Thank you, j, for this contribution as we continue to explore the BVG star connections. It's fun to know we each have Stan Boreson stories. I'm anxious to know if that Bainbridge Island actor you met is Chris Soldevilla because I know all about him. While I had not ever heard of Lanny Rees, I was fascinated by his story (article to follow your contribution---thanks for sharing), and here he is a relative of yours! Cool! I mean, Neat! Neat compares with cool, not Cool, although our Cool is neat, but I digress, and besides, I think you know what I mean.
So here they are, j's star connections, including being a shirt-tail relative to actor Lanny Rees (pictured at left, when he was a child actor). This is her story...his story follows:
"Hi!
Just checking in after reading the blog. One claim to fame is having a picture taken with Stan Boreson at a fall festival in our small town of Everson.
On a family vacation in California, we went to a small Episcopal Church and in walked Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and their children.
I was six years old, and looking for movie stars. I thought I had found Betty Crocker on a billboard but it was really a politician!! Ha!
I met Governor Albert Rosellini at my Dad's tavern.
I met a retired BI actor who came for Jury duty but I don't remember his name.(not helpful)
I was back fence neighbors to the Mom who went off to war. I prayed for them faithfully. I remember how that broke my heart.
I know Jan Angel. I know Dave Peterson. I know, I'm getting desperate to find notable people. I just did not run in circles where famous people popped out.
But I am a shirt-tail relative to Lanny Rees, a golden age child actor who is married to my sister-in-law's sister, Natalie. Lanny played Junior in The Life of Riley among other parts in movies. Junior was probably his biggest role. He had a part with Roy and Dale also.
My favorite and best celebrity is the King of Glory.
Can't wait to share how He showed up in my bathroom a few nights ago."
Can't wait to share how He showed up in my bathroom a few nights ago."
Thank you, j, for reminding all four of us that we have the ultimate 'Star Connection' in our relationship with Jesus Christ!
****************************
I am including this article about Lanny Rees (misspelled in title below) on the blog because it is so interesting. Personally, I think it should be amended to read:
"Lanny Rees is a shirt-tail relative to j of the famed Bethel Valley Girls."
I can dream, can't I?
Lanny Reese: All-American Boy of the ‘40s
By Ken DennisOften Clad in blue jeans and T-shirt, possessing a wide face with large round eyes, and dimples, Lanny Rees epitomized the all-American boy in films of the mid and late 1940s. Equally at home in comedies, dramas, and westerns, he appeared with such screen icons as James Cagney and Roy Rogers. If his film career was not very long, it was, nevertheless, busy and eventful. Rees recently shared memories of his remarkable life and career, providing fresh insight into the life of a child actor in the Golden Age.
Born Lanny Eliot Rees on December 14, 1933, in Veradale, Washington, Rees was the youngest of Arthur Edward and Mildred (Hooper) Rees’s eight children. His mother soon had Lanny taking tap dancing lessons, and with America’s entry into World War II, he began his career by entertaining troops stationed in the Spokane area. Not only did he tap dance, but also served as a junior emcee at camp shows. In 1944, with most of the Rees sons serving in the military, Lanny’s father, a heavy duty mechanic, sold their home and moved his family to Van Nuys, near Los Angeles. Lanny recalls, “I guess this was so they could put me in the movies.” It might be assumed that Rees had pushy stage parents, but he says this was not the case. “My mother was not pushy except in making me practice tap dancing,” which, ironically, he was never to do in a film.
Rees was enrolled in Maurie Reubens’ talent school, and it was while appearing in the school’s annual talent show at the Wilshire Ebelle auditorium that he was spotted by a talent scout from RKO and asked to do a screen test. Lanny also remembers that, “Jane Withers came back to see me after the show. I was really impressed by that. She was quite a young lady.” Shortly thereafter, twelve-year-old Rees took his test with actor Lee Bonnell and was hired to appear in A Likely Story (1947), a comedy directed by H.C. Potter and starring Barbara Hale, Bill Williams, and Sam Levene.
Although A Likely Story was Rees’s first film, it would be his fourth in order of release. Shooting began on the picture in 1946, but some cast members were called back in early 1947 to reshoot the ending. Lanny would make three more movies in 1946 which would be released before A Likely Story. Playing Barbara Hale’s little brother, he was paid $250 a week for eight weeks. “Barbara was a smart actress and was extra friendly to me,” Rees recalls. “She made a pencil sketch of me on the set, and I still have it today. She and my mother really got along great, too.
“Mr. Potter was awfully nice to me, very friendly. My emotional scene at the end really surprised him. After explaining the scene to me, I just began crying. I’ve always been a good crier. That really impressed him. Sam Levene presented me with a cap pistol during the shoot. Everybody on that picture was great. I was in awe, and on top of the world.”
After the completion of A Likely Story, Rees was signed by RKO to a seven-year contract. His salary was $100 a week, whether he was working or not. He attended the RKO school which was located near the studio’s back gate. At that time the school consisted of one teacher and two students—Lanny and young Sharyn Moffett.
Lanny’s next work, however, was as a loan-out to Republic Pictures for the film Home in Oklahoma (1946). Republic paid RKO $1,500 a week for Lanny’s services, while the boy actor continued to receive only $100. This, of course, was a common practice among the studios.
Home in Oklahoma was a good western flick, filled with action. Directed by William Witney, the movie starred Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and the always memorable George "Gabby" Hayes. Lanny worked on the film for two weeks, one of which was spent on location at the Flying L Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma. This was the same ranch Rogers and Evans would return to two years later to be married. “Roy and Dale were wonderful people, that was obvious to everybody,” Rees remembers. “And Gabby Hayes was fun . . . a fine actor.”
The picture did have more than its share of trouble, though. Roy’s stunt double was nearly killed in the train chase sequence while doing a horseback-to-train transfer on the run. Then, after it was publicized that Dale Evans’ double (who was doubling for Lanny) successfully took a fall over Rainbow Falls on location, a local teenager stole onto the property one night and was killed trying to repeat the stunt.
To top it all off, Lanny got really sick. “I got blood poisoning shooting that picture . . . On location, we were staying at a sort of campground with an outdoor roller rink, the biggest in Oklahoma. I got a blister on my foot from skating without socks, and back in L.A. it developed into blood poisoning with dark lines running up my leg. I was taken by the studio to a doctor at the Sunset Towers Hotel on Sunset Blvd. where I received three massive shots of penicillin . . . I was then taken back to Republic to make one more close-up for the picture.” Clearly, the child actor of the Golden Age was not pampered.
Little Iodine (1946), based on the syndicated two-panel comic strip by Jimmy Hatlo, was Lanny’s next film on loan-out. Starring Jo Ann Marlowe in the title role, the cast also included the venerable Hobart Cavanaugh and Irene Ryan, later to gain fame as Granny in television’s The Beverly Hillbillies. Made by Comet Productions, the picture was shot in an old cartoon studio in West Hollywood where some of the cartoonists were still at work. Charles "Buddy" Rogers produced the ten-day shoot using money invested by his wife, silent screen star Mary Pickford. Lanny recollects, “In one scene I had to eat a Fig Newton, which I really didn’t like. Jo Ann Marlowe saw me making a face as I was chewing the cookie . . . and different cookies were immediately ordered. I had no more contact with Jo Ann for several years until she called to ask me to take her to her senior prom. Little Iodine was a fun picture.”
My Dog Shep (1946) is one of Lanny Rees’s most well-remembered movies. A drama directed by Ford Beebe, it was shot in nine days, mostly on location at Warner’s Ranch, Iverson Ranch, and Corriganville in the San Fernando Valley. Lanny was the star in a cast that included former silent film great William Farnum as Carter J. Latham, an unwanted old man; Russell Simpson as nasty Uncle Matt Hodgkins; and former Keystone Kop Al St. John for comic relief. Flame appeared as the German shepherd of the title. Lanny, as Danny Baker, is extremely effective in this Golden Gate Pictures production which was highly successful at the box office.
While Lanny got along famously with virtually everyone during his years of filming, Fred Chapman, the boy who played his despicable cousin, Arthur, proved to be an exception. “Whether it was an extension of his character or what, he didn’t seem to like me . . . we just didn’t get along.”
William Farnum, however, was something entirely different. “He was the nicest man you could possibly imagine . . . a very considerate and wonderful man to me.” Although up in years and nearing the end of his long career, Farnum was still a very effective actor. Playing a cast-aside old man who forms a bond with a lonely boy (Rees) and his dog, Farnum finds himself once again unwanted and unneeded toward the film’s end. As he walks alone down the dusty road into the distance, Rees recalls that “the most hard-bitten members of the crew were in tears . . . the tears were just streaming.”
Another memory Lanny has of My Dog Shep involves Flame’s trainer, Frank Barnes, with whom he developed a close friendship. Flame, it seems, was quite a docile animal, so he had a much more aggressive double who was brought in when attack scenes were shot. Lanny was afraid of the aggressive double. “Frank used to sneak up behind me, growling, and grab at me with a claw-like hand.” It was all in fun, though, and just the sort of good fright that kids enjoy.
Returning to his home studio at RKO, Lanny had a much smaller role in Banjo (1947) starring his schoolmate Sharyn Moffett and directed by Richard Fleischer, who was just beginning his long Hollywood career. Banjo is the story of a girl and her dog, and Lanny’s few days of filming were spent largely on location in an area adjacent to Santa Anita Racetrack. He was glad to be back with his friend Frank Barnes, who was in charge of the canine title character, but there was little else to be glad about concerning Banjo since it was such a flop.
One of Richard Fleischer’s memories of the film ran like this: “I took a trip to New York when the picture was finished shooting and the editor was working on the first assembly of the film. To cheer me up, he took a scene from the picture, cut it [the film footage] up into dozens of celluloid banjo picks, and mailed them to me in an envelope with a note, ‘This is the best I could do with this scene.’ It made me feel really good.”
Upon completion of Banjo, Lanny’s six-month option was not picked up by RKO, and the thirteen-year-old was now a free-lance actor attending Van Nuys Jr. and Sr. High School. His agent, Jack Pomeroy, soon found him work in a Monogram western, Law Comes to Gunsight (1947), shot on location at the Melody Ranch in Newhall. The film features Johnny Mack Brown and perennial old-timer Raymond Hatton. Lanny remembers little of Brown, but says Hatton became a good friend. “I didn’t ride very well, just bouncing around holding on to the saddle horn, but Raymond Hatton taught me how to ride fairly decently.”
Of his next film, Reaching from Heaven (1948), Rees has only a vague recollection. He played the part of Edgar, a newsboy, and was uncredited for the first time in his career. This was followed by Republic’s California Firebrand (1948) with Monte Hale and Adrian Booth. A six-day shoot at Iverson’s Ranch in Chatsworth, this was a remake of Roy Rogers’ 1941 Sheriff of Tombstone. (It would be remade again in 1957 as Thunder Over Arizona with Skip Homeier.) While Lanny’s last several pictures were of small importance, much more meaningful and memorable work was just around the corner.
Based on William Saroyan’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Time of Your Life (1948) boasted an impressive cast that included James Cagney, William Bendix, Broderick Crawford, James Barton, and Jeanne Cagney. A William Cagney Production filmed at General Services Studios, the picture was directed by H.C. Potter, who remembered Lanny from A Likely Story and specifically requested him for the part of the newsboy. Although the role only involved a few days of shooting, Lanny received a run-of-the-picture contract at $100 a day for thirteen weeks. This was due to his getting a closely-cropped "butch" haircut for the part and the belief that this could limit his being hired for other roles until his hair grew back.
Rees remembers James Cagney with great fondness. “What you saw was what you got [with Cagney] . . . A straight-ahead guy who gave me the only acting lesson I ever got. I had made several takes of a scene, and I’m not sure the director even then had gotten what he wanted. Cagney took me to one side and said, ‘If you believe what you’re saying, the audience will believe it.’ And this has held true for me.”
An interesting footnote to Lanny’s performance concerns his character’s singing of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” While Lanny’s singing was found perfectly acceptable by the director, his voice was dubbed by a young singer whose rendition had been recorded prior to filming.
The Time of Your Life was a critical success but did poorly at the box office, losing half a million dollars. James Cagney blamed Potter and cameraman James Wong Howe for the loss, declaring that the film was neither well-paced nor appropriately shot. Rees, on the other hand, believes that the characters were too off-beat to be accepted by audiences.
Lanny’s next notable picture was Universal’s The Life of Riley (1949), directed, written, and produced by Irving Brecher. Lanny played Junior Riley in the film which starred William Bendix in the title role as his father and Rosemary DeCamp as his mother. Good support was provided by veterans James Gleason and Beulah Bondi. Life of Riley was successful and became a television series the same year as its theatrical release. Rees and DeCamp were retained from the film cast, but Bendix, who had also played Riley on radio, had to be replaced due to previous film commitments. Tryouts for the part included Jackie Gleason and Lon Chaney, Jr., both of whom took their screen tests with Lanny. Sixteen-year-old Lanny would become very good friends with Chaney, and remembers, “He was just funny and nice. He invited me to his house in Toluca Lake to swim and later told me I could bring along friends, which I did. He rented out the big house on the property, and he and his wife lived in the pool house or cabana.”
Gleason got the part because, Lanny believes, Chaney was too closely associated with his role as the Wolfman. In Lanny’s opinion, Chaney’s screen test was better than Gleason’s. The series, which ran for one season, was made by Filmtone Productions in a little studio on Santa Monica Blvd. just east of Highland. Lanny received $125 per episode for twenty-four or twenty-five episodes, each one being rehearsed and filmed in one and a half days—“Sometimes long days,” Lanny recalls. The series won an Emmy for "Best Film Made for and Viewed on Television in 1949." The Life of Riley would return to television in 1953 with William Bendix and a new cast and would run for five seasons.
By 1950, Rees had reached that awkward age for child actors, and parts became smaller and more sporadic. He had a small one-day uncredited part in M-G-M’s Kim, directed by Victor Saville and starring Errol Flynn and Dean Stockwell. In 1952, he appeared in an episode of television’s The Lone Ranger with John Hart as the masked man and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Lanny played the role of a chemistry-loving boy who helps the Lone Ranger trick map-stealing outlaws. He received about $250 for two or three days work and has very positive memories of Hart and Silverheels, the latter of whom was quite articulate and, he remembers, had something of a reputation as a ladies man. He continued with uncredited roles in Don Siegel’s Count the Hours (1953) with Teresa Wright and Macdonald Carey and in Dragonfly Squadron (1954) with John Hodiak and Barbara Britton. That would be his last Hollywood film. Rees would not be seen on screen again for 36 years.
In November of 1954, Rees began a two-year hitch in the US Army. A few years earlier, he had done some stage work at the Pasadena Playhouse among other venues, and while stationed at Ft. Ord near Santa Barbara, he took to the stage once again in a production of Golden Boy with former child actor and fellow soldier Darryl Hickman in the lead.
Upon leaving the service, Rees returned to Hollywood in an unsuccessful effort to find movie work. Married by then and with a family to support, steady work was a necessity. He found employment testing component parts for North American Rocketdyne, a manufacturer of liquid propellant rocket engines. Several years later, Reese went to work for General Dynamics Astronautics Division installing Atlas missiles. It was during this time that he and five other men prevented an Atlas missile from exploding in its silo and received the Exceptional Service Medal from the U.S. Air Force for the deed.
Following the end of the Atlas installation program, Rees undertook various other positions including one at the Spokane Civic Theatre where he met performer and band vocalist, Natalie Monte. Divorced from his first wife, he initiated an on-and-off courtship with Natalie which led to their marriage in 1972.
For most of the next 30 years, Lanny worked as a heavy duty mechanic and shop foreman. In 1990, however, he made a return to the big screen playing a police desk sergeant in Lightning Pictures’ Class of 1999, a story about robot teachers placed in a riotous school. Shot in Seattle and directed by Mark L. Lester, the picture’s cast included Malcolm McDowell, Stacy Keach, and Pam Grier. In Lanny’s words, “It was a disaster . . . I started with three pages of dialogue and don’t think I ended up with five seconds on the screen. I couldn’t get my check and get out of there fast enough!”
Lanny Rees retired in 2003 and lives with his wife in Washington where he spends his days landscaping his lawn, visiting his son’s farm, and putting old tractors back in running order. He has four sons and a daughter by his first wife, two stepsons with Natalie, a total of thirteen grandchildren, and two (at last count) great grandchildren.
In June of 2008, Rees debuted on the film fest circuit, appearing at the Memphis Film Festival held in Olive Branch, Mississippi. He enjoyed the experience thoroughly and looks forward to more opportunities of that kind.
Reflecting on his film career, Lanny remembers his many professional associations: “I never worked with anyone who wasn’t nice except for one assistant director whose name I don’t even remember. My special favorites have to be William Farnum, James Cagney, and Lon Chaney, Jr.” And his favorite film? “A Likely Story . . . a Cinderella beginning [for me] . . . third billing, a new experience, and did I like it!” How does it feel seeing himself on screen today? “I really liked making movies. I was impressed by them, but I never liked watching myself on the screen . . . Then several years ago, I guess I gained some objectivity and began to like seeing my movies and that little guy up there that I once was.”
By Ken DennisOften Clad in blue jeans and T-shirt, possessing a wide face with large round eyes, and dimples, Lanny Rees epitomized the all-American boy in films of the mid and late 1940s. Equally at home in comedies, dramas, and westerns, he appeared with such screen icons as James Cagney and Roy Rogers. If his film career was not very long, it was, nevertheless, busy and eventful. Rees recently shared memories of his remarkable life and career, providing fresh insight into the life of a child actor in the Golden Age.
Born Lanny Eliot Rees on December 14, 1933, in Veradale, Washington, Rees was the youngest of Arthur Edward and Mildred (Hooper) Rees’s eight children. His mother soon had Lanny taking tap dancing lessons, and with America’s entry into World War II, he began his career by entertaining troops stationed in the Spokane area. Not only did he tap dance, but also served as a junior emcee at camp shows. In 1944, with most of the Rees sons serving in the military, Lanny’s father, a heavy duty mechanic, sold their home and moved his family to Van Nuys, near Los Angeles. Lanny recalls, “I guess this was so they could put me in the movies.” It might be assumed that Rees had pushy stage parents, but he says this was not the case. “My mother was not pushy except in making me practice tap dancing,” which, ironically, he was never to do in a film.
Rees was enrolled in Maurie Reubens’ talent school, and it was while appearing in the school’s annual talent show at the Wilshire Ebelle auditorium that he was spotted by a talent scout from RKO and asked to do a screen test. Lanny also remembers that, “Jane Withers came back to see me after the show. I was really impressed by that. She was quite a young lady.” Shortly thereafter, twelve-year-old Rees took his test with actor Lee Bonnell and was hired to appear in A Likely Story (1947), a comedy directed by H.C. Potter and starring Barbara Hale, Bill Williams, and Sam Levene.
Although A Likely Story was Rees’s first film, it would be his fourth in order of release. Shooting began on the picture in 1946, but some cast members were called back in early 1947 to reshoot the ending. Lanny would make three more movies in 1946 which would be released before A Likely Story. Playing Barbara Hale’s little brother, he was paid $250 a week for eight weeks. “Barbara was a smart actress and was extra friendly to me,” Rees recalls. “She made a pencil sketch of me on the set, and I still have it today. She and my mother really got along great, too.
“Mr. Potter was awfully nice to me, very friendly. My emotional scene at the end really surprised him. After explaining the scene to me, I just began crying. I’ve always been a good crier. That really impressed him. Sam Levene presented me with a cap pistol during the shoot. Everybody on that picture was great. I was in awe, and on top of the world.”
After the completion of A Likely Story, Rees was signed by RKO to a seven-year contract. His salary was $100 a week, whether he was working or not. He attended the RKO school which was located near the studio’s back gate. At that time the school consisted of one teacher and two students—Lanny and young Sharyn Moffett.
Lanny’s next work, however, was as a loan-out to Republic Pictures for the film Home in Oklahoma (1946). Republic paid RKO $1,500 a week for Lanny’s services, while the boy actor continued to receive only $100. This, of course, was a common practice among the studios.
Home in Oklahoma was a good western flick, filled with action. Directed by William Witney, the movie starred Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and the always memorable George "Gabby" Hayes. Lanny worked on the film for two weeks, one of which was spent on location at the Flying L Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma. This was the same ranch Rogers and Evans would return to two years later to be married. “Roy and Dale were wonderful people, that was obvious to everybody,” Rees remembers. “And Gabby Hayes was fun . . . a fine actor.”
The picture did have more than its share of trouble, though. Roy’s stunt double was nearly killed in the train chase sequence while doing a horseback-to-train transfer on the run. Then, after it was publicized that Dale Evans’ double (who was doubling for Lanny) successfully took a fall over Rainbow Falls on location, a local teenager stole onto the property one night and was killed trying to repeat the stunt.
To top it all off, Lanny got really sick. “I got blood poisoning shooting that picture . . . On location, we were staying at a sort of campground with an outdoor roller rink, the biggest in Oklahoma. I got a blister on my foot from skating without socks, and back in L.A. it developed into blood poisoning with dark lines running up my leg. I was taken by the studio to a doctor at the Sunset Towers Hotel on Sunset Blvd. where I received three massive shots of penicillin . . . I was then taken back to Republic to make one more close-up for the picture.” Clearly, the child actor of the Golden Age was not pampered.
Little Iodine (1946), based on the syndicated two-panel comic strip by Jimmy Hatlo, was Lanny’s next film on loan-out. Starring Jo Ann Marlowe in the title role, the cast also included the venerable Hobart Cavanaugh and Irene Ryan, later to gain fame as Granny in television’s The Beverly Hillbillies. Made by Comet Productions, the picture was shot in an old cartoon studio in West Hollywood where some of the cartoonists were still at work. Charles "Buddy" Rogers produced the ten-day shoot using money invested by his wife, silent screen star Mary Pickford. Lanny recollects, “In one scene I had to eat a Fig Newton, which I really didn’t like. Jo Ann Marlowe saw me making a face as I was chewing the cookie . . . and different cookies were immediately ordered. I had no more contact with Jo Ann for several years until she called to ask me to take her to her senior prom. Little Iodine was a fun picture.”
My Dog Shep (1946) is one of Lanny Rees’s most well-remembered movies. A drama directed by Ford Beebe, it was shot in nine days, mostly on location at Warner’s Ranch, Iverson Ranch, and Corriganville in the San Fernando Valley. Lanny was the star in a cast that included former silent film great William Farnum as Carter J. Latham, an unwanted old man; Russell Simpson as nasty Uncle Matt Hodgkins; and former Keystone Kop Al St. John for comic relief. Flame appeared as the German shepherd of the title. Lanny, as Danny Baker, is extremely effective in this Golden Gate Pictures production which was highly successful at the box office.
While Lanny got along famously with virtually everyone during his years of filming, Fred Chapman, the boy who played his despicable cousin, Arthur, proved to be an exception. “Whether it was an extension of his character or what, he didn’t seem to like me . . . we just didn’t get along.”
William Farnum, however, was something entirely different. “He was the nicest man you could possibly imagine . . . a very considerate and wonderful man to me.” Although up in years and nearing the end of his long career, Farnum was still a very effective actor. Playing a cast-aside old man who forms a bond with a lonely boy (Rees) and his dog, Farnum finds himself once again unwanted and unneeded toward the film’s end. As he walks alone down the dusty road into the distance, Rees recalls that “the most hard-bitten members of the crew were in tears . . . the tears were just streaming.”
Another memory Lanny has of My Dog Shep involves Flame’s trainer, Frank Barnes, with whom he developed a close friendship. Flame, it seems, was quite a docile animal, so he had a much more aggressive double who was brought in when attack scenes were shot. Lanny was afraid of the aggressive double. “Frank used to sneak up behind me, growling, and grab at me with a claw-like hand.” It was all in fun, though, and just the sort of good fright that kids enjoy.
Returning to his home studio at RKO, Lanny had a much smaller role in Banjo (1947) starring his schoolmate Sharyn Moffett and directed by Richard Fleischer, who was just beginning his long Hollywood career. Banjo is the story of a girl and her dog, and Lanny’s few days of filming were spent largely on location in an area adjacent to Santa Anita Racetrack. He was glad to be back with his friend Frank Barnes, who was in charge of the canine title character, but there was little else to be glad about concerning Banjo since it was such a flop.
One of Richard Fleischer’s memories of the film ran like this: “I took a trip to New York when the picture was finished shooting and the editor was working on the first assembly of the film. To cheer me up, he took a scene from the picture, cut it [the film footage] up into dozens of celluloid banjo picks, and mailed them to me in an envelope with a note, ‘This is the best I could do with this scene.’ It made me feel really good.”
Upon completion of Banjo, Lanny’s six-month option was not picked up by RKO, and the thirteen-year-old was now a free-lance actor attending Van Nuys Jr. and Sr. High School. His agent, Jack Pomeroy, soon found him work in a Monogram western, Law Comes to Gunsight (1947), shot on location at the Melody Ranch in Newhall. The film features Johnny Mack Brown and perennial old-timer Raymond Hatton. Lanny remembers little of Brown, but says Hatton became a good friend. “I didn’t ride very well, just bouncing around holding on to the saddle horn, but Raymond Hatton taught me how to ride fairly decently.”
Of his next film, Reaching from Heaven (1948), Rees has only a vague recollection. He played the part of Edgar, a newsboy, and was uncredited for the first time in his career. This was followed by Republic’s California Firebrand (1948) with Monte Hale and Adrian Booth. A six-day shoot at Iverson’s Ranch in Chatsworth, this was a remake of Roy Rogers’ 1941 Sheriff of Tombstone. (It would be remade again in 1957 as Thunder Over Arizona with Skip Homeier.) While Lanny’s last several pictures were of small importance, much more meaningful and memorable work was just around the corner.
Based on William Saroyan’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Time of Your Life (1948) boasted an impressive cast that included James Cagney, William Bendix, Broderick Crawford, James Barton, and Jeanne Cagney. A William Cagney Production filmed at General Services Studios, the picture was directed by H.C. Potter, who remembered Lanny from A Likely Story and specifically requested him for the part of the newsboy. Although the role only involved a few days of shooting, Lanny received a run-of-the-picture contract at $100 a day for thirteen weeks. This was due to his getting a closely-cropped "butch" haircut for the part and the belief that this could limit his being hired for other roles until his hair grew back.
Rees remembers James Cagney with great fondness. “What you saw was what you got [with Cagney] . . . A straight-ahead guy who gave me the only acting lesson I ever got. I had made several takes of a scene, and I’m not sure the director even then had gotten what he wanted. Cagney took me to one side and said, ‘If you believe what you’re saying, the audience will believe it.’ And this has held true for me.”
An interesting footnote to Lanny’s performance concerns his character’s singing of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” While Lanny’s singing was found perfectly acceptable by the director, his voice was dubbed by a young singer whose rendition had been recorded prior to filming.
The Time of Your Life was a critical success but did poorly at the box office, losing half a million dollars. James Cagney blamed Potter and cameraman James Wong Howe for the loss, declaring that the film was neither well-paced nor appropriately shot. Rees, on the other hand, believes that the characters were too off-beat to be accepted by audiences.
Lanny’s next notable picture was Universal’s The Life of Riley (1949), directed, written, and produced by Irving Brecher. Lanny played Junior Riley in the film which starred William Bendix in the title role as his father and Rosemary DeCamp as his mother. Good support was provided by veterans James Gleason and Beulah Bondi. Life of Riley was successful and became a television series the same year as its theatrical release. Rees and DeCamp were retained from the film cast, but Bendix, who had also played Riley on radio, had to be replaced due to previous film commitments. Tryouts for the part included Jackie Gleason and Lon Chaney, Jr., both of whom took their screen tests with Lanny. Sixteen-year-old Lanny would become very good friends with Chaney, and remembers, “He was just funny and nice. He invited me to his house in Toluca Lake to swim and later told me I could bring along friends, which I did. He rented out the big house on the property, and he and his wife lived in the pool house or cabana.”
Gleason got the part because, Lanny believes, Chaney was too closely associated with his role as the Wolfman. In Lanny’s opinion, Chaney’s screen test was better than Gleason’s. The series, which ran for one season, was made by Filmtone Productions in a little studio on Santa Monica Blvd. just east of Highland. Lanny received $125 per episode for twenty-four or twenty-five episodes, each one being rehearsed and filmed in one and a half days—“Sometimes long days,” Lanny recalls. The series won an Emmy for "Best Film Made for and Viewed on Television in 1949." The Life of Riley would return to television in 1953 with William Bendix and a new cast and would run for five seasons.
By 1950, Rees had reached that awkward age for child actors, and parts became smaller and more sporadic. He had a small one-day uncredited part in M-G-M’s Kim, directed by Victor Saville and starring Errol Flynn and Dean Stockwell. In 1952, he appeared in an episode of television’s The Lone Ranger with John Hart as the masked man and Jay Silverheels as Tonto. Lanny played the role of a chemistry-loving boy who helps the Lone Ranger trick map-stealing outlaws. He received about $250 for two or three days work and has very positive memories of Hart and Silverheels, the latter of whom was quite articulate and, he remembers, had something of a reputation as a ladies man. He continued with uncredited roles in Don Siegel’s Count the Hours (1953) with Teresa Wright and Macdonald Carey and in Dragonfly Squadron (1954) with John Hodiak and Barbara Britton. That would be his last Hollywood film. Rees would not be seen on screen again for 36 years.
In November of 1954, Rees began a two-year hitch in the US Army. A few years earlier, he had done some stage work at the Pasadena Playhouse among other venues, and while stationed at Ft. Ord near Santa Barbara, he took to the stage once again in a production of Golden Boy with former child actor and fellow soldier Darryl Hickman in the lead.
Upon leaving the service, Rees returned to Hollywood in an unsuccessful effort to find movie work. Married by then and with a family to support, steady work was a necessity. He found employment testing component parts for North American Rocketdyne, a manufacturer of liquid propellant rocket engines. Several years later, Reese went to work for General Dynamics Astronautics Division installing Atlas missiles. It was during this time that he and five other men prevented an Atlas missile from exploding in its silo and received the Exceptional Service Medal from the U.S. Air Force for the deed.
Following the end of the Atlas installation program, Rees undertook various other positions including one at the Spokane Civic Theatre where he met performer and band vocalist, Natalie Monte. Divorced from his first wife, he initiated an on-and-off courtship with Natalie which led to their marriage in 1972.
For most of the next 30 years, Lanny worked as a heavy duty mechanic and shop foreman. In 1990, however, he made a return to the big screen playing a police desk sergeant in Lightning Pictures’ Class of 1999, a story about robot teachers placed in a riotous school. Shot in Seattle and directed by Mark L. Lester, the picture’s cast included Malcolm McDowell, Stacy Keach, and Pam Grier. In Lanny’s words, “It was a disaster . . . I started with three pages of dialogue and don’t think I ended up with five seconds on the screen. I couldn’t get my check and get out of there fast enough!”
Lanny Rees retired in 2003 and lives with his wife in Washington where he spends his days landscaping his lawn, visiting his son’s farm, and putting old tractors back in running order. He has four sons and a daughter by his first wife, two stepsons with Natalie, a total of thirteen grandchildren, and two (at last count) great grandchildren.
In June of 2008, Rees debuted on the film fest circuit, appearing at the Memphis Film Festival held in Olive Branch, Mississippi. He enjoyed the experience thoroughly and looks forward to more opportunities of that kind.
Reflecting on his film career, Lanny remembers his many professional associations: “I never worked with anyone who wasn’t nice except for one assistant director whose name I don’t even remember. My special favorites have to be William Farnum, James Cagney, and Lon Chaney, Jr.” And his favorite film? “A Likely Story . . . a Cinderella beginning [for me] . . . third billing, a new experience, and did I like it!” How does it feel seeing himself on screen today? “I really liked making movies. I was impressed by them, but I never liked watching myself on the screen . . . Then several years ago, I guess I gained some objectivity and began to like seeing my movies and that little guy up there that I once was.”
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