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Hollywood Hour
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Bravo for the Other Boyle
Although the late Peter Boyle is being remembered primarily for his work on Everybody Loves Raymond, it was an obscure 1970s film that really captured his spirit.
Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:00 PM
By Dennis Michael
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Ron Gallela/WireImage.com
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Performing with Belushi on SNL, February 14th, 1976
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Peter Boyle’s performance in the 1970 Jon Avildsen feature Joe turned him from an unknown actor into a box office star. But his performance in the film as a brutal flag-draped racist and hippie hater didn’t make him one of my favorites.
Instead, it was a little known flick two years later called Steelyard Blues that made me a fan. If the title doesn’t ring a bell, it’s not much of a surprise. Despite its big name cast and above the line credentials, the movie didn’t make much of a stir at the box office, and since it came out on VHS well before the DVD era, it has disappeared with very few traces, if any. Looks for a Warner Home Video tribute-wrapped disc sometime next year.
Steelyard Blues was a wacky, almost psychedelic comedy that came out too late for its era. By 1973, hippies were beginning to consider cutting and perming their long hair while glam rock was having its short heyday in the twilight before the dawn of disco.
But Steelyard Blues had its roots in the 60s. The film was in many ways the strange offspring of Klute, with that film’s co-stars Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda together once again, and Jane Fonda yet again playing a hooker with a heart of gold. Sutherland on the other hand had returned to his anti-establishment persona straight out of M*A*S*H, this time playing Veldini, a demolition derby champ just out of the joint.
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Warner Home Video
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Deserves to be on DVD
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The storyline of the film - a group of misfits attempting to rebuild an antique amphibious plane to fly away somewhere “where there are no cops” (if memory serves) - was a rickety structure that bore about as much resemblance to reality as Yellow Submarine. But reality isn’t this film’s strong suit. The director, Alan Myerson, had cut his teeth with Second City and The Committee, and the film has a real sketch comedy feel to it
One scene, in which loopy Sutherland attracts a crowd while shoveling lion droppings at the zoo, stands as a memorable piece of found comedy.
The heart and soul of Steelyard Blues was Peter Boyle, playing “Eagle” Thornberry, an out-of-work and out-of-it-generally circus performer. Boyle’s antic performance, filled with unexpected costume changes, interspersed impressions of Brando in The Wild One with incredibly resourceful physical comedy. Boyle steals every scene he’s in, recalling the kinetic energy of certain soon-to-follow citizen from the Planet Ork.
When Eagle makes his critical contribution to the film’s third act, I remember a huge cheer rising up from the theater where I first saw Steelyard Blues. It’s that kind of movie.
Steelyard Blues really deserves a little more respect than it has received over the years. The hashish-scented script comes from David S. Ward, who went on next to create The Sting and is today a top-paid Hollywood script doctor. WKRP alum Howard Hesseman also stars as Veldini’s brother, a long-suffering district attorney who would just as soon be shorn of his black sheep of a sibling.
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20th Century Fox
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Boyle as "The Monster" in Young Frankenstein
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Every obituary of Peter Boyle will include for film the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” clip with Gene Wilder from Young Frankenstein, which definitely deserves its eternal place in film comedy’s greatest moments. But there is another lesser known performance by Boyle years later that did a fair job of conjuring up the spirit of Eagle Thornberry: his scene stealing performance in Honeymoon in Vegas.
In that one, he plays Chief Orman, said to be a Hawaiian Tribal Chief (although he looks in the film about as Hawaiian as Morey Amsterdam). In order to keep the main character (Nicholas Cage) delayed, the plot insists that he spend some time with the local Native Dignitary. Boyle wears a fright wig and regales Cage’s character, singing much of the score of South Pacific.
“Do you find Chief Orman attractive?” he asks at one point. It was the kind of unhinged comic character that Boyle could perform with ease. For ten years, television audiences watched Boyle turn the comic irascible character of Frank Barone into a display of brilliant comic timing. But really, the role never required him to get out of second gear.
You should have seen Boyle when he was really revving; he was in a class with Jonathan Winters and the aforementioned Ork-ian, Robin Williams. Wherever he is now, Boyle no doubt embodies the spirit of Eagle as dressed like Kit Carson, waiting with the horses to help the heroes escape.
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