I have a feeling of deja vu, like I've posted some of Meriwether's 4D MAN quotes before. If so, sorry for the repetition. This is part of my interview
with her:
...Bob Lansing was there with his wife Emily [actress Emily McLaughlin from General Hospital], and they had their new little baby, Bobby Lansing, Jr. I babysat with Bobby a couple of times while they were able to go and have dinner some place and go into town.
Q: Did everything go smoothly?
A: No, I know they had problems. The first day of filming, they started with a prayer, and I think were very respectful of each other and all. As it progressed and things went wrong, I saw problems. The energy that sustained them seemed to diminish a little bit...
Q: When things would go wrong.
A: Yes. I felt that maybe they were just not able to go back to that energy, or that belief that stimulated their involvement. I saw it sort of deteriorating and it made me sad. Bob helped a great deal with some of the directing difficulties: "Listen, let's just do this, let's just rehearse it and rehearse it until we get something that will work." And he relieved "Shorty," I think. I don't mean that Bob relieved him of his job [laughs], no, but a couple of times Bob relieved "Shorty" of the burden that was kind of pressing him down. Bob was able to do that, and do that in a gentlemanly way, just to help "Shorty."
Q: "Shorty" halfway admitted that to me. He said that Lansing was "as helpful and concerned as could be." The exact opposite of The Blob's Steve McQueen, who "Shorty" said was very difficult!
A: Oh, yeah, Bob was terrific, he really was, and I liked him a lot. I did two movies with him, 4D Man and Namu, the Killer Whale [1966], and a couple of TV shows. We remained very close friends and family friends. We'd all spent birthdays and Christmases and things like that together.
Q: Robert Lansing told an interviewer that when he was first approached, the 4D Man was not the main character in the movie, his brother was. Lansing said he talked "Shorty" into making the 4D Man the star before he took the role. Does that sound like a Robert Lansing move to you?
A: Bob was very cognizant of the way Hollywood works, and the way one becomes a star. So I think that probably was what happened.
Q: Lansing once told an interviewer he was "pretty hammy" in 4D Man.
A: Oh, now that's interesting. No, I never would think he was hammy...he just went into a heightened state of being mentally deranged. I always believed what he did. So, no, I didn't find him hammy. If I'd seen that, I might have said something to Emily [laughs]! Also, consider how quickly it was shot, and that he was injured.
Q: Injured?
A: By a blank from one of the guns, when the policemen in the movie were shooting at him. This was on one of our locations...night-for-night shooting. They thought they might get around to shooting a scene of Jimmy Congdon and me, so we were brought along just in case, but it was mostly going to be Bob working, running away from the police in the rain, and there were gonna be policemen shooting at him and there were going to be a lot of extras. At one point, Bob came out of a building through a door onto a little porch area as he was escaping, and the police were shooting at him. He jerked to one side, and held his face, and started to run away-they were still shooting. He finished out the scene, and then he said, "Uh...gang, I think I'm hurt." So they looked, and the side of his face near his eye had been hit with wadding, or something, fired by one of the guns. They took him immediately to the hospital, and Bob came back with the most wonderful story-it was just fabulous.
Dean Newman, who did the makeup, had designed an old age makeup for Bob, because in the movie any time Bob passed through any barrier, he got older and older and older. And so in this scene where he was running away from the police, Bob had this old age makeup on. He didn't touch the makeup until he got to the hospital, where that late at night only one doctor and a couple of nurses were on duty. Bob said he thought this doctor was from the Middle East somewhere, and his knowledge of moviemaking was nil. This doctor didn't know anything except, here's this "old man" coming in, and all of a sudden tearing at his skin [laughs]-pulling it off! The doctor started yelling at Bob, "No, no! Don't! Don't do that!" Bob said, "No, it's makeup, it's makeup," and still the doctor couldn't really comprehend what it was that Bob was doing, and he literally tried to grab Bob's hands away from his face. Part of the latex came off, and the doctor screamed. Bob said, "Please, look, look, look. I'm not old, I'm an actor, I'm an actor," over and over again, and finally it got through to the poor doctor. But the doctor had nearly collapsed, he almost fainted. He admitted that to Bob later, he said, "When I saw you doing that, I almost fainted. The blood just raced out of my head!" [Laughs] It was really something!
Q: In an old interview, you talked about "Shorty" doing something startling in the scene where you're kissing Robert Lansing, and you're actually holding a gun and getting ready to shoot him.
A: Yes-he discharged a gun [laughs]! He was in that enclosed set with us, and from about two feet away from Bob and me, he discharged a gun loaded with a blank, at the same moment that I was supposed to be firing at Bob. He must have read a book about directing that said, "Startle the actors, you'll get something wonderful!" Well [laughs], what he got was the wonderful spray of saliva that you see on the screen between Bob and me as we jumped apart when the gun went off!
Q: You just re-watched the movie, so-what do you think of it in 2005? Do you think it holds up?
A: Yes, I really do! I was really rather amazed at my performance! I thought, "Why, for heaven's sake...I wasn't half-bad!" There were line deliveries that I thought, "Hey...that's pretty good!" [Laughs] And as I watched the movie, a lot came back to me. You know the scene where Jimmy Congdon first arrives at the research center and I say to him, "I'm the good fairy who passed you through the gate." Well, in one take, just as I said "fairy," a fly landed on my nose [laughs]! I would give anything for that piece of film, but I'm sure it's gone. We were all in hysterics, we laughed and laughed. After that, trying to get back to acting the way we were supposed to in the scene was very hard! I also saw that I wore my own clothes in the movie--I forgot all about that. Remember the scene in the restaurant where Jimmy and I dance, and he puts his hand on my back and then takes it away because my dress is backless? That's my wedding gown, shortened to be used at a later date, and it was-it was used in 4D Man! I hated the swimsuit I wore in the scene with Bob and Jimmy in the park. In that scene, I wore a swimsuit, Jimmy wore a bathing suit, but Bob was fully dressed. Bob refused to wear a bathing suit-he even wore a jacket! I don't know why he refused to wear a bathing suit, because he didn't have a bad figure at all. But he just felt self-conscious about...something, I guess.
At some point later on, Bob Lansing went back to New York for something and 4D Man was on television, it was on the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 in New York. Million Dollar Movie played the same movie twice a day, seven days a week-the same movie! Bob was so funny, he said, "Oh, Lee, our careers went downhill when the movie first came out. Can you imagine what's gonna happen with it on seven days a week?" [Laughs]
He joked about it, but I think both he and I were...I know I was...I was proud of that first effort. I really was. It was a good joke, Bob saying, "What's going to happen to our careers with it on seven days a week?," but I know we were both proud of 4D Man.
...Bob Lansing was there with his wife Emily [actress Emily McLaughlin from General Hospital], and they had their new little baby, Bobby Lansing, Jr. I babysat with Bobby a couple of times while they were able to go and have dinner some place and go into town.
Q: Did everything go smoothly?
A: No, I know they had problems. The first day of filming, they started with a prayer, and I think were very respectful of each other and all. As it progressed and things went wrong, I saw problems. The energy that sustained them seemed to diminish a little bit...
Q: When things would go wrong.
A: Yes. I felt that maybe they were just not able to go back to that energy, or that belief that stimulated their involvement. I saw it sort of deteriorating and it made me sad. Bob helped a great deal with some of the directing difficulties: "Listen, let's just do this, let's just rehearse it and rehearse it until we get something that will work." And he relieved "Shorty," I think. I don't mean that Bob relieved him of his job [laughs], no, but a couple of times Bob relieved "Shorty" of the burden that was kind of pressing him down. Bob was able to do that, and do that in a gentlemanly way, just to help "Shorty."
Q: "Shorty" halfway admitted that to me. He said that Lansing was "as helpful and concerned as could be." The exact opposite of The Blob's Steve McQueen, who "Shorty" said was very difficult!
A: Oh, yeah, Bob was terrific, he really was, and I liked him a lot. I did two movies with him, 4D Man and Namu, the Killer Whale [1966], and a couple of TV shows. We remained very close friends and family friends. We'd all spent birthdays and Christmases and things like that together.
Q: Robert Lansing told an interviewer that when he was first approached, the 4D Man was not the main character in the movie, his brother was. Lansing said he talked "Shorty" into making the 4D Man the star before he took the role. Does that sound like a Robert Lansing move to you?
A: Bob was very cognizant of the way Hollywood works, and the way one becomes a star. So I think that probably was what happened.
Q: Lansing once told an interviewer he was "pretty hammy" in 4D Man.
A: Oh, now that's interesting. No, I never would think he was hammy...he just went into a heightened state of being mentally deranged. I always believed what he did. So, no, I didn't find him hammy. If I'd seen that, I might have said something to Emily [laughs]! Also, consider how quickly it was shot, and that he was injured.
Q: Injured?
A: By a blank from one of the guns, when the policemen in the movie were shooting at him. This was on one of our locations...night-for-night shooting. They thought they might get around to shooting a scene of Jimmy Congdon and me, so we were brought along just in case, but it was mostly going to be Bob working, running away from the police in the rain, and there were gonna be policemen shooting at him and there were going to be a lot of extras. At one point, Bob came out of a building through a door onto a little porch area as he was escaping, and the police were shooting at him. He jerked to one side, and held his face, and started to run away-they were still shooting. He finished out the scene, and then he said, "Uh...gang, I think I'm hurt." So they looked, and the side of his face near his eye had been hit with wadding, or something, fired by one of the guns. They took him immediately to the hospital, and Bob came back with the most wonderful story-it was just fabulous.
Dean Newman, who did the makeup, had designed an old age makeup for Bob, because in the movie any time Bob passed through any barrier, he got older and older and older. And so in this scene where he was running away from the police, Bob had this old age makeup on. He didn't touch the makeup until he got to the hospital, where that late at night only one doctor and a couple of nurses were on duty. Bob said he thought this doctor was from the Middle East somewhere, and his knowledge of moviemaking was nil. This doctor didn't know anything except, here's this "old man" coming in, and all of a sudden tearing at his skin [laughs]-pulling it off! The doctor started yelling at Bob, "No, no! Don't! Don't do that!" Bob said, "No, it's makeup, it's makeup," and still the doctor couldn't really comprehend what it was that Bob was doing, and he literally tried to grab Bob's hands away from his face. Part of the latex came off, and the doctor screamed. Bob said, "Please, look, look, look. I'm not old, I'm an actor, I'm an actor," over and over again, and finally it got through to the poor doctor. But the doctor had nearly collapsed, he almost fainted. He admitted that to Bob later, he said, "When I saw you doing that, I almost fainted. The blood just raced out of my head!" [Laughs] It was really something!
Q: In an old interview, you talked about "Shorty" doing something startling in the scene where you're kissing Robert Lansing, and you're actually holding a gun and getting ready to shoot him.
A: Yes-he discharged a gun [laughs]! He was in that enclosed set with us, and from about two feet away from Bob and me, he discharged a gun loaded with a blank, at the same moment that I was supposed to be firing at Bob. He must have read a book about directing that said, "Startle the actors, you'll get something wonderful!" Well [laughs], what he got was the wonderful spray of saliva that you see on the screen between Bob and me as we jumped apart when the gun went off!
Q: You just re-watched the movie, so-what do you think of it in 2005? Do you think it holds up?
A: Yes, I really do! I was really rather amazed at my performance! I thought, "Why, for heaven's sake...I wasn't half-bad!" There were line deliveries that I thought, "Hey...that's pretty good!" [Laughs] And as I watched the movie, a lot came back to me. You know the scene where Jimmy Congdon first arrives at the research center and I say to him, "I'm the good fairy who passed you through the gate." Well, in one take, just as I said "fairy," a fly landed on my nose [laughs]! I would give anything for that piece of film, but I'm sure it's gone. We were all in hysterics, we laughed and laughed. After that, trying to get back to acting the way we were supposed to in the scene was very hard! I also saw that I wore my own clothes in the movie--I forgot all about that. Remember the scene in the restaurant where Jimmy and I dance, and he puts his hand on my back and then takes it away because my dress is backless? That's my wedding gown, shortened to be used at a later date, and it was-it was used in 4D Man! I hated the swimsuit I wore in the scene with Bob and Jimmy in the park. In that scene, I wore a swimsuit, Jimmy wore a bathing suit, but Bob was fully dressed. Bob refused to wear a bathing suit-he even wore a jacket! I don't know why he refused to wear a bathing suit, because he didn't have a bad figure at all. But he just felt self-conscious about...something, I guess.
At some point later on, Bob Lansing went back to New York for something and 4D Man was on television, it was on the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 in New York. Million Dollar Movie played the same movie twice a day, seven days a week-the same movie! Bob was so funny, he said, "Oh, Lee, our careers went downhill when the movie first came out. Can you imagine what's gonna happen with it on seven days a week?" [Laughs]
He joked about it, but I think both he and I were...I know I was...I was proud of that first effort. I really was. It was a good joke, Bob saying, "What's going to happen to our careers with it on seven days a week?," but I know we were both proud of 4D Man.
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