Steve Prefontaine, played by Billy Crudup in Without Limits (1998) and played by Jared Leto in Prefontaine (1997)

Bill Bowerman, played by Donald Sutherland in Without Limits (1998) and played by R. Lee Ermey in Prefontaine (1997)

Stephen Meek, played by Bruce Greenwood in Meek’s Cutoff (2010)

Art Honeyman, played by Michael Sheen in Music Within (2007)

Pennie Lane Trumbull, played by Kate Hudson in Almost Famous (2000)

James Fogle, played by Matt Dillon in Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

John Reed, played by Warren Beatty in Reds (1981)

Louise Bryant, played by Diane Keaton in Reds (1981)

Claire Phillips, played by Ann Dvorak in I Was An American Spy (1951)

Walt Curtis, played by Tim Streeter in Mala Noche (1985)

Special mention goes to:

Curtis Salgado, whose signature style inspired the attire and music of Jake and Elwood Blues, aka The Blues Brothers (1980)

Walt Curtis, who has inspired two documentaries, Salmon Poet (2009) and Peckerneck Poet (1997)

The rarest category of Oregon film is a non-documentary based on the life of actual Oregonian. In 1951, Claire Phillips joined a select crowd which would later include John Reed and Louise Bryant, (Reds), Steve Prefontaine (Prefontaine, Without Limits ) and James Fogle (Drugstore Cowboy).

A night club singer who worked under the code name High Pockets, Phillip won the Medal Of Freedom for her espionage in WWII. You can read about her accomplishments in Brian Libby’s wonderful profile in Portland Monthly. Yes, she was water boarded by the Japanese.

She herself chose Ann Dvorak to play Claire Phillips/High Pockets on the Big Screen.‘

I hereby claim I Was An American Spy as an Oregon film on the basis of the inspiration provided by Oregonian Claire Phillips.

What are the odds? The only movie in which Portlander Charles Erskine Scott Wood appears as a character is one in which he is played by Sam Elliott, also a Portlander.

Sam Elliott plays Captain Wood,  serving under James Whitmore’s redoubtable one armed General Howard, in a television movie I have never seen,  I Will Fight No More Forever.

In real life, Wood was a lieutenant, and a very close friend of Howard, almost a member of his family. They were both West Point trained bookworms, and aspiring authors. After the Nez Perce War (which they both wrote about) Wood accompanied the Howards to New York, and studied law at Columbia while Howard ran West Point. After getting  his degree, he resigned from the army and returned to Portland to begin a lucrative law practice. Among his many, many contributions to Portland’s cultural life, he acted as mentor and inspiration to a young John Reed.

Lots of ways to learn more about C. E. S. Wood. Probably several more movies in him, especially for the person who wants to tell the story of a real life Batman, who led a double life of corporate lawyer by day and social justice crusader by night. One difference: with Wood there was no Bat  Cave. Everything was in the open. He had a luxurious home, wife, and five kids on one hand, and mistresses, political activism and poems published in The Masses on the other.

George Venn examines the circumstances behind the legendary surrender speech made by Chief Joseph which ends with the words “I will fight no more forever”, and concludes that the person who recorded the speech for posterity, young Lt. C. E. S. Wood, may have composed more of it than he let on.

Strange but true fact: Nan Wood Honeyman, C. E. S. Wood’s daughter, became Oregon’s first congresswoman in Washington.

Strange but true fact: I know an awful lot about General O. O.  Howard.

Strange but true fact: Electronic composer Heather Perkins, the founder of ElectroGals, is from one of several branches of General Howard’s Portland family tree.

I generally avoid writing about television films, but want to include a post about this one because Oregon Movies, A to Z receives visits from so many Sam Elliott fans.

I hereby claim I Will Fight No More Forever as an Oregon film, on the basis of the contribution made by Sam Elliott, and the inspiration provided by historic events which transpired in part in Oregon.

For Oregon newbies who want to get to know their new home better, here’s some advice. You can’t go wrong going straight to the source, and reading Oregon authors. Even where they do not take Oregon as their subject  (but choose, say,  Pancho Villa), much is revealed about the regional character just in the way they write.

Walt Curtis compiled this list of his top recommended Oregon books originally for the Clinton Street Quarterly. It is still the best list I have ever seen: direct, pure, idiosyncratic. Just like Walt.

Walt Curtis Recommends

1. Far Corner: A Personal View Of the Pacific Northwest by Stewart Holbrook. Debunking and delighting, the Portland historian writes of the Wobblies, Erickson’s Saloon, Aurora Colony, logging, and the myths and symbols of our region of the U.S.

Anne’s commentary: Stewart Holbrook cast a long shadow. Brian Booth edited a collection of Holbrook essays, Wildmen, Wobblies and Whistle Punks, and spoke about Holbrook at a recent Dill Pickle Club meeting. John Daniels chose The Far Corner as the title for his most recent collection of essays as a tribute to Holbrook.

2. The Selected Poems of Hazel Hall is the crippled seamstress’ marvelous work. Beth Bentley introduces this only volume of Hall in print, which needs to be amplified. An early feminist, her distinguished poetry deserves national attention once again. She is as good as Emily Dickinson.

Anne’s commentary: As Walt predicted, a second collection of Hazel Hall’s poetry did find its way into print. John Witte published a collection with OSU Press in 2000. Oregonian film critic Stan Hall, no relation to Hazel Hall, named his daughter after this forgotten Portland poet.

3. The Distant Music by Harold Lenoir Davis. This chronicle of the Mulock family and their relationship to the land is Davis’ last novel. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1936 for Honey in the Horn, Davis wrote as well as anyone in the Pacific Northwest, including Ken Kesey. He has justly been compared with Faulkner and Twain.

Anne’s commentary: Walt’s contrarian choice, to list a lesser known work by Davis rather than his Pulitzer Prize winner, means there must be something to The Distant Music. I have not read it but this year I will.

4. The Conquest, or the True Story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Eva Emery Dye. Dye popularized the expedition, creating a memorable feminist heroine in Sacajawea. She is the Northwest’s finest historical novelist, readable, upbeat, well researched. Her books should be brought back into print so school kids can get a sense of Northwest history. The Oregon Trail and all of that! Go to the library to read her work.

Anne’s commentary: Eva Emery Dye uses dialogue in a way which astonishes modern readers — putting words in the mouths of all her historical figures – but what a storyteller!  Read her (out of print, as Walt noted) novels for a still vivid portrait of a community trying to balance their ideal of a democratic society where all men are equal against their own historical record of  displacing the First Oregonians.

5. Life Among The Modocs: Unwritten History by Joaquin Miller. A seventeen year old boy went to live with gold miners and Indians near Mt. Shasta. From his experience would come an American classic. Miller himself would become the archetype of the Western man, making Buffalo Bill jealous.

Anne’s commentary: Joaquin fights both for the Indians and against the Indians, ping ponging from one side to the other. He knows exactly who he is and where his primary allegiance lies — with himself. The self portrait of a scoundrel in love with language. Is this the blueprint for future Oregon wildmen Ken Kesey and Gus Van Sant? Written in 1873, when Joaquin Miller was a lionized poet living in London.

6. The Bridge Of The Gods, a Romance of Indian Oregon by Frederic Homer Balch is reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The missionary Cecil Grey has been drawn to the Northwest by a vision of the bridge and a need to convert natives to Christianity. Himself a melancholy preacher, Balch died tragically at age 29 of tuberculosis.

Anne’s commentary: Walt has been after me to read this 1890 novel for as long as I can remember. I promise this year I will repair to Cascade Locks to sit and read this book within view of the steel cantilevered Bridge of the Gods which replaces the land bridge commemorated by its title. I will do this as a tribute to Walt, and despite the great misgivings I have about works of art created by melancholy preachers. Available on Google Books.

7. Heavenly Discourse by Charles Erskine  Scott Wood. Can you imagine someone’s life spanning the era from the days of Chief Joseph to the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Wood’s satirical sketches, disgracefully out of print, would rock conservative minds even today. Intelligent, classical, radical, libertarian, “Ces” Wood is the patriarch of Portland arts and letters.

Anne’s commentary: Walt is right. C. E. S. Wood is the patriarch of Portland arts and letters. He commissioned the Skidmore fountain, helped found the public library, worked as a corporate lawyer for lumber companies by day and as an essayist for radical East Coast magazines by night.  A litmus test: You’re not a real Oregonian if you don’t know who he is.

8. Insurgent Mexico by John Reed, the Northwest’s most internationally acclaimed author! What do we gringos know of the history of Mexico, our closest neighbor? John Reed was there, riding with Pancho Villa in 1913. Raw, passionate, poetic, the great journalist gives us a visceral, unforgettable account.

Anne’s commentary: Another contrarian choice by Walt, since Reed is more famous for writing Ten Days Which Shook The World, his eyewitness account of the Russian revolution.

9. The Singing Creek Where The Willows Grow : the rediscovered diary of Opal Whiteley by Ben Hoff . This rediscovered diary and biography is a standard for the re-issuing of Northwest classics! Opal is the “flower child”, charismatic and schizophrenia, who captivated readers of the Atlantic Monthly in 1920. She grew up in a Cottage Grove lumber camp, and is still alive in a mental hospital in London. Fascinating story!

Anne’s commentary: Since Walt wrote this, Opal Whiteley died. I belong to the camp which classifies her early childhood literary achievements as fraud. Hoff takes the opposing view. Her story, real or no, is part of Oregon history.

Walt’s original list, written for the Clinton Street Quarterly, was a full dozen titles. The additional three were by Washington State writers.

Here again is Walt:

1. The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald. Life on a Puget Sound chicken ranch. Ma and Pa Kettle are their closest neighbors! This book is still a bestseller. A housewife’s eye-view of geoducks and other curiousities peculiar to our landscape, including the people.

2. Paul Bunyan by James Stevens. In a literary manner, Stevens popularized the mythical logger of American folklore. Stevens also co-authored Status Rerum, a manifesto on the deplorable state of Northwest letters, with his close friend, H.  L. Davis.

3. Skid Road by  Murray Morgan. The first skid road, logger’s Valhalla or bowery was located in Seattle. Where the human and wood debris were dumped in the bay! Ox teams skidded logs to Yesler’s mill. Doc Maynard took over and the red light district became legendary.

For people who like contemplating how international Oregon’s film history really is – here is my Christmas present to you: a list of directors who came from afar to the big scenic back lot we call home to make movies. I include the photo of Sean Connery teaching a handstand because that is the way I sometimes feel myself. I want to turn you upside down. No, Oregon film history is not an endlessly excruciating list of mediocrities. Yes, I think we have a legacy we can learn from.

So, to balance out the post documenting the fondness Europeans have for Oregon directors,  I compile here a list of directors from other countries who chose Oregon as the location for their films.

Germany: F. W. Murnau,  City Girl (1930)

France: Jacques Tourneur, Canyon Passage (1946)

Hungary: Andre De Toth,  Indian Fighter (1955) &  Day Of The Outlaw (1959)

England:  J. Lee Thompson, MacKenna’s Gold (1969)

Czechslovakia: Milos Forman, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest ( 1975)

Scotland: Bill Forsythe, Breaking In (1988)

Canada: Ivan Reitman, Kindergarten Cop (1990)

Australia: Simon Wincer, Free Willy (1993)

Germany: Uli Edel, Body Of Evidence ( 1993)

To be clear – there are some turkeys on this list. But I will leave you the fun of sorting out which movies you like, and which you would like to disown.

In the literary category: these directors stayed home, but adapted works by Oregon authors.

Russia: Sergei Eisenstein,  Oktyabr (1928) based on John Reed’s Ten Days Which Shook The World

Japan: Goro Miyazaki, Gedo Senki (2006)  based on Ursula LeGuin’s Tales of Earthsea

I am sure there are more! I am especially interested in foreign directors who have adapted Oregon authors, so please let me know if there is a film which should be on this list.

Samuel Pack Elliott was born August 9, 1944, and graduated from David Douglas High School in Portland, Oregon in 1962. He began acting as a student at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, and was cast in Card Player #2 in Butch Cassidy  And The Sundance Kid in 1969.

Along the way to playing Wade Garrett in Road House, The Stranger who narrates the action in The Big Lebowski,  Virgil Earp in Tombstone, and Cher’s lover, Gar, in Mask, Eliott has also put in an appearance as the Father of Portland, his own hometown.

In I Will Fight No More Forever (1975), Elliot played “Captain” (he was actually a lieutenant at the time of the dramatized events) Charles Erskine Scott Wood, a soldier-turned -lawyer-turned-poet who liked to both read and spend money, and in the pursuit of both pleasures helped to civilize Stumptown.

Here’s Tim Barnes’ excellent description:

C.E.S. Wood may have been the most influential cultural figure in Portland in the forty years surrounding the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth. He helped found the Portland Art Museum and was instrumental in making the Multnomah County Library a free and public institution. He secured the services of his friend Olin Warner, a nationally known sculptor, to design the Skidmore Fountain and his words, “Good citizens are the riches of a city,” are inscribed at its base. The Portland Rose Festivalwas his idea. He numbered among his friends Mark Twain, Emma Goldman, John Reed, Clarence Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, AnselAdams, John Steinbeck, Charlie Chaplin, James J. Hill, and Langston Hughes. Soldier, lawyer, poet, painter, raconteur, bon vivant, politician, free spirit, and Renaissance man, Wood might also be the most interesting man in Oregon history.

Here’s C. E. S. Wood:

I doubt Sam Elliott knew that he was playing the Father Of Portland when he appeared  as Capt. Wood in  I Shall Fight No More Forever. I’d love for him to return to television to reprise this role. Maybe Carrie Brownstein will ask him to make a guest appearance during the next season of Portlandia.

“These readers seemed truly nervous to be in the presence of an independent thinker who could say things like, “John Reed’s a fine writer” and still have her brain intact.” Sheila O’Malley

Sheila O’Malley observed the anniversary of the Russian Revolution on Nov. 7 by writing about it on her blog, The Sheila Variations. If you want a tutorial on Portlander  John Reed ’s place in history, I couldn’t recommend a better place to start.

In Reds, writer-director-producer-star Warren Beatty zeroed in on a signficant detail. John Reed, who achieved world fame as a journalist, was a frustrated poet.

Throughout much of Red’s 194 minutes, Beatty’s Reed tries and tries to finish a poem to Louise Bryant, his wife.

Perhaps Beatty was thinking of this poem, by Reed.

A Letter to Louise

Rainy rush of bird-song
Apple-blossom smoke
Thin bells water-falling sound
Wind-rust on the silver pond
Furry starring willow wand
Wan new grasses waking round
Blue bird in the oak…
Woven in my word-song

White and slim my lover
Birch-tree in the shade
Mountain pools her fearless eyes
Innocent all-answering
Were I blinded to the Spring
Happy thrill would in me rise
Smiling half afraid
At the nearness of her

All my weak endeavor
Lay I at her feet
Like a moth from oversea
Let me longing lightly rest
On her flower petal breast
Till the red dawn set me free
To be with my sweet
Ever and forever…

Louise Bryant, played in Reds by Diane Keaton, was also from Portland (more precisely, Salt Lake City by way of Portland). Historians agree the scene where Bryant invites Reed to visit her writing studio is largely accurate. Where the invitation was extended is a matter of some dispute. The studio is still standing. It is located across the street from the downtown library, at 1033 SW Yamhill.

Louise Bryant, thinking about John Reed

John Reed, writing about Louise Bryant

Howard Zinn, writing about John Reed

Not one inch of Reds was shot in Oregon. Some of the Portland exteriors were shot in Seattle. Nevertheless, because it is based on the grand love affair of two Oregonians, John Reed and Louise Bryant, I claim it as an Oregon film.

Read here an impassioned defense of Reds as an underrated masterpiece.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hereby claim Reds as an Oregon film based on the two Oregonians who inspired it.

James Wong Howe, one time Portland boxer, shoots Betty Bronson as Peter Pan (1924).

Exports:

Portland filmmakers recruited to shoot Gold Rush epic in Alaska: 1, Lewis Moomaw

Film geniuses adapting Oregon authors: 1, Sergei Eisenstein (adapting John Reed)

Imports:

Film geniuses casting Oregon as Georgia: 1, Buster Keaton

Film geniuses casting Oregon as Minnesota: 1, F. W. Murnau

Stars visiting Oregon to pick up pay checks: Bessie Love, Boris Karloff, Jean Hersholt, Hoot Gibson.

First glimmerings of a later trend:

U of O students shoot a 35mm feature film on campus