My Blood Runs Cold - edited for Newporter lovers

[Eddie Offermann]

Hoping to find some good footage of a Newporter in original condition, I got the movie "My Blood Runs Cold (1965)" which I'd read contained scenes shot on one.

 

Turns out, there's a little over 20 minutes worth of footage that takes place on one, and it provided some interesting insights: so I pulled the clips all together into one YouTube video featuring just the scenes of interest to Newporter owners and lovers. I didn't edit it very vigorously, so there are certainly camera angles that don't reveal anything of special interest - but there's a lot of interesting stuff there: including some interiors that I worry means that at least one Newporter was cut up to do the filming - though it's always possible that a remarkably accurate interior was built on a soundstage so they could remove a section from the portside to shoot through.

 

I'm disappointed that time wasn't spent in the pilothouse - I'd have loved more shots of the original equipment there.

 

[Eddie Offermann]

I love the look of the dark hull on that boat with the water reflected on it in some of the sailing scenes. Gorgeous!

[Clyde A. Phillips]

Eddie,

 

Bob, of NP40T (or as he calls it, N40T, this site: Newporter 40 Together) just pointed your posts out to me and I see you got bit by the bug and have now taken the only medicine available.

 

I thank you for the clips from the movie.  I just "paused" my way through it and to my amazement found that two boats were used for the film.  I picked that up by studying details of the rigging looking for differences between some of the earlier west coast NP’s and the ones I rigged here on the east coast.  I found a lot of differences, but finding differences on what was depicted as one boat on one voyage was surprising.  I have often wondered what boat (boats, now) was (were) used in the film.  I’ve thought that the Black Swan (Tyrone Powers' Newporter) was used in that the hull appears on the screen to be black.  I’ll not do it, but it may be possible to trace that state registration number and find some details.

 

So far as the interior shots in the film are concerned, Lee Paterson, owner of the last NP built and male lead in a popular soap, had a film crew aboard as I took him out on his “Moonfleet,” number 124.  I was doing my normal thing after handing control over to Lee, and was standing in the cockpit just aft of the doghouse looking forward.  When I turned around to see what may be coming up behind us there stood a cameraman, camera in hand at waist level taking what I thought was a close up of my belly.  I quickly looked away from him with a far off gaze to the horizon.  When the film was shown on TV, that shot, taken from close enough for me to easily poke the photographer in the eye, showed me from about my knees to well over my head.  That was some fisheye lens he had!  Much of the interior scenes could have been shot with the same type lens.  But the scene with the actress in the port berth that has the cushion pushed up against the side lockers, showed the piping at the bottom of the cushion.  That had to be a cutaway hull, probably set up in a studio.  The designer of the NP, old Clarence E. Ackerman himself, had a lot of friends in the movie industry, and though he surely was at our shipyard by 1965, we were assembling “kits” made up in the California yard.  I’d guess that Ack had a hand in it and had the west coast crew build a mockup for their use.

 

Welcome aboard this “Ning Thing” that Bob has put together.  I’ve seen other attempts to bring NP owners together, but this one seems to be the best.  Stick around, you’ll learn a lot, and if you learn nothing you can teach.  I don’t come to this site enough so it is not my normal way to communicate.  But, if I can be of help to you (or anyone else who reads these words of wit) use [e-mail] to get to me.  Rigging was not the only thing I did, and I love these boats at least as much as you seem to love yours.