, let's not both up put Let's not put out two movies that will
lose money because they're the same. Also, I hear someone trying to open
my door and I look out and it's just like three year old, Okay,
I'm gonna have to to somebody right exactly. It's a it's a it's
a setup. Um, it's basically Irwin Allen, who was you know,
his nickname was the Master of Disaster. His thing was basically, we can
either both make the same film and they won't make money. They'll both lose
money because we're gonna eat each other's sales. Or you can go in on
one film and man, everybody makes money. So their first run was a
year on that movie. You know, it ran for a year first and
that's crazy. It's amazing that they used to do that. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, And it's it's amazing because this movie is not like a classic,
you know, it's of the disaster movies. You think earthquake thing,
but Towering Inferno. He doesn't get a whole lot of references. You can't
quote lines. In fact, I couldn't tell you who was in it except
for the two stars. And there's a lot of people in this movie.
So um, it's it's a weird movie that fell to the wayside. Was
very successful when it came out, but not really not really referred to very
doesn't they have that cult status. It's the other right, and the people
who haven't seen it. The plot line is that this place called Glass Tower
is the tallest building in the world it's one hundred and thirty eight stories.
It's um, which is funny because it's in San Francisco where they have lots
of earthquakes. Um and uh. And it's the the It takes place on
the opening night, the grand opening night, when they're having this huge opening
night party up on like or one of the high floors, and it turns
out that the developers, crooked son in law, who was the electrical subcontractor,
used shoddy materials for the all the electrical wiring. And so when they
turn all the lights on on the tower for the big opening night to show
off how you know, austin the building looks, it fries all the electric
cables in the building and starts the inferno. Um. Then it spreads,
and it's all about the firefighters and the people inside trying to survive and get
out of it. Yeah, I mean the the the the party took place
on one hundred and thirty fifth floor, that's the movie. The fire took
was actually started on the eighty first floor. So a lot of the movie
was like, oh, it's not going to make it up here, and
and and you know, it's interesting because a lot of this movie really got
me thinking about you know, the World Trade Center. Uh, you know
it was when those explosions happened. It was like, this is weird because
it really was differently instantaneous. I didn't it was like guttural. It's like,
wow, this is like just like the World Trade Center, and there's
lots of people falling, a lot of people fall to their death from the
window. Several you know, big characters fall fall off. So yeah,
it's a little bit. And then also so I just know something. It's
interesting because at the time they made this movie, the World Trade Center was
the biggest tallest building in the world. They wrapped filming on September eleventh,
nineteen seventy three, and three months after, there was a fire in the
real World Trade Center where sixteen people were injured, burned, not killed.
But it's just it was like I was, I was watching this in a
documentary. It was made back in ninety I think it was ninety five or
two thousand and five, must have been. There was yeah, well no,
there was no reference to September eleventh, so I think it was I
think it was ninety five that this came out. This documentary that I watched
was like, but it was, Yeah, it was really it's even more
bizarre when you think of it that that way. One thing stood out to
me too, And I don't know if this was explained in the plata,
they just didn't put it in there. But even when like entire floors are
on fire, there no alarm going off. Was the alarm system Frida?
Did they just not have? OJ Simpson was part of that and he said,
they said, why at the beginning when it happened, why wasn't the
fire department notified? And I don't know was the answer? We don't.
That was it? I mean that was why is there a plot? We
don't know? You know, something screwed up because there's one scene, you
know, where the kind of the couple, the pr man, I think,
and and the women are kind of hooking up and they don't realize the
whole building is on fire and they die because of it. And it's like
entire floors are on fire. How are the alarms not going off? But
I guess, yeah, I maybe has something to do with that canal center
the OJ was in. I don't know, because he was going door to
door, knocking on doors. Well, because half of the building wasn't even
occupied yet because remember at the beginning of the movie, the real estate I
was showing, you know, eighty floor to the top is residential, so
there was probably little occupation. And since he was involved with the building of
the place, maybe he was like one of the only apartment. Maybe,
but I can't remember. Does does Oj make it? Does he survive?
Because he saves the cat, I remember he and he gives it to fred
Astaire at the end, that's right, when fred Astaire loses his special lady
friend. All the people that die in this movie are the people that deserve
to die. You know. It's one of those moral movies, like the
people having the affair, the people that cheated, the people that were slimy,
you know, there were most of the people that died in this movie
were people that deserved to die in that in that part, they were not
likable people. Yeah, except for the woman that um Astaire was trying to
con remember Liza Lett or Lizaette? What were what was her name? And
did you do you watch she? I think she she falls out of the
elevator, right the outdoor elevator, and did he watch like the dummy the
dummy hit the balcony and go like spinning socially bad. Yeah, that's one
of the embarrassing moments. It was disturbing. It was a little disturb It
was like, whoa, I can't believe they left it in there. It
was really bad. I mean, it was really so cheesy when they happened.
I mean the originals the built the model that they built was impressive.
It was like sixty or seventy feet tall. So they made a proper good
model. Um. But yeah, that that little dummy doing it was literally
like a pout. That was kind of funny. But that was a surprise.
That was a surprise to me when that happened. I guess they had
to make you well, they had to make the model big because they had
to make the fire look not hokey when they're showing the you know, the
floor is on fire. I guess it makes that stood out to me.
I was like, oh, they used a pretty big model to make the
fire. Yeah, And it was when they when they lit it for the
first time and it was like boom boom, every you know, every quarter
of it. That was really cool. They did a good job with that.
Um Oh and again another John william Score who also scored Earthquake that came
out the same year in Star Wars and Washed in Space and Elie the Doll
and It's just a weird and the morning After song in Posidon Adventure won the
Oscar for Best Original Song, and then we May Never Love Love Like This
Again in The Towering Inferno won the Oscar for that one. So Irwin Allen
had back to back disaster movies when Oscars for Best Original Song, same songwriters,
same singer, and they and she's at mariey McGovern Yeah, yeah,
So it's it's it's funny because it's like there's a moment where they're in that
ballroom the promenade room or whatever it's called, and uh, and it's very
similar to the to the main ballroom of The Beside Adventure. There's a band
in the same place. There's a woman up there singing a song that sounds
just like there's got to be a Morning After. And then I realized later
on that it was the same songwriters and the same singer, and I had
to look it up what they were up against for that year when they won,
and it was like it was the theme from benji uh Blaze Saddles there's
a song in the movie Blazing Saddles, something called the Little Prince, and
there was a movie called Gold and the song was Wherever Love Takes Me.
So I don't the other songs were. None of the songs are memorable.
So whoever has that Oscar should be very happy of that. I mean,
look, most Oscar nominated songs are not the cream of the crop of the
music world. Let's just be honest. That's true. There's usually like one
or two that you've actually heard of and the rest of your you know,
because they got There was a couple of very very Star Wars moments in this
movie, and the sound, you know, when they were at the end,
the really suspenseful end, it was like, you know, I noticed
it aside from the John Williams connection, I just noticed the similarity to Star
Wars and then I realized, oh, yeah, it's him. So there
was definitely a similarity in styles. And it was only a couple of years
later. So and he did Earthquake two. I forgot about that. I
didn't know that, Yeah, which was the same year. So he was
busy, busy doing disaster score music scores. Again. You know, have
you watched Earthquake lately. I have not watched it since I was a kid,
because there's so many cool Hollywood scenes an Earthquake, the Capitol Records building
and in the Hollywood sign and uh that's the Hollywood Dam and and that office
building a figure is in quite a bit. And there's also very similar scenes
in that movie Earthquake to this movie, because there's a point where they're you
know how in this movie, how they're they're from one office from the top
of the building and they're propelling them in a chair, uh, you know,
to the other rooftop. You know what I'm talking about. I don't.
In the in the Towering Inferno, when they're trying to rescue the people
and they attach a chair to the top of that building and they fling them
across to the next office building to save them. Well, there's a really
long scene in Earthquake where they they get whim a woman on a desk chair
and fire hose and they wrapped the fire hose on the desk chair and are
lower It's very similar. And also the twisting staircase, which also has similarities
to uh to the Poseidon Adventure, when they're crawling up the Christmas Tree.
There's a point where the earthquake hits and you've got the railings that are dangling
there and he's and he's climbing down the railings. It's like the Christmas Tree
and it's like earthquake. It's just you know, they just talk about cannibalizing,
you know, that's what's what he did in an earthquake. The dam
at the Hollywood Reservoir breaks. Is that the one that breaks? Yeah,
poor mulhalland man, there's a there's a plaque there for mulehalland yep. So
the guy that did the Saint Francis Damn, which is the biggest man made
disaster in California state history, he's't. He's like in the afterlife going really
really he had to be another one of my damns. He blew up in
the Damn movie, like really can't get away from it. Oh that's sad.
Wow, that's it's so funny. I'm looking at this earthquake thing.
It's it's it's it's on you know, on screens for the twelfth Trembling Week
because that was sens Around too. That was crazy. Sens Around was amazing
where they you know, they had those bass speakers in the camp the in
the old theaters, and the whole place shook. They were just popping up
the bass and and they was screwing up the old theaters, like the old
theaters are literally falling apart because they couldn't handle the vibrations inside. And uh.
And I remember when they broadcasted on television. They did a broadcast on
FM radio, so you crank up your there would be a little flash to
turn on your your radio loud and it would They're broadcasting basically sense around so
you could watch it on TV. That was That's kind of funny. But
anyway, I love that kind of shit. I love hockey movies. I
love I love you know the Tingler with you know would they rigged the seats?
And I remember seeing a creature feature when I was a kid where during
the during the break between the double features, they were doing the spiral on
the screen and say, look out, look out, You're coming to monsters
and these guys and costumes that I'm running out and wearing up and down the
hall, up down the aisles and stuff. And that's all that kind of
stuff that hokey um, who's the guy that the producer William Castle. He
used to do all out of that kind of stuff. The director love that,
love that. So anyway, not involved with The Towering Inferno at all.
I just went off. So Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were the headlining
stars, which is an interesting combo because they were always kind of professional,
uh you know, opponents. I guess they were both huge stars, the
huge stars of their day and um and which is evident in the how they're
in the titles. There was a debate over because they I did not know
this, but apparently Paul Newman originally wanted McQueen for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid. And the reason McQueen didn't do it is because they never got They
never settled a dispute over how the who would who would be the top build
actor in it? So interesting, so to settle the issue with this one,
and I noticed immediately in the c and then read it, M is
they have McQueen is listed first if you're looking left to right, but Newman's
is higher, so they're like diagonally positioned. So you could argue, on
one hand, McQueen's is the first name you read reading left to right but
Paul Newman's name is higher on the screen, so they staggered them that way
so that no one is really the first build. Right. Um, it's
kind of funny how they did that. This satisfy. It is interesting.
I didn't know that about the Butch Cassidy thing because it would have been odd
too, because they both are these like, you know, monstrous blue eyes.
I mean, and I don't mean that negatively. I mean they're very
smoking in my opinion. Yeah, they're similar types of guy. Yeah,
and I guess in this in the case of a McQueen was offered the role
of the architect first and then wanted to go with the fire chief because the
fire chief had more of a dramatic lines, you know, dramatic, uh,
more of an impression he thought it would make. Yeah, he also
gets more. He's better. I think that I wouldn't. I don't think
I would have liked it as much if they were flipped because he gets more
action stuff and McQueen for me as more of an action guys, you know,
even though they're very similar off off screen they were both race car drivers
and stuff. Steve McQueen was a little bit more I think rough and ragged.
Uh. He they did. They both did a number of their own
stunts to the sagrine of the studios because they both got injured during this during
the shoot too. But I guess there was the there was a It didn't
seem like there was an unfriendly rivalry because they sho I've seen outtakes and they're
like laughing it up with each other. So I think it was more of
an imagined or created u rivalry. But they were both similar in appearance,
so you could see how that happened. But oddly, because McQueen chose the
chose the role of supposedly as I as I understand it, chose the role
of the fire chief. But he doesn't show up until like forty five minutes
into the movie. You know, it's like it's like Newman's movie, but
it's at forty three minutes and McQueen shows up. So but then he still
it's but it's a two hour and forty four minute movies, so he still
gets two hours. Yeah, and they demanded contractually that they have the same
amount of lines. They have the exact same unbelievable um but they looked,
they said, they looked like to be had a good time. So with
Paul Newman. Um, I've talked about this person in the past, but
uh, Jim Markham, who was Jay Sebrings protege and briefly took over see
Brings business after Sebring was murdered and um and came out to LA and kind
of at least tried to pick up where Sebring left left off with the celebrity
clients and stuff. His name is Jim Markham, and he became good friends
with Paul Newman, and Paul Newman championed him and used him as his hair
stylist for years. Even he ended up even started getting credits on Paul Newman
movies as the hairstylist on the on set because no one would fly him out.
UM. And he would go to New York and and give Paul Newman,
you know, haircuts in his his penthouse or whatever in New York City.
And uh, I think he may have even been credited on The Sting.
I think, um, I know he did Newman's hair on the Sting.
So and Markham wrote a book, um like a couple of years ago
called Big Lucky about his life and it goes into all of this. It's
a it's a good read, I think, um, so I'm plugging it
because it's an interesting read. Um. And Also, Paul Newman's son played
a firefighter in the movie. He's the guy that I heard that don't remember
this. He doesn't want to. He's the one that's afraid to repel down
the elevator shaft has apparently Paul Newman's son. Okay, interesting. Yeah,
Well, you know, Newman, by most accounts, is a really decent
guy. You know, he he continues to give to charity with his spaghetti
sauce. He you know, he willed it completely to charity. When he
died. It was I still buid a Newman's own balsamic vineagarette. It's a
very good vineagarette. Who does it benefit? You know, I don't I
have no idea. I just I by because I like it. I don't
know. Yeah, but a decent guy, A decent guy. Um.
So Paul Newman. I mean, we could spend hours just talking about his
career. He plays the architect who who's planning, who somehow apparently doesn't know
that the building he designed was very shoddily built and you know, goes up
like a Roman candle. But then you know, becomes a hero along with
Steve McQueen, because he's like Paul Newman's kind of the cerebral one who knows
how the building is designed, and McQueen's more of the kind of brash action
hero who comes in and yeah it doesn't you know, but not over macho.
That's what I liked about it. They weren't overacting, you know,
they was. McQueen wasn't doing that. He wasn't overacting. They were both
really likable, pleasant to watch people. And I don't wasn't There was no
one playing tough guy. There was no it was. It was really enjoyable
to watch those two. I was surprised at how enjoyable it was to watch
those two, because some of the others were unwatchable. But it was down
to you know, I mean, it wasn't his fault. It was Richard
Chamberlain's fault, the builder's son, because the builder son was the electrical engineer.
So it Newman, you know, he that was yeah, yeah,
he was pissed because his plans weren't you know, everything's up to code.
He goes, well, this building is not code, you know, this
is a different code. And sure, sure, I designed it to be
better than code kind of deal. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
because of the power would have taken. But so, um, it's so
funny. Sorry, so uh so. Paul Newman passed away on September twenty
six, two thousand and eight. He was eighty three, and he he
died from lung cancer. And uh yeah, he seemed like a really likable
guy. There was a great episode of Iconic Class I think on Sundance TV
with him and Redford kind of getting back together, and it seems like it
wasn't long before Newman passed away, within a few years of his death that
they shot that. It's really interesting and it shows how Paul Newman had fixed
up an old um playhouse and he just seemed like a genuinely good dude,
you know, and had one of the famously long lasting marriages of Hollywood.
M Yeah, and didn't you know, there's never anything that's been, yeah,
really published about him to being a dick. You know, He's just
supposed to be a decent guy that most everyone enjoyed working with that worked with
who worked with him. You know. That was the other thing they both
got. They both got a million each, equal billing, equal lines and
they both got a percentage of the gross. So I don't know what that
turned out to be, but it can't have hurt well, I mean,
interestingly, age Steve McQueen the year that movie came out, became the highest
paid actor in Hollywood and then disappeared for like four years and just went and
traveled around the country and raced cars and motorcycles, and um, I almost
wonder if he just was making so much money. He's like, yeah,
I don't going to do this acting thing for a while. I'm gonna take
my towering Inferno residuals and whatever else he got and just go have fun.
Yeah, there was, and that was the peak at that scandal with you
know, Aliy McGraw and Robert Evans, and because he was he was married
to Ali McGraw, who left Robert Evans for him, right. Evans was
always you know, we read the same book or he was like, well,
I don't blame her for leaving me because I was too tied up.
I promised her I'd never spent a week, you know, a night away
from home, and he was away from him all the time. It's a
great section in that movie. The kid stays in the picture too is his
Yeah, that whole segment about losing Alan McGraw, He's like, I losing
Alan McGraw to like the best looking guy in the country or in the world
or something like that, you know, the biggest star in the world.
You know, what can I do kind of deal? Yeah, you hear
Evans going that son of a bitch, you know the way he talked,
Yeah, luckiest guy in the world. But he also there's an outtake which
it shout it says Steve McQueen in a in an action sequence, and there
was a cut and he turns to the camera cutaway and he just says,
if anything happens to me, Ali gets my pickup truck. You know.
So there were an odd an interesting reference personal rap. Speaking of speaking of
pickups, I really wanted to talk about this. Steve McQueen, of course,
was super famous for his cars. He loved a race cars. He
raced motorcycles when he was first trying to be an actor in New York.
That's how he supported himself in large part by doing motorcycle races. And so
if you know cars at all, any car that was owned by Steve McQueen
is worth multiples more than it normally would be on its own. But the
fact that it was a McQueen vehicle is, you know, is pride makes
it prized. And he even had he even had I think it was last
year, a nineteen fifty two camper truck, just the most boring, not
a race card thing you can imagine, sold for one hundred hundred thousand dollars
for this, this old fifty two truck. His four gt race car sold
in twenty twelve, or eleven million dollars. At the time. It was
the most expensive American car ever sold. Again, I mean, four gts
are worth a lot of money, but the fact that that one was owned
by McQueen made it worth even more. And then the Peterson has what I
consider to be the ultimate sports car ever made if you're a collector, They
have his Jaguar x KSS, which first of all, is one of the
rarest cars to begin with, because the factory burned down and they built they
only built sixteen of them. The factory burned down. Nine of them burned
up in the factory, so there were only only seven of them made of
the original run. Steve McQueen then owned one of them, he called it,
I think the Green Rat or the Green Bastard or something. Anyways,
Steve McQueen owned one, and the Peterson autom Museum now owns it and it's
in their collection and it is worth I would today. I think it's worth
at least twenty five million dollars, no kidding, because of the perfect storm
connection of it being one of the rarest sports cars ever because of the factory
fire combined with the fact that Steve McQueen owned it. Yeah, it's crazy.
Yeah, yeah, wow, that is interesting because I've seen that.
I probably took pictures of it too, but I didn't know. I didn't
because it wasn't the bullet car. So I was like, all right,
whatever. But because I'm not a car person, I mean, there's no
no, no disrespect intended towards here. But sure, I'm not even this.
You know, I didn't really get Steve McQueen. You know. Everyone
was like, what a sex god he was or something like that. I
didn't get it, you know, I mean I I just never understood it.
And I'm not saying he was unattractive. But usually someone will catch your
eye, you know, if they're beautiful and or a good looking guy.
But it was like I didn't get Steve McQueen at all. You know,
maybe it's because he wasn't a threat to two normal guys, you know,
too regular guys. It's like Ron Jeremy and porn. You know, you
can watch him and because it's you're not threatened by it. Maybe that's what
it was. But I thought he was rather average looking. I didn't think
he was a sex god. You didn't get it, but he could right
right, right right, I did. And he said, I believe that
he was supposed to be at the house on the night of the murders,
and the murders, the murders, yeah, yeah, but he before he
left he got a call from an attractive blonde, and attractive blonde he decided
to go with her instead, so good choice. Yeah, but seepa queen,
Yeah, not an ugly guy, not by any stretch. I just
never really, never really got it. But he was a guy's guy.
He was definitely a guy's guy past cars and beautiful women, and that's I
guess that's what mattered. But it wasn't like a troublemaker because James Bonds were
always like really handsome men, you know, and and he was more rugged
than handsome. I think, yeah, yeah, Paul Newman was handsome.
He also apparently turned down the lead role in Close Encounters that Richard Dryfis ended
up take. He was Spielberg wanted him for it, and McQueen supposedly turned
it down because McQueen couldn't cry on cry on cue And there's that crying scene
where Dreyfus has the meltdown and his house and his family freaks out, and
Spielberg said, I'll take the scene out. I'll take it out, and
McQueen said, it's the best scene in the script. You can't take it
out. So that was it. He ended up not playing that role because
of that. Not wild. I could totally see him in that part too.
I could totally see him doing that. I can't see him crying,
but I can see the rest of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'd have to see that movie again. It's been a lot, many many
years. Um So McQueen got um mesothelioma. If you've seen the ads,
it's asbestos related cancer and it's funny because he smoked. But apparently the cancer
he got was from asbestos, and some people claimed that it was from the
asbestos used in the sound stage walls, or that may was from his race
car driving suits which have asbestos in him. But he blamed it on work
that he had he had to do when he was a marine. He was
in the Marines for a few years back in the forties, and that's he
he said he got it from. I think he had to clean out old
ducts or pipes or something and they were wrapped in old asbestos, and he
claimed that's where he got the exposure. So, you know, and time
wid Yeah, I wonder if the three months of inhaling, you know,
sorts of themes from this movie, uh might have contributed a bit, you
know. I mean it's kind of ironic. He dies from asbestos related cancer
and he played a fire chief who would have been wearing asbestos protective clothing if
he was wearing the real stuff in the movie. But yeah, yeah,
it's so interesting asbestos because I mean, we you know, I grew up
in as best as schools, you know, I mean I remember, I'm
sure I was in eighth grade, and I remember they closed the school for
like a month and gutted it and redid it because of that. But it
was like go up and you know, so, so for seven and a
half years we've been I've been, you know, eating this stuff. Basically.
Wait, the movie theater I worked at was one of those old movie
palaces and we had this massive asbestos curtain that we used to we used to
lower down because there was a fire curtain. So but the size of a
movie screen, you know, it's like asbestos is everywhere. So it's interesting
more people didn't die from it, but it's like it's like what saccharin or
something like one person dies and ruins it for everybody. Apparently, he I
mean, he had cancer bad. Unfortunately it's spread and the doctors in the
US told him we can't we can't save you. There's nothing we can do.
And so that's when he turned to this. There was this quack doctor
that he who had these crazy he was, I think really an orthodontist in
real life, who had these totally unproven treatments for cancer. And McQueen had
to go down to Mexico in order to you know, do it, and
uh, and of course it didn't work. And then toward the end he
had tumors. He had a big tumor in his abdomen and another one in
his neck, and he wanted to have him removed. And again the US
doctor said, your your heart won't your heart can't take the surgery. And
he went through with it. Anyways, he went down the warez and and
they were correct and he within I think about twelve hours after a surgical procedure,
he had a heart attack in his sleep in the early morning hours,
and that's that's how he died. So I would say, you know,
if you're if you're terminally ill, and somebody says they have a chance,
and whatever the FDA or whomever it is that regulates that here, because there's
so many outrageous kind of you know, hoops that people have to jump through
in a lot of ways. And and for our protection, they say,
but still it's if there's it's like buying drugs. You know, you can
you can get you can go down and get ballium in Mexico if you want
to, you know, I mean, it's not that difficult. So if
somebody's gonna offer to do it, it's like people going over the border to
you know, have their pregnancies terminated. Um, you know, I can't
say that I would do anything. I can't say I would do any different
than he did if I was in a situation and yeah, you know,
you're not gonna win anyways, you might as well go down swing and at
least try, you know, right, didn't Anny Kaufman like go to Yeah
some it was like an African country and some similar situation. Yeah, and
hard like a heart massage. They opened up his chest or something. It's
just it's footage at that I think somewhere. But anyway, it's uh so
I kind of don't blame him, but I also I don't know. Yeah,
yeah, um, but he he did die. He passed away in
the early morning hours of November seventh, nineteen eighty And it's just so weird.
In nineteen seventy four, becomes the highest paid actor in the world,
disappears, makes nothing for like four years, comes back, makes three kind
of minor films in my opinion, and then dies a very strange end.
Um, you know, and look the other guy, Dennis Hopper, would
disappear for you know, months or years at a time and go on tours
of the country and take photos and stuff. It was, you know,
the hippie era. Um, yeah, but I've never but it's very strange.
He did that and then just never really recovered because he got sick and
died. Um. And they were gonna do he was under contract with Erwin
Irwin Allen to do another film, and they were gonna do The Inferno,
the Towering Inferno two. Uh, and he apparently was considering being in that.
I think he turned it down and they scrapped it not long before he
died. So no Towering Inferno two for all of us. You know,
they could have cut this one in half exactly. William Holding, We've talked
about him before, but he plays the developer, right, the uh,
the the one whose son in law messes everything up. Um. He apparently
wanted top building and they were like, no, it's not in Paul's not
in nineteen seventy four. You're not getting Tought building over those guys. Yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting because we Holding and we covered him, you know,
ad nauseum. Yeah, and our sons at Bulevard podcasts. But I
forgot how I forgot how young he was. You know he was he was
he was like sixty three or something yeah when he died. Yeah, and
he I mean he was a he was a he was a heavy drinker and
he could have passed for seventy five. Uh, you know, he looked
pretty old in this movie, and that would have been you know that he
would have been probably what he would have been in his mid fifties. He
would have been like fifty six or so in this movie. Yeah. Yeah,
and he looked like a lot older than that. Yeah, he looks
like he's in his seventies in the movie. Yeah. Um. I mean
for people that haven't gone back and listened to that episode, just kind of
the cliff Nos version of his death was he was living in an apartment on
the beach in Santa Monica and he had a fall in his bedroom, I
believe, and hit his nightstand table and gashed his head open, and was
believed to have been like very very intoxicated and didn't realize how badly he'd damaged.
He'd hurt himself, he'd gashed his head open, and I guess bloody
kleenexes were found then. They think he was conscious for about half an hour
after it happened, but just didn't couldn't comprehend that he was in serious danger
and he ended up he probably was not in a Yeah, he I mean,
he hit that table so hard that they say it pushed it an inch
into the block, into the drywall. So that's a hell of a fall.
So he probably didn't even know and he was drunk. I mean that,
I think that's been established that he was there was. I mean,
the the proof of that was the empty bottle that was on the table next
to him. Kind of a thing. And imagine, I don't know if
you can actually check the toxicology and you know, when you've been dead for
as long as he was, because he was dead for a while I believe
before his body was discovered. But still he was a famously you know,
an alcohol abuser and a mean alcohol abuser and uh yeah, that's a really
bitter guy. But I didn't come off that way in this movie. He
was very likable, you know, despite the fact that it wasn't even his
fault actually that this whole accident happened. But he kind of was taking the
fall for it in a lot of ways. Uh right, yeah, no,
but ump Bump took the fall for it. La Um. He passed
away on William Holden passed away on November twelfth, nineteen eighty one. Um,
And I mean, for me, he's his sunset Boulevard. So it's
kind of hard for me to even picture him and anything else, even though
he did so much else. Um Fred Astaire, who would have been in
uh well into his seventies and and looked looked, looked at play as an
old Kahn man who is trying to Cohn. Was it Eliza Lette, what
did we settling? Yeah? I mean I joined a Cassum Jennifer Jones,
Yes, Um, and he um plays an old Cohn man. He's there
to kind of rip her off, and he then he decides he's in love
with her and and confesses to her that he was gonna, you know,
sell her stocks and stuff to do didn't exist and um, and then and
then she falls off the elevator and spins like a top uh ninety floors at
the bottom. She was very She didn't deserve what Scott no, but she
was she was like the Shelley Winter's character. You know when they when they
did that that that stairway scene, and you you just you know, she
was wearing the nice flowing dress and she had to climb down this thing,
just like Shelley had to climb up that uh that in the pasiety had to
climb up the Christmas tree. But she was like the sacrifice that had to
be done to teach him a lesson because he was a con man. So
I think that I think that's why they they killed her off in the movie.
Kind of a bad deal her man. Yeah, that was sort of
the surprise part of the movie. That was a surprise death in the movie.
I think that's true. That's true because usually it's they get people to
get it deserve it, and she didn't. Yeah. No, but fredist
So this is the crazy thing. Fred Astaire got his own only Oscar nomination
of his entire career from this movie for a Best Supporting Actor. Isn't that
crazy? He didn't win, but it's the only time he got an honorary
Oscar in nineteen fifty but he had he'd never I can't believe he'd never been
nominated for a legit Oscar and The Towering Inferno in nineteen seventy four is what
he gets it for all the stuff he did. He did the he was
not an actor. I guess he was more of a dancer, but he
acted, but he was never everything he's star billing in was a dancer,
I guess, sure. Yeah, that's what it was. He didn't get
the Oscar for this, but he did win a Golden Globe for I think
Best Supporting Actor. So he I mean, he had to have weighed seventy
five pounds, you know, soaking wet he was. He was not.
He was a very like always look kind of thing. But he's very frail.
Yeah, very very frail. It was just kind of funny how at
the beginning of the movie is like his first scene is taking a taxi to
this this office building and and he gets it's out of the taxi and it's
a ninety ninety five cent fair in a taxi. I know, it's it's
it's very indicative of the time period, and he's counting up pennies. It's
like it was just the funniest thing because you know, now they wouldn't even
what it's like immediately at five dollars when you walk in get into a taxi
anymore, whoever goes into taxis anymore? But but yeah, it's it was
just kind of funny. He doesn't tip the guy, all right, he
says, I'll tip you next time or something like that, right, Yeah,
yeah, so um, but I guy, Yeah, what an amazing
person. And funny that out of all those movies, like you said,
never an Oscar nomination except for this movie. Got a Golden Globe for this
movie. I think a Bapta as well. And it's just it's just for
this silly movie that's largely forgettable except for the epic nature of it. A
lot of people would even say would he wouldn't even know he was in it
unless you unless you, h, you know, pointed it out. So
he was at the end of his life. He was married to a woman
who was forty five years younger than him, Not that there's anything wrong with
that, but forty five years though, that's impressive, you know, but
h But apparently she loved him very much. And now I don't know if
this is true? Can you? Actually they say they had it in his
will. His wife's name was Robin Smith, and they said that he had
it in his will that he can't be portrayed in screen. Oh so they
can't like tell his the Fredistair story or whatever. Yeah, she said that
she would never she promised to never get permission to portray him in a film.
And in his will he said he requested that no such portrayal ever take
place. It's because it's there, the codicil whatever is there because I have
no particular desire to have my life my life misinterpreted, which it would be,
which I know. But you can't. You don't have a control of
that. Can you can make a Fredistaire biopick if you wanted to, You
can't really stops without without the estate's permission. I don't know that you could
do an entire film on him. You could probably get away with having him
be a character in another film, someone else's story. You might be able
to get away with not um going and getting his you know, life story
rights from his estate. But if you wanted to do like the fred Astaire
story, like a biography on him, you could write an authorized biography as
a book. So I that's freaking It's a legal interesting legal area, and
it continues to be an interesting legal area. Whether or not you'd be able
to do that, yeah, I mean you would consider it a tribute or
a what was that tournament Molly Shannon used about a send up? It was
anyway, but it was you know, I can't see how as somebody being
a public persona Now, if you're talking about movie clips. If you're talking
about you know, recreating like MGM movies, there's a copyright issue. I
can understand that, but him as a as a human being, I don't
know. It's just interesting, but I don't know if it's and I don't
know if it's a thing like copyright where it expires after a certain amount of
years. Like obviously, if they're gonna, you know, they do an
Abraham Lincoln bio biopic, they're not going and tracking down his his errors to
see you know what I mean, his descendants is to get permission. So
at a certain point, um, you don't have to. So I do
wonder what point that it's kind of a gray area and time. I doubt
there's good people knocking down doors for the Fredis Stare life story either you know,
I mean he was I mean, I don't mean that in the Nasty
Wire Us. And I can tell you when they do do big you know,
true films, true story films, there are always um extra characters in
those that are portrayed that they did not go and get the permission from that
person to do it right. One of the most famous ones is Jerry Heller,
who was the manager for inwa you know, when they did them straight
out of Compton film. He's portrayed in that movie and they did not consult
with him. He's played by an actor, and he actually was filing a
lawsuit at the time of his death against him for his portrayal. They thought
his portrayal is defamatory. So so if it's like part of a big ensemble
and it's not the main focus, I think they can kind of get away
with it. But if it's about the person specifically, I don't know how
that works. But anyway, that's supposedly in his will, that's what he
had. Now. They kind of made me blanche a little bit. Was
that on when he died. He's he died in Um, well, you
probably have the date right there. I don't. I don't have it right
up the top my head. He died on June twenty second, nineteen eighty
seven. He was eighty eight years old. He died for pneumonia hammonia.
And I think he was born in eighteen ninety nine. Yeah. Yeah,
my grandmother was born in eighteen eighty eight. Yeah, it's bizarre to think
that. I yeah, I grew up with that woman who was born in
the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, she died in seventy seven and she was eighty
eight years old. So wowing people that lived in I wish I had known
to ask them that, you know, the questions about that, um,
you know, being there, you know, the first time they saw a
television, or the first time they heard a telephone, or because they were
old school. I remember they did the old phones. They liked party lines.
They didn't even have their own phone line. You know, they would
where where I lived. I spent about half my childhood in Colorado. When
out in the sticks, I had friends that still had party lines. It
still had party lines in the nineties, in nineteen nineties, not the eighteen
nineties. It's crazy to think that people multiple home sharing the same phone.
It's kind of weird. So I remember when we would leave my grandmother's house
and we would get home. She wanted to know we got home, but
she didn't want anyone to know what we were doing. So we would call
and ring once so no one else would pick up the phone. Or either
that she'd say hello and we'd hang up. But that was just so other
people didn't know what was what was going on. But um, but anyway,
back to the first that's what we're talking about. So he you know,
his widow was forty five years younger than him. Now what I find
is, I said, what makes me kind of a blanche a little bit?
Is it? When he died, a gravestone was put on his grave.
He's at Oakwood Memorial Park. It's the same place where actor Stephen Boyd
was that Bob Crane was there until his wife had had had him exhoomed and
took him to Westwood Cemetery. His gravestone says something to the effect I will
always love you, my dear. You know, had nothing. It didn't
say actor dance or extraordinariyor I will always love you, my dear. It
was just to me. It kind of was like, it's not about you,
love you know, I understand it's about you, but it's really about
him. This is forever place, people forever going to come to visit and
pay their respects to him, and they're gonna go, whose I, Who
is I? You know? Why? Why why is your personal message on
on his tombstone? It's a right. She paid for it, and she's
completely in her you know, in her right to do that. But it
just made me uncomfortable. It's like, well, not about you, really,
but it's weird. We talked in our last show. I think about
a dispute over a headstone. It's funny how that happens with Was it with
Sinatra? Oh right? Yeah? Yeah. And it's never never about the
person, it's never about the person's wishes. I just saw a story about
them moving John Barrymore's body. His son did it, and the whole thing
about it because his Barrymore wanted to be buried back I think back East with
the family, the family plot, and he wasn't. He was buried out
here, and the sun finally was like, screw that. We We're gonna
the son and the grand somewhere, like we're gonna move him. And they
basically I think they were gonna have to have the whole family signed the paperwork,
and they kind of like, h kind of fudge that a little bit
just because they didn't want to deal with all the various personalities that they would
have to deal with. They just wanted to they'd never felt it was right
that his his wishes weren't honored m where he wanted to be put, and
they moved him. But yeah, I mean, it's about what they wanted
done. I think, I think, I mean, we'll look up when
they ripped off Graham Parson's body and set him on fire. You know,
he in the desert, you know, I mean, he they knew it's
not what he wanted, and they they they stole his body and lit it
on fire, trying to cremate him, not realizing that it takes a little
bit more than gasoline to uh, to cremate somebody. You know, it's
there's a lot of remains to go through. But still it's trying to honor
him the best you way, the best way you can. But I don't
know. Personal post it's on people's graves don't really fly. But that's me.
That's me. It's not it's not for me to say, I mean
to say, while it is because I just said it. It is for
you to say, Scott, your opinion matters. Yes, Um, I
put Jennifer Jones down next. Is that a good one to go to?
Yeah, that's fine. I mean, she's a she's a a sad individual,
man, I should talk about you know, she had some breaks,
some bad breaks, and she had a history of psychological problems and she at
one point attempted suicide. She jumped off a cliff in Malibu, and I
think her daughter eventually did commit suicide later. And she was a big advocate
for mental health awareness. That was her big cause. She was nominated for
five Oscars, one of them being for The Towering Inferno, which was her
last film before she went into retirement, and she won Best Actress for the
Song of Bernadette. And she was the sixth youngest actress to ever win a
Best Actress Oscar. She won it on her twenty fifth birthday. Only Hepburn
beat her by forty days for Roman Holidays, being younger than her. But
she was the sixty youngest actress to ever win it. Yep. And there
was something else, Oh, I was just gonna say, she should have
won an award for marrying well. She married David Selznick until he died,
and then she married you know, the industrial the wealthy industrialist Norton Simon.
After that, of course, who has an excellent art museum called the Norton
Simon Museum in Pasadena. It's a really good little art museum and apparently,
according to Wikipedia, um some of the artwork that appears at The beginning of
this film is from Norton Simon's collection. Really m hmm, interesting, I
wonder why. Yeah, I mean, I know they own the Blue Boy
in the Pink Lady. Those are the ones I know because I am only
familiar with, like the masterpieces. I really like, if you're in southern
California and you need a museum that's not like a full day like you know,
LACMA or the Getty is Norton Simon's a really nice, like you know,
one at one or two hour visit to. Yeah, you know,
see a nice space with some nice art, but not be overwhelmed by it,
you know, right, yeah, um, what do you think about?
Yeah? It was there. It was her daughter with Selznick. I
think they died as she jumped. She jumped too, I mean Jennifer Jones
tried to and well she did and they found her and they but then the
daughter jumped. She's twenty second floor of a building somewhere downtown. I think,
yeah, yeah, but at least she embraced it afterwards in the mental
illness thing and was a real advocate for you know, therapy and things like
that. Exactly. Yeah, get help, if you get get help,
um her ashes and her ashes are interred with Selznick, not Norton Simon over
at Forest Lawn. So interesting. M hmm. Yeah, She's just say
she was like the Shelly Winter's character of this movie. She was likable and
a bit awkward and clearly fish out of water and I ended up but likable
and surprisingly we should put a disclaimer, you know at the beginning, well
you know that there's just all of the spoilers in the world in this right,
but she was like the surprising death of all the deaths in the movie.
That was the one I didn't see comment m yeah. And she passed
away on December seventeenth, two thousand and nine at the age of ninety from
natural causes. Preston Peace. And then the last actor that I really wanted
to talk about, and I really wanted to talk about this for you,
Scott, was Robert Vaughan, who is best known for being in The Magnificent
Seven and bullet In Superman three and Delta Force and The Man from Uncle.
But I wanted to talk about this one because I know how much you love
a good Hollywood paternity dispute, and there's a really good one with Robert von
there's a really good one with Royson. Yeah so um. The famous producer
and director Matthew Vaughan a British director who produced Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels and
Snatch and directed Layer Cake and kick Ass and X Men First Class and the
Kingsman movies, and is married to Claudia Schiffer. He for the first like
thirty some years of his life believe that he was Robert Vaughan's son and was
named Matthew Vaughn, took on his surname and came to find out in two
thousand and two that his real father was a British aristocrat and was not.
Yeah, hold on, I'll tell you it's a name I can't really pronounce
very well, one of these very aristocratic like ten name names, George de
Vera Drummond or de Vere Drumond. So Matthew Vaughan has changed his last name
personally to however you pronounced demand Drummond, de Vere Drummond. But you know,
professionally he's still Matthew Vaughan, because that's kind of that's how everybody knows
him. But he does not go by that in his personal life anymore.
And here's the extra drama. His mother found out that that Robert Vaughan was
not the father back in the eighties and didn't tell her son, so he
didn't find Well that's very British though, it's very British. We just won't
say anything secret and every family has their dark secret. We don't discuss.
Yeah, right, I mean she must have known. I mean well,
I mean, well maybe she didn't, but uh um, that that is
that's really interesting. I mean because I knew. It's an odd He had
a career in England that I didn't even know about. I mean, he
was in he was in a British soap opera in two thousands and you know,
in the early two thousands called Coronation Street, which is like a you
know, it's like a real British thing. It's not like you know of
now. It's it is like so British it's not even true. And he
was in that for a while and it was like that surprised me on his
IMDb page and he did. He was in Little Britain. He was in
an episode of the of the comedy show A Little Britain. So he had
a real connection to England. Now I know why because of his son.
But I didn't I didn't know that before. So that's uh, that's very
interesting. That's that's interesting. Yeah, very And Robert Vaughan lived in the
twenty sixteen, so so Robert lived long enough to know the truth and for
his son to know the truth. And I think UM gave Matthew Vaughn or
permission or urged him to keep the last surname, or said you can keep,
you know, calling yourself that if you want to, and so that
was nice, I guess. But yeah, so he didn't even know,
I guess. I guess nobody knew, not until the mother supposedly found out
in the nineteen eighties. So I would imagine Robert Vaughan probably found out also
in the nineteen eighties. Hmm, yeah, crazy, wow. He I
remember when when when this, you know, we talked about this in the
Jaws podcast. I was a huge, huge fan of Jaws, and I
remember when this movie came out there was well that would have been after Jaws
and Jaws was seventy five. Anyway, Robert Vaughan was going to be on
the Tonight Show and I remember, like I was never a Tonight Show fan,
but I say, that because I thought it was going to be Murray
Hamilton played Mayor Vaughan and Jaws, so I thought Mark, you know,
it was so stupid as a kid, but I was like, oh my
god, the mayor from Jaws is going to be on this night show.
And it was Robert Van I was so disappointed. Man from Uncle was a
great show. I love that show. And uh, and that's that was
one of those tribute questions when people ask about Man from Uncle. It was
what actually did Uncle stand for? And it's a United Network United Network Command
for Law Enforcement? Oh wow? And uh, but it's also another British
thing because they they're there, you remember get Smart. It was Chaos was
the name of their their anti spy you know there there and this one was
Thrush and Thrush is like, you know, it's like a East infection,
so and there, you know, it's just kind of funny, you know,
Thrush and there'd be some some laugh some laughs there. And he was
also in Pootie Tang, which I love. I love that movie. Pooty
Don't forget that. I love that. Have you ever seen Potty than I
have? Very funny movie? Said I say, it's a very funny movie.
Yeah, that's hilarious. It is good. It is a good movie.
But anyway, Yeah, so Robert Vaughn died. He died November eleventh,
twenty sixteen. He was eighty three, and he had been getting treatment
for leukemia for the year leading up to his death. So my assumption is
that that's that was what caused that are contributed was leukemia. Yeah, yeah,
by all, I mean I know that Jeff Man Mentor, who owns
Larry Edmond's Bookstore, he was friendly with Robert Vaughn. He come in every
once in a while to this old Hollywood bookstore, the last one is left
in Hollywood, and so it was neat that he was a cool guy that
supported you know, the old bookstore is a neat right. Um, So
Robert Vaughn's the last one I had on my list. Luck luckily, a
lot of the actors in this film are still alive. That's nice. Yeah,
Water is still alive and Fay Dunaways alive, and you know he has
faked unaway. She was a she's I'm you know, she is not good.
She's just she's like a stiff as a board, you know, I
mean, Mommy Diarist I can't see anything else but that she wanted an Academy
Ward for a network. I gotta watch that one again because it's really good.
She plays kind of a really badass, ball busting career woman who's she's
kick assing that I like her. I just think she's awful in this movie.
And she and she did her typical face stuff. You know, she
showed up late and people were show I said they had like the paperwork they
were showing. Miss Dunaway showed up ninety minutes late and people were just leaving
the set, you know, Robert, you know holding In fact, they
say that there was a confrontation between you know, Holden. They say slammed
her against the wall and said, you know, quit messing around. And
after that, she showed up on time after after that, but but she's
famously it was like, you know, I'm half in the bag by noon.
We gotta get this done. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.
But she is I mean, she's got such a terrible reputation. And we've
probably talked about this on before. When there's a great appearance of Betty Davis
on The Tonight Show. She did a movie with Fate Dunaway called The Disappearance
of Sister Amy, which is about the evangelist Amy Semple McPherson, and there
was a period of time where she was unaccounted for and Betty Davis played her
mother. So Betty Davis was asked on the Tonight Show close to her death,
so in the l in the mid eighties, MI to late eighties,
is there anyone that you would that you did not enjoy working with? And
she said one, hands down, fake Dunaway. And she was never person
to name names. Betty Davis was never won to trash she, but she
said she was the most unprofessional person I've ever worked with. And people in
the audience were giggling. She's like, this is not funny. I'm not
saying this would be funny. She showed up late, you know, and
I had to you know, there's a courtroom scene and she wouldn't even show
up and Eddie Davis would, you know, try to entertain the extras there
because they're sitting there in the heat. And Dunaway shows up late. But
Davis goes out in a real terror about her. And that's for Betty Davis,
who could not be more professional, to actually throw Fay down like that.
Um, it was very revealing. And there are lots of those stories,
don't you don't you know who I am, Stories of her stores and
uh, you know, throwing things and hitting people with things and throwing things
at people and so um, she's notorious for being that one. It's too
bad because I think my favorite photo of a celebrity ever is the famous one
of her by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel the morning after she won
the oscar for Network. I love that photo so much. It's such an
interesting with the newspaper pages all spread out on the ground below her and she's
just chilling by the pool with her oscar sitting there on the table with you
know, her tea or whatever, her coffee or whatever it was on the
table. Yeah. I love that photos. It's like the second and the
second wave, the peak at the second wave of the Hollywood Golden Age,
like Golden Age part two and uh and yeah that's all the Evans business and
Nicholson and all those you know that was whoever thought those would be the Golden
Age again? You know that's that's so funny because they're over. So many
of those guys are dead or dying that there is. It's like, what's
next. I'm afraid that I'm afraid to even think it. Really, you
know, there's something to be said for the studio system. So um.
But yeah, anyway, Faye was a piece of work. And she and
I you know, she was she was she was, she was Fay,
she was Fay. But the other people that I had, I was just
gonna go on about some of the some of the moments in the in the
show, in the movie, because there's so many interesting. Uh well,
first of all, I thought this is unrelated but related. I thought The
Besides Adventure was the first disaster film, but it was actually Airport in nineteen
seventy that was the first airs of the big the first of the big seventies
disaster movies. Disaster kind of Yeah, so I thought, you know,
I thought that The Positon Adventure was the groundbreaker there, but no, it
was actually this other one air airplane that can't be right, no airplanes comedy
Airport is the one airports. Yeah, they did a whole bunch, They
did a whole string of airport movies and make people terrify of flying. Yeah.
In fact that now somebody I had it written down and that somebody in
this movie was in airport seventy nine. Oh, Susan Blakeley, who played
Richard Chamberlain's wife in the movie, she was in the Concord air airports.
Those were great movies because they, I mean, they have people like you
know, Gloria Swanson and Jimmy Stewart were in these We're in these airplanes.
They were they were cool. I mean, these are people that had a
week to kill, you know, and you go to the studio up the
road and they had the phony airplane set up and you know, why not,
I'll make fifty grand and no problem. Yeah, right, right right.
But um so, some of the moments that if in the movie that
I found were interesting, Well, oh there, we didn't say anything about
Bobby Brady with the headphones. That was he shows up at the beginning of
the movie Mike look on Linda, who was Bobby Brady, who was the
precocious young boy just like Eric Shay was in The Poseidon Adventure. And he
has these headphones on. They're wireless, but they're like this big and they're
with big antennas and something like that. So that was that was another comparison
to the Poseidon Adventure was the precocious young boy. The fire started in the
room break in a breaker box on the eighty first floor. I thought it
was interesting because the breaker box open opens, and when I was a boy
scout, one of the first things they taught you was like, for some
reason oily rags existed, Be careful of oily rags because they're a fire hazard.
And that was like what I was never where did where did oily rags
ever happen? But that's what it was. In the eighty first floor of
this office building is a pile of oily rags, about six pens, six
cans of spray paint, and these five gallon drums that don't say anything except
flammable aim. It's like what the contents are, we don't know, but
it's all in one time, every single it's make a nuclear bomb in that
tiny little storage cabinet with everything that was in there, and yet it's like
a really long time for it to actually catch on fire. And then there
was a scene where Steve McQueen shows up and he goes to the eighty first
floor and they're trying to get this thing under control and it's not working.
And he has to go to the upper floors to I guess warn people up
there to get ready to go or something. But so he literally walks about
twenty feet to an elevator twenty feet on the fire to get onto an elevator
to take it up in the building, which is again the first thing it
happens when there's a fire in a building. Elevators get shut down and you
use the stairs. Well, here's the chief of the fires, you know,
the fire brigade, going and using the elevat twenty feet I mean,
I'm not even joking, like right around the corner from the flames and he
gets into an elevator, which is it's just funny. There is. There
are a couple of uh there. For some it's an inexplicable thing. On
the bar in the promenade room is a lighted candle. I noticed it about
three times. It's nothing, there's no attention brought to it, and it's
not like it's an atmospheric candle like those pretty ones that hit as centerpieces.
It is like a single white candle on the bar in the middle of the
scene. Three times in the movie. I don't know why it's there,
but it's a lighted candle on fire, distracting if you catch it. But
there must be some kind of symbolism to that, you know, very obvious
symbolism if it is. But I just somebody had to be somebody's had to
be somebody's you know, joke or something. There are a lot of featured
extras in the movie. There's a couple that, like at the beginning when
Paul Newman walks in, somebody walks by and say hello, there, whatever
your name is, and not even not even facing the camera. And I
would have swore that would have been like Irwin Allen's cameo or something like it.
But I googled like crazy, couldn't find anything. But it was one
of those weird that's odd you know, here's this this guy that's blocking Paul
Newman's face and saying this weird line that's oddly focused on. And so there
was, there was. But I do know that Irwin Allen's wife was in
this movie, and his girlfriend was in this movie. And his girlfriend,
yeah, yeah, yeah, his girlfriend played the mayor's wife and the mayor
and she's a featured extra. She's a she's not a not a not a
slim woman. She's got a pink dress and the most awful blonde wig on
her head, and and they show her in a ton of scenes. They
show her she's one of the people on the sceneic elevator, and I didn't
know it until I watched the retrospective thing that she was. She was interviewed
and she was Irwin Allen's girlfriend at the time, but his real wife was
in the movie, so I don't know what their relationship was like. But
this she shows up a lot in the movie, and she actually looked younger
twenty years after the movie than she did in the In the actual movie,
they say that, well, steveh ac Queen, there's one really interesting scene
where I thought it was strange he was during the movie. I mean,
it's a two hour, forty five minute movie. There's a scene where he's
sitting with the other firefighters on the floor in the lobby. Now how he
goes from way up there down to the lobby, but he's sitting there,
you know, taking a rest with the other firefighters, which okay, I
was like, all right, I'm it's weird, but I'm on board with
it. But it turns out that he screwed up his foot in a in
a scene, and he had to do several scenes sitting. So that's why
they had him. That's why they had him in the movie. How they
had how they had they had him sitting for which was weird, but that
explained it more so than for me. Anyway. Another ridiculous moment was outside
the promenade room where the big event was happening, the opening, the launch
of this whole thing, with all the dignitaries, the senator and the mayor
right outside like two fire doors and one of them on the other side of
cement blocking it, like like a wheel barrel of cement, you know,
dried on the door this fire door of this this amazing building. And the
thing is that the platform is only about twenty feet long by five feet,
so how a wheelbarrel of of concrete is up there and tipped over and the
fireman can't get in and he just happens to have uh, plastic explosive explosive
firefighters carry with them in their pockets. Yeah, it's kind of funny.
I love that kind of stuff. And there is a there was another scene
that of the helicopter rescue. Yeah, there's a big part where you know,
they're the helicopter comes, they're gonna lift airlift people off of the roof
of the building. And the helicopters come military I believe it was the Navy
that was that was landing the helicopter there, and these two women extras run
towards this thing and he flips and smashes up and explodes. Well, first
of all, you never see any of the wreckage, like landing on the
road below. It's not it's just this explosion in the end. But those
two women who ran up to it and cause the accident go right back into
the crowd and everyone's like comforting them because like they're scared. It's like I
would have thrown him off the roof, you know, it's like you just
screwed this up. You screwed up. Yeah, And and they're like,
oh, come here, oh you poor thing. It's like, no,
you screwed up because it's founding. You stay back here. And these two
idiots go running for it and they they So that pissed me off, but
it was interesting. There's so I mean, there's so many weird, little,
weird little things, but most of the special effects were good. The
weird the worst of it, I believe was the Steve between scenic elevator bit
when they showed him being you know, airlifted like this behind the elevator.
That was that was really bad. That was that was like comic cleat bad.
That was like a Carol Burnett's kit or something like that. But yeah,
but that, I mean, I think those are all I think all
my notes about about how the points I wanted to make. They say that
Paul Newman supposedly developed an allergy to smoke. While that that's sort of a
silly thing because that sounds like an urban legend. Yeah, it sounds like
something that would happen to anybody on the set. He's round like that was
like a hot set. I mean literally a hot set. He was also
a heavy smoker, like well into like I think he quit in like nineteen
eighty six or something like that and ultimately died from cancer. So I don't
if he was a heavy smoker, I don't think he became allergic to set
just to fake smoke. That sounds crazy, Yeah, no doubt. One
thing I really like about these old disaster movies is that they are a little
time capsules, and they show you what people were concerned about at the time,
right, like you know the airport movies is I think because commercial flight
started becoming accessible to the masses and a lot more flights, and so air
disasters became like a hot thing in air safety. Right. And then if
you look at the timing, the Series Tower which is now called the Willis
Tower, was finished the year before this movie, or no, it was
finished the year this movie was made. And then as you said at the
top, the World Trade Center was finished the year before, and so it
gives you the end there's a there's definitely a message that they're trying to wrap
around this film about the safety of these super tall buildings that were starting to
get built. It was almost like we were in like a skyscraper arms race
in the seventies, and people were concerned about the ramifications, you know,
of the of the engineering and stuff like that. And you know, obviously,
now, first and first and foremost they're making a disaster movie, but
they also you get the kind of social message that came with it. We
certainly they're playing with with with what scares people the most. Now, you
know, the pandemic movies and zombie movies, and you know what we just
lived here for the last ninety yard, you know, a thirteen or fifteen
months. You know, it was literally like a zombie movie when when this
first, you know, everything was locked down just you know, you'd see
a few people running around, but it was yeah, and you know what's
funny, there was another scene in movie this movie they really stood out,
is really scary, and it's when that group of people, you know,
everyone's freaking out in panic and they they say, don't use the elevators,
but then the elevator's doors open and everyone panics and gets on them, and
then the doors shot and they can't stop it. And then the next thing
you know, the doors open and they are on a different floor and they
all get burned up. But that was it was like it was like Dawn
of the Dead. You know, when you're on an elevator, it's like
your worst fear, what's what's going to happen when you open it? And
Dawn and the Dead. There was just a pile of zombies, right there's
the doors open. There's like and that's that's just what this was too.
It's a it's another one of those irrational it's not irrational, it's just a
fear that you know what's going to happen when you open up that door,
it could go very wrong, right uh, And they played on that for
sure, But yeah, they they I guess there was also an issue with
this movie because the um, I don't know, the Builders Association, whoever
they are, were pissed because they were not it wasn't an accurate portrayal of
how things are really built, of course, right so, but but nobody's
not going up in those buildings, you know, and not having a problem
renting them out. Do you ever go up to the top of the Serious
Tower. I've never even been to Chicago except through the airport, so no,
oh, that's such a great town. It really is. An architecturally,
I'm not a nerd about architecture. I mean, I don't, I'm
not. It doesn't bother me. I like distinctive buildings like the Transamerica Tower
in San Francisco. I love that because it's a triangle. Well, um,
Chicago has a really distinctive, amazing office buildings, and the Serious Tower
is I went up to the top of it once, I think, and
it was on one of those days that you got to the top of so
cloudy you can even see out, but they have they're trying to make these
things more desirable for tourists to go to them, because people who need more
and more thrills. So they're doing that thing. Like in the John Hancock
building, they did it's called tilt where you're at the top and they you
get on this bar and you go I did that. I scared to death
of hikes, but but I did do that, and it was I'm glad
I did it. But the Serious Tower has a glass they built out like
a you know, I don't know, maybe ten foot extension and it's glass
floor. So you see on of those and you're looking straight down. And
this is a couple of years ago. I think there's even video with this.
It cracked while these people were on it. You know, it just
like shattered. Now, I mean they it was. It was you know,
it was protective, protective, protected fifty times. But you're still on
it and it shatters and you're like, oh my god, that would just
that would just I'd lose it. And that's another rabbit hole I go down
when I'm on YouTube. There's that one bridge that they had it it was
like a glass bridge and they had it set up so it did fake cracks
like it was. It was broad you know shows. Oh my god,
I could watch those all night. I love that. I will confess that
I did um the US Bank Tower in downtown La, the one that they
blow up an independent stay. Yeah, they have a glass slide. Yeah,
the past a couple of years I did go and do that, uh
with with our our mutual friend Kelly. I got I was not down to
do it. And then as soon you had to buy a ticket to get
up there, and so I had to take it just to go up and
I was going to watch them go, and then as soon as I saw
it, I was like, I'm doing it. And I was the first
one in the group to go down. It was awesome, but it was
you know, you slide down it really fast. It's over super quick,
you know what I mean. It's like second. It's like a three second
thrill as you flush slide down it and then you're you're over. But to
actually stand on a glass floor and look down and dwell on it, no,
I'm not that's a little much. I'm not. I'm not down.
Yeah, it was it was that the tilt thing I did. I was
glad I did it, and I don't I believe I did it, but
I did, and I'm glad I did it, but I couldn't do it.
Um, yeah, it was. It was weird. It was really
weird. But you know, I guess somebody said if I do, if
I go parachuting once, that I'll get over my fear of heights, because
I have that. There's a term for it. I just heard the other
day. I can't remember what it is. When you get to the top
of a building, you get the urge to jump. I get that a
lot. Like my stomach flips and I've just like I feel like I want
to go. And that's why I'm like usually on my hands and knees on
a roof because I can't if I get too close. I get the urge
to jump. Now, it's not a desire to jump, it's just like
it's like a magnetic power that it has to do that. And uh and
it really I get that a lot with those you know, with those p
o V videos on YouTube where people are jumping around on buildings and stuff like
that. Do you ever watch those those kids up in like the Ukraine who
have nothing, nothing to lose, so they're jumping around on these twisting up
and down on their bikes and stuff. And I watched those and it's like,
oh, man, I just yeah, it's it's it's something. But
you know, those people die doing fairly regularly too. It's crazy and you
can't really go, yeah, those poor people, well no, because you
really they don't call them, you know, the daredevils for nothing, you
know. But so the movie, I guess they exploit, you know,
this horrible thing that happened is disaster and all these people die. But what
I really like is there was a message that that was that was on the
screen, and it was a dedication which I loved, and it said it
said to those who give their lives so that others might live, to the
firefighters of the world, this picture is gratefully dedicated, and that that was
really you know, I hope it wasn't cartuitous. I thought it was quite
I thought it was you know, I hope it wasn't something, oh,
we gotta do that. But it was just nice because because they're again people
that don't you know, the people that don't don't get the nods that they
deserve. And although it's a fictional movie. And and silly. Could you
imagine though a fire on like the eightieth floor and being on the gun it's
just like the World Trade Center to me, you know it just it's that
same thing. What do you do with that? And they show these guys,
you know, on the eightieth floor having a walk to one hundred and
thirty fifth floor to that, you know, and you could see them they're
like dying. And that's that's what those poor guys in New York did,
you know? And and oh just just oh, I couldn't believe it.
The stamina that they have to have, let alone, you know, the
skills that they have to have in the bravery. It's well, God bless
them, man, God bless him. Yeah, and that is it.
The Towering Inferto has been done again. Sorry we spoiled a you know,
forty five year old movie or whatever it is, forty seven year old movie.
Um, but go watch it anyways because it's I think you like to
your point at the beginning, it still holds up really well and is a
fun little time capsule. It's a good special effect. It's a silly yeah
it is. It's it's the acting. Yeah, it's just yeah, it's
a time capsule. The special effects are the star of this movie. I
think, I really do. Uh yeah, McQueen and and and Numa were
good, they were really good in it. But I thought the special effects
by far were the star of this movie. All right, everybody, well,
thank you very much. This is always fun to do. And if
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