The Silver Screen Oasis

Hi, all, tomorrow (Tuesday, August 11) is going to be a special fun day at the Ben Johnson Fanpage all day long, so check in in the morning and come back now and then during the day!

The party has started at the BJ Fanpage.... please stop on by and if you'd like to contribute, send your quote/info/picture/whatever to me as a private message here or e-mail me at [email protected].

http://benjohnsonfanpage.shutterfly.com

And a HUGE thank you to JackFavell who originated this thread on SSO and suggested I do Wagon Master for my next screencaps project. Kind of started an avalanche there, JackFavell! ;)

Dillinger publicity photo.

Two pics from One-Eyed Jacks. That's Ben hanging upside-down in the second photo -- according to an article in Life magazine that covered the shooting of OEJ, he was strung up there for so long he nearly passed out. And then they cut that scene from the movie.

This is an article about the new actor Oscar winners in the July 1972 issue of Screen Stories. You can download much bigger and more legible scans here: https://benjohnsonfanpage.shutterfly.com/print/988

An interesting item that showed up on eBay quite a while ago was the actual original photo paste-up board for the two page photo spread from the Screen Stories article above. I couldn't resist adding it to the BJ Fanpage archives. :) So here it is. The first picture is a scan I made of the photo of Ben and Carol Johnson -- it was taken at the Academy Awards or a party afterward the night Ben won his Oscar.

The board itself is too big to scan, so I took photos with my mini iPad -- the first is with the cellophane overlay, the second with the cellophane rolled back so you can see the photos themselves, which have been cut up rather haphazardly. :) If you scroll up to the previous post with the article itself, you can see all the graphics they added.

Two pictures from War Drums.

A pic from One-Eyed Jacks. The bank clerk is Elisha Cook, Jr. ;)

This one is from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Alas, damage on the still but I think it's a beauty anyway. ;)

Ben, John Agar (sitting), Harry Carey, Jr. (crouching), not sure of the other two men standing with them.

This is a still from the 1986 TV mini-series Dream West. Ben had a one-scene cameo as Jim Bridger. With him are Rip Torn as Kit Carson and Richard Chamberlain as John Fremont.

Two from The Wild Bunch.

Sure wish I could have gone to the Ben Johnson Roast! The photo below the article is from the opening of the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles on November 22, 1989. The article about the roast and the Autry Museum photo are from issue no. 11 of The Westerner. The Westerner was a combination magazine and catalogue published from 1986 to 1997 by the Old West Shop, which is still in existence, in Vienna, West Virginia.

War Drums. ;) With Lex Barker and Joan Taylor. :)

Ben made several films and TV movies with Gary Busey. In the ABC Wednesday Movie of the Week (Dec. 5, 1973) Bloodsport, he played Busey's overbearing father who was obsessed with his son's high school football career.

This is on the set of Kid Blue. Ben played Sheriff "Mean John" Simpson and his character definitely earned that moniker.