Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:04 Hi everybody. My name's John Raby and I'm the host of the somewhere in time podcast called call back yesterday. This is a pod let designed for anyone who is on Mackinaw Island this weekend at the 30th annual somewhere in time weekend at grand hotel or anybody who wishes they could be there like me to get the time travel experience, just right. Go to the place where I conducted the interview during last year, somewhere in time weekend, and listen, very intently and concentrate. If you do it just right, it'll feel just like it's 2019 walk, ride a bike or rent a carriage and get to Bogan lane near st. Anne's church. Up on the right. You'll see the Bogan lane in run by my longtime friend. I've known her for probably 52 years. Ever since my family rented a house on the other side of the Island, back in the late sixties, please identify yourself.
Speaker 1 00:00:59 My name is Trish Martin. I live on makin Island, had grown up here and I run a small BNB on Mackinaw Island and write for the paper and that's who I am. Yes. I have a master's in field botany having done a floristic study of the vascular plants of Mackinaw Island. If you want to know the truth, but it's fun. I do. How are you involved in somewhere in time? Well, of course we are here the summer. They made the film and, uh, I was actually an extra, but all my scenes got cut. So, but it was fun. I mean, we had a good time and uh, I had a lady who stayed with me for the six weeks or whatever, almost two months, I guess, uh, that the film was being shot, who was the understudy for Theresa. Right. And, uh, I also got to work on the costumes, fitting them to the people, uh, for all the periods scenes. So that was great fun.
Speaker 0 00:01:55 You fit for like, you know, is, I mean, did you fit for plumber a Seymour?
Speaker 1 00:01:58 Oh no. It's just for all the extras that were coming in. And a lot of the costumes I believe had been used in my fair lady. They've rented them for the film as they do, but they all had to be fitted. I have to tell you my favorite. Can I tell you my favorite story was, do you remember Agnes shine? Well, Edna shine was a very petite Scottish woman who came to work at the hotel, I believe at the grand, um, when she was 14 or 15 years old. And so they cast her as an extra and she knew I was working on fittings up there. And so she came out in her dress that she was wearing for the thing. And she was in a full nuns habit and she came up to me and she said, Turkish, Kenya, imagine me unknown. And if you knew Agnes, yeah, it was kind of hard to imagine her and none.
Speaker 0 00:02:55 You remember what it was like on the Island when they first said, Hey, there's going to be a movie here.
Speaker 1 00:03:01 I think people were pretty excited. You know, I mean, this is something that hasn't happened. I mean, since the MRA movies were made and the fifties and sixties, um, so we hadn't had any filming going on for a while. And, you know, people were kind of excited to have Superman be here and of course, Christopher Plummer and Jane Seymour. And so it was kind of exciting to see and, and everybody kind of wanted to be involved if they could. And because the cast and crew are here for almost two months, they got to know a lot of people here on the Island and, and we interacted with them a lot. So everybody was pretty happy about it. They thought it was odd when they allowed them to take cars up to the grand hotel. That was the big discussion at one point, but it was thought well, okay, if they do that early and it's out of the way for the tourists, that's fine.
Speaker 0 00:03:56 So you're being candid about that. Like, I could see people being much more outraged than that. I just, I remember eyebrows raised, but I don't, you know, I was 13.
Speaker 1 00:04:04 I don't think people were outraged. I think they've been, I don't know. I shouldn't say this, but anyway, a lot more outraged at Mike Pence coming here and bringing seven vehicles to the Island. So he could be here for a half hour or 40 minutes to do a talk. I'm sorry. We were a little more perturbed about that than we were the few cars for the, the scenes that were being filmed in semi-trucks and semi-trucks and yeah, there were things.
Speaker 0 00:04:30 What about where people were people suspicious of Hollywood?
Speaker 1 00:04:34 Not really. I didn't get that impression. I, more people were just excited I think, and the idea of getting to be an extra in a film or, and people would go down just to watch them film and see how they were doing stuff. And of course, some of the scenes had to be done filmed at night. So that was, that was different. And, and I have to say the cast and crew that were here were very nice. Um, had a couple of them come over for a meal and so on here. And, uh, bill Irwin came and had a breakfast with us one day and, and Susan French, we brought her tea a few times when she needed specialty.
Speaker 0 00:05:12 Th that's the word is that the, this was one of the happiest movie shoots in the history of movies.
Speaker 1 00:05:18 I think everybody had a good time and people on the Island, well, they were excited to have them here. I don't, they didn't really bug the cast and crew, um, as they might've done in other places, you know, and they were excited to meet Christopher Reaver or Jane Seymour, Teresa writer, whoever. But it was like, Oh, well, there they are. They're eating dinner. You know, let's let them eat dinner,
Speaker 0 00:05:42 Did a plumber and Reeve and Seymour and French mixed with the Islanders.
Speaker 1 00:05:47 Yeah. To some extent, uh, for Jane Sima or went riding with friends of mine when they were up here, they had a couple horses. Of course she couldn't do more than walk her horse because of movie rules, which is funny, cause she's a good rider. And they had a couple of hunt horses that were fun and you know, they would be around in town and seeing people and yeah, and the crew too was very much, um, we had a cookout with the cinematographer in his van and the crew from there one day, I actually had a friend of mine who's in the film. Uh, actually my best friend's dad father-in-law was in the film. And he actually got paid as an actor because he was supposed to be quiet in the back of an elevator and had to get out of the way for somebody coming in and ended up saying, Oh, excuse me. So he got credited as a actor in the film. Who was that? Oh, it was Jim Dunnigan, uh, who is a cottage you're up here. I used to be on the park commission here, uh, for a long time. And, uh, he was in the film and it's right there in the movie.
Speaker 0 00:06:58 Have you thought about the idea of the whole of time travel?
Speaker 1 00:07:03 Oh yeah. Well, the idea of time travel is just fun. I mean, it's interesting to think about going back to a particular period and seeing what it really was like, instead of just what we hear in the history books. I don't know if on the space, time continuum it would ever happen, but you never know there are wormholes and all sorts of weird strife. You never know
Speaker 0 00:07:26 We on a time machine right now, an eight mile round time machine called Makena Island.
Speaker 1 00:07:31 I guess you could say that. Um, though, I've lived here all my, most of my life. So this seems normal to me, it doesn't seem like we're back in time because this is how it is it's. And I like the fact that when you walk down the road here, you have to see your neighbors. You can't ignore them. And, and so you do say hi to everybody and, and it's a nice thing. I don't want to give up necessarily the real world to go back to those days. I don't think it was as a romantic or we have, I think we all have a romanticized view of history, probably things weren't quite as good as you think they might be.
Speaker 0 00:08:12 I think modern underwear's a lot better as is plumbing.
Speaker 1 00:08:16 Yeah. Modern plumbing, modern underwear, a few other conveniences.
Speaker 0 00:08:21 These are, uh, the, the, um, the gum toothpicks made of plastic. There's so much better than 1912 toothpicks. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:32 They showed the film Superman here. Well, Christopher Reeve was here and I was up at the, well, I can always call it the college theater, the mission point theater and somebody. And it was just packed. You couldn't get tickets. Everybody was excited about going because Christopher Reeve was here and somebody was saving three or four seats and people were saying, well, you can't save seats. You know, you got it. No. And they held him well after the movie started, Christopher Reeve and company walked in and sat in those seats. And then the sound went out in the film, which was notorious down at that theater at the time that the sound equipment, the equipment was from the fifties early sixties. So it wasn't in great stuff. But anyway, the film, when the sound went off and they were trying to fix it and Christopher Reeves stood up and started narrating the film for that few minutes while the sound was out. And then when the sound came back on, everybody applauded him and really sat down and watched the rest of the movie. The other thing is, my mother always likes to mention that Christopher Reeve donated his bicycle for, to the medical center for the auction to raise money for the med center. So
Speaker 0 00:09:47 I thought it didn't all the actors are many of them,
Speaker 1 00:09:49 Probably others did too, but mother always remembers Christopher Reeve doing it. So, yeah, cause she had worked at the med center stuff.
Speaker 0 00:09:55 I realized that you're a perfect, a perfect person to explain why the hell there was a full movie making operation on Mackinaw Island.
Speaker 1 00:10:05 Oh, well, um, there was an organization that had its world headquarters here on Mackinaw Island known as moral rearmament. It was originally called the Oxford group and eventually changed its name to moral rearmament. And you may not have heard of them, but you might have heard of some offshoots, including alcoholics anonymous and up with people. Um, it's the show that went around for a lot of years, they made a lot of films, as well as doing road shows and so on. And they had a full film studio in what is now mission point editing rooms and you know, the whole, the whole bit, a big sound stage. And it was, I think they told me at one point it was the largest soundstage East of the Mississippi at the time it was built. And it's because it was quite large. It ended up being the college gym eventually.
Speaker 1 00:10:59 But when the college started, what were the films about? Oh, well they were usually, there were a number of films. Um, I was in two of them. One of them was called pickle Hill, which was about bootlegging during prohibition and how somebody in Penn state college changed because of their interaction with some folks and getting their life straight and stop bootlegging at the time. Uh, another one was called, um, decision at midnight, Martin Lando was in that one. Actually, I don't remember much of it, but it was something world war, two vintage piece on trying to get their lives straight and getting out of Eastern Europe and stuff like that.
Speaker 0 00:11:39 And explain the connection with MRA
Speaker 1 00:11:41 Moral rearmament was the organization's, um, goal was to get people, to listen to the guidance of God daily and live by absolute standards of honesty, purity, love, and unselfishness. And so they were trying in making these films and doing the road show and then up with people and all this, um, to get people to take lives seriously and to, uh, try to make the world a better place. Figuring the only person you can change is yourself. So if individuals change, then the world can change and, and not be, uh, as bad a place. So that's what these stories were about. My dad actually worked on one film in Kenya, which was about the Malmo uprising called the voice of the hurricane. And Glen closest dad was in that one too. That's a whole nother story. And, and it's a funny, I have to tell one other funny story.
Speaker 1 00:12:39 I was in, uh, I was in China in 1981 and the film was released in 80. So it was there in 81 with my mother who had been born and raised in China. And we came out into Hong Kong, uh, at the end of our trip. And we were looking in the newspaper in Hong Kong to see what was available to do. And we saw an ad in the paper, which said held over for the 11th week, somewhere in time. And all we could laugh was we went halfway around the world and we cannot get away from this movie.
Speaker 0 00:13:16 Thanks for listening to a call back yesterday, Padlet, please subscribe and give us a rating. And I hope I'll see you next year on Mackinaw.
