Daily Update
Posted by Faye Bell on September 29, 2008 at 08:43:20:
St. George resident tells tales of Tinseltown
BY BRIAN PASSEY • bpassey@thespectrum.com • September 28, 2008
Patrick Curtis was in "Gone With The Wind" - he just doesn't remember it.
The St. George resident played the part of baby Beau Wilkes. As an infant in the role, he only has the stories from his parents and costars like Olivia de Havilland, who played the role of Beau's mother, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, and is still alive at age 93.
Yet Curtis continued relationships with many of the actors appearing in the classic film as he grew up working as a child actor in Hollywood. Those connections and the stories that resulted from them - ask him about riding in Clark Gable's Jaguar roadster as a young boy - make Curtis a popular speaker at various "Gone With The Wind" events, including those associated with the fall season of the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
"Moonlight and Magnolias," one of the three featured plays at USF this season, tells a farcical story about the writing of the screenplay for "Gone With The Wind." Curtis attended the opening of the play Saturday and he plans to return to Cedar City on Oct. 13 for a free screening of the film.
Mickey Kuhn, who played a slightly older version of Beau Wilkes in the film, will join Curtis for a talkback session following the screening at the festival's Randall L. Jones Theatre.
"We're really excited about this," says Michael Bahr, education director for the festival. "It's sort of a celebration of 'Gone With The Wind.'"
Bahr says Curtis is an excellent local resource connected to "Gone With The Wind" events associated with the fall season. Although Bahr says "Moonlight and Magnolias" is enjoyable without having seen the film or read the book, those who are familiar with the story will better understand the background of the play.
At first Bahr says he was unsure if Curtis would have enough background on the film because he was only a baby at the time it was filmed. Then he recently had breakfast with the former child actor.
"I was thoroughly entertained at breakfast," Bahr says of the tales Curtis told him of growing up in Hollywood. "I was just thrilled and excited about the stories. É For me it's living history."
Curtis says he and Kuhn will likely tell stories at the Oct. 13 event about costars and why they have all remained close friends after nearly 70 years.
The child actor
So how did Curtis land his role in "Gone With The Wind," being that he was a baby at the time?
Curtis' parents were already a part of the Hollywood scene. Among their friends was George Cukor, the film's original director who took it through two years of preproduction but was replaced by Victor Fleming shortly after filming began. Fleming, who is credited as the film's director and is one of four characters depicted in "Moonlight and Magnolias," was also a friend of Curtis' father.
"Every once in a while he'd come over to our house and play cards," Curtis says of Fleming.
That easy access to industry insiders provided plenty of child roles for the young Curtis. He worked in nearly every Tony Curtis film made in the 1950s and he was the ninth of 13 children to the fictional Ma and Pa Kettle in their comedy series.
"They were just wild children and I was one of those wild children," he says.
"I was just a working kid that I guess they could rely on not to do anything terrible," Curtis continues, adding that he was practically invisible in many of his roles. "Normally I was the 'fourth-kid-on-the-right,' so I didn't have a lot of responsibilities."
Among those roles was a small part on the "Leave It To Beaver" television series as one of the kids who would stop by and say things like, "Can Wally come out and play, Mr. Cleaver?"
It wasn't a solitary existence living as a child actor in Hollywood. All of his friends did the same thing.
"We could ride our bikes to five different studios in minutes," he says. "It was great fun."
The drama of life
Although Curtis spent his childhood acting, his dream was to make films, not appear in them. He continued to act in "Leave It To Beaver" while pursing a degree in cinema at the University of Southern California.
He also attended the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps while at USC and graduated in 1960 with a commission to the Marine Corps. While at Marines Corps flight school in San Diego he met and married a young woman from La Jolla, Calif., named Raquel Welch.
She would go on to be one of the most enduring sex symbols in popular culture but at the time she was unknown.
"I married a little girl from La Jolla," Curtis says of his now ex-wife, Welch. "I didn't marry an actress."
As Curtis transitioned from acting in movies to making them, he and Welch grew together in Hollywood. He worked for a time as an assistant director for Universal Studios but soon he was producing the films that made his young wife a star. At times it was difficult mixing home and business life, he says.
"Every film is a drama at one time or another," Curtis says. "But if you're sleeping next to your star it's hard for them not to know what's going on."
The couple were together for 16 years and raised two children, Damon Welch and Tahnee Welch, who followed her mother's path as an actress for a time, including a role in "Cocoon."
Curtis says Welch now has a successful wig company and recently donated $1 million in wigs to cancer victims. Although they divorced in 1972, Curtis still speaks highly of his ex-wife while acknowledging celebrity eccentricities.
"She's a character," he says. "All performers are characters."
As a Marine Corps pilot, Curtis flew 283 missions over Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. He returned home wounded in 1968 and joined the Marine Corps Reserves, retiring in 1980 as a colonel. Curtis says he still speaks at Marine Corps events and is a member of the local Marine Corps League.
For the past 20 years Curtis has been married to a "wonderful woman" named Annabel.
The couple first discovered St. George while Curtis was producing a movie called "The Avenging Angel," which was filmed in various St. George locations.
The 1995 film starred Charlton Heston, Tom Berenger and James Coburn and involved a plot to assassinate Brigham Young. Fittingly, as the man who played Moses in "The Ten Commandments," Heston also played the role of Young, a figure known to many as an "American Moses" for his role in leading early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across the plains to Utah.
After so long in the Hollywood scene and under the tabloid glare, Curtis says he was happy to find in Annabel a woman who was far from that life. He says she didn't even watch movies while growing up.
Curtis tells a story of introducing Annabel to one of his Hollywood friends a few years ago. After a brief conversation she asked the friend to repeat his name. Curtis' friend replied: "Charlton Heston."
Telling the story over breakfast at the Fairway Grill, Curtis smiles like a man who loves his stories of Hollywood but relishes his time away from Tinseltown.
