TinselTales: Roo-ing Around

This is a potential new type of post that I'm trying out. It involves taking a closer look at gossip about a particular person or project. This one is reasonably obscure but then that's why I'm featuring it! In 1950, 20th Century Fox set out to make the first American Technicolor film shot in Australia (using funds that were "frozen" there due to currency laws of the time.) First meant to star Tyrone Power, he bailed in order to work in a London stage production of Mr. Roberts. Next, the trio of Richard Widmark, Jean Simmons and Errol Flynn was considered, but by the time it was ready to go, the project was set to star Peter Lawford, Constance Smith and Richard Boone. Smith was given to Otto Preminger for his film The 13th Letter (1951) and so Maureen O'Hara was courted for the part instead. It proved to be an ill-advised decision on her part because the script was in a state of constant rewrites and, despite top-billing, she hardly had a role to play (coming in more than 20 minutes after the movie's start and with the running time at 84 minutes total!) She wound up as something of a guest star in her own movie, with most of the things that had appealed to her about the script she read being discarded in the final rendition.

The story really concerns two con men, Lawford and Boone, who decide to take advantage of an old coot (Finlay Currie) who owns a large station in the outback. Currie's son is long-missing and Lawford decides to pose as him, meanwhile beginning to fall for Currie's daughter, O'Hara. This is more than complicated since he's trying to pass himself off as her brother, though she doesn't know that at first! The plot line had veered significantly from initially having a horde of kangaroos virtually wiping out a town (!) to this gently racy love story/con game to where there is barely a hopper to be found in the finished product, rendering the title Kangaroo (1952) pointless. The poster is an amalgam of untruths!

O'Hara, who was always proudly Irish, found to her delight that there were many Irish people in Australia and she took to the people there instantly. Her affection for the place and its inhabitants marked almost the only pleasant aspects of the entire experience. She wasn't fond of director Lewis Milestone's script changes, but couldn't leave the production - which was hotly anticipated in Australia - without causing deeply hurt feelings in the host country. She also felt that both Lawford and Boone were arrogant and rude with the crew and most of the people in their presence (she stated that people called Peter Lawford "Peter Awful!")

Now for the gossip... According to O'Hara, the Australian press was so unhappy with the way they'd been treated by these two gents that they decided to follow them around and attempt to dig up unappealing information on them to use in printed stories. One night, they hit pay dirt when Lawford and Boone were discovered visiting an all-male brothel which was, according to O'Hara, filled with "beautiful boys!" The scandal was such that 20th Century Fox execs implored O'Hara to somehow smooth the whole thing over and prevent the damaging story from actually going to press. In the end, it was indeed buried until half a century later when she relayed it in her autobiography.

I don't know if these two actually did partake in the gay brothel (or if they ever found entertainment on their own time), but I can say that throughout Kangaroo, Boone can scarcely keep his eyes or his hands off of Lawford. They have more chemistry together than the supposed lovebirds Lawford and O'Hara. It must be said, though, that O'Hara refers to Boone as a Broadway "hoofer" when, in fact, Boone was a dramatic actor in things like Medea and The Man and never a musical on The Great White Way. Both men were married for most of their lives, Boone three times and Lawford four, not that this means anything in the final analysis.

Both men were 6' tall, but their heights seem to differ throughout the film.

Though they aren't shown sleeping, it's implied that these two share one room at the station.

Boone was never known for his good looks, but he is about as handsome as he ever was at this particular time. Likewise, Lawford, with his burnished tan and golden-streaked hair was near his own peak of physical appeal.

Their secretive scheme lends a suspicious element to shots like this. ("Do you think anyone knows?")

Only Peter Lawford would play a conman on a rugged trail drive while wearing a pinky ring!

Just when you're wondering if one of them is going to "whip it out," the two of them whip it out in a vicious, prolonged duel with whips cracking endlessly. They seem to be doing a substantial amount of their own stunt-work in this climax that recalls Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones' passionate fight to the death in Duel in the Sun (1946.)

It's only after he's been whipped almost to death that we finally get a skosh of beefcake in the movie.

Note that in the shot above, from the very same scene, he has no visible wounds at all, but in this one he looks like Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988!)

Boone was exceptional at playing cold, threatening villains, though he had became a household name in the late-1950s thanks to his role as the slick, forthright hired helper on Have Gun Will Travel. Later moving to Hawaii, he worked less frequently, but usually to good effect. He was offered the role of Steve McGarrett on Hawaii 5-O, but turned it down, allowing Jack Lord to enjoy a 12-season run with it! (He was hoping that his own pilot, Kona Coast, would go to series, but it did not.) Boone died at sixty-three in 1981 of throat cancer and pneumonia.

Lawford overcame a childhood accident (which left him with a diminished right arm), a childhood molestation and a ruinous relationship with his controlling mother to become a young leading man at MGM. After a failed marriage to one of the Kennedy's, a falling out with close pal Frank Sinatra and career woes, things became unspooled for him and he suffered from severe alcohol and drug abuse. He died in 1984 of liver and kidney disease at only age sixty-one (and looking far older.)