It’s been six years since Pat Boone graced the cover of ALIVE Magazine — the first time ALIVE featured a personality on its cover and because it was our Mother’s Day issue, it seemed appropriate. Boone was a major recording artist and popular film star of the 50’s and early 1960’s and we devoted six pages on his career with an exclusive interview by Antonia Venezia. That special May Mother’s Day edition was our most popular issue up to that time.
I caught up with Boone recently in Omaha, Nebraska, where he was appearing at film historian Bruce Crawfords’ showing of the classic 1959 movie, Journey to the Center of The Earth, which starred Boone. Coincidentally, Boone had just come from his 60th high school reunion in Nashville, Tennessee.
While decades may have passed since the peak of Boone’s career as a hit singer (second in sales only to Elvis back then) TV variety show host and movie star, he vividly remembers making Journey to the Center of The Earth, in which he co-starred with James Mason and Arlene Dahl.
Years ago, I worked in the film industry and for a while as a publicis for 20th Century Fox, Boone’s home studio. I fondly remember working at my very first real job as the assistant manager of the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California, where Journey to the Center of the Earth played first run.
I asked Boone how he happened to be cast in the film.He explained, “I did not want to be in the film. It was science fiction and I wanted to do romantic comedies, with music. The producer promised to add a song for me to sing (My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose) and even offered a percentage of the movie’s profits, but that was not my deciding factor — my manager and agent said they would ‘strangle’ me if I didn’t take the role! And I’m glad I did. It was the best part and some of the best singing I did in my whole career.”
Boone also shared some wonderful ‘behind the scenes, on the set’ stories with me. “The one that cracks me up the most was from a climatic scene in which James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Peter Ronson and I were on a raft, caught in a giant whirlpool. It was a tricky thing to shoot — the raft was on a revolving platform that tilted when it went around. It had to look like we were being tossed violently. Hundreds of gallons of water were being dumped on us to simulate a stormy sea. The noise was deafening, but not enough to drown out Dahl, who started screaming as she held on for dear life. She screamed at the director, Henry Levin, ‘Get me off this thing. Get me down. I’m going to pass out!’
She kept yelling. Mason had little patience for it. He thought Dahl had already overplayed the role of a dainty creature when we had to wear very heavy parkas, feigning winter amid very hot July weather, for another scene (Dahl complained then of heat prostration). Mason was not amused as this time he yelled back at her, ‘Shut up woman! We’re going to have to do this ten times if you don’t keep quiet.’ We were going to have to dub dialogue anyway, and they got the shot.”
Boone said that Dahl was hauled away to the infirmary on a stretcher. Boone added, “I got along tremendously with James Mason. I was in awe of him as an actor, and he was very helpful to me and very friendly. I liked the way he hummed a lot before a scene would be shot. He never hummed any tune I could recognize, but I think he was making sure that famous voice of his was warmed up and ready. He was thoroughly professional.”
“Journey to the Center of the Earth may have saved 20th Century Fox,” Boone said, “the studio was in danger of being bankrupted by the filming of Cleopatra until Journey became a solid box office hit. It definitely ranks as one of the true adventure classics that had a profound influence on many future filmmakers, such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Brendon Fraser, eat your heart out.”
Boone’s boyhood idol and career role model was Bing Crosby, who had parlayed a singing career into a Oscar for Going My Way.
“Honestly, I never hungered for a movie career,” Boone said, “but they wanted me to do what Dick Powell had done — a singer who became a very dramatic actor. And I was in it up to my neck.”
Boone even gave up a successful TV variety show to pursue movies, but dramatic roles were hard to come by, as his pal Elvis Presley also learned. “Elvis and I were two Tennessee boys who visited back and forth,” Boone said, “I was the All-American boy and Elvis was the rebel. I was the conformist and he was playboy. We had a lot of the same fans, but we appealed to different instincts. Elvis once confided that he wanted to play roles like those in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Similarly, Boone desperately wanted to play the lead in the Sand Pebbles, but Steve McQueen got the part. “Rightfully so,” Boone added,
Boone did, however, turn down a meaty role with Fox’s reigning star, Marilyn Monroe. It was to be called Celebration based on a William Inge play. Boone wouldn’t compromise his Christian upbringing. Monroe had recently starred in Inge’s Bus Stop. Celebration was released a couple of years later with a title change. It was now called The Stripper with Joanne Woodward and Richard Beymer (in the role originally slated for Boone). It was one of Fox’s biggest flops. I think Mr. Boone made the right decision.
Pat Boone, known then as now for his conservative Christian values, said he turned down roles that would have required him to play corrupt hypocrites or pushed the envelope of on screen taboos. “I couldn’t conscientiously do those roles,” he said, “but you turn down a few and they quit coming.” For the film Journey to the Center of the Earth Boone said, “It was a milestone in my career — not just my movie career but my whole 55 year-long foray through the entertainment business. It was expensively produced, artistic and entertaining, and the whole family could enjoy it. What a concept! It was an honor (and a lot of hard work) to be in that film with people like James Mason and Arlene Dahl.”
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