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"Where Will it All End?"
The first full length movie made in our Montgomery area took several months to complete. Much of the time involved tailoring the story to fit the location selected to film the story. A beautiful hill-top ranch a few miles northwest of Montgomery. The owner couple love to entertain and use an exact replica of an old-time saloon complete with bar and accessories. They also bought one of the last existing "Dog-trot" houses in the county and moved it to their ranch and restored it exactly to insure it will stand for another hundred years. This old-style house with its front porch all the way across the front complete with a porch swing to sit in and catch all the breezes is perfect. They have cattle, horses, ponds, rolling hills, open meadows and heavily timbered areas. Just right to "shoot" any action "shots" a western demanded. I found that making a movie is pretty complicated. It is on the same order as the military operations. "Hurry up and wait." Several people are required just to take one photo. In my short session the scene was to be in a store one that was in an isolated part of the country. The ranch owners had borrowed the use of an exact replica of a log cabin from their friends just up the road from their home and I was installed, complete with my "granny costume and "mob" cap" and behind the counter, I had sacks of green coffee beans, snuff, Rumford Baking Powder and unbleached "domestic" cloth to try and sell the young lady star. When she came into the shop, she and I exchanged a couple of lines with only one "retake". The hero of the show, the male star "the Shootist" complete with a huge pistol strapped low on his leg was the very handsome Chuck Walker. He is a Walden resident and I got to exchange a couple of lines of the script with him and we only had to do one retake. I don’t remember all the people involved in making the movie, but they were all very nice and friendly. The star female was from Schulenberg originally and one of the actors was Mark Hayter, the Conroe native who writes the column in the Sunday Courier. He wrote of his experience in the movie a couple of Sundays ago. Although the part I played didn’t require a contract and there was no salary involved I did have a wonderful experience and ate Breakfast biscuits baked by the leading lady ate a fabulous dish of chicken and dumplings made by the B&K Family Restaurant on FM 2854, who catered the movie group for the two weeks it took to complete the movie. I can also brag to my three year-old great great grandson that I was once a "movie star". I was told yesterday by Marky Heintz of Dobbin, that another movie is being readied to be shot closer to the town of Montgomery. Taking into consideration the speed of the changing of Montgomery, anything can happen now. Hopefully "my" movie will develop and will be sold and will get to make it to our television access. The movie has been temporarily named "Asylum of the Scorpion" and is supposed to be happening right after the Civil War and also is happening because of the Civil War. The central theme is about two shell-shocked war shocked, defeat shocked, carpet-bagger take-over government shocked young men, one of which is Conroe writer Mark Hayter. Mark wrote quite a long article about his movie actor adventure in the Conroe Courier for April 8, 2001. To add emphasis to the title of the movie, one of the "props" was a huge almost hand-size black hairy spider, with claw-like feet, a Black Emperor Scorpion". He was "put-up" in style a nice, fancy plastic box with a steady supply of crickets, his favorite food. The caretaker of this huge, scary version of a scorpion was the lady of the house where the movie was being made and thinking she could save time, she put a half a dozen crickets and a supply of water in the "Scorpion Palace", checking the next day, there were no crickets left. The regular diet for the animal was one cricket a day, but given the chance, the scorpion ate all six bugs at once. This caused another trip to town, crickets to care and strict diet control for this movie actor. One of the discoveries I made during my one day of the movie making was the realization that in Montgomery County there is still areas that are exactly like conditions were in the 1850 era. There are wagon-type roads leading to once upon a time homesteads complete with old-time Crepe Myrtle trees, old-time lilies still living many years after the home or cabin owners are gone. Circles or lines of Narcissa or Jonquil flowers bloom each spring and there were Mulberry trees, Chinaberry and a few cedars trees for the chickens to roost in. Run-off streams of water wash out the wagon trail to the old homestead and crossing those water covered washed out road took all the skill of the horses pulling the wagon showing their value to the homesteader and the skill of their owner trainer. This was a great addition to the movies. Where else but Montgomery could this setting be found in its natural state? There are still many unknown, unfound treasures in our "Golden Triangle". I am so glad to live among them. |
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©Montgomery
County News, 2004 |
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