PT 109

Regarding "PT 109"...

Bob thought of that movie as he did most of the movies he made early on before "I Spy", as stepping stones in a career and little else.

Bob was already good friends with Robert Blake, ever since he and his wife Nancy had seen Blake in a play in L.A. and went backstage to introduce himself. I believe it was a play about drug addicts and Bob was very impressed. One time I was at the house and Bob had Blake and director Richard Brooks over. There was a young woman, a friend of Bob's wife Candace, I think - and both Blake and Brooks were kind of showing off trying to win over the woman. Neither did, to my recollection.

He felt in general the picture was a debacle, that it was cheap looking and poorly directed. The original director, I'm not sure who, maybe Lewis Milestone -- was fired, a couple weeks or so into shooting, and replaced by someone the cast felt was far inferior. Also, no one liked Ty Hardin, to the point that when Ty was stung in the groin by a jellyfish and called out for help, no one went to help him.

To clarify, it wasn't made the year Kenedy was killed, it was shot in summer of '62. Bob liked Cliff Robertson very much and they were pretty friendly, and it was Cliff who called him with the news on November 22nd.

One funny story; we were all out to dinner at Musso & Frank's years ago and Bob was telling a story about the movie. They were shooting in very hot weather and for some reason the crew got stranded on the island. They couldn't shoot for days and the cast began to go stir crazy. In fact, some of the actors really began losing it. At that very moment, Norman Fell, who was also in the movie, walked in the restaurant, saw Bob and nodded. As he walked off, Bob said, under his breath, "Norm was one of them."

Coincidence? I think not!