WEBVTT

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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast more what you hear

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weekday afternoons on the Drive. You've
known him in a lot of things,

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from Seven Brides to Seven Brothers,
Tom Thom Peyton Place and Everybody's Favorite West

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Side Story. Russ Hamblin has lived
a lifetime in Braun Broadway and in the

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movies, and now he's decided to
sit down and write a whole book about

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it, and I think it's a
long awaited memoir. Russ Hamblin is joining

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us to talk about his new book, Dancing on the Edge, And are

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you Russ dancing on the Edge?
Yes, I think so. I think

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I may have fallen off a couple
of times, but I have been hello

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to everybody in Oklahoma. I spent
a lot of time there at Fort Cell

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Wow in the Army. I was
at Fort Cell and I had a good

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time there. I enjoyed Oklahoma and
the people, uh and had had a

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good time. Whenever you're in that
area, you always inevitably hear the boom

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boom boom of artillery practice. Yeah, that's right. Well, I was

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one of the ones that uh that
that that at that time, well,

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I was in a tank division.
So I used to was forget what it's

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called now, but I had to
do uh in in in the tank.

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I had to work it out to
tell them where to aim, otherwise I

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would have blown the city up.
I mentioned you what have well, your

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adventures in show business kind of went
back to acrobatics. Uh yeah, I

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said, gave a lot of credit
to acrobatics. I just used acrobatics in

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every genre that there is from In
in musicals, I made made it look

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like I was a good dancer.
I faked a lot, but I could

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do a flipping. People say,
boy, he's a great dancer, but

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he was actually a good acrobat.
In the Westerns, I could jump on

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horses backwards and forwards. In comedy, I could take pratfalls, fall down

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and jump back up again fight scenes. So I give a lot of credit

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to acrobatics. That's really good for
an actor because it helps you. It

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helps you a lot. Russ Tamblin
is with us. His biography is out

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and it's called Dancing on the Edge. You also were starring in films where

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I mean we didn't have CGI like
we do now. But in Tom Thumb,

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I mean you had to utilize and
work with some the special effects of

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the day. That's very true.
In fact, in Tom Thumb, I

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was the one that George Palell I
mean because it was George pell who did

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tests with me against the green background
and a blue background to find you try

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and figure out what the best color
is, and they finally figured out that

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it was a blue screen. It's
used all the time. Now. I

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didn't know that they were doing that
at that point in filmmaking. Well Tom

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Thumb was when it started, but
they used several processes. One was blue

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screen and in another words they'd made
dolls and that was about it. Russ

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Hamblin with us Dancing on the Edge
is his memoir. It was, Oh,

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I guess it was about a year
ago. We had one of your

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co stars on, George Chakrash.
He talked about what a great friendship you

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two had, even though on screen
you arrivals were. We became better friends

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after the movie. While we were
making it, we didn't. We didn't.

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They didn't like us even speaking to
us because we were, you know,

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one against the other. But George
is. One of the problems with

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George is he's such a sweet man. He's just really, really nice and

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it's it was hard to to look
at him and think of him as somebody

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bad. That was good acting for
both of you, it was. And

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that was one of the things too, that I think you really got a

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chance to stretch your facial expressions in
that film because there were a lot of

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close ups of you and you had
to You had to act hate, you

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had to act desperation, and you
could always see what was going on in

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your face. Yeah. I used
to describe my character Riff as somebody who

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looked like he was on uppers all
the time. Russ Hamblin's with Us and

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Dancing on the edge of his memoir
where he talks about his long and uh

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and in whole film careers singing and
did you sing a lot as a young

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person and then getting into musicals?
I did sing a lot, but I

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didn't wasn't considered a singer per se. And as a matter of fact,

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the one who who handled the singing
for West Side Story also handled the singing

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for for a movie I did called
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and they

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and so they dubbed a lot of
the dancers voices they don't because he just

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he like he had his little group
of singers, and he liked to use

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them whenever he can, so you
know he'd have I think he tried to

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to get one of his singers a
voiceover for he Also he choreographed guys and

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dolls and he wanted to dub Frank
Sinatra's voice. So yeah, some people

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they just don't give up. They
don't quite get it. Seven Brides for

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Seven Brothers was working with all that
great Johnny Mercer music as well. Yeah,

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and I've said that they should make
another one now, a Mormon version

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called seven seven Brides for One Brother. Russ Damblin's with us and his memoir

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is called Dancing on the Edge.
You know him from several films. Also

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father of Amber, who's had a
very successful career in film on her own.

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Yes, she certainly has. I
mean it used to be, you

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know, Russ Tamlin's daughter. Now
it's Amber Tamblin's father. When she wanted

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to get into the show business,
did you say, honey, I'm trying

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to get out, man, just
about close enough. I tried to keep

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her out and I thought, well, if she went on a few interviews,

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she'd get tired of it real.
But her first interview that she went

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on was for General Hospital and I
said, oh good, she'll this will

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make her quit, yeah, make
her not want to do it, And

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she got the part. So she
was on that show for seven years.

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More inside stuff from Russ hamblin Dancing
on the Edge. He says, memoir

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it's available everywhere you get books.
Thank you for all the great entertainment,

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Russ, and it's a pleasure to
talk to you. Thank you. Good

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to talk to you too. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons

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from five to seven. And I
Heart to be Media Presentation