Deja View: Back from the "Edge"

Yes, I know that y'all were ready to send out a search party for me. My life has been busy to the point of absurdity where work is concerned. (Hello, building season, nice to see ya!) Amongst all the various orders, issues, emergencies and concerns associated with the wholesale flooring biz, there was also a (very rare for me) trip across the country. Then I returned to more than 220 emails to sort through! Even rarer than a trip for me is a trip with my family (the last one was more than 20 years ago!) So where did I go? Well, it was to Las Vegas, Nevada. While there I took in Hoover Dam and part of the legendary Grand Canyon. And, as it turned out, stood on the very gravel where a movie was once filmed! 1959's Edge of Eternity starred Cornel Wilde as an Arizona deputy embroiled in mayhem around the famous canyon. 

A huge number of Grand Canyon visitors attend the south rim, which is less expensive to tour and has different views to offer than the west rim, which is where I wound up (because it was an hour and a half closer and I didn't want to be in a car for nine hours round trip!) The west rim is operated by the Hualapai on their reservation.

Plot points of Edge include the tram seen here. This scenario could only have ever been done during an amazingly brief window in time. You see, in 1958, development began on the extraction of guano from a bat cave on the other side of the point. Guano (bat shit, for the unenlightened!) was a highly sought-after fertilizer (which had also been used previously for the manufacturing of gunpowder.)

The company called U.S. Guano spent $3.5 million to build the tramway, which carried miners to and from the aforementioned cave. Unfortunately, there was far less guano in the cave than estimated and the venture only yielded about $100,000 gross profit, becoming abandoned in 1960! So the sweet spot of this movie, released in 1959, was really the only time this setting could be viable. Bat-shit crazy, right?!

A climactic fight was filmed on this tram, with real stunt-people floundering about and a helicopter looming nearby. (In the wake of various accidents involving aircraft in the canyon, most of the park no longer allows helicopters and small planes to fly within the space, but today the west section - part of the reservation - is exempt from these statutes and copter tours are prevalent. 

The movie's performers, Wilde, Mickey Shaughnessy and Victoria Shaw, filmed their portion of the goings on in a set with rear projection of the canyon. It's not very convincing, though the footage of the stunt people remains impressive.

The precipice shown here in the movie...

...is now the site of the Grand Canyon Skywalk.

Not for the squeamish, this U-shaped, cantilevered viewing area is a marvel in itself.

It's a loooonnng way down.

Another famous spot, seen here in the movie, is Eagle Point.

Somehow through the course of erosion, the rock took on the resemblance of an eagle with its wings spread.

I know some people have trouble spotting things like this easily, so I've done an outline of the section here to clarify.

This was my own personal snap of the area in question. No guardrail here, folks! It felt a little daunting.

Here are two ol' buzzards for the price of one!

Edge kicks off with this scene of a man overlooking the Colorado River.

The plan was for this pic of me with my aunt to show the river next to us. But you know how it is when you ask someone else to click a photo..... In any case, it's basically the same spot in which the man above was standing. There is now a small deli and covered dining area on the premises.

The same area through my own lens.

Longtime readers of this blog might recall Edge of Eternity because of one of its costars, the impishly handsome (but little-known) Rian Garrick.

Garrick burst into the movie biz in 1959 with Edge and three other films: Up Periscope, Battle of the Coral Sea and The Flying Fontaines.

He popped up in a prior bulge post thanks to his drunken emergence from a swimming pool while fully clothed in a summer suit.

Moments like this often make movies a little easier to sit through, Grand Canyon or not! Ha ha!

He was cute as a bug, and not untalented, but he mostly wound up on TV or in small roles in movies like Two Rode Together (1961) and Mirage (1965.) By 1966, he was out of the industry completely.

Reference guides list him as still alive at 89, but a recent FB post from a relative described him as being 92 and still in terrific shape (and much beloved) today! Maybe his age was adjusted down as he began his career (just as his name was altered from William Kaye.) It was hell to capture shots of him with his head up. I always swore that if he'd played to the camera a little more and not looked down so much during filming, he'd have made it further in the cut-throat world of Tinseltown.

One last thing. My trip ended horribly when I came to the Atlanta airport for what was meant to be a one-hour layover, but a horrendous hailstorm diverted me to Dallas-Ft Worth for a while, then finally to ATL. I lived there for nearly one whole day and went 41 hours on just two one-hour catnaps until finally getting on a flight back to Cincinnati. Disaster movie fanatic that I have always been, I just pretended I was in the bowels of the Wilson Plaza from 1974's Earthquake, where Ava Gardner and Genevieve Bujold sipped coffee out of paper cups and waited to be rescued. Only there was no dancing Walter Matuschanskayasky to keep me entertained!

It's all back to the normal grind now, so I will endeavor to get more posts up, more frequently. Thanks, till next time!

TV Movie Time Tunnel: "Kiss Me" Where...?

This was going to be an "It Actually Happened" post, for reasons I will elaborate on in a bit. However, I ultimately changed my mind and decided to highlight the movie itself. Kiss Me, Kill Me is a rather little-known 1976 made-for-television movie that fell into my lap recently. It was actually a pilot for what was intended to be a series (titled "D.A.'s Investigator?"), but - like 1000s of pilots - that didn't happen. Online, it's not hard to find folks carping about how underwhelming Kiss Me is, though that occurs with most anything because people are born complainers. I don't think this telefilm would change any lives, but I thought that some of its content was pretty fascinating for the time it was made and shown.

The inaugural installment of "D.A.'s Investigator" was first called "Please... Kill Me." Written by the same screenwriter who was Oscar-nominated for They Shoot Horses Don't They? (1969, losing to Midnight Cowboy), Robert Thompson had been a longtime TV scribe and also wrote the teleplay for 1974's A Case of Rape, which starred Elizabeth Montgomery. I doubt you'll find it written anywhere but here, but this film's story line is very clearly inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn, which led to a 1975 book and the 1977 movie, Looking for Mr. Goodbar. This project slunk in one year beforehand!

Quinn had been a late-20s teacher for the deaf with a slight limp, who was later discovered to have embarked on an, um, adventurous sex life. Here we have Tisha Sterling as a teacher of handicapped children who walks with a limp. She heads into a nightclub called Mardi Gras the evening before she is killed.

Some of you may be aware that Sterling was the lookalike daughter of 1930s leading lady Ann Sothern, who we adore. Her father was Robert Sterling who, after his divorce from Sothern,  was wed to the dazzling Anne Jeffreys for more than 50 years.

The hapless Sterling has some sort of adventure in her apartment before being discovered murdered in a grisly fashion.

Now we meet the star of this project, Miss Stella Stevens, who reports to work and finds roses waiting for her from a district attorney she'd helped to win a case. She's an investigator with the D.A.'s office, helped by an assistant seen here, played by Michael Anderson Jr.

She's barely in the door before she's called into her boss's office over the murder in question. It seems that Sterling had been interviewed by Stevens during an earlier matter and a key piece of evidence was located leading back to Stevens!

It's unusual to see Stevens as a redhead, though this was not an isolated incident. She also went red for her showy role in Dean Martin's The Silencers (1966), among others. What's also jarring is that her character's name is also Stella! So that must have been easy for costars to remember during filming. Stevens is one of a few members of my Disaster Movie Club to be found in this film, having played a key role in The Poseidon Adventure (1972.)

Her boss is played by Dabney Coleman, who had a brief role in The Towering Inferno (1974.) Within a few years from this, he would enact one of the most asshole bosses in history as Franklin Hart in 9 to 5 (1980.)

Stevens arrives at the blood-spattered crime scene to join detectives Alan Fudge (who played a helpful air traffic controller in Airport 1975, 1974) and Bruce Glover.

On site as well is another detective who Stevens used to know, Claude Akins. I don't want to say that Akins isn't any good, because he could act, but it annoys me that his eyes always seem to practically be closed. He seems an unlikely partner for Stevens, though perhaps producers had memories of her convincingly playing the wife of Ernie Borgnine just a few years prior.

Not Claude Akins...

She asks to see the piece of paper with her name on it. Note the character name on the memo in question. Stella Stafford. Murder victim Sterling apparently wrote "He is going to kill me - I know it" herself, having had the paper handy from Stevens' office.

The writing of hers on top is in a sort of shorthand that Stevens had developed. She still has no memory of Sterling at all, so she asks to view the body to see if it jogs her memory.

Akins accompanies Stevens down to the morgue so that she can view Sterling's violated corpse.

Said guard is played by one-time cinematic leading man Pat O'Brien, costar of James Cagney and close pal of Spencer Tracy. This is really just a brief cameo and would disappoint anyone who tuned in just to see him.

As the investigation proceeds, Akins and Glover find themselves interrogating a suspect who was seen arguing with a man at the Mardi Gras bar as well as loitering around the apartment building where Sterling lived. He's played by Robert Vaughn of The Towering Inferno.

Vaughn turns out to be the head of a major ad agency and is met outside by his attorney and another associate once he's released from questioning.

Proceeding on, after a few other leads, Stevens and Akins head to Mardi Gras to interview the bartender (played by character actor Arnold Soboloff.) Stevens has since recalled that Sterling had left her office and gotten into an elevator with a young black man.

Anderson and Stevens have it out over Akins. He's had a slow go of it in recent times when it comes to cracking cases and he needs this one to be solved in order to maintain a career. Anderson thinks he's past it, but Stevens vehemently defends him.

When Akins manages to narrow down and locate a suspect, the bartender is called in to look over a police lineup to see if the man who'd spoken to Sterling the night of her death is the same as the one Akins has brought in. Akins' arrestee is pegged and, before long, confesses!

Stevens hears from a D.A. played by Steve Franken (of Avalanche, 1978) that Sterling really "got around" and that Akins' defendant's confession may not hold up because he's a known drug user. He wants more evidence before he'll take the case to trial.

Stevens decides to grill Akins' suspect, Charles Weldon, to see what she thinks about his motive and/or guilt. Despite his confession, he now pleads his innocence and paints a picture of Sterling as someone who got off on being knocked around.

His attorney is played by Richard Greene who happens to be the guy I posted a picture of in my most recent bulge post (the cute sea patrolman standing with Robert Conrad.)

As it happens, it is he who comes closest to providing any sort of bulge shot in this movie!

The friendship/quasi-relationship between Stevens and Akins is tested when she begins to believe that Weldon didn't do it while Akins is bent of closing the case and getting his "win."

"C'mere... you lousy cop..."

Back to Vaughn. He's at his agency, suggesting that the model in a photo shoot for stockings show more leg.

He finds Stevens waiting for him, filled with questions. She's trying to figure out who it was that Vaughn engaged in an argument with that night at Mardi Gras.

She quickly zeroes in on a photograph Vaughn keeps on his desk and realizes that she's seen the other man in the picture before. He was one of the ones who greeted Vaughn upon his release at the police station.

Vaughn is evasive and increasingly agitated. He won't give her any information (even about the name of the man who's pictured with him in that portrait!)

I was excited when Stevens headed to the health club to get a lead on the young man, but all we really see is owner Mike Masters telling her his name and how he'd been fired for stealing and hustling the customers. (Even Mike Masters is an honorary member of the Disaster Movie Club because of his appearance in Irwin Allen's Cave-In! Ha ha!)

Stevens informs Akins that her young man is a longtime troublemaker who's been hurting animals and people since he was a teen. She's convinced that the guy killed Sterling after she encouraged him to treat her roughly. But he won't let go of his current suspect.

Attempting to put a few things together, she enlists Anderson to help her in a bit of a setup. She has him call both Vaughn and his gym buddy and gets them to meet up. Then these two follow Vaughn to the place referred to by Anderson as only "he knows where."

At last we come to the "It Actually Happened" part! Vaughn drives to a local watering hole called Pinochio's. ("Aaaah... Lie to me, lie to me!") It's a gay bar!

Inside the dark, red-tinged hangout, a group of hustlers are doing the then-popular Hustle.

Vaughn is pleading with his former playmate to get together again. He's confused about why the guy called him. But we already know that he didn't! Now, had I not been paying careful attention to this point, I almost would have thought this young stud was Gary Sandy. But...

It turns out to be, of all people, Bruce Boxleitner!

Boxleitner has moved on to a new "friend" (and the dude in the sunglasses puts his hand under Boxleitner's arm to claim his territory.) Vaughn invites them both to come over to his place for a "party!" But this doesn't end the way he'd wished...

When next we see Vaughn, he's in his immaculate apartment preparing.

Even though their last meeting was rather contentious, he can't help himself from buying Boxleitner an airplane ticket to Miami under an assumed name ("Lawrence Vane") and outfitting him in some elegant duds of his.

In all honestly, nothing could have prepared me for a 1976 TV-movie in which Robert Vaughn and Bruce Boxleitner were presented as sex partners!

Vaughn is quite besotted and so he's virtually powerless to resist Boxleitner's charms, even considering his snarky, nasty personality.

He's only too happy to take anything and everything he can from Vaughn, including a wad of money.

These are very unusual roles for this pair of actors.

I found it pretty fascinating to watch the various adjustments from their ordinary body language and expressions as they took their turns at playing gay. Neither one is "flamboyant," mind you, just slightly different.

Boxleitner was in the early stages of his career, but this wasn't his debut. He'd popped up on a 1973 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and done some other projects. But 1976 would be the year he began to attract attention as he costarred on How the West Was Won.

Should you wish to take in this one hour and 12-minute mystery, it's free with ads in a really nice print on YT right here. Clearly, it goes down easier if you like the selection of performers who were cast in it.

::::BONUS PICS::::

This same year (1976), Boxleitner was cast in a TV-movie called The Macahans, which was developed into a spottily successful TV series in 1977, renamed How the West Was Won. From that point, he was on an upward career trajectory, with his own brief show Bring 'Em Back Alive, miniseries like Bare Essence and East of Eden (my favorite work of his) and subsequent series including Scarecrow and Mrs. King and Babylon 5.

We would expect no less, but Stevens embarked on a short-lived relationship with Boxleitner after they met on this project. Her son Andrew was only five years younger than Boxleitner! He ended up marrying an actress from How the West Was Won (who'd played his sister!) and then was famously wed for nearly a dozen years to Melissa Gilbert. He married for third (and last?) time in 2016.

During his time on Bring 'Em Back Alive, which was an adventure show based on the exploits of 1910s game trapper Frank Buck - hence the stache - Boxleitner was recruited to take part in Battle of the Network Stars. This was always our favorite TV program, thanks to the event coercing all the men into wearing Speedos for the aquatic events.

That same season (1982-83) was the time when "Fake Duke Boys" were temporarily brought in to replace the stars of The Dukes of Hazzard, including Byron Cherry, seen here.

The End!

But wait, there's more...!

Mr. B. led a very "clean" sort of career, with no nudity or raunch to speak of. But... In 1992, he was coerced into starring in a made-for-cable erotic thriller called Double Jeopardy, costarring Rachel Ward and Sela Ward (no relation - what are the chances!?)

He's in full Michael Douglas/Fatal Attraction (1987) mode as a man who cheats on his wife and it's followed by murder. If you are looking for this movie, the Youtube version has been clipped and cropped and has a blurry picture quality and so it a waste of time. These caps come from the site I visit more often and the print is good. Here is a link to the movie.

Anyway, he is seduced in the shower by Rachel Ward.

Then later gets out of bed with Sela Ward to answer the phone. And this is the sole instance of nudity in his career. (You can't say I don't do my research!)

Now it's really The End!