American Graffiti is a 1973 coming of age film co-written/directed by George Lucas. Set in Modesto, California, the film is a study of the rock and roll culture popular among the post-World War 2 baby boomer generation. The film is a nostalgic portrait of teenage life in the early 1960’s told in a series of vignettes, featuring the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures within one night.
The genesis of American Graffiti was Lucas’s own teenage years in early 1960’s Modesto. He was unsuccessful in pitching the concept to financiers and distributors but finally found favor at Universal Pictures after United Artist, 20th Century Fox, Columbia Pictures, M-G-M and Paramount turned him down. Filming was initially set to take place in San Rafael, California, but the production crew was denied permission to shoot beyond the second day. As a result most of the filming of American Graffiti was done in Petaluma.
In 1995, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The advertising phrase that accompanied the film when it was released was….’Where were you in 62’… many people today believe that that was the year more than many other years that was the end of America’s innocence.
I had the distinct pleasure and privilege to relate some of my experiences in the film and theatre business in “’Alive” a few months ago—and wonder of wonders, I’ve been invited back to do some of the same. This time it mixes the present, along with the past.
Now residing in Omaha, Nebraska, the entertainment capital of the United States—wait, let me rephrase that—now living in Omaha, Nebraska, I’ve had the good fortune, for a film buff like myself, to occasionally spend some time visiting with some of the celebrities that pass through this fair city. Incidentally, in a 2012 Gallup poll, Nebraska was chosen the 6th happiest place to live in America and California, the 17th. Go figure…
Since arriving back in the mid-west, I’ve participated in one of the area’s signature events, an entertainment fund raiser, that not only raises thousands of dollars for health care, but salutes Hollywood’s classic films, filmmakers and stars. Twice a year this event comes to the beautiful Josyln Museum, produced by film historian, Bruce Crawford. Bruce has honored over 30 films since 1992 and has been recognized by the American Film Institute as a true treasure for his work on the preservation of classic movies. To list the films he has brought to Omaha shown in the way they were originally presented, would be the movies that America has loved for decades.
This year the film that was honored was, without a question, the biggest surprise hit of 1973: the George Lucas coming of age classic, American Graffiti. The film was co-written and directed by Lucas, and starred a laundry list of young people, unknown at the time, that soon were to become some of the biggest names in Hollywood—Richard Dreyfus, Harrison Ford, Ron Howard, Susanne Sommers, Candy Clark, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith, McKenzie Phillips and a half-dozen more (not to forget, Wolfman Jack; yet, the cast member who came to Omaha to honor the film was not a movie star, but one of the biggest and most successful TV icons of the 1970’s hit sit-com, Laverne & Shirley.
Of course I’m talking about Shirley Feeney, herself, Cindy Williams. I had the happy opportunity to visit with Williams and get her candid comments on the making of this iconic film and how she came to appear in it. Cindy Williams, had just come from Macon,Georgia, where she was appearing in Nunsense Blvd. (a spin-off of the musical comedy, Nunsense that she appeared in on Broadway.)
Back in 1972, when she got the call to audition for the film, Williams had just finished filming, Travels With My Aunt with Maggie Smith in Europe. Both films had the same casting director.
“He called the day I got back,” Williams recounted, “I remembered being very jet-lagged when I got his call and he said, ‘I have an ingénue part and we can’t find anyone for it. It’s a young director [George Lucas, pre Star Wars] and I think it’s going to be good.’ I tried to turn down the part of Ron Howard’s, clingy girlfriend in ‘Graffiti’ three times, but the casting guy persisted, and I grudgingly went to the audition.”
“I really liked George, but I said I really wanted Candy Clark’s part (flirty Debbie, who on the big night, dates nerdy Terry), “I wanted to play comedy. I didn’t want to be crying through the movie, while everyone else was having fun.”
Cindy’s instincts were right; Clark was the only cast member to receive an academy award nomination. Williams continued, “My agent called again and said, ‘Cindy, you really should do this, it’s going to be a fabulous movie.’ I still said no.” Then Francis Ford Coppola, who was the producer, called Williams’ house. “I hadn’t seen the The Godfather yet,” Williams recalled, “but I had seen, You’re a Good Boy Now, a film that Coppola directed, and I thought it was fabulous. He said, ‘Cindy, you really want to do this ‘ and I immediately said….of course, I do.”
And boy is she glad she did. “George was terrific; he had a vision, went for it, and nailed it.” When she and Ron Howard met with Lucas for the first time (she was 24, and Howard was about to turn 18), Lucas described the movie as a musical with the soundtrack comprised of 40 classic, rock ‘n ‘roll hits. “I remember walking out of there with Ron and he said, ‘That’s just brilliant!’ And when we saw a rough cut two weeks in with some of the music, we knew it was.”
Cindy Williams always wanted to act. As a kid she mimicked commercials in the bathroom mirror, put on shows in the family garage and performed at church socials. As she grew, she wished that one day Debbie Reynolds, one of her idols, would see her in one of her amateur shows, whisk her away and put her in a film. Another thing that brought fame to her eyes was her Dad, who drank, but was constantly doing imitations of comics like Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle.
At Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California, Sally Field was in her drama class. Williams’ first notable role was a recurring one on the TV drama Room 222. She knew American Graffiti co-star, Richard Dreyfus, long before the movie shoot.
“My best friend from college grew up across the street from Ricky, as he was known then, before any of us were in show biz.”
While Dreyfus was very serious about his part, she said, Harrison Ford and Paul LeMat were cut-ups and mavericks. “They were fun. It was like going to a risqué church camp, real mischievous.”
The movie was so low budget there were no dressing rooms. The actors hung out in the classic cars between takes—even during takes, in Williams’ case.
“Sometimes when they were shooting a scene in the front seat, I’d be lying in the back seat. There was no place else to go.”
“Lucas was an easy-going director,” Williams said, “and very open to suggestions. At one point, Ford wanted to burst into song, crooning Some Enchanted Evening in an exaggerated, Enzio Pinza style, from South Pacific. Lucas let him and it was shot; but they couldn’t get the rights to the song, so it was cut.”
I asked her if it surprised her when the movie became such a huge hit. “Yes and no. Yes, because Universal shelved it (eight months)—they were considering not even releasing it; but, no, because I had seen it. It was so glorious, and I saw how the crowd responded to it. But Universal was off, by George. They thought it would bomb and the studio even lost the rights and the chance to have, Star Wars.”
The film was finally released to universal acclaim and financial success and was nominated for the academy award for best picture. Produced on a $700,000 budget, the film turned out to be one of the most profitable movies of all time. Since its initial release, American Graffiti has garnered an estimated return of well over $200 million in box office grosses and home video sales.
Of all the movie and television people I’ve met over the years, Cindy Williams was singularly the warmest, most unassuming and funniest star that I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend some time with. Not being in the public eye much since Laverne & Shirley left the air, it was amazing to see the hundreds of fans that came to see her at the showing of the film that directly led her to be cast in the sitcom and she visited with them for over two hours, treating all like old school chums.
I enjoyed talking about her career and other films that she made, like the Oscar nominated, The Conversation, where the sweet and innocent-looking Williams plotted to kill her husband. At one point during our visit, she jokingly accused me of ‘stealing her reading glasses, (I had picked them up by mistake and pocketed them) and we had a running faux argument, that amused her to no end…she even threatened to file a restraining order against me.
As a post-script to my fabulous time with Cindy Williams, she gave me this bit of unique trivia: Star Wars owes a debt to American Graffiti, and not just because George Lucas became rich and famous from it. During post production on American Graffiti, one of the sound crew wanted Lucas to retrieve the second dialogue track from reel two. In filmmaker lingo, his request was, “Could you get…R2-D2 for me?”
…And another star was born.
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