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Walter Brennan

RicoGregg said:
All well and good, but was the "freckle-faced kid" and the "fat kid" ever denied service at a restaurant? Did the "neighborhood bully" ever get turned away from a hotel because his kind wasn't served? Was the "pretty blond girl" ever denied treatment at a hospital or did the "mischievous toddler" get limited to a certain part of town? We're talking different levels of stereotyping here.
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I am not denying that stereotyping or racism did not exist but what I referred to specifically was life on the Roach Studio lot.

The salaries paid to the individual performers was based on a number of things including seniority, popularity and the demands of the kids' parents (since the youngsters themselves could not bargain).

RicoGregg said:
And, here's another goodie for you: Hal Roach went into a partnership with Benito Mussolini.
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That link is incorrect if I am to believe other sources. Roach went into a film partnership with Vittorio Mussolini, the SON of the dictator. And he insisted that the Italian government was not going down the similar anti-sementic road as was Germany. When eventually they followed the German example he, and others, bailed on the agreement.
 
The following is from a biography on Walter Brennan.

During the 1960s Brennan was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas Communists - and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, the riots in places like Watts and Newark and demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, were the result of perfectly content "Negroes" being stirred up by a handful of "troublemakers" with an anti-American agenda. Those on the set of his last series, "The Guns of Will Sonnett" (1967) - in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father - said that he cackled with delight upon learning of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and several crew members recalled how he actually danced a spontaneous jig when he heard of King's murder.
 
The Voice of Reason said:
During the 1960s Brennan was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas Communists - and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, the riots in places like Watts and Newark and demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, were the result of perfectly content "Negroes" being stirred up by a handful of "troublemakers" with an anti-American agenda. Those on the set of his last series, "The Guns of Will Sonnett" (1967) - in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father - said that he cackled with delight upon learning of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and several crew members recalled how he actually danced a spontaneous jig when he heard of King's murder.
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If this story is true then it this does not bode well for Brennan's legacy. I remember reading some where that when RFK was killed that Ron and Nancy Reagan, reportedly at some party, toasted Kennedy's death. I found that story hard to believe as I do about this one regarding Walter Brennan dancing a jig when MLK died. But then again I repeat that I heard stories that Brennan did not like working with African-Americans.
 
...on the one hand, Walter Brennan did star in the 1956 theatrical film Good-bye, My Lady, a John Wayne production that had Sidney Poitier and Louise Beavers in supporting roles (having never seen the picture, I don't know if Brennan had any scenes with either Poitier or Beavers). The stories of Brennan's alleged reaction to the MLK and RFK Assassinations while on the set of The Guns of Will Sonnett are obviously malicious lies, considering the series had gone into reruns with the 3/15/68 ABC telecast and hadn't been in production in either April or June of 1968. On the other, in his autobiography Aaron Spelling: A Prime-Time Life - http://books.google.com/books?id=IzKcIV1UufoC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=Aaron+Spelling+on+Walter+Brennan&source=bl&ots=LpL2C3O-Pc&sig=msDl6K7NjUHVB9iGq59qEtSoqms&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Sy0IUOv4Neqa2gW-hKDvBA&ved=0CGcQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=Aaron%20Spelling%20on%20Walter%20Brennan&f=false - Sonnett producer Spelling does characterise Brennan's politics as being "to the right of Rush Limbaugh," and as a result the liberal Spelling made a point of avoiding talking politics with Brennan. But, had anything even remotely resembling the "spontaneous jig" ever happened, I strongly doubt that Spelling would have bothered to cast Brennan in his The Over-The-Hill Gang ABC Movie of the Week productions after the 1969 cancellation of Sonnett...
 
Ultimajock said:
The stories of Brennan's alleged reaction to the MLK and RFK Assassinations while on the set of The Guns of Will Sonnett are obviously malicious lies, considering the series had gone into reruns with the 3/15/68 ABC telecast and hadn't been in production in either April or June of 1968.
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I tend to agree with you. Only someone not in their right mind would celebrate the murder of another individual and I don't believe that Walter Brennan, despite his political beliefs, would celebrate the death of any one.
There are so many "urban legends" floating around out there that it is hard to tell the truth from fiction.
 
I remember reading some where that when RFK was killed that Ron and Nancy Reagan, reportedly at some party, toasted Kennedy's death.

And I would be horribly disappointed in the Reagans if that was true. Politics aside, I think they had too much class for such a reaction.
 
Mark_Giardina said:
Only someone not in their right mind would celebrate the murder of another individual ...
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I know you're talking about Walter Brennen but your statement isn't true. We celebrate the death of other individuals frequently, the most notable being Osama bin Laden.
 
landtuna said:
Mark_Giardina said:
Only someone not in their right mind would celebrate the murder of another individual ...
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I know you're talking about Walter Brennen but your statement isn't true. We celebrate the death of other individuals frequently, the most notable being Osama bin Laden.
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Walter Brennan didn't order airplanes to fly into buildings and kill thousands of people either did he? Damn straight people celebrated the death of bin Laden. Should we also mourn the deaths of Hitler, Stalin and Mao?
 
Walter Brennan once said, "Don't go believin' every consarned thing ya read on the Internet, ye da-blasted fool!" ;D
 
landtuna said:
Mark_Giardina said:
Should we also mourn the deaths of Hitler, Stalin and Mao?
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None of them were murdered.
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Maybe they should have been then millions of people would lived instead of dying in concentration camps or gulags.

The more that is being discussed about Walter Brennan the more I believe that what is being said about him, in regards to dancing a jig when hearing of the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr, is nothing but idle gossip.
 
The following is from p. 337 of Jeff Kisseloff's book "The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-61."
Writer Everett Greenbaum is quoted:

"What a bastard Brennan was. We were there five years, and he thought my name was Phil, and he thought I was gentile. He was always confiding in me. He'd say, 'You know, Phil, a n****r smells bad because they got poison in their pores and you can't get it out.' He also told me, 'Phil, I can tell a Jew by their back. Their back ain't round like ours. It's straight down.'..."

This was followed by a quote by fellow writer Charlie Isaacs:
"I worked with Walter and I didn't find him to be that way at all. He was conservative, yes, but I found him to be one of the kindest, most generous men I ever met in show business."
 
This is from TV Guide, March 30, 1968, an article titled "An Old Actor
Stands Fast In A Changing World" by Carolyn See:

"Still, he's not exactly content. 'I'm an American, first and last and
always,' he tells me. 'I served in the trenches for nine months during
World War I and I haven't regretted it until the last two or three years.
It's the lefties, that's what.' He feels strongly that there is a plot--not
just a plan, but a plot to take over the country. This operation is
run by the Communists, of course, but they enlist the willing aid of
many creeds and colors, who form a kind of anti-UN, in the same way that
there is a world of anti-matter out there somewhere, if you care to believe
in it."

But then he goes on: "Everyone in this country ought to have a chance,
Jew, Protestant, and..." (slight hesitation) "I'm sure all this trouble with
the Negroes (still acceptable in '68) is caused by just a few of them. I've
known many Negroes, many of them; they, they----" (the conversation stops,
a scene from "Guns Of Will Sonnett" is being shot).

So draw your own conclusions. Ms. See concluded that Brennan was essentially
a nice man whose views were formed in a simpler time and, like many people of
his generation, had difficulty adjusting to the changes taking place in the late '60s.

For my part, I don't think that makes him evil; my own grandfather, six years younger
than Brennan, was a lifelong boxing fan and never understood why Cassius Clay changed
his name to Muhammad Ali, nor did he care much for Ali after his refusal to be inducted
into the Army when he, himself, had been in the Marines for twelve years (having lived
through both world wars the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era made no sense to him).

A little tolerance for their generation is in order here.
 
bpatrick said:
This is from TV Guide, March 30, 1968, an article titled "An Old Actor
Stands Fast In A Changing World" by Carolyn See:

"Still, he's not exactly content. 'I'm an American, first and last and
always,' he tells me. 'I served in the trenches for nine months during
World War I and I haven't regretted it until the last two or three years.
It's the lefties, that's what.' He feels strongly that there is a plot--not
just a plan, but a plot to take over the country. This operation is
run by the Communists, of course, but they enlist the willing aid of
many creeds and colors, who form a kind of anti-UN, in the same way that
there is a world of anti-matter out there somewhere, if you care to believe
in it."

But then he goes on: "Everyone in this country ought to have a chance,
Jew, Protestant, and..." (slight hesitation) "I'm sure all this trouble with
the Negroes (still acceptable in '68) is caused by just a few of them. I've
known many Negroes, many of them; they, they----" (the conversation stops,
a scene from "Guns Of Will Sonnett" is being shot).

So draw your own conclusions. Ms. See concluded that Brennan was essentially
a nice man whose views were formed in a simpler time and, like many people of
his generation, had difficulty adjusting to the changes taking place in the late '60s.

For my part, I don't think that makes him evil; my own grandfather, six years younger




than Brennan, was a lifelong boxing fan and never understood why Cassius Clay changed
his name to Muhammad Ali, nor did he care much for Ali after his refusal to be inducted
into the Army when he, himself, had been in the Marines for twelve years (having lived
through both world wars the antiwar protests of the Vietnam era made no sense to him).

A little tolerance for their generation is in order here.
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A nice post. Your last sentence says it all. It is so easy to throw stones at earlier generations.
 
FRR said:
bpatrick said:
So draw your own conclusions. Ms. See concluded that Brennan was essentially
a nice man whose views were formed in a simpler time and, like many people of
his generation, had difficulty adjusting to the changes taking place in the late '60s.


A little tolerance for their generation is in order here.
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A nice post. Your last sentence says it all. It is so easy to throw stones at earlier generations.
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Indeed it is. We're all victims of the times we grow up in, and shouldn't be faulted for it.
 
What he was, was a man from a long-gone age (in many respects an age the time for which was long, long past)
and a man who struggled to advance gracefully even as his contemporaries moved forward...remember, Harry Truman, the first President in the 20th Century to propose a Civil Rights Bill (in 1948) was a full decade OLDER than Brennan.
 
I must recommend his recordings of "Who will take Grandma" and "Ruby don't take your love to town".
 
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