First Films, Patrick Swayze, Pancreatic Cancer & Roller Disco

First film roles by an actor or actress can be inspiring, workmanlike or downright embarrassing. As much as a fledgling hopes to take wing in a star-making performance, the chances of overnight success are rare. Gregory Peck became an instant box-office sensation in his first motion picture, "Days of Glory" (1944), as did Burt Lancaster (above), in "The Killers" (1946), and Kirk Douglas, in "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers" (1946). However, for every Peck, Lancaster and Douglas, there is a Glenn Morris, George Lazenby and Klinton Spilsbury.

Glenn Morris, a gold medalist in the decathlon, became the fourth Olympic champion to portray Tarzan when he starred in "Tarzan’s Revenge" in 1936. (Producer Sol Lesser originally considered casting baseball great Lou Gehrig in the lead but was not impressed with his leg muscles.) Reviews of Morris’ performance were so negative (one critic noted his facial resemblance to Harpo Marx) that he never made another movie and went into the insurance business in Los Angeles. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy and was wounded in combat. He died, age 61, in 1974.




George Lazenby, an Australian model, was hand-picked from a number of 007 hopefuls to succeed Sean Connery as James Bond in "On Her Majesty’s Secret Service" (1969), a role he was singularly not asked to reprise. Graced with a self-deprecating sense of humor, Lazenby good-naturedly lampooned his image in the 1977 comedy "The Kentucky Fried Movie" and the 1983 made-for-television film "The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E."




Klinton Spilsbury, son of a onetime Northern Arizona University football coach, was plucked from obscurity to star in "The Legend of the Lone Ranger" (1981) and, just as suddenly, vanished back into obscurity. The best thing that can be said about his screen presence is that his dialogue was mercifully re-dubbed by actor James Keach. Afterwards, Spilsbury was variously rumored to be modeling in Europe or working at a Subway sandwich shop.


One of Hollywood’s most storied missteps on the road to stardom is Paul Newman’s first film role, in 1954’s "The Silver Chalice," as Basil, a Greek slave who made the goblet Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. A shamefaced Newman subsequently paid for a full-page apology in Hollywood trade papers, urging the public to avoid the movie.


Sally Field, future two-time Oscar winner and three-time Emmy winner, took her screen bow as Mercy McBee, a sluttish teen on a wagon train who seduces a married man, with tragic results, in "The Way West" (1967), a wannabe epic starring Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. Another two-time Oscar winner, Jodie Foster, got her start as a child actor at the Disney studio in the 1970s, including "Napoleon and Samantha," "One Little Indian," "Freaky Friday" and "Candleshoe."


Jeff Goldblum, the star of "The Fly," "Jurassic Park" and "Independence Day," made his first impression as a burglar-rapist (credited as "Freak #1") in the 1974 Charles Bronson thriller "Death Wish" (above), and that brings to mind, in a lighter vein, Sylvester Stallone’s first legitimate screen role as a subway mugger in the 1971 Woody Allen comedy "Bananas."


"He Knows You’re Alone" (1980), one of the first, low-rent slashers that ripped off "Halloween," featured the first glimpse of Tom Hanks (below). Hanks survives the serial killings, his girlfriend ends up with her severed head in a fish tank.



Speaking of horrors, Johnny Depp’s initial screen role, in "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984), found him swallowed by his bed and regurgitated in a geyser of gore. George Clooney made his debut as a doomed security guard in the blood-drenched parody "Return to Horror High" (1987). In the 1991 science-fiction comedy "Critters 3," first-timer Leonardo DiCaprio (below) appeared as the stepson of an unscrupulous landlord.


Kevin Costner’s premier performance in a motion picture was an awkward portrayal of a young, wealthy horse rancher in a rare gem of drive-in theater T&A called "Sizzle Beach," which was filmed in 1974 but remained in the can until 1986 to cash in on his box-office popularity.

Which brings us, in the lamest of segues, to the big screen debut of Patrick Swayze in 1979’s "Skatetown, U.S.A."


Patrick Swayze died at the age of 57 on September 14, 2009, after being diagnosed 20 months earlier with pancreatic cancer, the fourth deadliest cancer in the U.S. among men and women, with the highest fatality rate of all cancers. The prognosis is usually a death sentence because there are no early symptoms, resulting in advanced or metastatic disease at the time of detection. The normal survival window is three to six months. The odds for a five-year survival are less than five percent.


Michael Landon, of "Bonanza," "Little House on the Prairie" and "Highway to Heaven" fame, put on a brave face when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in April 1991. He passed away less than three months later at the age of 54. Luciano Pavarotti, world-famous operatic tenor, succumbed to pancreatic cancer 14 months after his diagnosis. Acerbic standup comic Bill Hicks (below) learned he had pancreatic cancer in June 1993 and died in February the following year. He was 32.


Six months following his diagnosis, Patrick Swayze went ahead with plans to star in the new A&E police drama "The Beast" (below) and completed filming the first season. Smiling for photographers, he referred to himself as "a miracle dude."


The son of a Texas engineer-rodeo cowboy and a dance instructor (Patsy Swayze, who choreographed "Urban Cowboy"), Patrick studied ballet from an early age and later became an accomplished high school athlete, excelling in gymnastics, football and diving. He married his teenage sweetheart, Lisa Niemi, in 1975 and trained with both the Harkness and Joffrey Ballet companies before a knee injury sidelined his dance career.

Swayze debuted on Broadway in 1975 as a dancer in the shortlived musical "Goodtime Charley," starring Joel Grey, father of Patrick’s future "Dirty Dancing" and "Red Dawn" costar, Jennifer Grey. Swayze subsequently played Danny Zuko in a Broadway production of "Grease."

Hungry and wide-eyed, Swayze and his bride uprooted themselves from New York for hand-to-mouth survival in Hollywood. Their bohemian existence in rent-by-the-day motel rooms and month-to-month apartments inspired Swayze to make a nightly ritual of motoring up Mulholland Drive for a panoramic perspective of Los Angeles, where, as he recounted in his posthumously published memoir The Time of My Life (co-written by wife Lisa Niemi), "I’d sit there, looking out over the lights of Hollywood and say, ‘I’m going to conquer you.’"


Just when the couple’s last "two thousand dollars had been whittled down to nothing," Swayze recalled, "I got offered a role in a movie called ‘Skatetown, U.S.A.’ In the late 1970s, especially in Southern California, roller disco was king. You’d see skaters everywhere, half of them toting giant boom boxes playing the latest Earth Wind & Fire or Jackson 5 songs. Walking in Venice Beach, you’d be swarmed by skaters in bright socks and short-shorts, twirling their way down the boardwalk. So when I read the script…I knew that even if it wasn’t great art, it was at least part of a cultural phenomenon."

Roller discos originated as a fad in the 1970s at the height of the disco craze, peaking in 1980. A number of ‘70s-era roller discos remained open into the 2000s, while new venues experienced successful revivals.

Into this milieu of fleeting fad-dom strolled opportunistic director William A. Levey. In 1973, Levey cashed in on the popular blaxploitation genre with "Blackenstein," which made "Blacula" and "Scream Blacula Scream" look like "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II" of drive-in theaters. Levey’s subsequent output included "Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman" (also known as "Erotic Encounters of the Fourth Kind"), "Slumber Party ‘57" (featuring the film debut of Debra Winger), and "The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington" (starring Joey Heatherton and George Hamilton).

"Skatetown, U.S.A." was written by a curious hybrid of show biz talents: Nick Castle and Lorin Dreyfuss (who also co-produced), along with director Levey. Nick Castle later scripted "Escape from New York" for director John Carpenter and wrote and directed the heartfelt 1986 fantasy "The Boy Who Could Fly." (Castle, incidentally, played the killer behind the mask in Carpenter’s original "Halloween.") Lorin Dreyfuss, Richard Dreyfuss’ older brother, is an actor in his own right, while he has often provided voice-overs for Richard when the latter’s dialogue needed to be re-recorded.


"Skatetown, U.S.A.", released two months before the other disco skating movie of the year, "Roller Boogie," starring Linda Blair, is set in a giant, fictitious roller skate arena in Santa Monica, run by Flip Wilson (above) and his ditzy assistant, played by busty Judy Landers (remember the old Robert Urich series "Vega$"). Billy Barty (below, with Judy Landers), one of Hollywood’s most enduring little people, portrays Flip’s father, while Flip himself, in his "Geraldine" getup, appears as his own mother. The plot, as thin as it is, centers around a big skating contest that offers a winning prize of $1000 and a moped!



Swayze recalled in his autobiography that the movie’s cast included "some of the hottest stars of the seventies: Scott Baio (Chachi from ‘Happy Days’), Maureen McCormick (Marcia from ‘The Brady Bunch’), Ron Palillo (Horshack from ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’), Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary Ingalls from ‘Little House on the Prairie’)."

As related in her 2008 best-selling warts-and-all memoir, Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice, Maureen McCormick, in the wake of the cancellation of "The Brady Bunch," suffered years of addiction to cocaine and Quaaludes, admitting to trading sex for drugs and contending with depression and bulimia.

Remembering "Skatetown, U.S.A.," she wrote, "Like a disco, there was a lot of cocaine being done on the set. Many people were open about it. Unable to resist temptation, I fell back into my same old routine. Soon I was missing days on the set…It got to the point where the whole set talked openly about my erratic work habits and unreliability."

She noted, "I was already self-conscious from having to do most of my scenes wearing tight short shorts and a tube top. To ensure that I was super-skinny, I did coke and popped diet pills. I got below 110 pounds, which was too thin for me."



The film’s supporting cast is riddled with a number of comedians, ranging from familiar faces on "The Gong Show" and the game show "Make Me Laugh" (Murray "The Unknown Comic" Langston [above], Bill Kirchenbauer, Vic Dunlop, Gary Mule Deer) to old-school funny people like Joe E. Ross and Ruth Buzzi (below).

Dorothy Stratten, the Playboy Playmate of the Year whose celebrity was immortalized when she was killed, at the age of 20, in a murder-suicide by husband Paul Snider, shares her brief moments of screen time with old-time comic Leonard Barr, who delivers Henny Youngman-like one-liners while she asks, "Can I have my pizza, please?" The painfully humorless scene (below) is repeated several times.

The standout oddest costar in "Skatetown, U.S.A." has to be Dave Mason. Best known for the blues-rock classic "Feelin’ Alright," which was first recorded in 1968 when he was a member of Traffic and later became a hit for Joe Cocker, Mason also had a solo hit in 1977 with "We Just Disagree." Not a name usually associated with disco, Mason received second billing (after top-lined Scott Baio) in the film for performing "Feelin’ Alright" on-camera and singing the title tune, with Carolyn Dennis. (Dennis was secretly married to Bob Dylan from 1986 to 1992 and is the mother of his daughter, Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan.)

The otherwise impressive soundtrack features songs by Earth Wind & Fire with The Emotions ("Boogie Wonderland"), The Jacksons ("Shake Your Body"), Heatwave ("Boogie Nights’), Patrick Hernandez ("Born to Be Alive"), John Sebastian ("Roller Girl") and Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. ("Perfect Dancer").

"I was cast as Ace Johnson," Swayze wrote in his book, "the hot-shot, bad-boy skater in tight leather pants who battles the hero, played by Greg Bradford."

This was the first film for Bradford (above), as well, who looked uncannily like Mark Hamill (of "Star Wars" renown) with muscles. (According to one internet wag, there are viewers who still insist Hamill was in this movie.) In a moment of blissful ignorance, Bradford, wearing a pink, skintight shirt, dazzles the crowd with a solo skating performance to The Village People’s "Macho Man." When his acting career didn’t take off, Bradford embarked on a career in adult cinema as an editor and a music composer, credited as Montel Bradford.

Bradford’s love interest in "Skatetown, U.S.A.", who happens to be Ace’s sister, is portrayed by yet another newcomer, Katherine Kelly Lang (above), best known now for her long-running role as Brooke Logan Forrester on the daytime TV drama "The Bold and the Beautiful."

Swayze’s Ace leads the West Side Rollers, a skate gang whose choreography comes straight out of "West Side Story." Ron ("Horshack") Palillo, in a scruffy beard and dog collar, is Ace’s right hand man.

After good buy Stan turns down Ace’s offer of a soda (because, Stan says, "Sugar’s bad for my timing"), Ace declares, "Valley Boy doesn’t know about West Side etiquette! Skatetown is my turf! I win the contest! I take home the trophy, the dough and the women!"


"I had roller-skated competitively in my teens," Swayze noted, "but hadn’t done much since then. I was hell-bent on doing some amazing things on skates for this movie, so I had my dad send me my top-of-the-line figure skates from Houston and I began practicing moves on any paved area I could find. I spent hours honing moves, from camels to double Salchows. By the time we started filming, I was pumped - I wanted to bust Hollywood wide open with my first role."


Swayze shared his on-screen skating with April Allen (above), "a world-champion roller skater whom I’d worked with years earlier in Houston. We were friends from way back, so I couldn’t believe it when it turned out we’d be performing together in my first movie." He recalled, "My scenes at the roller rink with April Allen, where I could show off my dance training as well as skating, went…smoothly…April was an amazing skater, and she and I heated up the set with a skate-dance sequence that was powerful, sensual, and sexy."

Swayze’s bad-boy Ace ultimately challenges Stan to a one-on-one race down Santa Monica Pier on motorized roller skates, and, in the watery aftermath, Stan rescues Ace from drowning. In the script’s most endearingly corny dialogue, Ace sputters, "I insult you, I cheat you, I even try to kill you, and then you save my life! Why?" to which Stan blandly responds, "Well, I’m the hero."

"I also had a solo skate," Swayze said, "that led to the review that launched my career, when Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, ‘Not since John Travolta took the disco floor in "Saturday Night Fever"…has there been such a confident display of male sexuality as when a little newcomer to films named Patrick Swayze hits the rink…Swayze drew gasps (and) ought to be on (his) way in films.’"


"That was flattering, of course," Swayze remembered, "but on another level it was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to be a serious actor, not a dancer-turned-actor or hunk-of-the-week,"
Not surprisingly, one critic called "Skatetown, U.S.A." "amiably trashy." Swayze himself told Entertainment Weekly magazine that it was the one film he’d most like to see removed from his résumé. In 1984, he said in a Toronto newspaper, "I saw that with not too much trouble I could become a teeny-bopper star, but I knew that if I accepted that, it would take years to win credibility as a serious actor."

Holding out for better roles, he earned kudos for his performance as a soldier who learns he has leukemia in a 1981 episode of "M*A*S*H." He was big brother to C. Thomas Howell and Rob Lowe in director Francis Ford Coppola’s version of S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders (above), costarring Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Diane Lane and Ralph Macchio, who said that Swayze "wanted to be Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and Errol Flynn all wrapped into one."



Swayze turned down a reported $7 million to star in a "Dirty Dancing" sequel. He told the Chicago Tribune, "I look for curveballs in my life." In 1992, he portrayed an idealistic doctor in the slums of Calcutta, India, in "City of Joy." "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" (1995) cast him, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo as drag queens on the road (above). He played a charismatic self-help guru who collects child pornography in the 2001 cult favorite "Donnie Darko." In 2006, he appeared in a London stage production of the musical "Guys and Dolls" as charming gambler Nathan Detroit.

Afterword:

As many as one-third of pancreatic diagnoses are linked to cigarette smoking. Smokers are, in fact, twice as likely to get pancreatic cancer as non-smokers. It was claimed that Patrick Swayze once had a three-pack-a-day habit, and he continued to patronize smoke shops well into the advanced stages of his illness.

A week before the series "The Beast" aired, Swayze was interviewed by Barbara Walters for an hour-long TV special. He told her, "I keep my heart and my soul and my spirit open to miracles." He decided not to pursue experimental treatments, saying if he were to "spend so much time chasing staying alive," he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the time he had left. "I want to live."

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette
Puff, puff, puff and if you puff yourself to death
Tell Saint Peter at the golden gate
Lord, you hate to make him wait
You gotta have another cigarette
"Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)"
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen