Rhoades wows with Tales of Films Shot in the Keys

BY TIM GRATZ

In addition to serving as president of the Key West Art and Historical Society, Shirrel Rhoades is perhaps better known as the critic, whose always entertaining movie reviews are published in five cities, including Key West. And he delighted a gathering at the Key West Customs House recently with a fascinating talk on movies filmed in the Florida Keys.

Who knew that Thomas Edison shot his first film here, in 1898, featuring the burial of the victims of the U.S. Maine. Rhoades showed clips from the film.

In 1942, legendary producer-director Cecil B. DeMille filmed “Reap the Wild Wind” here, starring John Wayne, Ray Milland and Susan Hayward.

Seven years later, another legendary director, John Huston, filmed the classic movie “Key Largo” about a gangster (Edgar G. Robinson) seeking shelter in a Key Largo hotel from an approaching hurricane. This was the fourth and last time that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall appeared together in film. However, no footage for the movie was actually taken in Key Largo; some scenes were shot at the Caribbean Club several miles north of Key Largo, but most was filmed on a Hollywood set.

In 1954, Twentieth Century Fox released its third film shot in Cinemax. Its title was “Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef” and it starred Robert Wagner and Richard Boone.

The first Hollywood film with an all-black cast was “Carib Gold,” filmed here in 1956 and starring among others Ethel Waters and Cicely Tyson.

The most critically acclaimed film shot in Key West was “The Rose Tattoo,” based on the award-winning Broadway play by Key West resident Tennessee Williams and directed by Daniel Mann.  Although filmed here, the storyline was actually set in a small Louisiana town on the Gulf of Mexico. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture) and won three.

Several other films were shot in part in the Keys although their stories were not set here. Famously, “PT109” substituted then-Munson Island or an island in the south Pacific (more on this later). The 2008 film “Fool’s Gold” presented an opposite scenario: Although the story was set in Key West, none of it was filmed here; the shooting took place in the Bahamas and in Australia. (A dead giveaway were the mountains in the background. One wonders why they chose not to film in Key West, or simply set the storyline in Australia.)

In 1959, director Blake Edwards used the Key West submarine base to film his comedy “Operation Petticoat,” starring Cary Grant.

The most historically significant film shot here was “PT 109,” the story of Jack Kennedy’s heroism in WWII, in which the producers used Munson Island (now Little Palm Island) to substitute for the small South Pacific island on which JFK and his crewmen sought refuge after a Japanese destroyer sank the PT boat he commanded.

Rhoades offered several vignettes about the making of “PT109.” In approving the film, Kennedy set three conditions:  1. That it be historically accurate; 2. That the profits go the PT109 veterans or their survivors; and 3. That he have final approval over casting. After reviewing several screen tests, the President chose Cliff Robertson. His wife had lobbied for Warren Beatty. Peter Fonda also tested for the film.

Kennedy was a dedicated Cold War warrior, not the peacenik some revisionists contend. He was a big fan of the James Bond novels, as well as of Ernest Hemingway. And he would have enjoyed the Bond movies, one of which, “License to Kill,” starring Timothy Dalton, was filmed in part in Key West in 1985.

In that film, Bond calls London to announce his resignation from the Secret Service. The scene was shot inside the Hemingway House, although it was not identified in the movie. Receiving Bond’s verbal resignation, M advises him, “Then your 00 license to kill is revoked.” To which Bond replies: “I guess this is a farewell to arms.” (Some say Dalton ad-libbed the line.)

Shirrel told the audience another interesting tale related to Bond.  While he was working for a publishing company in the Bahamas he met a man named James Bond, an orthonoligist whose name Fleming adopted for the hero in his novels. Who else can boast of meeting the real James Bond?

Here are just some of the films mentioned by Rhoades that demonstrate the popularity of the Keys for filmmakers over the past 20 years:

“Running Scared” (1985) with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines as Chicago police officers who vacation in Key West; “Havana” (1990) starring Robert Redford; “CrissCross” (1992) starring Goldie Hawn, filmed largely at the Eden House where Scott Summers stayed in 1976 and set his story; “Matinee” (1993) starring John Goodman dealt with the Key West response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, with scenes shot at the former Key Wester Resort and at the Strand Theatre on Duval; “True Lies” (1994) with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis, with the famous scene shot on the Seven Mile Bridge in which Schwarzenegger lifts Curtis to safety through the sun roof of a speeding Lincoln (it was actually Curtis who refused to use a “body double” for the scene);

“Drop Zone” (1994) starring Wesley Snipes, with scenes shot at the Sugarloaf Airport. “Up Close and Personal” (1996) starring Robert Redford, with a scene shot at the Seven Mile Bridge; “The Spanish Prisoner” (1997), a David Mamet production starring Steve Martin and Ben Gazarra; “A Murder of Crows” (1998) starring Cuba Gooding, Jr., with a car chase through the streets of Key West; “Heartbreakers” (2001) with Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt, a female version of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels;” “Red Dragon” (2002) with Ed Norton and Anthony Hopkins;  “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2002) starring the late Paul Walker, with a chase scene shot on the Seven Mile Bridge; “Meet the Fockers” (2004) starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro and Barbara Streisand; “The Pacifier” (2005) starring Van Diesel; “Miami Vice” (2006) starring Colin Farrell (selected by Don Johnson); “Repo Man” (2008) starring Jude Law; “I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009) starring Jim Carey and Ewan McGregor;

Rhoades’s five favorite films made in the Keys:

  1. CrissCross
  2. License to Kill
  3. True Lies
  4. The Rose Tattoo
  5. Key Largo

 

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