Thirty-five years ago growing up with your friends along the rural, unpopulated ridges of River Ridge and Walton Heights was a boy’s dream come true. Born in the early and mid-1950s, my friends and I were raised on World War II motion pictures; hence, often a big part of our long, leisurely summer days and school weekends was spent “playing war.” Dressed up like soldiers from Patton’s Army, we would build forts and plan tactics. With all the new homes under construction, we created long systems of tunnels in their foundation trenches and imitated Steve McQueen’s “The Great Escape.” As we grew into the teenage years, this playacting turned into an interest in making movies instead of watching them.
One day two or three years ago a plain manila envelope arrived at my office, and in it was a single VHS cassette that had a label that read “‘Salerno Bridge’ 1972.” Upon opening the envelope, staring at this videotape, I really had no recollection of what was about to unfold before me. Popping the tape into our office cassette player took me back 33 years to a time when the Interstate 430 bridge crossing the Arkansas River was under construction. This massive construction project had opened up a new stage for our neighborhood theatrics. “Salerno Bridge” was a movie shot on Video 8 about the Italian World War II campaign that was complete great drama: special pyrotechnic effects, World War II uniforms, Navy frogmen and the scaling of cliffs. The stars included the sender of the tape, Steve Gray, playing The Lieutenant costumed in his Parkview High Navy JROTC uniform. The two other players appeared in Catholic High Marine JROTC uniforms and included your author as The Captain and Reed King as The Major. Our Salerno Bridge set was the concrete pillars of the I-430 bridge construction. Our Italian shore was the bank of the Arkansas River. Our Mediterranean cliffs were the hillside cuts for the massive interstate.
Having not thought about this film in 30-plus years caused me suddenly to have a flood of memories about other such endeavors by Gray and Hill. Our previous attempt at a film had been a major Civil War epic. We had recruited our friends from all over the neighborhood, obviously including our dear pals, the numerous and thus readymade “Cast of Thousands” Murphy clan. We made Confederate and Union uniforms. We dug trenches. We obtained mass quantities of black powder from our secret Robinwood source for the explosions caused by cannon and rifle fire. We choreographed a horrific battle between the Confederates and the Yankee invaders that included artillery fire (made from PVC pipe, sprayed black), hand-to-hand trench combat and soldiers running down a hill dying in the explosive cannonade.
As it was filmed during an Arkansas summer, it was hot. Crew and actors were complaining due to the take and retake repetition—and the lack of refreshments offered by the producers. But finally it was “in the can.” We had completed our “Gone With the Wind.”
We assembled the parents and told them when and where the debut would be held. We went up to my grandfather’s house to get the screen and the Super 8 projector. Upon opening the camera, we found it empty. Our top staff had forgotten to load the film. Our charges, cannonade and bloody fight were for naught and remain only in our ancient imaginations. As a result, now you know why we are bankers, lawyers, doctors and computer whizzes—and not in Hollywood.
– August 2005