In May of last year when Cliff Robertson visited Medford in connection with the showing of "Charly" and the convention of the Oregon Association for Retarded Children, I asked, as a question of general interest, if he had plans for making a picture in Oregon. Many film companies have lately.
    Robertson answered, "I hope so. I've never really had the chance to visit Oregon. Everybody I've met from Oregon I've liked. I like their warm, friendly, down-to-earth kind of attitude. I hope I can find the right project and come up here and spend some time."
    "Here" in that sense meant the state. Now "here" may mean the Rogue Valley.
    It was announced this week that Universal Pictures is considering shooting a film in Jacksonville beginning next month. Robertson is to be the male lead.
    As motion pictures go, this one is not to be a high budget film, but then neither was "Charly." The picture to be shot locally is a western about Jesse James. The 1870s style buildings in downtown J'ville suit the requirements of producer-director Phil Kaufman, but there are some problems to be ironed out. A few utility lines and a couple of business signs will have to be temporarily relocated.
    In recent years official Oregon has begun waking up to the motion picture dollar, which, according to one state spokesman, multiplies eight times as opposed to about two for the tourist dollar. When Paramount filmed "Paint Your Wagon" in Baker in 1968 an estimated $7 million went into the Oregon pockets from that. Since then a safe official estimate is that an additional $4 million accrued directly to the state's economic stocking.
    "Sometimes a Great Notion," produced and directed by the star, Paul Newman, just concluded filming on the Oregon coast. In 1969 "Getting Straight" was filmed on the Lane Community College campus in Eugene. Last fall Jack Nicholson lensed exteriors for "Five Easy Pieces" in several Oregon locations, including Eugene, and then in April and May of this year Nicholson directed "Drive, He Said" on the University of Oregon campus, again at Eugene. But the last is a no-no with some upstate because of the nudity.
    State officials who mention the strong possibility that Universal will come in next month also caution that this western will not exactly be a Tom Mixer. In front of the cameras will be some rough dialogue and tough action. Behind them--well, the motion picture company is its own cultural entity, complete with some nice people as well as some s.o.b.'s (a description borrowed from the picture).
    Those who would encourage film companies to come to the Rogue Valley make two suggestions to area residents: Don't try to act as censors, and there are at least a half-dozen other locations outside Oregon the company could choose.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," October 9, 1970, page C3


    JACKSONVILLE (Special)--A motion picture company may begin filming in historic Jacksonville next month.
    Warren Merrill, special projects manager of Gov. Tom McCall's Economic Development Division, made the announcement this week to a small gathering of interested persons from Jacksonville and Medford.
    Phil Kaufman, a producer-director for Universal Pictures, has said he is interested in using the town for a setting for a Jesse James movie. Cliff Robertson would be the leading actor.
    With unemployment in Jackson County now 6.4 percent, this could be an economic shot in the arm. Extras would be paid approximately $20 a day. This would be a low-budget picture of about $2 million. However, considerable money would be paid for communications, transportation and construction.
    Last picture filmed in Jacksonville was about Jacksonville and its mining days. That was "Canyon Passage," filmed about 1949. This was one of Lloyd Bridges' first pictures.
    Action for this picture would be set in Northfield, Minn., 1876. Views of Jacksonville seem to compare favorably with photographs of Northfield. The telephone and power lines on California Street as well as certain business signs will have to be moved or concealed from camera range.
    Universal began considering Jacksonville for the location several months ago when Kaufman toured the area with representatives of the Medford and Jacksonville chambers of commerce. Originally plans called for filming to begin in September or November. It was felt that if the later date were used, Jacksonville would not be the film site because of uncertain weather conditions.
    For the past three years the governor's Economic Development Division has been actively soliciting motion picture companies and television production units to work in Oregon. Merrill estimates that since 1968 the state economy has gained $11 million, directly, as a result of this "smokeless" industry. The goal is to have at least one picture company working in the state the year around, he said.
Sunday Oregonian, Portland, October 11, 1970, page 41


    JACKSONVILLE--(Special)--A movie starring Cliff Robertson will be made here starting in late November, Universal Studios has announced.
    Negotiations for the $1 million production, "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," have been completed, according to a joint announcement by Gov. Tom McCall and Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Bowman.
    The film, produced and directed by Phillip Kaufman, describes an attack by Jesse James and his gang.
    Jacksonville, an historic southern Oregon gold mining town, was selected because of its resemblance to pioneer photographs of Northfield, and because of the availability of wagons and other pioneer equipment locally.
    Filming is expected to take about three months. Provisioning the film company and the hiring of extras will be handled locally, Universal spokesmen said.
Oregonian, Portland, October 30, 1970, page 32


    It was good news at Universal Studios this week that "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" will go before the cameras in historic Jacksonville in Southern Oregon on Nov. 23 for a three week schedule.
    Fact is domestic production of any motion picture, whether at the studio, on a Los Angeles street, or elsewhere in the United States, cheers Hollywood actors and technicians no end.
    Universal, by the way, leads major Hollywood studios this year in the number of home productions--with the Jacksonville-located picture now No. 14.
    Jacksonville, Oregon's historic little mining town restored in recent years with its look of the 1870s, will have a Universal crew in the vicinity for about three weeks, a studio spokesman explained.
    The company then moves on to Central and Southern California locations for the "tight budget" picture based on a screenplay by the producer-director Phillip Kaufman based on the story "The Robber and the Hero."
    Kaufman won a critic's prize at the 1964 Cannes Festival for a picture titled "Goldstein" and also produced and directed Jon Voight's "Fearless Frank," already in release.
    With Oscar-winner Cliff Robertson the star, other top roles will be announced shortly, says Jennings Lang, Universal's vice president in charge of production.
    These include Jesse and Frank James, their mother, Mrs. Samuels, and the Younger Brothers, Jim and Bob.
    Extras will be hired, and this could mean work for Medford-Jacksonville townspeople as well as Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors already getting set for winter and spring productions in the new Angus Bowmer Theater.
    Incidentally, the modern theater concept in Ashland should be an eye-opener for the Hollywood visitors.
    As for story, Robertson plays Chadwell, a member of the James gang who returns about 10 years after the Civil War only to find the James outfit "vegetating." He gets an idea to rob a bank in a little town of Northfield in Minnesota.
    Naturally Jacksonville's U.S. National Bank with proper "makeup" will be the bank in question. [It was not.] Not only was the little mining town picked because of its clean, scrubbed 1870s look, but because of the reputation Oregon now has for cooperating with motion picture producers, actors and crews on location here.
    Negotiations were handled by Gov. Tom McCall's office and Warren Merrill, Oregon manager, who has been instrumental in past years in bringing such major productions as "Paint Your Wagon" and "Sometimes a Great Notion" to Oregon.
Oregon Journal, Portland, October 31, 1970, page 7


    JACKSONVILLE--Mayor Alvin Bowman announced this morning that the time of tonight's meeting of the Jacksonville City Council has been changed to 7:30 o'clock in the city hall.
    The change has been made, according to Bowman, "to accommodate citizens, particularly property owners, who have questions concerning the movie proposed for filming in Jacksonville."
    City Attorney Ervin B. Hogan will be present at the meeting to help negotiate terms of a contract between the city and the producers.
    Bowman stated that "the council will act as mediator between the citizens and the producers."
Medford Mail Tribune, November 3, 1970, page 1


    JACKSONVILLE--A number of questions concerning details of the proposed movie to be filmed in Jacksonville were asked by the audience at the regular meeting of the Jacksonville City Council last night. The meeting was scheduled one-half hour early to provide adequate time for the questions.
    Ervin B. Hogan, Jacksonville city attorney, and Harker Wade, unit manager for Universal Studios, the producer, were also present to answer questions.
    Concerning the proposed closure of portions of California and Oregon streets, Wade stated that they would be closed to vehicular traffic for approximately four weeks beginning about Nov. 16. He said that foot traffic would be permitted except during actual shooting. 1-7 minutes. The 25-45 minutes used for setting up scenes would allow for passersby.
    Mayor Alvin Bowman stated that the matter of closing California Street was a matter for the State Highway Commission to decide. California Street is part of Oregon 238. He said that he had been unable to contact the highway commission on election day.
    The question of fire protection for the south side of the city was raised. The fire hall is on the north side. Wade said he spoke with representatives of the Jacksonville Volunteer Fire Department. He claimed that the fire trucks would be able to detour around the closed area and said hydrants would be covered with easily removable barrels.
    Gordon Warner of Gladiolus Gardens asked about closure of Oregon Street. He uses the building at 110 Oregon St. for a bulb storage warehouse. He said that his crop is perishable and that some means of allowing truck traffic is necessary. Wade agreed to meet with Warner at noon today to discuss the problem.
    Mrs. Wayne Reavis, owner of "The Old Curiosity Shop," Jacksonville retail liquor outlet, reported she spoke to a representative of the state liquor commission and that he had said the commission usually "went along with" local activities.
    Other questions remaining to be resolved are the temporary removal of telephone and power lines and the selection of a bypass route for logging trucks.
    Mayor Bowman said he is "making no guarantees yet as negotiations are not that far along."
    Hogan presented a request form to Wade for consideration. He said it was not a contract, but a statement of various obligations that the city felt should be assumed by the studio. These concerned restoration of involved property to its original condition following the completion of the movie and financial responsibilities to be assumed by the producer.
    In other business, an ordinance was passed vacating a portion of Hueners Lane (Academy Street). No opposition had been expressed at a recent public hearing on the matter.
    A special council meeting was called for 8 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Jacksonville Fire Hall to discuss details of the requirements for the new position of city supervisor, which was created in July.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 4, 1970, page 9


    MEDFORD (AP)--Universal Pictures will hold interviews Saturday for persons between the ages of 6 and 80 who want to be extras in the film "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."
    The movie will be shot in Jacksonville and will star Cliff Robertson.
    Persons who have period costumes will wear them for interview from 9 to 10 a.m. at the Red Lion Motel in Medford. Other persons may be interviewed from 1 to 4 p.m.
    The action is supposed to take place in 1876. Jacksonville was made famous for its gold booms in the 1850s. Many of its original buildings have been restored.
    Filming is to start Nov. 23. Between 35 and 40 extras are to be used each day. One hundred are needed one particular day, and 200 two other days.
Oregonian, Portland, November 14, 1970, page 19


    The pay is $15 a day ($1.66 an hour). The hours are from 6:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., with lunch furnished by the company. The job may last four or five days at the most.
    Yesterday nearly 5,000 people went to the Red Lion Motel in Medford to apply. Some came from as far away as Burns and Klamath Falls. Universal Pictures was interviewing for extras and actors for the motion picture to be filmed in Jacksonville, "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."
    Starring Academy Award winner Cliff Robertson, the film concerns an attempt by Jesse James and the Younger Brothers to rob a bank in Northfield, Minn., in 1876. The nineteenth century architecture of downtown Jacksonville was a deciding factor in getting the picture located there. Filming is to begin Nov. 23.
    Previous advertising for yesterday's interviews had indicated that applicants would be screened from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. However, a number of persons, including some from the studio, thought 9 a.m. was the designated hour.
    Interviews were held in the Red Lion's downstairs banquet rooms. Manager John Maison said yesterday afternoon that he received a call from the motel switchboard at 7 a.m. saying that people were already starting to congregate. By 9 a.m. an estimated 1,500 were on hand, most in costume.
    Some costumes were authentic, some were made for the occasion and others were rejected by Director Phillip Kaufman as being "too western." Kaufman stressed that the setting is Midwest, not Western.
    A special request was issued for applicants with Scandinavian costumes. In addition to the regular pay rate, the picture company pays a $5 per day costume allowance.
    Casting was also held for minor character roles. Several men, including a few described as "hippies," agreed to have their heads shaved in order to portray convicts. The rate for the convicts is reportedly $50 per day for a planned one-day shooting schedule.
    Early in the day most hopefuls were processed through a registration line and photographed by Assistant Director Ralph Sariego. Each applicant photographed held a card bearing his or her name and phone number. Production Manager Harker Wade said that persons accepted should be notified by telephone prior to Nov. 23, although they may not be required to appear on that date.
    Interviews were suspended about noon yesterday and resumed at 2 p.m. By 2:30 the procedure was conducted on a walk-through basis with Kaufman selecting a particular face or costume from the line moving through the Red Lion's basement corridor. One studio representative, looking very tired, said, "We thought about 500 would turn out."
Medford Mail Tribune, November 15, 1970, page 1


    SALEM (UPI)--Landing a Hollywood movie for a small Oregon town may be one success--but smoothing out the resulting details may offer just as much of a challenge.
    Universal Studios is planning to shoot the film “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid” in the historic Southern Oregon town of Jacksonville. It will feature Cliff Robertson, and is produced and directed by Phillip Kaufman.
    Filming is expected to start about Nov. 23 and take three weeks. The company has already started work on transforming Jacksonville into a small Minnesota town.
    One of the first hangups was what to do with the 20 logging trucks a day which come through Jacksonville. The movie requires that most of the town's main street--California Street--be closed for four weeks.
    Finding a bypass route which would accommodate the huge logging trucks was a challenge which was finally settled.
    All the power lines and telephone lines along Main Street have to be taken down. They will be put on the sidewalk, then covered with a boardwalk.
    The power poles which remain will be strung with a single wire to simulate the telegraph lines which were a part of the landscape in the era of the film. This probably will be one of the more costly aspects of the film project.
    Townspeople would have liked to use this opportunity to put the power lines permanently under ground. But the town doesn't have the money to do it.
    Universal had considered using Jackson, Calif., as its film location, where the power lines are already underground. But that historic town is so commercialized that Universal concluded it would cost more to remove all the neon signs than it would to take the power lines down in Jacksonville.
    Hundreds of yards of dirt must be hauled in to transform the paved main street into a dirt road.
    Barrels will be spotted along the boardwalk as props--but their real mission will be to cover fire hydrants.
    The raid depicted in the movie takes place on a Fourth of July, so the town will be all decked out in flags and bunting. This also gives the movie-makers a chance to do a lot of cover-up work.
    Storefronts will be painted with water colors as they are transformed into a movie set--so they can easily be restored to their original condition.
    The film depicts the famous Northfield raid by Jesse James and his gang.
Oregon Journal, Portland, November 17, 1970, page 15


    JACKSONVILLE--A group of interested Jacksonville citizens began the circulation of petitions yesterday to preserve the new, pioneer appearance of Jacksonville.
    The petition, addressed to the planning commission, mayor, and city council of Jacksonville states that "during the past few days, Universal Pictures has done more to restore the pioneer appearance of Jacksonville than could normally be done in several years . . . the beneficial effects of this change have been immediately apparent in the active interest displayed by visitors and residents alike."
    The signers request that measures be taken to have the wooden sidewalks in the business district made permanent, that California Street from Oregon to Fifth streets be permanently closed to vehicular traffic, and that the possibility of placing electrical and telephone wiring underground in the pioneer district, permanently, be explored to the fullest extent.
    Other measures suggested on the petition are to take steps to make permanent any buildings or features erected by the motion picture company which contribute to the pioneer character of the city and to study the possibility and practicality of keeping the present temporary crushed granite surface on California Street and adjacent blocks.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 18, 1970, page 1


    Jacksonville is happily jumping these days. There hasn't been so much interest and activity for many a long year. (Perhaps not since the d'Autremont trial of 1927 has the little city been the focus of so much attention.)
    The cause, of course, is "the movie." Universal Studios next Monday will begin filming the story of a Jessie James bank robbery in Northfield, Minn., nearly a century ago. Jacksonville was picked because it is handier to Hollywood than Minnesota, and because its 19th Century buildings and surroundings are generally, if not identically, similar to those of Northfield.
    Interest has been general since selection of Jacksonville was first announced, but the first tip-off to the extent and depth of the interest came last Saturday when some thousands of people turned out (instead of the 500 or so expected) to try out for roles as extras or bit players.
    And, last week and over the weekend when workmen were putting in wooden sidewalks and covering over the streets with dirt and beginning to take down the utility cables and paint buildings and put up new signs--well, Jacksonville was visited by more people than have strolled its quiet streets in many a day.
    We regard the circumstances as particularly felicitous for those who have for a long time cherished the historic environment of Jacksonville, and wanted to protect it and enhance it. The partial restoration to a similitude of what it once was, visually and in other less tangible ways, and the excited popular reaction to it, is tangible evidence that historic restoration does indeed have popular appeal.
    We have heard a little grousing and grumbling about the inconvenience that is caused as the movie company literally takes over the town. But this is minimal. On the other hand, the number of stories about people going all out to help in any way they can are frequent and heart-warming.
    It is true that this is a commercial enterprise. Universal Pictures is out to make money, not to give Jacksonville a boost or to engage in other eleemosynary efforts. But at the same time, the firm's representatives have been thoughtful, courteous, understanding of local problems and needs, and generally have behaved like gentlemen--even when others have not.
    It is a good bet that Universal Pictures will leave Jacksonville in as good shape, and perhaps better, as when they arrived, both from a visual aspect and from a feeling of community.
    It is not unreasonable to expect that, if the event is as happily concluded as it has been begun, it may be the forerunner of similar visitations, for Jacksonville's authenticity as a "set" for other productions should prove to be a potent attraction. And the cheerful and helpful welcome given the movie-makers will not go unnoted in Hollywood.
    There have been some misunderstandings and false starts, but this is inevitable in an enterprise as all-embracing as this one. Generally speaking, it has been a happy experience thus far for practically everyone.--E.A.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 18, 1970, page 4


    JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (AP)--Preparations for the start of filming next week of "The Great Northfield Minn., Raid" are nearly complete, and Jacksonville residents like the new look.
    A group of residents have started circulating petitions to preserve the new appearance.
    The work has been done by Universal Pictures which is filming in Jacksonville because the old red brick buildings look like Northfield, Minn., in the 1870s.
    The concrete sidewalks have been covered with wooden boardwalks, and California Street has been closed to motor traffic and the asphalt paving covered with a thick layer of crushed granite.
    The petition says "Universal Pictures has done more to restore the pioneer appearance of Jacksonville than could normally be done in several years."
    The petitions ask that the wooden sidewalks in the business district remain, that California Street be permanently closed to vehicular traffic and that electrical and telephone wiring be permanently placed underground.
    The petition asks the city officials to study the possibility of keeping the crushed granite street surface.
Corvallis Gazette-Times, November 19, 1970, page 2


    JACKSONVILLE (UPI)--This city has "aged" 100 years in a few days at the hands of a movie company, and some residents at least would like to make the new look permanent.
    Universal Pictures, preparing to start filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" next week, has put dirt on the sidewalks and is about to remove overhead utility wires.
    A local group is now circulating petitions to have the "new, pioneer appearance" retained after the film crews leave.
    "Universal Pictures has done more to restore the pioneer appearance of Jacksonville than could normally be done in several years . . . ," the petitions say.
    "The beneficial effects of this change have been immediately apparent in the active interest displayed by visitors and residents alike."
Eugene Register-Guard, November 19, 1970, page 48


    There were almost as many people visiting Jacksonville last Sunday  as were at the Red Lion Saturday. The Sunday crowd was on a sightseeing tour.
    Saturday's children were clamoring (and a few shoving) to get even a small part in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," Universal's period bank job set to lens in Southern Oregon's old town beginning one week from today. The originally announced filming date was the 23rd; but, weighing various considerations, the decision-makers elected to start the day after Thanksgiving. They hope to have their work done and be gone by Dec. 21.
    Before Jacksonville agreed to take on the picture, many discussions were held with Universal personnel and key production people from the picture. The principal topic was the effect of the filming on the town. At this point, a week before any camera has cranked, some interesting long shots and short takes have developed.
    Jacksonville's downtown businessmen have noticed an upturn. Commenting on Sunday's visitors, Dick Maples at the House of Wood said some of them were Medford residents who had not been to Jacksonville in four years or more.
    On any given noon hour of late, That Store, J'ville's homegrown deli, is about twice as full as the Long Branch on Saturday night. Last Sunday one could barely find the door, much less get into it. It was that way, too, at Curly and Clara Graham's Mustard Seed Coffee Shop (formerly Polar Bar) down on Fifth Street, beside the museum.
    Meanwhile, back at the deli, and elsewhere along California Street, signs of changes are appearing. Universal has built a "harness shop" on the concrete slab that last summer was That Store's sidewalk cafe. Owners Joel Brown and Lauren Hardy have now acquired their on-premises beer license. When the picture company leaves, word is the addition will be That Store's tap room, called The Harness Shop.
    In order to give the town the appearance of Northfield, Minn., certain business signs have been altered. The Beekman Bank is now a dentist-mortuary establishment. The Village Gallery is Allen's Hardware and the J'ville Tavern carries the legend: Lee and Hitchcock and College Grill. Next to the tavern is "The First National Bank." This will be robbed in the picture, and interiors will be filmed there.
    The sign changing and other activities have created their own moments. That Store (again) was re-designated "Dairy Products" and signs hung on the front advertising milk and cheese. One would-be customer came in and asked for a milkshake, not on the real-life menu. Sandy, behind the counter, had to do some fast explaining.
    Jacksonville is presently advertising for a public works director. An applicant came to town Sunday, saw dozens of men working and said that the morale of the employees seemed good. But he was really amazed at what the men were doing, spreading loose dirt over the pavement. According to reports, he left town shaking his head and talking softly to himself.
    The next time he returns, he may find California Street brightened with gaslight. That should clarify the problem no end.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," November 20, 1970, page C18


    JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (AP)--This historic gold mining town looks like Northfield, Minn. and likes it.
    Some residents have started circulating petitions asking that the city fathers leave things the way they are when a film company completes “The Great Northfield Minn., Raid” and leaves town.
    The film by Universal Pictures is about a raid at Northfield by the James gang, famed bank robbers of an earlier day.
    Jacksonville was chosen because, film representatives said, its red brick buildings look much like those in Northfield in the 1870s.
    Changes for the picture include board walks built over the concrete sidewalks, a layer of gravel over the asphalt pavement, and removal of telephone and power lines.
    The petition asks that wooden sidewalks remain in the business district, that California Street--the main street--be permanently closed to motor vehicles, and that the wiring be placed permanently underground.
    Jacksonville has preserved and fostered its pioneer appearance and has a strong attraction for tourists.
Statesman Journal, Salem, November 20, 1970, page 18


    JACKSONVILLE (UPI)--This city is advertising for a public works director and one applicant who came to town this week was a bit surprised by what he saw.
    He observed dozens of men at work and said their morale seemed high. But he was amazed at what they were doing: Spreading loose dirt over the paved streets.
    According to reports, he left town shaking his head.
    The dirt was being spread in preparation for the filming of a movie, "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," set to start here Nov. 27. Jacksonville is being made to look like a Midwest town circa 1876.
    As preparations continue, some visitors are having trouble telling the regular Jacksonville from the movie set.
    Universal Pictures has put up a number of signs in connection with the film, so that a delicatessen which normally serves beer now advertises dairy products, and an art gallery proclaims that it makes signs.
    Sure enough, someone tried to order a milkshake at the delicatessen and a customer went into the gallery to see about getting a sign painted.
The Observer, La Grande, November 21, 1970, page 9


    JACKSONVILLE--People in Jacksonville are curious about Northfield, Minn., these days. After all, for a month or so Jacksonville will be Northfield (during the filming of the Universal Studios picture "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" set to start Friday.)
    Jacksonville is the older town by four years. It was the center of the gold rush of 1851. Northfield was settled in 1855 and did not become an incorporated village until 1871; an incorporated city in 1875, one year before the famous James-Younger gang raid. The raid proved disastrous for the gang. The aroused citizens fought back with rocks, rifles and revolvers until Jesse James was forced to order a retreat.
    Although the original pioneer character of both towns was similar, Jacksonville has retained more of the flavor of the past. The population of Northfield, today, is approximately five times that of Jacksonville. It is a railroad and food processing center with some manufacturing on the side. In the general plan released last week, Jacksonville was credited with one industry, a heavy equipment repair shop.
    Northfield is only 38 miles from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) with a population approaching 1 million. Jacksonville is nearly 300 miles from Portland, 400 from San Francisco.
    Jacksonville is an historic site. It has the museum and the Britt Festival. Northfield has two colleges, Carleton and St. Olaf's; and an arboretum.
    The altitude of both towns is approximately the same, but Jacksonville is surrounded by hills. Northfield lies in the broad valley of the Cannon River, which empties into Mississippi about 50 miles to the east.
    Both towns are surrounded by agricultural areas, Jacksonville by orchard and Northfield by dairy farms.
    The population of Northfield is primarily of German and Scandinavian origin. The people of Jacksonville have come from many backgrounds.
    Northfield has not forgotten Sept. 7, 1876. There is a Jesse James Cafe on one of the main streets. Jacksonville is not likely to forget either, after the next few weeks.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 23, 1970, page 1


    It's uncertain just how much it cost Northfield, Minn., but it's going to cost Universal Studios "something under $1 million."
    "It," in this case, is "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," a movie which is scheduled to begin filming in Jacksonville on Friday.
    Producer-director-writer Philip Kaufman said the movie will star Academy Award winner Cliff Robertson and Robert Duvall, who has appeared in "True Grit," "M.A.S.H." and other films. Kaufman himself has made two other films in Chicago, "both," he said, "for my own independent company." The films were "Goldstein" and "Fearless Frank."
    "Goldstein," made in 1964, won the Prix de la Tour Nouvelle Critique at the Cannes Film Festival, and "Fearless Frank" in 1965 was actor Jon Voight's first movie.
    Kaufman, contacted in Hollywood, said the movie company would be in Jacksonville for only about 19 days on a six-day-a-week shooting schedule. "We'll be doing most of the major location photography there," he said.
    The director said the cast will be composed "of about 25 people at its biggest," and said the crew would also be "smaller than usual." There were about 150 people in the company of "Sometimes a Great Notion," filmed in the Newport area last summer.
    Kaufman said of "Raid's" budget: "We're trying to do it for something under a million dollars. We're trying to keep it low-budget."
    After the filming in Jacksonville, the cast and crew will return to Hollywood and do most of the rest of the shooting there. "For the end of the shooting," he said, "we're going to a little town near Stockton." Completion of filming, he added, is scheduled for Jan. 10.
    The movie will depict the raiding of the small Minnesota town by Jesse James and his gang, including the Younger Brothers. It is taken from a story called "The Robber and the Hero."
    To transform a small 20th century town in Oregon into a small town in Minnesota in 1876, Kaufman said, "the whole town has been boardwalked, we put dirt on the streets and the power lines have been lowered."
    Other changes are in store, including painting storefronts (with watercolors, so they can be easily removed) and decking the town out with flags and bunting, since the raid took place on the Fourth of July.
    The problem of fire hydrants has been very neatly solved.
    They've been covered with barrels, which just look like they're there for atmosphere.
Eugene Register-Guard, November 26, 1970, page 18


    For the past few days the question was would "The Great Jacksonville, Oregon Rain" wash out "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid?"
    The Universal motion picture crews hoped to stick to their (revised) schedule for starting the filming today.
    First shots planned were panoramic views of Jacksonville from the cemetery hill. Those who have seen the sign at Oregon and California streets, and some who haven't, know that J'ville is to be Northfield, Minnesota in 1876 when Jesse James, Cole Younger and Co. came to rob the First National Bank.
    Academy Award winner Cliff Robertson is cast as Cole Younger. Robert Duvall is James. Duvall was the heavy heavy in "True Grit," Ned Pepper, who precipitated John Wayne's big scene. He was also featured in "M.A.S.H.," "Bullitt," "To Kill A Mockingbird," and a number of other motion pictures.
    As planned, Jacksonville was aged with boardwalks and crushed granite in the streets. Originally the granite was poured about two weeks ago with the intention of packing it into a usable surface. Orders from the State Highway Department required grading of the covering from the center of California Street (Oregon 238). When it was later replaced, it became a substance halfway between sponge and quicksand. One Universal representative said that more, dry granite would have to be spread. The rain-soaked material would bog wagons and present too much risk to horses.
    So, after much preparation, cameras are rolling west in Jacksonville.
Al Reiss, "The Tempo Beat," Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," November 27, 1970, page B13


    JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (AP)--Business is booming in this historic Southern Oregon town (population 1,500), which was made famous during the 1850s when gold was discovered nearby.
    In those days, men came to the area to look for gold. In 1970, men--from Hollywood--are bringing the gold with them, in the form of money being spent during filming of a movie.
    Universal Pictures is scheduled to begin filming today for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" which will star Cliff Robertson, an Academy Award winner.
    For several weeks, crews have been transforming the town into a Midwestern town of 1876. The concrete sidewalks have been covered with boardwalks. Crushed granite covers California Street's asphalt paving. Traffic has been rerouted, leaving buckboards and other horse-drawn vehicles. The main street features a horse watering trough.
    With the changes come some confusion.
    That Store, a delicatessen, now has a sign designating it a seller of dairy products… and a would-be customer walks away without the milk shake he requested.
    An artist's California Street studio has another prop sign promoting "Signs on wood, glass, tin, cloth. Paper-card signs while-u-wait. Lettering on carriages to your satisfaction. Gold leaf our specialty."
    She, too, had some explaining to do to a prospective customer.
    A harness shop has been built on the concrete slab next to a sidewalk cafe. The Beekman Bank is now a dentist-mortuary establishment. The Village Gallery is Allen's Hardware. The Jacksonville Tavern carries the legends: Lee and Hitchcock and College Grill.
    Next to the tavern is the mock First National Bank, which will be the center of attention for the Jesse and Frank James gang, whose raid gives the picture its title.
    The U.S. Hotel, completed about July, 1880, which once had President Rutherford B. Hayes as a guest, has lost its new sign for a newer one, renaming it "Dampier Hotel." It really houses the U.S. National Bank.
    Officials for Universal Pictures said they hope to complete filming by Dec. 21.
East Oregonian, Pendleton, November 27, 1970, page 4


    Even the sun turned out to see the motion picture in Jacksonville yesterday afternoon.
    Universal's filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" went into its second day of filming with morning work in the Jacksonville cemetery, where the first day's shooting was conducted in a steady rain Friday.
    Later cast and crews moved downtown onto California Street, where the buildings have been modified, painted and hung with bunting to give the appearance of Northfield, Minn., during an 1876 Centennial celebration.
    Cliff Robertson and companion actors played to a capacity house. Throughout the afternoon several thousand onlookers walked along the boardwalks, through the shops on California Street, or remained behind rope barricades stretched by Jacksonville police and Jackson County Sheriff's officers.
    Some persons, hoping to get a good view of the filming, climbed onto rooftops. The age of the buildings, as well as the obvious hazard of height, makes the roof a dangerous viewpoint.
    About 10 days ago, when the downtown blocks were being groomed for the picture, one of the studio's key personnel said that the street would . . . really look like 100 years ago when we get the wagons--and people in costume on it." Yesterday, it did.
    Usually clean-shaven Robertson is bearded for his portrayal of Cole Younger. Robert Duvall, cast as Jesse James, is due to arrive in Medford early next week.
    Much of yesterday's afternoon filming concentrated on the Younger gang entering town, riding around the corner of Oregon Street, onto California. Then there were shots of Robertson and others walking along the boardwalk in front of the various shops.
    Philip Kaufman, the 34-year-old director of "Raid," could be seen at various times coaching actors on the upcoming scene, or conferring with cameraman Bruce Surtees.
    One point of contact between the picture company and visiting spectators was the voice of Ralph Sariego, assistant director, through the battery megaphone. Sariego often called for anyone not in costume to remain back, out of the sightline, as the cameras got ready to roll. Surtees cautioned Sariego to clear spectators from certain areas; although not in direct camera range, their reflections would appear in windows that were in the picture.
    When the picture wrapped the day's shooting just before 5 p.m. because of darkness, Robertson accommodated a pressing throng of fans by signing autographs.
    There are a number of talents evident in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," both in front of the camera and in back of it. One face recognized yesterday, behind a black mustache, was Luke Askew, from "Easy Rider" and "Flare-up." Askew is in the role of Jim Younger.
    Robert H. Harris, who recently appeared in a TV episode of "The Governor and J.J." along with Joan Bennett, is cast as president of the First National Bank, to be robbed in the picture.
    Early yesterday evening, after the picture company had returned to Medford, the report from the Universal Production office was that Saturday produced "a good day's work."
    Filming is expected to resume on California Street Monday morning.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 29, 1970, page 1


    JACKSONVILLE--The rain drips softly down on Jacksonville this late November afternoon. Everybody, or so it seems, is out-of-doors.
    Shopkeepers stand on their doorsteps chatting with passersby. An artist sketches the passing throng from her perch on a sidewalk bench outside the butcher shop. Two little boys splash through the mud pie that is California Street, and everyone speaks to everyone.
    The movie is no longer coming. It is here. And something has come with it, a resurgence of local pride. Jacksonville is among the elect; it has been chosen. (For the next few weeks Universal Studios will be filming the "Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" in town).
    The movie has brought the town factions close. A lifelong resident remarks: "Old wounds are being healed, old quarrels forgotten in this immediate realization of what we are and what we have here." He waves to a man across the street. They have had differences at city council meetings. One man favored history; one belonged to the party of "progress." Now they are friends.
    A college boy back for Thanksgiving says, "I'm glad I came home; there's something doing." His blonde girlfriend hangs on his arm. She giggles, "Isn't this the most?"
    Three high school girls who have been wandering along the board sidewalk pause. They want to have their say. "We live here. This is our town."
    "Did you try out for parts in the movie?"
    "No, we have to go to school, but we're going to watch every minute we can."
    A number of the citizens will have parts. Many will wear the historic costumes they have used for civic celebrations. The women, especially, have suitable nineteenth-century apparel. However, the man in charge of the wardrobe says that at least a hundred costumes have been stored in the rooms above the tavern.
    Like others of the "movie people" he has caught Jacksonville's excitement. "I like this town. It's real and it's friendly." He is trying to locate a local seamstress. People are helpful. They know just the person. The artist writes out the name and telephone number on a sheet from her sketch pad.
    Another load of decomposed granite is dumped on the barricaded portion of California Street. Citizens and tourists take the mud in stride. Wooden crosswalks span the street at intervals. A bulldozer scrapes the overflow on the side streets. "It's a good place for a mini-skirt. How do you suppose the women used to keep their long dresses clean?"
    A gentleman from San Francisco has parked his car two blocks away and walked downtown. "I've gone through here a lot of times on my way to the Applegate. This is the first time I've ever stopped."
    The high school girls circle the "dreamy" area again.
    The townspeople are looking at Jacksonville in a new way. The new that has been added belongs: board sidewalks, bunting, lace curtains in a second story window. "Let's keep it this way," someone suggests. "Keep California Street permanently closed to traffic. Don't put the telephone poles back up. Don't restore the neon signs." A tavern owner overhears: "I'm sticking to a wooden sign from now on."
    A housewife, her arms full of groceries, enters the conversation. "Of course, you've heard about the petition. My husband and I both signed it." (The petition directed to the Jacksonville City Council is a request to keep as many of the changes wrought by the movie as are attractive and feasible. It is being circulated by interested citizens).
    To be fair, there are some who do not like having the movie come to town. "It's too noisy." "There are too many tourists." "It's inconvenient for parking and shopping."
    The adverse comments are made with low voices. More and more of the doubters are becoming convinced of the overall benefit to the community. "What do you want to bet Jesse James and the Younger boys would have rather settled in than raided a town like this?"
    The rain has increased, but no one seems to care.
    The high school girls continue to circle the town.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 29, 1970, page 10


    Because of the filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" in Jacksonville, at least four Rogue Valley persons have drawn memories of Jesse James, his family and gang, into the present.
    Mrs. Lillian Knight, Medford, said that when her father was a boy in Oklahoma, the James gang, which was terrorizing the Midwest, rode into the family ranch and, at gunpoint, demanded fresh horses. They were on the run after a raid. There was no argument. They got the horses.
    Mrs. Lola Ann Buck, 93-year-old Central Point woman, remembers that when she was a child of about 10, her family made a 36-mile round trip in a horse-drawn wagon in order to see Frank James, brother of Jesse, who was gatekeeper at the Vernon County (Missouri) Fair. It was felt that Frank James, who had been pardoned from the penitentiary, would be a drawing card to the fair. He was. Mrs. Buck said people came from miles around just to look at him.
    Later, she said, her uncle bought a home-place that had belonged to the James family and "dug it full of holes looking for treasure." But they failed to find anything.
    Mrs. Buck remembers well the legends about the notorious Jesse, how he changed his name to Howard to avoid capture and how his cousin, Bob Ford, shot him in the back in order to collect the reward money. She also remembers a song that starts: "It was a dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard and laid Jesse James in the grave . . ."
    Jesse James was a murderer and a bandit, but he rode with the aura of the Robin Hood legends.
    One of the most complicated stories about a connection with Jesse James comes from Mrs. Gary Nelson, Ashland, receptionist in the Mail Tribune newsroom, who says, "The James brothers were cousins to my grandfather's mother's father, whose name was John LaMar."
    To get the genealogy straight, she called her grandfather, Ted Johnson, editor of the Chinook Opinion, in Chinook, Mont.
    She was right, grandpa said, but she hasn't figured out yet whether that makes her a fifth cousin, or a cousin five times removed, to the notorious bad man of the 1870s.
    Another complicated story comes from Mrs. L. H. Hughes, 89, Fern Valley, who lived in Southwest Missouri as a child and went to school with Jesse James' cousins.
    Mrs. Hughes says that Adolphus Huston, for whom Huston Road, Phoenix area, was named, was a brother-in-law to Jim Moore, who defended Jesse James, and that Huston's two daughters married her two brothers.
Medford Mail Tribune, November 29, 1970, page 10


    JACKSONVILLE (UPI)--A crowd of probably 800 persons congregated on California Street here Saturday, and they stood for hours in the chilling cold for the robbery of the First National Bank.
    Rarely has a community looked forward to such an event.
    What else could you expect from a town that has signs out saying "Welcome, Cole Younger and gang."
    It was the second day of filming for Universal Studios' "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," and the action attracted people from Portland, Dayton, Cave Junction and many other parts of the state.
    For the most part they were to see little other than the 1876 look of Jacksonville turned Northfield.
    The film crews spent much of the day shooting a burial scene in the old Jacksonville cemetery at the edge of town. Spectators were not allowed there.
    Late in the afternoon technicians and equipment moved into the heart of Jacksonville, and the speculation surged through the crowd on a sea of whispers: "They're going to shoot the bank robbery. See, there it is, the First National Bank."
    Before the day was out the moviemakers had shot a short segment of film portraying Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson) and some of his gang riding into town or horseback.
    It took the combined efforts of film personnel and a half dozen deputy sheriffs to keep the crowd out of the filmed scenes.
    A one-block stretch of California Street was ordered vacated, and the crowds had been pushed back to clear the scene for a quiet afternoon in 1876.
    But as the technicians moved their equipment and other preparations went on for more than an hour, the crowds had slowly eased back into the forbidden area. Many had crawled to the rooftops of old Jacksonville buildings for better views.
    Today the cameras record interior scenes of the First National Bank and events leading up to the great robbery. This is the third day of a projected 19-day filming schedule in and around Jacksonville.
    On hand along with about 30 Hollywood actors are 30 highly trained Hollywood horses, which are used extensively in the filming.
    About 50 percent of the $1 million film is to be shot here, and the rest in California.
    Sound stages and ranch locations belonging to Universal Studios will be used for some of the sequences. Some shots in a cave will be taken in Hollywood's Griffith Park, and additional brief bits of location filming will take place in Locke and Sonora, in Northern California.
Baker City Herald, November 30, 1970, page 2


    Motion picture companies will occasionally plan some interior shots on location as insurance against bad weather. If snow continues in Jacksonville, "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now in production there, may find itself up against a blank, white wall. Some interiors were scheduled for this area, but not many. Most will be shot in the Universal City studios.
    Yesterday, though, filming moved indoors, with snow falling outside. During the afternoon a scene was shot in the "First National Bank," a set built in the Kubli building on California Street.
    At 2 p.m. yesterday Cliff Robertson, starring as Cole Younger, entered from the drizzling, snow-spitting day. Following lunch in the Jacksonville Inn, Robertson had retired to his dressing room to review the scene in which he was now going to act.
    Already on the set were about 30 persons: Actors, sound and light technicians, cameramen and onlookers with varying degrees of reason for being there.
    Robert H. Harris, cast as Wilcox, president of the bank that the Younger and James Brothers intend to rob, checked his gray-brush mustache in a mirror held by a makeup artist then took his place at the small table enclosed on two sides by the banking counters and wickets. Robertson sat in a chair next to Harris and the two rehearsed the scene while the picture's youthful writer-director, Philip Kaufman, observed closely, sometimes bending down beside the table to get a camera-level view.
    Harris' costume was an 1876 gray business suit, with vest. Robertson wore an ankle-length cattleman's duster and a misshapen, brown western hat. His costume under the duster was a tweed coat and pants, a limp white shirt and a dark blue bow tie. From his boots to his beard the actor, in character, displayed a kind of ragged elegance, accentuated by the way he lit and smoked a homemade pipe, one of his props in the picture.
    As the two men went over lines and consulted with the director, cameraman Bruce Surtees and his assistant, Bob Thomas, checked interior and exterior lighting and scene composition. The shot was to begin as an exterior view through the bank window, then move in as the camera pulled back to discover Robertson and Harris at the table.
    Outside, 10 feet from the window, two huge arc lamps angled in, planing the set with the lights and shadows of late afternoon. Muted flood- and spotlights inside balanced the lighting.
    At one point Surtees said that they had to get the falling snow out of the picture. A tarpaulin was raised over the sidewalk above the camera sightline, held by ropes stretching to the tops of buildings across California Street.
    Later, looking through the camera, Surtees called for a glass door to be closed across the street in order that an arc reflection would not spoil the picture. Each detail became finer than the last as picture time approached. As Thomas sighted through the camera, Surtees positioned actors outside the window.
    At 2:30 Assistant Director Ralph Sariego called for quiet, "Hold the talking."
    Shooting got under way, but had barely begun when Kaufman called, "Cut." Something had gone wrong. Within a few minutes the scene was set again. Again the staccato of male voices ricocheted around the close, unheated room:
    "Roll the camera."
    "Roll it."
    "We're rolling."
    "One-eleven, two."
    "Speed."
    And Kaufman's voice, "Action."
    After a retouching of actors' makeup and an adjustment of lighting, there was another take. Somehow it felt right. Robertson got up from his chair. Sariego came in from outside saying, "Sound's good." A moment later Betty Abbott, the script girl said, "Print one-eleven, three." That made it official. Take three of scene one-eleven would stand.
    Beyond the breath-steamed windows snow fell with its own kind of quiet determination.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 1, 1970, page 9


    JACKSONVILLE--The script calls for a centennial celebration in 1876 in Northfield, Minn. Mother Nature, on the other hand, calls for snow and rain in 1970, in Jacksonville, Ore.
    When you put it all together, it means that Hollywood is once again creating its own reality in the form of a movie--this time, "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."
    And all the precipitation in Jacksonville, where the movie is being made, this week apparently presents no problem.
    Sally Abbott, script supervisor (and niece of comedian Bud Abbott), said the cameras are "able to angle away from the snow" when it falls so it's not in the picture. "You can't see the rain either," she said, "unless it's backlit. Isn't that crazy?"
    When snow is on the ground, as has been the case in Jacksonville in the mornings, movie crewmen simply hose it off.
    The movie, which stars Academy Award winner Cliff Robertson and character actor Robert Duvall, is written, produced and directed by Philip Kaufman. It is Kaufman's first major movie after two independent films--"Goldstein" and "Fearless Frank."
    "We hope to bring it in for under $1 million," Kaufman said. "It is essentially a low-budget picture."
    One reason the costs can be kept so low--by Hollywood standards--is that Robertson is receiving no salary for the part he plays.
    "That's because I own part of it," he said Wednesday. "I'm working for living expenses only." The show will be billed as "Robertson and Associates in collaboration with Universal Studios."
    As partial owner, Robertson has also had a hand in writing some of the script, and he and Kaufman are in nearly constant consultation on the set.
    Robertson's interest in the picture extends even to such minor matters as the scroungy hat he wears in the part of Cole Younger. "I picked it up off the floor of the Western Costume Co.," Robertson said. "They were going to sweep it out."
    The movie concerns the raid made by Jesse James (Duvall), and the Younger gang on a small town in Minnesota on July 4, 1876.
    A plot outline of "Raid" made available to the Register-Guard indicates that the members of the gang, especially Cole Younger, are depicted as honest, hard-working farmers, driven from their land by the railroads. In showing the gang members as ultimately becoming popular heroes, the show as outlined seems to have definite overtones of the trend-setting "Bonnie and Clyde."
    Harold Mendelsohn, publicity director for the movie company, said that "one-quarter to one-fifth" of the movie's budget will be spent in Jacksonville, and that the crew is scheduled to finish filming there on Dec. 19. They will work six days a week.
    The publicity director said there are about 50 members of the crew and that the Hollywood cast numbers between 12 and 24.
    The company plans to use 35 to 50 extras each day except one or two days when a celebration scene is to be shot.
    At that time, he said, about 200 extras will be used in the filming. "We're getting as many of them from here as we can," he added.
    Two streets, including the main one, of this Southern Oregon town of 1,500, have been transformed for the movie.
    Boardwalks have been installed, sand (simulating dirt) has been spread on the street, and hitching posts, wicker chairs and barrels are scattered about. (The barrels are there to hide the fire hydrants.)
    In addition, an antique shop has been transformed into a bakery, signs such as "Dentist & Mortuary" have been erected over already-existing businesses, bunting has been hung on most of the buildings, a calliope is bolted to the boardwalk and a blacksmith shop has been erected.
    And extras roam all over the place in what Robertson called "authentically funky" costumes.
    The character of the historic old town is already such, however, that it is occasionally difficult to separate the real from the unreal.
    A visitor Wednesday wandered into a general store, only to find four old men (one of whose teeth were in his pocket) sitting around a checker board set up on a barrel. Thinking he'd blundered into an atmosphere shot, he began to apologize, only to find that the four old men, all "authentically funky," were quite real.
Eugene Register-Guard, December 3, 1970, page 34


    Cliff Robertson is no stranger to the Medford area. In mid-May, 1969, about a month after receiving the Academy Award for his starring role of "Charly," Robertson made a personal appearance here, in connection with the local showing of the picture and the convention of the Oregon Association for Retarded Children.
    Today marks his first week of work on "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now on location in Jacksonville. Universal is producing the Philip Kaufman story of the 1876 robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield by the Younger Brothers and Jesse and Frank James. Robertson is cast as Cole Younger. Now, as before, he is winning many fans and friends.
    Most are aware that Robertson's acting career encompasses stage and television as well as films. He received the Emmy award for his portrayal in "The Game." He also starred in the original-TV versions of "The Hustler" and "Days of Wine and Roses." "Charly" was adapted from a television play.
    Robertson says that he worked on "Charly" for seven years before bringing it to the screen. There was the initial difficulty of selling backers on the idea.
    He also appeared as John F. Kennedy in "PT-109." The late President personally selected Robertson for the role in the picture released during Kennedy's brief term of office.
    One of his favorite roles was the ambitious young senator pulling convention political strings in "The Best Man," in which he and Henry Fonda battled for the party's presidential nomination.
    (A 1959 Robertson film, "Battle of the Coral Sea," is scheduled on "Phil's Philms" at 11:30 p.m. Saturday on KOBI-TV.)
    Robertson's latest picture in release is "Too Late the Hero," a Robert Aldrich film in which he stars as an American naval officer attached to a British unit during World War II. He was on location in the Philippines with this picture when he received news of winning the Oscar for "Charly."
    As Cole Younger, Robertson is in his first film approximating a western. Although "Raid" concerns a bank robbery, Director Philip Kaufman stresses that it is not a western in the general sense. The setting is in the Northern Midwest. Robertson has grown a full beard for his role, and adopted a costume of which he is quite proud. He uses the authenticity of the costumes as an illustration of the picture's detail.
    "Some westerns say they're authentic, but the costumes are too elaborate." Touching the ankle-length cattle duster he wears as Younger, he says, "This outfit is so funky it looks like the real thing. Not like wardrobe." He opens the duster to display a fraying wool coat and a large gold watch chain. And the hat, brown and beaten: "They showed me a lot of hats in wardrobe. I saw this funky thing over in the corner, on its way out to the dump or something. Isn't it great? No shape at all. Looks like it's worth about 32 cents," he says through an easy smile.
    Like many actors, Robertson also has writing and directing capabilities. The former newspaperman said that he assisted with writing and directing "Charly." On the Jacksonville set, he occasionally offers suggestions about his own or other actors' characterizations, or scene composition.
    Many spectators have flocked to J'ville to get a view of the filming. One mistake that observers often commit is the belief that because an actor or technician is not immediately involved in doing something, he is idle. Between takes or set-ups those involved in making the picture are usually planning what is to come next.
    When Robertson is not on-camera, he can sometimes be seen standing or sitting, his blue eyes locked on some introspection. A word will bring their gaze outward and widen his ready smile, but when the interruption is concluded, however courteously he answered it, he seems to withdraw back into the world of his own creation.
    Cliff Robertson's humanitarian dedications are well known; of course his efforts in behalf of the mentally retarded, and for Biafra. Commenting on radio and television announcements that he often records for a particular cause, he says, "That's easy for an actor to do. It's the people who are constantly working with the causes who deserve credit."
    Among his hobbies is aeronautics. He is a pilot. As a balloonist, he has participated in many races. He is also a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association (Local 319, please note). One of Robertson's air-minded friends is George Milligan of Medford's Mercy Flights.
    By the time "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" is in release, Robertson will be involved in other projects. One utilizes his interest in flying, a picture titled, "I Shot Down Baron von Richthofen--I Think." With Robertson as writer, director and actor, this one is set to film in Ireland.
    Although Southern Oregon is paling under rain and snow, Robertson is well tanned. Prior to coming here he was in Africa. He will narrate an Ivan Tors TV special about the diminishing elephant population.
    Mrs. Robertson, actress Dina Merrill, intended to accompany her husband on this Oregon trip, however, a recent television commitment precludes her doing so. The Robertsons have a two-year-old daughter, Heather. Another daughter, Stephanie, is 11.
    Tempo downbeat: Our Tempo beater recently had his attention gently directed to the fact that in mentioning That Store in Jacksonville, (currently Universal's unofficial J'ville office) failed to note that one of the owner-operators is Guy Vinson. Hard to believe that we should omit him after sharing so many pleasant conversations with him, but true. Mr. Vinson is definitely a part of That Store, and a nice Guy to have around.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 4, 1970, page C15


    Recently, on cable TV, the late show presented "The Maltese Falcon," one of John Huston's motion picture classics. In one scene Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre decided that Greenstreet's henchman, whom he "loves like a son," is expendable. So Elisha Cook Jr. gets killed. That, more or less, is the story of Cook's life in pictures.
    Actually, Cook is one of the screen's most durable featured actors. A gentle 67--he was born in San Francisco in 1903--his essential features and characterization have changed little over the years. He has come to represent the epitome of the eternally put upon: the fall guy. Slightly built with an inverted triangular face beginning to soften at the edges, Cook can thrust a breathless anxiety into his voice and, in front of the cameras, register apprehension, fear or madness in the roundness of his eyes.
    In "The Great Northfield Minnesota, Raid," which Philip Kaufman is now directing in Jacksonville for Universal, Cook portrays Bunker, a cashier in the bank that is robbed by the Cole Younger-Jesse James gang.
    Now, Cook can say that he has appeared in a number of westerns; but there was a time he could not. "They wouldn't let me make a western because they said I was too small," he says. Then he was cast in "Shane."
    The actor began in show business while still in his teens. His mother's stage name was Helen Hendry. Early in his career Cook appeared with George M. Cohan in Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness."
    Relaxing in his Jacksonville dressing room, within a short walking distance of the film set, Cook recalled that the first picture in which he ever appeared was made in a garage.
    "It was a talking picture, in the early thirties. We made it in a garage, believe it or not, on East 55th Street in New York City. The name of that picture was 'Her Unborn Child.'"
    Cook sipped from a plastic cup containing black coffee. "I'd done 'Her Unborn Child' on Broadway and women went for the title. We had five matinees a week. So anyhow, we make it and everybody gets 50 bucks a week. It was awful."
    Using film terminology to indicate time lapse, he said, "So now we cut and we're making 'Shane.' We're on location in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for a long time. Now we go back to the studio. And while we're in the studio, a man walked up to me and he says, 'You don't remember me, do you?' and I said, 'No sir, I don't.' He says, 'I'm Henry Ginsberg.' I said, 'I'm very glad to know you, Mr. Ginsberg.' He says, 'Well I produced your Unborn Child.' We laughed like heck. We really roared. He walked away and a man walked up to me and says, 'You know who he is? President of Paramount.'"
    During his career, Cook has been able to be both participant and observer insofar as motion picture history is concerned. Among the directors for whom he has worked: George Stevens, John Huston, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski. His work for Polanski was in "Rosemary's Baby," where he appeared as the landlord.
    "I worked for Kubrick in a picture called 'The Killing' where we robbed the race track. Marvelous picture." As an aside, or inwardly, he said, "Stan's from New York. His father's a musician." Cook recalled some other Kubrick pictures from "Spartacus" to "2001: A Space Odyssey." Then he said, "Stan made a picture all by himself with a little Eyemo. "For less than 15 hundred bucks."
    In Jacksonville Cook became reacquainted with an old friend, an actor who also appeared in "The Killing," Joseph Sauers of Ashland who made many pictures under the name of Joe Sawyer. He plans to visit Sauers' home.
    Outside his screen image, Cook is congenial, open and interested in people. But there is also in philosophical side to him. "Why am I here?" he asks. "Sometimes you wonder."
    Again over coffee he says, "We left San Francisco two weeks before the earthquake in 1906 in April." Then he underscores the thought with a personal story:
    "The third picture I ever made was a thing called 'Submarine Patrol' with John Ford. We were shooting a mockup, a ship at sea on a back lot at Twentieth Century-Fox, and I was supposed to be up on the bridge in a storm sequence. They poured the water all over me--you know, I was supposed to go over the bow of the ship--well, I got knocked off the captain's bridge and I got my thumb cut off. Naturally they had to shoot around me. They put me in the hospital.
    "Well I had a contract to go back to New York to do a show with Larry Schwab of Schwab-Mandel, a musical. I had to be in New York on a Monday morning for rehearsal.
    "So John Ford arranged plane reservations for me, or train on the Super Chief. That was in 1938. The train left Los Angeles Friday night and was in New York Monday. The plane, you had to change like five times going across country." Cook glances up. "Well, Ford gave me a police escort downtown. I missed the plane. I got on the train. You know what? Next morning in Albuquerque I get a paper. The plane turns over on takeoff and everybody was killed. So why am I here?"
    The character Cook portrays in "The Great Northfield Minnesota, Raid." is one who figured historically in the robbery. "He was shot by Jesse James, but he didn't die."
    Cook has worked in Oregon before, once near Bend in "Indian Fighter" with Kirk Douglas. "We built that fort over there. Then we gave it to the city. I guess it's been used for other pictures."
    His home is in Bishop, Calif. Mrs. Cook is the former Peggy McKenna, once a stand-in for Carole Landis. Mrs. Cook is now a member of the Sweet Adelines, who are planning a conclave at Bishop.
    One of the distinctions of "The Maltese Falcon" was the particular scene in which Cook, Bogart, Greenstreet, Lorre and Mary Astor appeared. The actors were stage-experienced. John Huston, he said, shot the scene, as though it were on a stage. "We rehearsed that for a day-and-a-half. Then we did it, continuous. Nine-hundred-eighty-feet of film. Almost a whole magazine. Eleven minutes of film is a good day-and-a-half's work."
    That scene, on a soundstage, wasn't subject to the whims of the weather. Elisha Cook's birthday is Dec. 28. He may spend it in the Rogue Valley.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 6, 1970, page 6


    JACKSONVILLE--It's the clothes, finally, that do it to you.
    The boardwalks, the dirt streets, the hitching posts, the wicker chairs and grain sacks scattered here and there--they all help, of course, but, finally, when you come right down to it, it's the clothes. They somehow go beyond being costumes and become . . . clothes.
    They're what make the set for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" more than just another set for just another movie.
    When you walk into the section of Jacksonville the movie company from Universal Studios is using, and you see the women in their drab-calico dresses, skimpy black, triangular shawls and simple bonnets made from a single, rectangular piece of cloth, and when you observe the men in their don't-give-a-damn work clothes or well-worn cutaway coats or shiny checkered suits and bowler hats--when you see these people in their clothes, and in that setting, it's precisely like walking into a living daguerreotype that just happens to be in color. Drab, ordinary color, of the type one would expect to find in a small Midwestern town.
    Both the movie's director, Philip Kaufman, and its star, Cliff Robertson, use the word daguerrotype to describe the feeling they want to get into the movie (both men pronounce it differently, incidentally) and they have succeeded admirably.
    It's rather as if a museum has been turned inside out, spilling all over the streets of the town, people and all. And, instead of the mustiness and antiquity usually associated with museums, this one has the rather odd effect of making the cars that pass by and the people in modern clothes look like the anachronisms.
    The effect is total enough that when you see a school-marm type smoking a filter-tipped cigarette, or a bank clerk wearing a ski jacket for warmth against the wretchedly cold Jacksonville weather, you want to tell them to stop it. You want to tell them that it's just . . . it's just not right.
    It's the same with all the movie equipment which is there to record the whole living stereopticon slide or daguerreotype scene or what have you. You understand, with one section of the mind, why they're there, but on another level, it's not right at all. It's as out of place as colored lights playing over the gardens of Babylon.
    The pace that is maintained on the set also contributes to the feeling of having walked through a time warp.
    It takes literally hours to set up a shot that will probably take less than a minute in the movie. Director Kaufman estimates that "we get about three minutes (of film) a day." That seems to be just about the right pace for daguerreotype characters.
    It also led one extra, who had been there from the beginning of the shooting on Nov. 27 to comment wryly, "I thought we were going to see a movie being made. I sure would like to see how it's done."
    The weird feeling of Time Past exists even when the company films a scene again and again and again.
    One scene, for instance, has Robertson in a blacksmith shop, putting a new sight on a rifle, and then walking to the door and sighting with it.
    It is a difficult scene photographically, and had to be redone 11 times.
    An although you see cameraman Bob Thomas (who also worked on "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") dollying back and forth with a huge camera, and even though you see another man heating the rifle barrel with a blowtorch so it will sizzle when Robertson puts it in the water, and although you hear things like "tight shot" and "move on the pan," it still isn't like a movie is being shot.
    Rather, it's as if through some cosmic caprice, some inexplicable unnatural phenomenon, the people (not actors any more) in the scene have been trapped into doing the same things over and over and over again.
    The movie equipment being used to record the action is simply curious-looking, completely extraneous stuff, and the people operating it are just as much out of place as it is. They might just as well have come out of Alice's White Rabbit's hole.
    It's a different kind of thing with the wind machine.
    When it's being used to blow the steam from a steam calliope a certain way, it's because the steam should be going that way, obscuring Robertson in precisely that manner.
    So it's okay for the wind machine to the there. It's taking things that are already right and making them more right, if you will.
    There are even some things you can't see that add to the overall rightness of things. Knowing that the I.O.O.F. Hall at one end of the street actually was built with two feet of dirt on its roof so it wouldn't catch fire when Indians shot burning arrows into it is one of these things. [The "fire arrow" story is a myth. Soil was the most readily available defense against fire from any source.]
    Completing the whole terribly correct 19th-Century scene is a black, purple-curtained, horse-drawn hearse standing in front of a building with a sign reading "Dentist & Mortuary."
    And bringing you back to the 20th century with a jolt is the realization that the white roses on each side of the coffin in the hearse are plastic.
Eugene Register-Guard, December 6, 1970, page 35


    JACKSONVILLE--How does a man who has made only two small films, both independent, neither well known, get to direct a movie with a million-dollar budget and an Academy Award-winning star?
    According to Philip Kaufman, 34, "Jennings Lang, a Universal Studios executive, called and said 'Cliff Robertson is in my office. I'd like you to meet him.' So I drove through the rush hour traffic in L.A., met him, and in half an hour, we knew we'd make a movie."
    The movie turned out to be "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," currently being filmed in Jacksonville.
    Actually, of course, there was a little more to this big chance than just meeting a man. The two independent films, for instance.
    The first, "Goldstein," made in 1963, was awarded the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the Cannes Film Festival.
    The second, "Fearless Frank," described by Kaufman as "a comic book morality film," was Jon Voight's first movie. Voight later won great acclaim for his part in "Midnight Cowboy."
    "Frank" was originally to be handled by a small independent distributing company which didn't do anything with it until acclaim came to Voight in "Cowboy." Then they sold it to a national distributing company which, according to Kaufman, is exploiting it on the basis of "Cowboy."
    "I didn't make it as an exploitation film," Kaufman said, "and I feel bad about the way it's being handled."
    Eventually, Kaufman said, "Universal saw the films I had done, and I began writing for them. One project fell through. This one ('Raid') has been in the works for two years."
    The idea for "Raid" came from a conversation Kaufman had at the studio and he began researching it. The research came relatively easily since he had been a history major at the University of Chicago. Now, he says, "I have a two-foot shelf of research material."
    One of the major differences between his earlier films and this one is the matter of budget. "Goldstein" cost $40,000 and "Fearless Frank" was completed for $140,000. The budget for "Raid" is about $1 million.
    Also, "Raid's" budget is more or less just there. For his other two movies, Kaufman said he got the money "by knocking on doors."
    Kaufman said his wife, Rose, has supported and helped him throughout his career, and that she "wants me to do what is honest and artistic."
    To this end, the young director said "We're exaggerating things somewhat in this show. We want that funky look that only old photographs of history seem to have, so whenever we get a perfect shot, we throw it off a bit to give you the feeling of a document. We're not after slick frames or compositions which are supposed to be considered in perfect taste."
    Kaufman said he has no particular fears about directing his first major movie. "It's what I want to do, and I enjoy doing it, so I don't think about being scared."
    "Talking about being scared. It's when you see a bad movie. That scares the heck out of you. You feel like 'What am I doing here? What if my movie comes out like that?'"
    And he never once mentioned that French filmmaker Jean Renoir called "Goldstein" nothing less than "The best American film I have seen in 20 years."
Eugene Register-Guard, December 6, 1970, page 35


    To the Editor: The letter in last Sunday's Tribune, "Anyone Else?" by a Central Point woman who saw Frank James, reminds me what my father told me.
    When he filed on a homestead in Jewell County, Kansas, in the year 1872, he would have to go some 200 miles east in order to get employment during six months of each year.
    On one occasion he went to the State Fair at Topeka, Kansas. While he was in the ticket line, an armed man on a horse asked the gatekeeper what he would do if Jesse James would ride up and demand the gross receipts. The gatekeeper quickly replied, "I would shoot him." "Well," the stranger said, "I am Jesse James," and quickly seized the money boxes and rode off without a shot being fired from either party.
    I never learned if it was the real bandit James or some other gang posing as the James brothers, but I did see the Coffeeville, Kan. raid by the Dalton boys in a moving picture show around 1909 in Kansas City, Mo.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 8, 1970, page 4


    The effects of the Jacksonville filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" are being felt all over the Rogue Valley. One spread to Ashland last night when Cliff Robertson, starring in "Raid," appeared at the Varsity Theater in connection with the current engagement of his Academy Award picture, "Charly."
    Varsity manager Harry Arnold described the attendance at last night's opening performance as "a good crowd." Most were young people of school and college age.
    Robertson continued to win friends, as he has since arriving here, by greeting the audience in the lobby prior to the screening and signing autographs.
    One girl, asked if she had seen "Charly" before said no. Another said, "Yes, it's a great flick. It has heart."
    Arnold introduced Robertson, who received a warm, sustained round of applause as he walked onto the Varsity stage. The actor recalled his 1969 visit to Southern Oregon, saying:
    "When I first came to Oregon a year and a half ago, I was privileged to be invited to the National Association for Retarded Children Convention in Medford. From the time I landed in Portland and Mr. Milligan of Mercy Flights flew me over to Medford, until I left a day later, I encountered nothing but friendship and warmth and a great spirit, and I was very impressed.
    "Since we've been in Jacksonville this last two weeks, we've encountered this same kind of spirit and this same kind of warmth and hospitality. And tonight, my first experience in Ashland, I've encountered the same feeling. I personally, along with all the rest of the cast and crew of the picture would like to thank you all for your very kind reception.
    "If the rest of Oregon is like these three towns, you've got a great state, and we're very happy to be here."
    Robertson described "Charly" as "a picture about a little guy with a great handicap. It's also the story about a lot of little people with handicaps, none of which they were responsible for. We've taken it as far as a dramatic form and extended it into the future. We're told by science that hopefully in not too many years they will be able to do what we did in this picture."
    In "Charly," based on Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon," Robertson plays the part of a retarded man who, through surgery, becomes a super intellect.
    The first run of "Charly" locally was in 1969.
    One test of the worth of a picture is, would you want to see it again. This reviewer has seen "Charly" four times. Each time some additional nuance appears. And there is, of course, Cliff Robertson's outstanding performance.
    "Charly" continues at the Varsity through Tuesday. Companion feature is "For Love of Ivy," with Sidney Poitier.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 10, 1970, page 7


    The other day a tourist visiting Jacksonville asked directions to the city's museum. Trying to accommodate, a local resident said, "It's down this street, in the old courthouse. You can't miss it. There's a sign on the front that says 'Northfield College.'"
    Two weeks ago Universal Pictures began filming "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," in Jacksonville. This city of 1,500 was chosen from several possible sites because of the downtown business district, built during the mid and late 19th century and still looking that way. The picture concerns a robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minn., by the Younger Brothers and Jesse and Frank James in 1876.
    Philip Kaufman, writer-director of the film, became interested in Jacksonville about a year ago when he was scouting for locations. Kaufman and Universal worked with Gov. Tom McCall's motion picture representative, Warren Merrill, who in turn consulted with the Medford and Jacksonville chambers of commerce.
    In early October Merrill met with representatives of the Jacksonville Planning Commission and City Council, as well as local executive personnel from Pacific Northwest Bell and Pacific Power and Light Co. to explain the studio's interest in the town, where negotiations stood, and what would be required of Jacksonville should the picture come in.
    Despite the prospect of "clean green dollars," the news met with mixed reaction among local businessmen and residents.
    California Street, principal thoroughfare through town, is Oregon 238. Traffic, including many logging trucks, would have to be re-routed over a less suitable street one block away.
    The plan was to board the sidewalks of California Street and to cover four blocks of the street itself with several inches of decomposed granite. Power and telephone lines would have to be dropped into the gutter and buried under the gravel. Traffic control would require extra policemen. (Jacksonville's regular police force is a man named Frank Carter.)
    All this was accomplished after several meetings between Jacksonville city officials and key personnel from the picture. Universal assured Jacksonville merchants that interruptions to business would be minimal. The studio negotiated contracts with individual businessmen and affected property owners on California Street providing a daily rated fee for inconvenience that might occur.
    Within weeks after Merrill's initial announcement, Universal's art director for the picture, George Webb, and set director, Hal Gausman, had their construction crews restyling the Victorian face of downtown.
    The day after Thanksgiving filming began under a drenching rain in the Jacksonville Cemetery. The next day cast and crews moved onto their specially prepared street. Police Chief Carter estimated that a crowd of 3,500 turned out that day (Saturday, Nov. 28) to see star Cliff Robertson at work. Academy Award winner Robertson is cast as Cole Younger.
    (Last Wednesday, Robertson made a personal appearance as a special showing of his award-winning film "Charly" opened at Ashland's Varsity Theater.)
    The presence of the motion picture company is having its effect culturally, financially and socially on the Rogue Valley. Universal is headquartered in Medford at the Red Lion Motel. About 40 rooms are occupied by actors and crews. Restaurant and bar receipts have been increased by the new residents as well as by local people, who drop in hoping to glimpse someone they have seen on the screen.
    Besides Robertson, some others in the cast are Robert Duvall as Jesse James (Duvall was recently seen in "True Grit" and "MASH"); Luke Askew (from "Easy Rider"), Jack Manning, Robert H. Harris, R. C. Armstrong, Royal Dano and Elisha Cook. There are no major roles for women in the picture.
    Meals for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," are catered locally by the Jacksonville Inn. Owner of the Inn, Jack Bate, reported serving lunch to 85 people from the picture the day filming started. Later the figure rose to about 130, and when the company moved to an out-of-town location, Bate expected to serve about 180. Rooms upstairs in the Inn are used as dressing rooms.
    Some Jacksonville businesses report adverse effects. One restaurant operator outside the immediate filming area says he has lost customers because of parking problems caused by the re-route of Oregon 238. A beauty shop owner who has been at the same location for a number of years tells a similar story.
    An employee of the U.S. National Bank's Jacksonville branch, in the building Universal has designated as the Dampier Hotel, says that while deposits remain up because of an interbranch service, customer flow is down, and two people have withdrawn their accounts claiming inconvenience. The bank's branch in Central Point reported an increase in customers, largely from Jacksonville accounts. "The 3rd of the month is usually very busy," a Jacksonville employee said, "This month it wasn't."
    "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" is budgeted at just under $1 million, as many are these days when picture producers are trying simply to survive. Up to 200 persons have been considered as extras, at about half the going pay rate for extras in Hollywood. However, when extra casting was announced, several thousand people turned out, to work for $15 per day. Those who were selected are enjoying their work, even though much of it is in the rain.
    When the picture was ready to begin shooting, the rain set in with a vengeance. There were a few days of snow. Director Kaufman began filming in the rain anyway. He and cinematographer Bruce Surtees are using the weather to establish mood. This week, when the weather began to clear, production crews had to spray the scene with sprinkler hoses in order to keep the scenes consistent.
    Original plans called for the picture company to leave the Jacksonville area by Dec. 10, although the date may be set up to the first of the year. Interiors will be shot at Universal City Studios in Hollywood. Some other location work is planned for Locke, Calif.
    Next Monday (Dec. 10) Warren Merrill and Gov. McCall's Motion Picture Promotion Committee, consisting of eight businessmen from several Oregon cities, will visit Jacksonville. Oregon is actively soliciting Hollywood's attention. Whether Jackson will win or not is still an unresolved question. Some residents have submitted a petition, asking that the boardwalks and dirt streets be retained and that power and phone lines be permanently buried. Others oppose the idea.
    Then, a couple of days ago, one resident asked this reporter if there were anything to the rumor that another picture company was already considering the historic town as a location.
    "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" may be the first olive out of the jar. But then, a liking for olives is an acquired taste.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 11, 1970, page C2


    JACKSONVILLE--The eight-member Governor's Motion Picture Promotion Committee will make its first on-site inspection of a movie production in Oregon early next week.
    The committee will visit Jacksonville for an inspection and information-gathering tour of location filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota, Raid," Monday and Tuesday according to Warren Merrill, special projects manager of Gov. Tom McCall's Economic Development Division.
    The relatively new committee is headed by Paul Lansdowne, of Eugene, representing the Oregon Motel and Hotel Association.
    Other members are Flavel Temple, of the Oregon Restaurant Association; Bay Lowes, of U.S. National Bank; Mike Jordan, Pacific Northwest Bell, and John Sell, of First National Bank of Oregon, all of Portland; Ervin Smith, of Burns, representing Eastern Oregon; Curt Lamb, Dallas, representing Oregon Chambers of Commerce, and Bob Ladd, Salem, representing the Oregon Restaurant and Beverage Association.
    Monday will be spent at the filming site, with a meeting of the committee scheduled Tuesday morning.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 11, 1970, page C2


    Cliff Robertson had been talking on the telephone outside his dressing room upstairs in the Jacksonville Inn for half an hour, more or less. The call he had just completed was obviously business and concerned motion picture work.
    Harker Wade, unit production manager for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" was waiting to talk with Robertson as soon as the call was finished. When Wade and Robertson concluded their discussion, Jack Manning, a cast member and friend of Robertson's for many years, knocked on the door and escorted me in.
    Robertson had removed his Cole Younger costume and put on a sweatshirt and faded blue pants. His long hair and beard still showed dampness from filming in the rain earlier.
    As many know, Robertson is cast as Younger in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," the Universal Picture now on Jacksonville location which tells the story of a Younger-James gang bank robbery in Northfield in 1876.
    This was a re-meeting. The Academy Award actor had consented to an interview in 1969 when he visited Medford in connection with his picture, "Charly," and the convention of the Oregon Association for Retarded Children.
    Sitting on the edge of his bed, Robertson lit a cigarette and discussed his work, in this picture and others.
    It is general knowledge that most of this picture is being shot in the rain. This would appear to hamper production. Is it? [sic]
    "If you have a lot of dedicated actors and crew like we have, they have an ability to sort of overcome almost all the inclement weather that comes along."
    After early shots were established in the rain, some scenes had to be augmented with sprinklers. Robertson said, "We are literally, you might say, painted into a rainy corner in this picture . . . Most of the time in Hollywood they sit around waiting for the sun, but we couldn't afford that, and we also felt that maybe this would be a unique aspect of the picture, that maybe this would be the first time people would see a western where a robbery was done in the rain. Does it always have to be high noon and out in the desert, the way pictures usually depict it?"
    Besides rain, Robertson noted other ways in which the picture breaks from certain western cliches. "I would say our picture is closer to the truth, the way it really was back in those days, in this case, 1876. We're simply trying to go back into history books and tell it the way it was then. We're trying to show that the heroes didn't all wear white hats and they didn't have fast draw holsters and tailored clothes. We're trying to show that they really, in truth, were a pretty grubby bunch of boys."
    The development extends to characterization. Robertson said, "They weren't uncomplicated either. We're not trying to show them as overly romantic and well dressed. That's why we all look so scruffy out here. I think that people who look at some of the old books and Daguerreotypes and talk with their grandparents--I think they can corroborate that."
    Robertson's successful "Charly" was a 'low budget' picture. The current "Northfield Raid" is also in that class. Budget now, though, is not necessarily synonymous with quality. Robertson was asked how about the trend toward lower budgeted films. Could this help the creative aspect of picture making?
    "I don't think there's any question. When you're making pictures like some of us have seen in the last 10 years where the budgets run $20, $22 million, it's a pretty ridiculous situation. There have been some pretty notable exceptions, and that's what's induced some big studios to try it, again. But really, if you look at all the huge budget pictures, rarely have any of them ended up in the black. They've been lucky, most of them, to break even. In some cases they've put a studio into such a near bankrupt situation they've almost closed the industry within that studio. It also precludes the little producer, a group of people like we have here.
    "If you keep your budget realistic, obviously you have a better chance of making some kind of profit. If you make some kind of profit, this means you can continue to make pictures."
    Robertson praises the "cohesive team effort" within the current picture and says that this would be lost in a larger-budgeted work.
    Commenting on how well the cast and crew of "Raid" seem to mesh, Robertson said, "Phil Kaufman, the director, and I spent a lot of time getting just the right actors for the right parts. We knew what these fellows could deliver . . . If we continue the way we have been going, with the cooperation of the people in Medford, who have been very very involved in trying to help us in every way, this will help in making it a very successful team effort."
    Robertson and Ralph Nelson, who directed "Charly," worked as a team and took a gamble on the picture. He acknowledged this and said, "My wife said the other day, 'When are you going to stop gambling and work where you get a salary?' I'm not getting a salary for this--maybe a minimum to satisfy the union, but I'm not getting what I'd normally get if I were working for somebody else."
    The TV special Robertson recently did for Ivan Tors on location in Africa will be shown on NBC (KMED) on Jan. 15.
    When he received word of his winning the Academy Award, Cliff Robertson was on location in the Philippines shooting "Too Late the Hero" with Michael Caine. He considers this a pre-award picture and counts "Raid" as his first since "Charly."
    "I'm gambling on this because I feel that the picture has merit, the story has merit, the actors have merit. I think that this will come across and I have enough faith in the American public that word of mouth--we won't have a lot of money for a big advertising campaign--but I think they'll recognize the merit and that word of mouth will get around that this is the unique western and very honest."
    Robertson has begun work on a personal film project, "I Shot Down the Red Baron--I Think." He says he is about one-third of the way through it and intends to resume it when his work on "Raid" is completed.
    Whatever his future productions, he will certainly hold a special regard for "Charly." When he talks about it, his own sense of personal involvement is apparent. He appeared in the television presentation, "The Two Worlds of Charley Gordon."
    After seeing television roles he created go to other actors in "Days of Wine and Roses" and "The Hustler," Robertson bought the rights to this one. He worked seven years to get backing. No one was interested in pictures about retardation. He was told, "Nobody'll come to see it. Nobody wants to be reminded that these things exist." Then the late Selig J. Seligman and ABC financed him. "He opened the door everybody else kept closed."
    He says, "It was a very unique movie, very very touching. It also had a lot of humor." When he received the Oscar, Robertson said, "Doors burst open." He got a number of script offers, but turned down several waiting for something he believed in. Finally, he decided on "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."--A.R. [Al Reiss]
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 11, 1970, page C3


    Philip Kaufman is director of The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid." He is also producer. To look at him in the crowd behind the camera you might not pick him out as either. He also wrote the script. You might grant him that.
    Kaufman is a sensitive young man who uses his deep, mellifluous voice only when he has something to say. "Raid" is his third picture. The first, "Goldstein," won him a Cannes film festival award in 1963. His second was "The Adventures of Frank," a pop satire with Jon Voight, later released as "Fearless Frank." To Kaufman's disappointment, although he made the picture several years ago, it was not released until after "Midnight Cowboy." The distributor hoped to gain from the "cowboy" publicity for Voight.
    "How did you happen to choose Voight?"
    "I'd seen him in New York. He was off-Broadway acting in 'A View From the Bridge.'"
    Kaufman began producing pictures from the standpoint of a writer. He attended Harvard Law School, then studied American History for a year at the University of Chicago. He and his wife moved to San Francisco when he decided he wanted to write, to "…take a year off and plan the novel." He supported himself at a variety of jobs. The Kaufmans moved to Italy, and there, for a while, he taught math.
    Our conversation is during the noon break in filming. The picture company, actors and crew, about 120, are in the upstairs dining room of the Jacksonville Inn. Kaufman sits near the end of one of the long tables. Early afternoon sunlight filters through the amber window, onto the white linen tablecloth and the red paper napkins; onto Kaufman's thinly angular face, the amber finding something of its own in his eyes, almost brown, deep and quiet as his voice.
    As the questions are asked, the eyes are directly on you, as if they are doing the listening. When he answers, his gaze may drift to the tablecloth or the plate as though he is mentally writing the answer there before he reads it back. Occasionally he touches his finger to his forehead. Kaufman is 34, youthful despite his trimmed beard.
    Does Kaufman have difficulty in adjusting from the introspective work of writing to directing that requires exercising and delegation of authority?
    He points out that a writer who produces and directs his own script usually fares better than the writer who does not. Since revisions are often required for such extraneous reasons as weather or individual location characteristics, the directing writer can make them the way he wants them. Kaufman recognizes filmmaking as a venture of communal talents. Not all changes, he says, in an original idea are necessarily bad.
    "That thing today, when the horses stampeded. We didn't plan that. We couldn't stage it that way. But we got it on film. We can hope it comes out good."
    One scene in the picture calls for Royal Dano to fall over a steam calliope. The incident Kaufman noted was one in which the calliope let out a short blast and a number of horses bolted up California Street.
    The calliope is driven with live steam. The actor or stuntman falling across it runs more than a little risk. Couldn't they simulate it with dry ice?
    "Then it would look like dry ice." Kaufman says, "That's one reason we're making the picture in Jacksonville." When early shots were taken in the rain, a certain mood was established. Cameraman Bruce Surtees achieved a particular effect working with the rain, not against it. This past week when the weather began to clear, the picture makers had to supply rain of their own to maintain the mood.
    Kaufman referred to an earlier scouting trip through the Jacksonville area. "I saw those giant logging wheels down at the Pioneer Village. I wanted to use those." The wheels, belonging to George McUne, were featured in an early shot, with McUne at the helm of his steam tractor.
    On pictures in general, what directors does Kaufman admire? He mentions John Cassavetes and "Shadow." He says, more in reminder than qualification, "When I became interested in films, one was pretty much on his own. There weren't as many books on filmmaking. There weren't all the college courses. Now, it's the thing to do."
    "Do you think a picture has the right to be entertaining? Must it spell everything out for the audience?"
    Kaufman glances down at his right hand on the table, then up. "I think the audience has a responsibility to the picture. In the forties, it was all the story, how the story was told. Now pictures can be considered by the moment, by what each moment is worth."
    "Do you believe in injecting slow-motion techniques for intensity?"
    "Sam Peckinpah has done this very well. I'm not in competition with Peckinpah."
    "You think more in terms of creative expression than competition then?"
    He nods slightly, "Yes."
    "Would you call 'The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid' an anti-establishment?"
    "Only in the sense that it may not be what forty years of Hollywood westerns have led people to expect."
    "But weren't the Youngers and the James Brothers primarily farmers who were driven into outlawry?"
    Here Kaufman rubs his fingertip across his forehead, "Well, in our picture, we consider people who become what they're fighting against. The townspeople rise up against the robbers and become the very thing they're fighting."
    Local shooting of "Raid" is principally exteriors. Additional exteriors are to be filmed in Locke, Calif., with some second unit work at Sonora. Interiors will be done at Universal City Studios.
    "I've never worked in a studio before," Kaufman says, "This will be my first time."
    "Some directors have had highly successful careers without ever having done a 'Ben-Hur' size epic. How do you feel about this?"
    Within his beard, the corners of Kaufman's mouth turn up into a smile, "This picture is big enough."
    If the writer's sensitivity can translate directly to the screen, we can expect important, if not epic films from Philip Kaufman. At one point during our conversation he said, quietly, "The writer must have his tentacles out into many areas of awareness. The writer must observe and feel, and sense."
    Even before any hint was given through word or gesture that it was time to leave the table, Philip Kaufman's mind was already, obviously involved in constructing some scene or action outside, beyond the amber window.--A.R.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 11, 1970, page C4


    Alby Thomas may have cut his initials into a milestone in the recently burgeoning Oregon motion picture industry. This year he qualified for an Oregon resident hunting license.
    Usually a Californian, Thomas is now in Southern Oregon working as transportation coordinator for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," the Universal Picture starring Cliff Robertson now being filmed in Jacksonville.
    Last spring and summer Thomas was in Newport where he was transportation coordinator for "Sometimes A Great Notion," another Universal film starring Paul Newman.
    Most people outside the motion picture industry don't even conceive of the existence of a transportation coordinator. Most within the industry can't go ten minutes without thinking of him in one way or another.
    On location, and to and from, the coordinator is responsible for virtually anything on wheels and for seeing that it rolls, even if that means building a road, as Thomas had to do on one of the Newport area locations.
    Actors and crew must be driven to and from locations; equipment and livestock have to be moved, and, when a take is in progress, traffic has to be controlled.
    Traffic control is an important part of the coordinator's responsibility. Thomas, a spare 50 in Levi's and western hat, wears a denim jacket decorated with patch insignia from various police agencies with which he has worked. On location, he supervises policemen assigned to traffic duty.
    Thomas has been involved in picture transportation for 32 years. He spent about 20 years at Republic Studios, then went to Universal when Revue (MCA) took over.
    "Notion" was not the first time he worked a Paul Newman film. Thomas was coordinator on "Winning." The auto race drama was filmed in part at Indianapolis during the 1968 Memorial Day 500. "We had 278 pieces of equipment to supervise on that one." He recalls meeting Medford Indy driver Art Pollard while there.
    When the picture company begins work at 6:30 or 7 a.m., Thomas must be out and ready to roll by 5 a.m. "Up at Newport I had a car with three mobile phones," he says. "I'd go out early in the morning and check the weather, then phone Arthur Newman (production manager) and tell him which location we should shoot at. We only missed twice." he says. "Once they listened to the weather man instead of me."
    Thomas says the Jacksonville location for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," is an easy one, because it's so centralized. With few exceptions, the filming is concentrated in the downtown area.
    For several days he has been checking an area on the Applegate where a baseball game is to be filmed. Rain affects the way in which Thomas deploys his equipment. "The field is soft. If we go in with trucks, we could tear it up. We want to leave it like we found it. If it dries just a little, we can park the big rigs out on the road."
    But, in making motion pictures as in many other projects, distance is time and time is money. Before the picture company decided to move onto the Applegate location Thursday, they asked Alby's opinion. Then, when he told them, they listened.
    In the field, where no electrical power is available to drive cameras or activate lights, it is brought in on trucks, mobile sanitation facilities complete with showers are set up, and the all-important caterer's wagon comes in on rubber tires.
    While some picture driving requires special knowledge and skills needing Hollywood-trained personnel, Thomas will always hire some local drivers when he goes into an area. Here 18 men are working for him. Seven are local.
    Quiet, yet personable, the gray-eyed Thomas is all business while he's on the job. While he likes the relaxed atmosphere of the Jacksonville location, he prefers the challenge of keeping busy. Jacksonville artist Elaine Witteveen sketched an impromptu portrait of him over coffee recently. Even over coffee, Thomas is on top of the picture's next move.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 11, 1970, page C5  Witteveen's sketch was printed above the article.


    Jack Manning is cast in two roles in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now on location in Jacksonville. Each of the characters he portrays gets killed.
    Originally, the New York-based actor was signed to fill the role of the richest man in town. Then he was shifted into the part of Heywood, the auditor at the First National Bank of Northfield, when the actor originally signed had to return to California. That left Manning's initial role open. After thinking about it, the people who made decisions decided Manning could do both.
    As Heywood, he is clean-shaven. His hair is a distinguished gray. In his other characterization, Manning's hair is dark and he wears a mustache and beard.
    Jack Manning's association with "Raid" began with a 2 a.m. call from Cliff Robertson some time ago. He and Robertson have been friends for many years. In the early 1960s he directed Robertson and Dina Merrill (Mrs. Robertson) in a summer touring production of "Voice of the Turtle."
    Manning says, "The production to 'Voice of the Turtle' started a whole new chapter in my life." When the play opened in Bermuda, Manning met Frances Smith, now his wife.
    Mrs. Manning and their two children, two-year-old Colin and an 11-month-old daughter, Brook Genevre, are scheduled to arrive in Medford tomorrow from New York.
    Manning also has a grown daughter, Gale, by a previous marriage. A former model, she is associated with a New York agency, where she selects models for particular assignments.
    Manning appears in two pictures in current release, "The Owl and the Pussycat," with Barbra Streisand, and "Where's Poppa," with Ruth Gordon. His varied acting and directing experience counts much stage and television work.
    Some of the stage productions in which he has appeared are: "Othello," with Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer, "Man and Superman," with Maurice Evans, "The Boy Friend," with Judy Carne, and "Junior Miss," under the direction of Moss Hart. He portrayed Oscar in Mike Nichols' production of "The Little Foxes."
    When television was something more than a colorful means of selling soap, Manning conceived and acted in a series of "mono-dramas," in which he, alone, combined monologue with acting. The presentations used one actor and three cameras. Typical of his work for these were such plays as "Julius Caesar," "Hamlet," and "A Tale of Two Cities."
    He has taught and directed at the School of Fine and Applied Arts at Boston University and at the School of Acting at Brandeis University.
    On the training an actor needs, Manning says, "You never stop educating yourself. It's living--living, but being aware while you're living. You use it all: ballet, fencing, first base--athletics are just as important. Imagination. Keep your imagination lively. You have to stretch. Kids have it when they're young, you know, 'You must be the fireman and I must be the groceryman,' but they learn inhibition as they grow older. Your observation is important."
    Nudity in pictures? If it belongs, but Manning doesn't believe in taking a story that is too thin in the first place and "jazzing it up with nude scenes." He says, "There aren't that many stories that require them, but then there aren't that many stories that require shooting and killing either."
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 11, 1970, page C5


    WHITE CITY--Mel Yoder, 50, a two-year member at the Veterans Administration Domiciliary, has been singled out from the ranks of about 5,000 applicants as one of the leading "extras" of the Jacksonville movie set.
    Yoder, a native of Ragersville, Ohio, is a former Seventh-day Adventist minister, a graduate of Southern Missionary College, Collegedale, Tenn. He is cast in the role of a leading citizen--the town's dentist-mortician--in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid." About 120 domiciliary members applied as "extras," and 45 were placed on call, according to Ralph Nelson, who supervised the veterans' listing.
    "I have never been stagestruck or an exhibitionist," said Yoder, "and regard my presence on the Jacksonville lot as a fortunate accident. I was standing in the rear of the crowd of applicants on the first day of registry almost out of sight of film officials. But I was somehow spotted by Phil Kaufman, the film's director, who shouted for me to come forward--and I became an undertaker!"
    "Mine is a rather small role, but I believe now that I will be working the length of the picture. I appear several times for brief moments in my role of undertaker as a kind of allegorical presence--a portent that dark doings are afoot and that I am ready for any oncoming incident in keeping with my profession.
    "My only prior association with theater was that of a folk musician. I interspersed my service during years of itinerant ministry with psalms on an ancient form of mandolin and my guitar."
    Yoder, a volunteer Laubach instructor at the White City Adult Opportunity Center on the domiciliary grounds, plans to save every cent of his earnings as a "movie star" and then enroll for graduate theological work at a Protestant seminary.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 13, 1970, page B7


    The Reiss family of Jacksonville gets involved in things as a unit. Like movies.
    Al Reiss has been movie editor, among other things, for the Mail Tribune during the past several years. And he has written virtually all of the numerous news and feature stories published about "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," the film currently being made in Jacksonville.
    His wife, Audrey, is an extra in the movie. And so is their daughter Karen. (Older daughter Belinda is away at college.)
    MT photographer Larry Holman snapped the three of them on the set the other day.
Cleve Twitchell, "Potluck," Medford Mail Tribune, December 13, 1970, page B12


    Royal Dano relaxed in his room at the Red Lion. He had put in a tough day, over the steam calliope--literally--on the Jacksonville location of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now being filmed there by Universal.
    In red-and-blue plaid wool shirt, slacks, with his graying hair and salt-and-pepper beard, Dano looked as if he might have just come in from a day's work in the woods. Around a cigarette, taking an occasional pull from a glass of Scotch, the actor talked about his work and how he first became interested in the theater.
    The narrative quality added by the tone of Dano's voice and inflections is lost in any written account, but certain incidents in his life, as he tells them, reflect humor, warmth, and, above all, an interest in people.
    Shortly after I'd arrived for the interview, a friend Dano had not seen in 25 years came into the room. Dee Parker, who lived in Medford until 1953, had been a musician in a servicemen's show troupe in Burma during World War II. Parker now lives in Salem. He was in Medford working with Peter Kiewit Sons on the Bear Creek Valley Sanitary Authority project when he saw Dano's picture on the front page of last Sunday's Mail Tribune. That brought about a reunion between the two friends.
    Dano said, recalling Burma: "At that time, we put together shows a little bit heavy, because we had to put up our own sets--dig post holes, chop bamboo, bury the thing, guy-wire it off, push anything you could find into the area for a stage. One night we used an old Japanese flatbed trailer. We tied everything to it. It looked so shot up we never thought it would move. In the middle of a barn dance sequence, the vibrations loosened the trailer and we rolled away in the middle of the show."
    Dano got the acting urge concurrent with the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific. He had been cast in a high school pageant as Franklin D. Roosevelt. The production was in rehearsal in late November of 1941. It was presented in New York on Sunday, Dec. 7, in front of 3,000 people. Another young actor portrayed Winston Churchill. The scene was to commemorate the American-British Alliance of the Atlantic Charter.
    "In this scene they had like 50 guys in British uniforms in the background and 50 guys in American naval uniforms--Jack Carter, the comic, was in this chorus. And the orchestra consisted of 150 kids from the school of music.
    "I went on stage that evening, with the 150 piece orchestra playing: 'Bohm-bohm-bohm-bohm,' the Fifth Symphony, and across the stage came a guy dressed as Winston Churchill. I said (intoning as Roosevelt), 'Mistah Prime Minister--' and that's all I got out, and the joint came apart. They started yelling and stomping. They thought the building was gonna fall down. And I thought I was good. You know, I didn't realize the fact that a moment had occurred in history, where if anybody had said, 'Mister Prime Minister,' in a semblance of Roosevelt's voice, they would have torn up the place."
    Dano had an appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, but the prospect of three years out of action was too much. He volunteered for the draft. When he was in the army in the CBI, actor Melvyn Douglas, then an officer, tapped him for a part in the servicemen's troupe. "They could send us down the Lido Road where they couldn't send the USO."
    He still didn't consider making a career of acting until he returned to New York, after the war and renewed acquaintance with army friends who were going into theater. He studied at the American Theater Wing.
    As we talked, the television set was projecting an image of James Arness and Dennis Weaver in the "Marshal Dillon" re-runs of Gunsmoke. The sound was turned down.
    Dano has done much television work, including "Gunsmoke." He has worked with the distinguished "Omnibus" series, in which he portrayed Abraham Lincoln. His first feature motion picture assignment was in Oregon about 20 years ago, also for Universal, in "Bend of the River" with James Stewart and Rock Hudson.
    Dano acted in Shakespearean plays in high school. Recalling a high school production of "Taming of the Shrew" in which he played Petruchio, he said, "We had five or six companies in a big school of 11,000 pupils. I was able to fool around a little bit and be inventive in the scene where he grabs Kate and never lets her eat. Instead of a roast beef, I decided to use a string of sausages. I skipped rope around the stage with it." He feels that Shakespeare is better when produced on the stage than when read. "In those days I had no intention of becoming an actor," he said.
    Dano has a fine awareness of the different media in which he works, and the strengths and weaknesses of each. He has the training of study and experience. Guiding that is his interest in people. He is as deeply involved in the work of young filmmakers as he is in the history of television; such programs as "Suspense," in which he worked with Robert H. Harris, also in the cast of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."
    Much of Dano's great empathy stems, obviously, from his own life. In 1935, when he was 12, he ran away from home in New York and worked his way West. His account of the experience, delivered as a monologue too spellbinding to interrupt, comes out extemporaneously with the quality of blank verse. Although the resonance of his voice, pitched low into quiet conversation, is lost in print, here is a verbatim quotation of a part of his narration set into a blank verse form:
    Royal Dano's work in Jacksonville will be completed and he will leave within the next day or two. Since he has been here, he has re-acquainted himself with old friends and met a number of new ones, who hope that the road will lead back to Oregon.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 13, 1970, page B8


    JACKSONVILLE (SPECIAL)--One of the major stars of the upcoming midwestern "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" did not come up from Hollywood but has been here longer than any of us: the town of Jacksonville.
    The movie is not a western. Co-producer, writer and director Phil Kaufman and star and co-producer Cliff Robertson stress that it is a midwestern, which is why Jacksonville finally got the proverbial big break.
    "The West had really passed Northfield by," Kaufman said. "Northfield was no frontier town, and Jesse James was not Billy the Kid. We wanted brick buildings rather than wooden ones, because Northfield was really a small city. In fact, the James gang even watched a baseball game. That's an incident in the movie. This was 1876, and all the action was west of Northfield."
    Whatever the final picture turns out to be, it will be a collaboration between Robertson and Kaufman. Both men have been working on it for more than a year, and both want it to come off well. It was Kaufman's original idea and script, but he and Robertson re-worked it, and they are functioning as co-producers. Moreover, while Kaufman set some shots up by himself on the day this writer was on the set, he would often consult with Robertson, and they would work things out together.
    The rain was falling in a steady, ceaseless patter until an hour before sunset, but it didn't bother anyone. "We're delighted with the rain," said Robertson from behind a real beard, the one he started for "Too Late The Hero." "You rarely see real rain in a movie, and this may be the first bank robbery to be filmed in the rain."
    Later Kaufman explained that rain had been planned for the final scenes of the movie because it fit the mood of defeat he wanted to imply. "We did some shooting on a sunny day, but we like the rain so much we re-shot the material in the rain. Now we're hoping it will snow a little for the closing scenes."
    Robertson estimated that the Jacksonville portions will comprise about 80 percent of the movie. For the movie, Jacksonville's cement sidewalks are covered with walk-boards, the street is filled with sand, and many of the stores have false wooden fronts. A real bank, U.S. National, has a sign indicating it is a hotel. The bank robbery scenes couldn't be filmed there, as the bank must operate during the day when the movie is being shot. Thus, a fictional First National Bank has been built in another building, and all bank scenes will be filmed there. Some businessmen like the Hollywood modifications on their buildings so well that they have decided to keep them after the company leaves.
    Jacksonville denizens braved the steady drizzle and low temperatures to watch filming from one end of the street, but no great crowd gathered, partly because it was a weekday, partly because of the damp, penetrating chill. Traffic has been routed around the two blocks of the town's main street so that Younger, James & Co. would not smack into a truck as they gallop out of Northfield with the swag.
    Jacksonville was picked for the movie from a file two feet long, Kaufman said. "We contacted every historically oriented town in the country," he said. "A western town wouldn't have been too hard to find, but this is a midwestern. Jacksonville is perfect. We've had nothing but cooperation from Warren Merrill's office and from everyone in Jacksonville." Merrill is Special Projects Manager of the Oregon Development Commission, and his job is liaison between the governor's office and motion picture companies.
    Kaufman, who once worked for a graduate degree in history at the University of Chicago, says the project is based on history. "We've taken a few liberties, but we are trying to get a funky feeling in the costumes that you get when you look at old pictures. I've read everything I could find on Jesse James and Cole Younger, and I've looked at every daguerreotype I could. I feel like I know these guys now.
    "See, these outlaws were related. The Jameses and the Youngers were cousins, and the Daltons were cousins to the Jameses. In a sense they considered themselves guerrilla fighters. There's a lot of 'Bonnie and Clyde' in the situation, because they were robbing banks and railroads. This was during the Grant administration, and the banks were corrupt. That's why these outlaws were folk heroes in their own time. They were fighting establishments that many people feared and hated.
    "As a matter of fact, Cole Younger invented train robbery. We're at the other end of the historical spectrum Sam Peckinpah uses. He's using the very end, we're using the very beginning."
    However, from Kaufman's description, it sounds like some of Peckinpah's anachronistic irony will be employed, for the basic situation seems the same as that Peckinpah has used: violent men working in a time and place where the violent life has passed.
    "Jesse James was a real criminal and probably a little off in the head. But Younger is almost something of a tragic figure. The James gang is pulling this raid for the money and for the hell of it, but Younger wants to do this one job so he won't have to rob again. This is the whole idea behind the picture, Cole Younger's last ride. He was wounded 11 times in the raid and was caught and went to prison for 25 years. We're trying to build a sense of doom around him. The town undertaker walks through the film at several important points as a kind of foreshadowing of catastrophe.
    "Cole's younger brother Jim was also on the same raid, and he also went to jail for 25 years. When he got out, he became an insurance agent. Then when they discovered he was an ex-con, they invalidated all his policies. Then he fell in love and was jilted and as a result he committed suicide with a gun. So the raid was very fateful for him, too.
    "When Cliff and I were working on this we brought out more about Younger than I had originally written. I wrote the original script two years ago, but we've adapted it for a starring role. Cliff has had some great ideas in expanding the concept of Younger and building his character."
    Robertson said that the script was one of six Universal submitted to him and that he liked it immediately. Kaufman said that at their first meeting, "after about 20 minutes I knew Cliff and I would be making the picture together."
    Robertson said, "I like the script because it looked honest. There are certain parallels to our time. Younger wasn't unique in history, but he lived in two completely different eras. He rode with Jesse James, but he wasn't like him. Jesse was very simplistic. I think you could almost call him paranoid. He just wanted to ride and shoot.
    "But Younger was more complicated. He was partly a victim of circumstance. He was riding with people different from himself, but getting along with them at the same time. But he had vision and self-awareness that they didn't. He wasn't an intellectual, but he was reflective and introspective. He could have been a useful citizen, and he was when he got out of prison. He settled down completely and died a peaceful old man, practically on the eve of World War I.
    "By the way, he still had 17 bullets in him when he died."
    In large scenes 200 local people are used as extras, but on an average day, only about 30 to 40. One of these is Mel Yoder, who plays the symbol of doom. Yoder describes himself as "a freelance creature working for church unity. I wouldn't mind having my own church," he says, "as long as I could keep it from getting bogged down in denominationalism."
    The company hopes to be finished by Dec. 19, and hopes the final cost will be less than $1 million. And, if they are lucky, it will keep on raining until Dec. 17, after which it will snow just enough to symbolize a long winter for Cole Younger.
Sunday Oregonian, Portland, December 13, 1970, page 128


    JACKSONVILLE (Special)--"The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" is not a documentary, a semidocumentary or a syllable-for-syllable recreation, according to co-producer and director Phil Kaufman, but everything is being done to give the basically factual story a look of convincing visual authenticity.
    "We've got everybody dressed in these old clothes that they really did wear at that time and in that area," Kaufman said. Two others described the costumes as "funky old" clothes, star and co-producer Cliff Robertson and actor Robert Duvall, who plays Jesse James.
    Duvall displayed his authentic Jesse James haircut, styled after a photograph of James. The sideburns are high and short. For what it's worth, so were those of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Some afternoon when you have nothing else to do, in fact, go to the library and look through pictorial histories of the old West. Hair and beard styles varied greatly from place to place, and many cowpokes seem to have affected crew cuts. In movies, hair styles of both men and women tend to be those popular in Los Angeles at the time the movie was made.
    Duvall, who does some horseback riding in "Northfield," said, "The average cowboy wasn't that good with a gun, but he could sure as hell ride. When they're going to make a western, they ought to do the auditioning in the corral. You'd find a lot of stunt men getting the leading roles, because anybody who can ride will tell you there aren't many actors who can. It's a good thing audiences don't ride, because they'd never tolerate Westerns if they did."
    About his role, he said, "We're playing Jesse with a few faggy overtones here. Nothing too blatant, but just a hint here and there. After all, he had a terrifically strong mother and a weak father, which is sort of a predisposition right there. Then he was out riding with the gang and away from women. Of course, we figure he was plenty messed up in his head already."
    Al Gausman, the picture's set decorator, explained how other authentic touches were added. "We've been able to borrow a lot of pictures and other artifacts from local people and from the Jackson County Museum. We're using some furniture, wagons, even a steam tractor. We borrowed a hearse from the Pioneer Village (a local Old West tourist attraction). A steam calliope came from Disneyland, only it had been in a shed for 14 years, so nobody's seen it before.
    "We've put metal things instead of wood on the streets because Northfield was getting civilized. By 1875 the manufacture of goods was picking up, and there were such things as typewriters and adding machines. This watering trough here," he said, indicating a three-tiered metal structure, "has a big trough for horses, a fountain for people and a little trough for dogs."
    Gausman described his job as basic detective work. "You get a lead on a good picture or vase, and then you hear about something else, maybe a good chair, so you follow that lead. But a lot of things are just luck. You're looking for one thing and find something totally different that is ideal. Some of our best items are serendipities."
Oregonian, Portland, December 15, 1970, page 18


    JACKSONVILLE (UPI)--Southern Oregon's historic gold rush town heard the sound of six-guns again Monday as motion picture actors made their getaway after staging a bank robbery attempt.
    Universal Studios' filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" continued under gray skies and in biting cold winds.
    The picture tells the story of an attempt to rob a bank in Northfield by the Jesse James-Cole Younger gang. Cliff Robertson is Younger and Robert Duvall plays James.
    During the day the picture company filmed an interior scene in the bank, then moved outside onto Jacksonville's main street for the horseback getaway amid such shouting and gunfire.
    Again, as it had done several times before, the picture company added extra wind and its own rain.
    A studio spokesman said the company hopes to complete downtown Jacksonville filming this week. Some scenes are to be shot at areas outside of town before crews return to California to complete filming.
Capital Journal, Salem, December 16, 1970, page 26


    JACKSONVILLE--Irate citizens helped thwart the First National Bank robbery here Monday and Tuesday, but it was all movie make-believe. The unsuccessful heist was a scene for Universal's "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now on location in and around this historic Gold Rush town for a third week.
    It looks as though Universal's actors and crew will spend a white Christmas in the Rogue River Valley, too. Shooting is behind schedule, and exteriors may not be completed here before the first of the year.
    That delay is considered par for the movie course and has nothing to do with Jacksonville as a location or the "Oregon dry spell."
    Strange as it seems, the picture about the Younger Brothers and James gang started filming in the rain shortly after Thanksgiving.
    As co-producer and star Cliff Robertson and his young director, Philip Kaufman, have put it: "It's like painting yourself into a corner--rain set the mood and we've got to match our scenes to the weather."
    Until Tuesday, the weather has been overcast, with cold winds--but no rain. Movie makers don't stop for the weather, however. They use "rain machines." In this case fire hoses with special nozzles on long pipes are put into action.
    Oddly enough, after the luncheon break and the bank scene had been put on film, it really started to rain--harder than some members of the cast and crew had urged in their prayers. It not only rained, but winds of near-gale velocity swept the town.
    In Medford, for example, the wind whipped the roof off a lumber warehouse. Even for a bakery shop exterior, director Kaufman and his director of cinematography, Bruce Surtees, continued to employ the rain nozzles. And on Wednesday there was a mixture of cold rain and snow. Weather will tell whether the "parade" will be filmed Thursday.
    A visit to a movie location, either in Oregon, California, Europe or South America, isn't a new assignment for this writer.
    The movie-making technique when it comes to the old army style "hurry-up-and-wait" hasn't changed in 25 years.
    Perhaps the story, directorial and acting techniques have, but there is still the call sheet, posted so actors and crews can be ready for a day that starts with buses leaving the Medford motel at 6:30 a.m. until shooting ends--it was 6 p.m. on Tuesday, and despite rain mixed with snow, Kaufman and his actors were at it early Wednesday morning.
    Most of the actors and crew are at the sprawling Red Lion Motel in Medford, one of former Portland area nightspot operator Tod McCloskey's operations. (The Thunderbirds, Sea-Tac and motels in Washington, Oregon and Nevada are others.)
    On Tuesday morning the "bungled bank heist" was put on film. Robertson observed the action from across the street. He wasn't in the scene. This was a stunt sequence whereby Cole Younger (the role he plays) gallops the full length of the street, firing his six-shooter, dispersing irate men and women townspeople who have converged on the bank with rifles, shotguns and clubs. He rides to the bank door and a bandit, shot in the shoulder, stumbles out and manages to get onto the horse. They escape.
    Hollywood stuntman Bob Herron played Cliff's role here. The horse, trained for movie work by Ritchie Brehm, is Blue--and is one of 60 head of horses, some similarly trained, used in the picture. Incidentally, Chick Hannan, from the Hollywood home office of the American Humane Association, is in Jacksonville--and he's proud of the way the horses are treated. They are housed near Jacksonville in a stable that has everything "but a hot water shower" for them.
    On any working set, interviews are hit-or-miss. This writer talked to Robertson while a bank interior featuring Broadway and TV actor Robert Harris as the bank owner was being filmed. Most of the time we talked in whispers. What the producer-actor has to say about his new picture will be the subject of another column. 
Oregon Journal, Portland, December 17, 1970, page 11


    When you ask someone for an interview, what you are really asking is a piece of his time so you can pry into his life and/or his mind and spread it all over town. A politician is, or should be, obliged to grant interviews because he, in theory anyway, owes his time to the public he serves; service that often comes at great public expense. Actors are public figures to the extent of their public image. Sometimes this image can be enhanced by the publicity arising from an interview. At times the image can be impaired. Some need the publicity, some don't. While it is pleasant to interview an actor who responds to interview questions--especially one who responds candidly, as a few sometimes do--one must also respect the person, who reserves a part of himself or for himself.
    Luke Askew's eyes are an opaque brown. They say, "I will look out, but you will not look in." In "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now on location in Jacksonville, Askew is cast as Jim Younger, one of the gang who attempts to rob the Northfield bank.
    Although Askew did not object to conducting the interview over a tape recorder, his manner seemed to shift from earlier cautious friendliness to friendly caution. After a few answers that equated with courteous yesses, noes or maybes, I switched the infernal machine off and we engaged in a pleasant conversation about his work but not, to any great detail, about his personal life.
    There is a quality in his voice that hints of the South. Originally from Georgia, Askew worked in a variety of jobs before he got into pictures.
    He spent a year at the University of Georgia and six months at Mercer University in Macon.
    He served in the Air Force, worked in oil fields, worked as a television announcer and was manager of a waste paper plant in Red Hook in Brooklyn, so named because the men in the district settled their differences with baling hooks.
    He says he has no academic training as an actor. For awhile he sang ballads and rock music, not with a group but, characteristically, on his own. This brought him to the attention of a casting director, Joyce Selznick, and into Otto Preminger's "Hurry Sundown." Among his other pictures are "Cool Hand Luke" and "The Green Berets."
    In at least two of his pictures, Askew has portrayed a loner, in "Easy Rider" and "Flare-up." In the latter he was a psychopath hounding Raquel Welch to death.
    "And you were the leader of the hippie commune in 'Easy Rider'"
    "No, that's not right. I wasn't the leader of the commune. I was supposed to be a traveling revolutionary. I don't think that was brought out fully in the picture. A lot was lost in the final cut. But I'd been to the commune before."
    "Did you know Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson before you got into 'Easy Rider'?"
    "I knew Dennis." He smiled slightly. "You cast your friends in movies."
    Askew didn't work with Hopper in "The Last Movie" in Peru. He was in Rome making Italian westerns.
    Still speaking of "Easy Rider," he said, "No one believed that would take off the way it did. It was just supposed to be another cycle picture. But it took off."
    "Terry Southern got part of the screenplay credit on that. How much did he have to do with writing it?"
    "Nothing. They thought his name would help sell the picture. But it turned out they didn't need it."
    "Is there anything in pictures you would like to do besides act? Produce? Direct?"
    "I'd like to write."
    Askew says he likes science fiction. He talks with admiration of "2001: A Space Odyssey," and Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. In addition to being science fiction writers, both men are respected scientists. He says lately he has enjoyed reading psychedelic science fiction based on the Bhagavadgita.
    Concerning his role of Jim Younger, he says that this offers an interesting opportunity to mime a character. Younger is supposed to have had a part of his upper lip shot off. Throughout most of the film the scar is masked by a horsehair mustache. So Jim Younger is a portrayal of action rather than speaking. The dark mustache is in contrast to his reddish-brown hair and fills out his angular, thin face.
    Luke Askew is an actor to watch, in "Northfield" and elsewhere.
    His wife and their seven-month-old son were with him recently in Southern Oregon.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 18, 1970, page C3


    Recently on the location of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" in Jacksonville, a young girl approached Robert Duvall and asked, "Aren't you the one who plays Jesse James in this movie?" Duvall answered, "I AM Jesse James."
    Off camera Duvall's quiet-spoken personality is in marked contrast to the menacing or psychopathic projection he often presents on the screen. He was the notorious Ned Pepper in "True Grit," and the army
doctor in "MASH" who leaned so far to the right he fell over. Duvall's first picture was "To Kill a Mockingbird." He was Boo Radley.
    On a cold day in Jacksonville, over a welcome cup of steaming onion soup, he discussed his Jesse James portrayal and some of his other recent picture work. Duvall researched the James brothers, and one result was his selection of his haircut, high over the ears, with short sideburns. Many pictures require actors to ride horses. Does he think the ability to ride is a real requirement?
    In a pleasant, quiet voice tinged with a soft eastern accent, he answers, "I think a lot of pictures should be cast in the corral. You might find a person, a stunt man, who can ride. Then there might be an
actor who is--," he holds the thumb and index finger of his right hand about a quarter inch apart, "--that much better than one who can ride. But the rider looks better."
    Duvall recently finished working in Mississippi on "Tomorrow," Horton Foote's adaptation of the William Faulkner story.
    Another, soon to be released, is "THX-1138," made in San Francisco by the American Zoetrope Co., now headquartered there. Duvall voices a high regard for the work of young THX director George Lucas.
    Himself interested in producing films, although not necessarily the commercial variety, Duvall has "about five hours of raw film" about a family of trick riders in Ogallala, Neb. He intends to edit the film into a documentary.
    The whole flavor of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" strives for the mood of the event and circumstances surrounding it rather than any scene-for-scene re-creation. Duvall's James is slightly off-center mentally with implications of homosexuality. Duvall speaks of "Jesse James, the American Hamlet."
    During his stay in Medford and his work in Jacksonville, Duvall has made a number of friends. Of an evening he may be seen having dinner in the Red Lion coffee shop, or in the lounge. Besides riding, he enjoys tennis. A few days before coming here he played a tennis match with actor Jim Brown.
    The picture company will be leaving this area soon. Southern Oregon may make history as the only area ever to invite Jesse James to come back.--A.R.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 18, 1970, page C4


    Craig Curtis spent much of Wednesday lying in a pine-box coffin with about ten bullet holes in his chest. But he was working all the time.
    Curtis is Bill Chadwell, one of the outlaw gang who comes to rob the First National Bank of Northfield in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now in its last few days of location filming in Jacksonville.
    The bullet holes were courtesy of the makeup department. Once they were applied to his bare chest, a task of about one hour, Curtis was unable to put on a shirt or any garment that would touch them, so he draped a jacket over his shoulders as he walked through town when he wasn't needed on camera.
    Unsuspecting customers in a Jacksonville restaurant were more than a little shocked to see a young man, bare to the waist, apparently mortally wounded, calmly drinking coffee and reading. Part of the surprise might have been, why didn't the coffee stream out the holes.
    Wednesday evening, Curtis in casual street clothes, out of costume, sat in the Red Lion's coffee shop and discussed his creative ambitions, which extend beyond acting.
    Curtis is slightly less than 6 feet, built like a welterweight who has kept training. He looks young, probably younger than he is. When he talks about stage acting and producing motion pictures, his whole manner assumes an intensity that makes the listener believe, or want to, that Curtis will succeed in his aspiration.
    He says, "In acting the stakes are the highest. It's your life. It's a gamble. A big gamble." He is conscious of time running like raw egg down the wall. In one of his pictures, "The Long Ride Home," he was hurt, "doing a stunt I didn't have to." As the result of the injury he lost two years of work.
    His first television appearance was in a New York television program called "The Verdict Is Yours." He has done a great deal of television, from daytime soap operas to "77 Sunset Strip" and "Bonanza." In the motion picture "The New Interns," he got into a pool hall fight with George Segal.
    Curtis is serious about his filmmaking ideas. He is planning to take cinema courses at UCLA and USC. During each he will have to make short films. Then he would like to work with the American Film Institute.
    His role of Chadwell in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," is a young man who idolizes Jesse James and rides with the gang.
    Like many others in this picture company, Curtis believes there is something a little extra special about the group. "I've seen some bad ones," he says, "But this one is good. Very good." He attributes this to people such as director Philip Kaufman and cinematographer Bruce Surtees and their respect for their work and others in the company; also their skill and competence.
    "Film is a director's medium," Curtis says, "Or a cinematographer's medium. Stage is an actor's medium."
    One of the highest compliments a screen actor can get is to be called a "New York actor." One "Raid" cast member defines a New York actor as "one who can begin a scene and go through it to the end without stopping to say, 'What's my line?'"
    Curtis notes that in acting for pictures one has to act in pieces, but on the stage he can build to a desired peak. Videotape, he feels, is restrictive. Film is a wide open medium.
    Just because Curtis spent Wednesday in a coffin doesn't mean he won't be working on a later day in "Raid." That's the way motion pictures go.--A.R.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 18, 1970, page C5


    JACKSONVILLE--When Cliff Robertson's "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," makes its motion picture theater bow next year moviegoers should find this story, based on the last "ride" made by Cole Younger of train and bank robbing fame, an "as it was" glimpse of American history. (Northfield is the home of Carleton College.)
    While not a "big budget" film as the epic pictures of today are figured, it does represent $1 million-plus.
    Robertson is not only the co-producer, with former 20th Century-Fox and Cinerama Releasing executive Bruce Graham as his young associate, but he also stars as Cole and works closely with his young director, black-bearded, quiet and sincere Philip Kaufman.
    Just as his 1968 Oscar-winning film "Charly" was a challenge, so is "Northfield" and two other projects, one of which ("The Night I Shot Down The Red Baron") is about a third completed.
    He wrote, produced, directed and stars in the latter. These projects should keep him on movie screens for several years to come.
    When "Charly" won an Oscar, he was in the Philippines where he was making Cinerama's "Too Late the Hero," with Michael Caine for Robert Aldrich.
    How does Oregon compare as a location?
    "It's heaven!" was his prompt reply, even though torrents of rain overflowed the gutters outside "The First National Bank" on Tuesday afternoon.
    For one thing, Robertson, who works practically night and day on not only "Northfield," but on his other projects, has been able to relax here.
    He lives in a rented house in the Jacksonville area, and his wife, actress Dina Merrill, has been with him.
    Miss Merrill is in Hollywood this week working on an episode of NBC-TV's "The Men from Shiloh."
    The role?
    "I'm an old-fashioned kind of husband," he said, smiling. "I don't believe in taking my work home to my family! I really don't know. She didn't talk too much about it."
    And so back to "Northfield" went the interview--although he did comment on last weekend's Smith River fishing trip, with its successful catch of salmon and steelhead for the pair.
    How does Robertson describe his picture?
    "I'd call it an action Western with human comedy as well as social relevance," he explained. "We deal in truth, but at the same time we keep our picture non-preachy and entertaining."
    As for his own portrayal, he is Cole Younger, with his characterization based on detailed research by his director-writer Kaufman, who studied at the University of Chicago for his master's degree in history.
    "I'm an anti-leading man type in this picture," he added. "We tell the story the way it was."
    He pointed to his own costume--grubby, baggy, dirty tweeds and what he called his "funky" drooping brown hat.
    This and our other outfits were taken from Daguerreotypes and from drawings of the Youngers and the Jameses--who were cousins.
    Robertson described Cole Younger as a victim of the circumstances of his era. Younger, possibly the "inventor" of the train robbery, was an intelligent man who wasn't trigger-happy like cousin Jesse.
    James is played by Robert Duvall. Moviegoers will remember Duvall for his many character roles in such recent pictures as "True Grit," "M.A.S.H." and last season's "The Rain People," in which he played a Nebraska motorcycle cop.
    In "Northfield," Robertson described Duvall's characterization as highly volatile, depicting Jesse as a wild, irresponsible paranoid.
    "He was the kind of man who shot first and asked questions later."
    How did Robertson decide on "Northfield"?
    He said Universal wanted him to do another "Charly"--but the actor did not care to repeat such a role.
    Kaufman, whose credits included the 1963 Cannes prize-winner, "Goldstein" and a Jon Voight picture, "Fearless Frank," made in 1964 and just now in release, was under contract to Universal.
    One of his projects was "Northfield" and Robertson says he was intrigued when he read the script--one of five offered him by the studio.
    This is the story of Cole Younger's "last" ride.
    As for "Charly," not only did the Oscar "open the doors" but it convinced him there was a future in acquiring properties for production.
    He was frustrated when many of the television roles he played were given to other actors when major studios acquired rights. So he bought the screen rights for "Charly"--only it took him seven years to get financing. Both Robertson and his director, Ralph Nelson, took a chance--and won.
Oregon Journal, Portland, December 18, 1970, page 7


    Filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" moved out onto the Applegate yesterday, near Cantrall-Buckley Park. Work on California Street in downtown Jacksonville ended at 2:30 p.m. Friday, and many local persons working as extras were released. Later Friday "ride-bys" were filmed at the Presbyterian Church and the Jacksonville Museum, re-named "Northfield College."
    Saturday morning actors and technicians began their work in 17-degree temperature.
    Two more days of filming are scheduled locally. One additional sequence will be shot near Jacksonville; the other in the vicinity of Gold Hill.
    The picture, directed by Philip Kaufman, concerns the robbery of a Northfield, Minn., bank in 1876 by Jesse James, Cole Younger and their gang. Cliff Robertson is cast as Younger.
    In order to simulate 1876, sidewalks in front of Jacksonville's 19th-century buildings were boarded over, the center of the street filled with gravel, and power and telephone lines concealed.
    According to reports from Universal, it will be about Dec. 28 before the town is restored to original condition.
    The motion picture company plans to leave Medford Dec. 24. Some members have already returned to Hollywood to prepare for interior filming at Universal City Studios.
    Additional location work is planned at Locke and Sonora, Calif.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 20, 1970, page 1


    Bruce Surtees could very well be the busiest man on the set of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid." Surtees is cameraman for the Universal picture now filming in Jacksonville.
    Trying to arrange an interview with him finally required meeting him at 6:30 Friday morning. Surtees, director Philip Kaufman and assistant director Ralph Sariego arrived together in the red Chevrolet station wagon--one of several hired by the picture company for local transportation.
    The boardwalks along California Street glistened with a rime of diamond ice in the pre-dawn moonlight. Inside the building designated "First National Bank" backup crews were already at work. Extras were lining up for wardrobe, located upstairs in the building.
    In the lower part of the building, behind the bank set, some of the picture's high-intensity lights had been turned on to give heat--with a great deal of success.
    Surtees got a steaming cup of coffee from one of the dispensers behind the set. Then we went into the "bank" and talked while crews worked around us.
    With an oval face and high forehead, Surtees possesses a youthful, somewhat cherubic appearance that belies his knowledge, talent and experience an older man would envy. "Raid" is his third picture as a cinematographer.
    He has gone through years of the prescribed apprenticeship as second assistant cameraman, first assistant, then operator. He studied still photography at the Art Center in Los Angeles, graduated from there when he was 20.
    Surtees has worked on a number of Clint Eastwood pictures. He was operator on "Two Mules for Sister Sara," (opening at the Lithia Christmas Day) and "Coogan's Bluff," both directed by Don Siegel.
    "It was Siegel who made me a cameraman," he says. As cameraman he filmed a picture in Carmel, Calif., in which Eastwood starred and directed.
    Heredity, or at least early environment may play an important part in Surtees' choice of motion picture photography as a life's work. His father, Robert Surtees, has a distinguished career in the field. The elder Surtees' credits include "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," "Oklahoma," "King Solomon's Mines," (for which he received the Academy Award), "The Graduate," and "Sweet Charity." Bruce worked with his father on "Sweet Charity."
    Bruce is articulate concerning his art and its practitioners. "How about technical advances in cinematography?"
    He nods. "Lighting and emulsions." He talks about faster emulsions requiring less elaborate lighting and allowing greater freedom in filming.
    "Camera techniques are the same," he says, "but each individual has his own interpretation."
    "Can you look at a picture and tell whose work it is without otherwise knowing?"
    He says that he can and states a high regard for the work of many cinematographers: Gabriel Figueroa of Mexico, with whom he worked on "Sister Sara"; Carlo De Santis who did "Fellini Satyricon" and "Romeo and Juliet"; and a special appreciation for the work of Charles Lang, whose pictures include "Charade" and "One-Eyed Jacks."
    "Where is the line between director and cinematographer in photographing a motion picture?"
    "There isn't one." Surtees says that getting the picture on film involves a cooperation between both, and consultation. He expresses genuine praise for the ability of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" writer-director Philip Kaufman.
    "Would you like to direct pictures?"
    "Oh, no. There are too many good directors out of work and too few cameramen. Last year 125 were admitted to the profession. The older ones are retiring but the average age is 56."
    "What about the location filming here in Jacksonville. Were there problems? The rain?"
    "We wanted to get a staged documentary, if that makes sense. You know. If you just do a long shot, a two-shot and a closeup, you've got a western, nothing else."
    He talks about working with the rain, using it as a definite ingredient in the picture. He suggests other strengths added to "Raid" by the location work.
    Almost everyone in the nucleus company of "Raid" remarks on the effectiveness and harmony in the unit. There is a great respect of one person for another, and of all for Bruce Surtees and Philip Kaufman. If the weather seemed an insurmountable adversity when filming began nearly a month ago, the young, enthusiastic crew who overcame it can point to real accomplishment.
    Now, possibly more than ever before, film is the index of mass communication. It is also an expanding medium of individual creativity in collective application. Bruce Surtees will be an important part of the medium's future.
    Surtees' discussion of his work was so engrossing that I was surprised to glance up and see the room filled with about 50 people, twice the number there a few minutes ago. It was time for the busy cameraman to go to work; to capture a part of the day and shape a piece of the future.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 20, 1970, page C1


    Upstairs in the Kubli Building on California Street in Jacksonville was where Universal Studios kept their wardrobe department for "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid." That was the building renamed "First National Bank" for the picture.
    In the chilly loft R. G. Armstrong sat on one side of the space heater at the head of the stairs, and I on the other. Nearby, rain peppered against the windows and a few feet away Mrs. Richard Hein of Jacksonville worked at a sewing machine, altering a costume.
    Up through the walls from the street below came the muted sound of gunfire and yelling.
    "It sounds like the gang is getting away," I said to Armstrong. "Will they be needing you down there?" Armstrong portrays Clell Miller, a man who rode with the James-Younger gang.
    "No," Armstrong said, "I'm sitting down there dead in a chair off camera."
    The seemingly joking statement says a great deal about Armstrong's philosophy.
    A physically large man with a reddish mustache and beard liberally sprinkled with gray, Armstrong is a philosopher who finds meaning the Eastern cultures and their emphasis on the unity and sanctity of life.
    Out of his Clell Miller costume, an ankle-length cattle duster, western hat and boots, and in street clothes, Armstrong looks like the popular concept of what he originally set out to be, a writer. He has written plays and novels, and that is what got him into acting.
    Once, when he went to New York to try to sell a play he had written, he began reading it aloud and was tapped for acting duty.
    Originally from Birmingham, Ala., Armstrong studied at the University of North Carolina, where he obtained a master's degree in literature. His principal areas of study were composition and English and American literature.
    But it was through study of Eastern thought that he discovered himself.
    "I was raised on duality," he says. "I don't think duality should exist in anybody." He cited the dichotomy of Christian teaching and Christian practice as he experienced it during his youth in the South. "My early teaching should have prepared me to think young the way I'm thinking now."
    He talks about experiments conducted with flowers, measuring their sensitivity to kind words and even kind thoughts. "When the man said it was time to feed the plants, experiments showed that the leaves would start rustling just then." Armstrong talks so convincingly of his belief in the sanctity of life that, after hearing him, it is incongruous to see him carrying a gun, even in a film role. The antithesis of duality, he says, is "Being whatever you are everyplace. Be whatever you are in principle everywhere." His accent indicates his southern origin.
    What does he think about the rediscovery of Christ by many young people who are rejecting drugs?
    "Jesus is another brother who's searching for the truth. Like Buddha, Ghandi, Socrates. There's something going on in men that is going on in the universe."
    Armstrong applies unity to his work as well as his thinking. He continues to write as well as act, and participates in a playwrights' group in Los Angeles.
    He has appeared in "El Dorado," "The McMasters," and "The Great White Hope." On television he appeared in 16 of 26 programs of "T.H.E. Cat." He was the one-armed police chief.
    As a writer, or director, is there any particular theme he would like to develop? He hesitated an instant before saying, "The story of a character, like a seed, lodged under a heavy rock, looking for a crack, a way to flower and grow. Hate, violence, destruction. These siphon off any real psychic energy. I don't see any point in writing about people trapped unless you can show those who break the chain of hate and free themselves."
    Armstrong lives with his family in Studio City, Calif. His wife, Ann, was once a singer with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. They have three daughters, aged 17, 15 and 8, and a boy, 10. Armstrong has enjoyed working in Southern Oregon, but, like many others on "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," he will be glad to get home for Christmas.--A.R.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 21, 1970, page D3


    With motion picture and television producers now encouraged to use Oregon locales, it could be that moviemaking could become one of the state's top industries.
    Since Paramount's "Paint Your Wagon" was filmed near Baker in 1968, major studios have spent more than $11 million here. Universal's "Sometimes a Great Notion," for example, was a major production on location from early in June until late in October. "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," now shooting in Jacksonville, while not the most expensive of pictures, will spend several hundred thousand dollars of its $1 million plus budget in the Rogue River Valley.
    The conversion of historic Jacksonville into Northfield, Minn., 1876, is an example of what moviemaking means to a community. Specialists representing many phases of location setup--legal, housing and other logistic details--converged on the area early in October.
    Gov. Tom McCall's busy special projects manager Warren Miller has been active in getting studios to come to Oregon for years. He has been successful, and there is a possibility that another film will be made in Jacksonville this spring. Neither the studio nor the producer involved can be named.
    The town of 1,500 residents now has four blocks of its shopping area as authentic mid-19th century as it was in the days the town was the focal point of a gold rush.
    The street is no longer paved. Instead a yellowish sandy granite material has been spread several inches thick over the four-block area. The street and side streets leading into it have been barricaded. There are "No Parking" signs for blocks around, which causes gripes from a few main streeter merchants as well as nearby residents hampered by the mud caused by cars and trucks forced to detour. The main street, California, is Oregon Highway 238--a busy secondary route to Medford, Central Point and other communities. Logging trucks and motorists use a special detour.
    The sidewalks are now the old-time boardwalks. The telephone and power lines have been buried under the street covering: the television aerials, flashing electric advertising signs and all other evidences of 1970 have been removed.
    Actually Universal pays businessmen and property owners along California Street a daily fee for possible business interruption.
    But for the most part, Jacksonville merchants are experiencing as much business now as during the tourist rush each summer.
    "That Store," the busy delicatessen, for example, is busier than ever, advises one of the proprietors, Joel Brown, formerly of Portland. He operates the shop with two Medford men, Lauren Hardy and Guy Vincent. His best customer, he says, is Elisha Cook Jr., a veteran movie and television actor.
    The Jacksonville Inn has run into a winter bonanza as a result of movie-making. Jack Bate not only serves lunch for actors and crew members, often more than 100, but he provides dressing rooms upstairs for actors.
    And as they say in some of the series: "Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent . . ." so have the building names on California Street and elsewhere around the town to give Jacksonville the authentic look of Northfield, Minn., in 1876.
    The Kubli building, for example, now houses the First National Bank, where the Youngers and the Jameses stage their robbery. The U.S. National Bank's branch across the street is no longer a "bank" from the exterior--it is Dampier Hotel. Business continues inside.
    Such signs as Dentist and Mortuary; Manning's Stoves and Hardware, Furniture, Bakery, Horse Shoer, mask other businesses--including the state liquor store, and the barber shop (both busy as ever). The J-Ville Tavern and Pool Hall is now College Grill, and the Horse Shoer is a working blacksmith with a team of horses waiting for service outside. Universal has offices in what is tagged Telegraph Office, and the Jacksonville Museum, the site of the old courthouse, on another street has a sign at its entrance: "Northfield College."
    Not only has Universal spent thousands providing a "Western Street" of an authenticity never found on a Hollywood studio lot, but the cost of transportation, labor, supplies and extra salaries has been enormous.
    As for those extras, the number depends on the "atmosphere." A parade sequence, or a mob scene, requires more. So at times 30 or 40 men and women are employed.
    They really earn their $15 a day in the cold and windy often all-day sessions.
    There are no female leads in "Northfield," but there are plenty of women extras.
    A talk with several of the extras the other afternoon indicated they are having the time of their lives. Three of them, Shirley Stieber, Medford; Pat Houck and Florence Olson, both of Jacksonville, were taking shelter from the rain inside the busy J-Ville Tavern. Mrs. Olson has a key role--she plays Ma James.
    She should be a standout--a motherly, friendly little woman in bonnet and "granny" costume.
    "Any lines?" this writer asked her.
    "Not even a grunt," she smiled as she shook her head.
    For one thing, there's no nudity in "Northfield," but in this "as it was" Western, there is a brothel.
    The location? One woman resident was asked whether her post Civil War gingerbread-trimmed residence could be used as an exterior. (Naturally Universal pays.) "Not my house!" was the firm answer.
Oregon Journal, Portland, December 21, 1970, page 19


    JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (UPI)--Downtown filming on the Jacksonville location of Universal's "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" came to an end Friday. It began Nov. 28.
    The picture concerns the attempted robbery of a Northfield, Minn., bank in 1876 by Jesse James, Cole Younger and their gang.
    Additional location work is planned at Locke and Sonora, Calif.
The World, Coos Bay, December 21, 1970, page 30


    JACKSONVILLE--The people of Jacksonville said farewell to some good friends last night.
    The occasion was the annual banquet of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, which pays recognition to those who have contributed to the town during the past year.
    The friends who are leaving are the cast and crew of the Universal Studios' production "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," which has been filmed in Jacksonville over the last few weeks.
    In the spirit of the affair gifts were given to the actors and townspeople and dozens or more names called out for special appreciation.
    The highlight was the presentation of an engraved pocket watch with the portrait of the late President John F. Kennedy to Cliff Robertson. Robertson played the role of Kennedy in the film "PT-109" and became a friend of the President as a result. The gift was made possible for the Chamber through the courtesy of Medford jeweler John Nuich.
    Engraved gold pins were given to Mrs. Estelle Knapp for her work in the Information Center, former Mayor A. C. Bowman, and retiring chamber directors Lowell Hocking and John Witteveen.
    Robertson promised his hat and black tie to the Jacksonville Museum. He said that the actors had little to donate, but a host of happy memories to take away.
    There were no formal speeches, but there was a great deal of friendly banter, and everyone called on everyone for a few words. So much a part of the town had the actors from Hollywood become, that they entered in as if they had always belonged and clapped loudly when the new chamber members were introduced.
    They are Mrs. Wayne Reavis and Joel Brown, with Mike Moen continuing as president for a second term. Jack Bate and George McUne are carryover members.
    The party ended early, as the actors still have a few more days to work, and it ended on a note of great goodwill. The original James-Younger gang, those who survived, left Northfield in fear. The second James-Younger gang made a different impression on Jacksonville. They are leaving to the cry "Come back, the steelhead will be running in the Rogue come spring, and we've a wonderful climate in the summer."
Medford Mail Tribune, December 22, 1970, page 1


    Local filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" ends today, with final shots to be taken along the Applegate River. The Universal picture began location filming in Jacksonville Nov. 27.
    Written and directed by Philip Kaufman, the motion picture concerns the historic robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minn., in 1876 by the Jesse James-Cole Younger gang. Cliff Robertson is Cole Younger. Robert Duvall is Jesse James.
    Location work in downtown Jacksonville ended last Friday. Yesterday actors and film crews worked near Gold Hill on the Chavner-Thompson property. The exterior of the Thompson home will be seen as a house where part of the gang hides out following the raid.
    Most interiors will be filmed at the Universal City Studios in California, although a few were done in Jacksonville, principally in the "First National Bank."
    Other location work is planned for Locke and Sonora, Calif., but the greatest percentage was done in the Rogue Valley.
    Despite an almost steady rain and overcast conditions, with some snow, members of the film company have praised the Southern Oregon area, and many indicate they would like to return.
    Those who have not already left will depart for Los Angeles by chartered plane Thursday. The Universal production office will remain open in Medford for a few days following Christmas in order to conclude paperwork connected with the filming.
    Boards are to be removed from Jacksonville sidewalks about Dec. 28.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 23, 1970, page 1


    It will be home for Christmas for actors and crew members of Universal's "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," which completed work at the Buckley place, about 12 miles from Jacksonville, on Wednesday.
    A chartered plane took "99 percent" of the group of approximately 70 players, technicians and administrators back to Hollywood Thursday, a Universal spokesman advised.
    The remaining crew will "clear the area"--put Jacksonville "back" to its 1970 status to the satisfaction of Jacksonville authorities.
    On Tuesday night, Clift Robertson, coproducer and one of the stars (he plays Cole Younger) saw rushes of one of the big scenes--the Northfield parade filmed in two days last week.
    After Christmas the company returns to work.
    "We've got 'X' number of days at the studio and a few days of location work in California, which includes a short jaunt to Sonora," the spokesman said. "We should be finished by the middle of January."
    Sonora? That's Missouri in the picture. Oregon's 1,500-population Jacksonville and surrounding territory "stars" as Minnesota.
    When Robertson returns to Hollywood he will have Ray Atkeson's pictorial "Oregon" as a handy reminder of his Oregon production experiences.
    The colorful volume is autographed by Gov. Tom McCall and was presented to the actor in the heart of downtown Jacksonville by Jackson County's state representative, Donald L. Stathos.
    Stathos, in his presentation, urged Robertson to "show this book to producers so they will see that Oregon has a diversity of beautiful scenery for all types of film making."
Oregon Journal, Portland, December 24, 1970, page 11


    The boardwalks are buckling after more than a month in the rain. They are splitting, broken, beginning to rot with the damp. There are gaps in them, and you can see the concrete underneath.
    Robert Duvall is in New York today spending Christmas with his family. Last Saturday he bought presents for his daughters at a Medford shop.
    Don Moffat, who played Manning in "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," is going to New York to direct and appear in a Broadway play.
    Actors and production personnel who hadn't left before got on a plane yesterday morning at the Medford-Jackson County Airport and went home. That's something Jesse James and Cole Younger never did, and people weren't generally so sorry to see the Jameses and Youngers go.
    When announcement was originally made that "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" was going to be filmed in Jacksonville, there was a lot of genuine, and justified, apprehension, along with much eagerness for the whole thing to actually happen. A picture company came, strangers began working, and yesterday friends got on the plane.
    The logistics of filming in downtown Jacksonville presented inconveniences, even apparent hardships to some Jacksonville businessmen. A merchant who has been located in Jacksonville for many years deserves at least as much consideration in protection of his interests as does any new business, including a motion picture company.
    But this was one of the better companies. And, as you got to know them, you recognized the individuals as people, not "stars" or images. Last week Bruce Surtees, chief cameraman, was sick. He lost a day because of it. Transportation coordinator Alby Thomas had a bout with illness. Royal Dano injured his leg when he fell under a horse during a scene. Elisha Cook went to an Ashland dentist. Cliff Robertson took an evening to attend an Ashland showing of "Charly" and sign autographs. Mrs. Robertson (Dina Merrill) made several visits to Jacksonville. A television commitment precluded her staying here during the filming. Robertsons' young daughter, Heather, did stay here with a nurse and governess. This segment of the local press deliberately did not report that. Each individual has his right to personal privacy, regardless of public image.
    You were in the picture, about 200 of you, anyway. And you or your neighbors or somebody you or they know worked in transportation, or with the horses, directing traffic, serving food or in any of several direct connections. Indirectly, people from the picture may have attended one of your parties, or you may have attended one of theirs.
    Maybe your only connection was to visit the Jacksonville location and walk along the boardwalks, point to the "First National Bank" and tell a friend, "They'll rob that in the movie."
    Indirectly, restaurants and shops in Southern Oregon noticed the influence of the picture. "That" deli in Jacksonville where now, for the first time in weeks, locals can find a seat; Oak Knoll in Ashland where last Saturday night Robert Duvall and Craig Curtis stopped in. A few recognized Duvall from "MASH," but the lounge was so crowded most didn't even know the actors were there.
    Universal people found a number of other restaurants while they were here: The Candle Room, the Wooden Shoe, Linda's, The Stage Line Inn, The Far East and others.
    One of the many local people who worked for Universal during the filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" was Larry Oliver from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Larry has had much experience as an actor and director. He was signed on as production assistant and put in charge of casting extras. One of the key people in the picture said that Oliver performed an "invaluable job," and that he cast some excellent local people in background parts.
    Two locals in the background were John de Yeiser of Grants Pass, recently moved here from California, and Charles P. McBeth of Jacksonville, who has been a J'ville resident for more than 20 years. These men will be seen sitting on the porch of the "Dampier Hotel" playing checkers in a downpour of rain. De Yeiser, 76 years old, was issued his Screen Actor's Guild card during this film.
    Jacksonville filming ended one week ago today. Final shots were taken on the Buckley property on the Applegate Wednesday morning, then Wednesday afternoon in the fuelwood yard on Oregon 238 near Hanley Road.
    Tuesday morning the men from Universal began removing their props from California Street. The horse's head on the hitching post near the blacksmith shop looked on pensively, as if reflecting on a few weeks of glory in the rain; as if it knew it was only made of plastic. By Tuesday afternoon, it too was gone.
    The purpose was illusion, but the experience was real.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," December 25, 1970, page D2


    JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (AP)--Moviemakers will rip boards off the sidewalks and clear gravel from the streets during the weekend.
    They finished filming "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" Friday and plan to return the town to its 1970 appearance.
    The boards and gravel were to cover the concrete and asphalt so Jacksonville would look like Northfield did in 1870.
Statesman Journal, Salem, December 25, 1970, page 12


    JACKSONVILLE, Ore. (AP)--Jacksonville will be restored to its 1970 appearance--which is an approximation of 1870--by Monday.
    Moviemakers completed their downtown filming last Friday, finished scenes in nearby areas Wednesday, and were to head for Hollywood Friday.
    Over the weekend they will rip the boardwalks off the concrete sidewalks and clear the gravel that concealed the pavement of California Street. That will pretty much restore the historic gold mining town to the appearance it had before it was transformed into Northfield, Minn., for the filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid."
Capital Journal, Salem, December 26, 1970, page 41


    "Jesse James Slipped Here" street banners in Northfield, Minn., proclaim during the annual four-day Defeat of Jesse James celebration held the second week of September.
    Material on Northfield's history and Jacksonville's reenactment of it has been exchanged by the Northfield News and the Medford Mail Tribune during the filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" by Universal Studios.
    Northfield is a college town, the home of St. Olaf and Carleton Colleges. According to the Northfield News, it was not thought proper to honor hoodlum desperadoes when the celebration was inaugurated in the late 1940s. Instead recognition is given to the bravery of the citizens who resisted the attack by the James-Younger gang. Therefore, the News carries a special historical section each year to remind the townspeople of their heritage.
    During the "Fall Festival," a title preferred by some, there is a reenactment of the infamous raid with members of the Rainbow Saddle Club taking the part of the gang and Northfield Art Guild members assuming the roles of outraged citizens.
    However, there are other events with no connection to the past: Industry Day displays, a visit of the Artmobile from Minneapolis, and a carnival.
    Northfield appears to be less interested in maintaining its historic aspect than does Jacksonville. In a comment column the News answers the question "How come the Northfield Chamber of Commerce let this (the movie-making) get away?" with "It would be our guess that, even if our Chamber of Commerce had been consulted, Northfielders would have cared little about having mud on Main Street, neon signs taken down, etc. etc."
    Conversely, Jacksonville admires its new old look, so much so that Richard Hein, the local contractor charged with restoring the town to its pre-movie appearance, has persuaded the State Highway Commission, Pacific Power and Light Co. and Pacific Northwest Bell to wait until Dec. 28 before starting the cleanup.
    Interest also has been expressed by many citizens in adding to the town's historic atmosphere in a permanent fashion as soon as finances permit.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 27, 1970, page C10


    JACKSONVILLE--California Street in Jacksonville is becoming 94 years more modern today as contractor Richard Hein and crews from the Pacific Power and Light Co. and Pacific Northwest Bell return the town to 1970.
    For more than a month Jacksonville was the scene of the filming of the Universal Studios production "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid." During that time the town was returned to 1876 with board sidewalks, dirt streets and an absence of utility poles.
    A petition by local citizens to leave the movie "additions and subtractions" failed because of lack of city funds.
    Jacksonville Police Chief Frank Carter states that traffic barricades on California Street will be removed in about two days.
Medford Mail Tribune, December 28, 1970, page 1


    HOLLYWOOD (UPI)--Cliff Robertson became the first actor in recent memory to be approached by a major studio to develop a motion picture in which he would star.
    A Universal vice president asked him almost 18 months ago to pick a screen play, help rewrite it and work on the production schedule.
    The reason is relatively simple. Robertson devoted seven years to developing, writing and selling "Charly," the film that won him an Academy award in 1968.
    Robertson's painstaking research and dedication to the total picture--not just his role--has spawned a rare actor indeed. Perhaps the last such was Charlie Chaplin, but he owned his own studio. Cornell Wilde has done similar things.
    The picture Robertson decided on was "The Great Northfield Minnesota raid," a factual account of the Cole Younger gang's unsuccessful attempt to rob the Northfield bank.
    "I play Younger," Robertson said, still wearing the beard he grew for the part. "He got shot 11 times in that raid and spent 25 years in prison.
    "Jesse James was a part of his gang, but he bugged out during the raid and escaped by wearing womens clothes."
    In his research Robertson traveled to Oregon and Kansas to talk to members of the Younger family. He found them close-mouthed but unashamed of their outlaw forebear.
    "Younger was a good 'badman,'" Robertson said. "Unlike Jesse James, who suffered from paranoia and sadism, Younger was a decent guy. He had been a captain in the Confederate army."
    Robertson is earning a small salary for his role and accepting a healthy share of the box office receipts.
    "It's more than a gamble," he said. "I spent a year and a half without making a single penny and I won't start making any real money until the picture is released."
The Observer, La Grande, March 13, 1971, page 11


    No one in Jackson County was surprised when Mr. and Mrs. Bill Howard, owners of the Diamond L Appaloosa ranch at Eagle Point, designed and built the first covered arena for horse activities in the area, thus combining their business of breeding and raising Appaloosa horses with recreational events.
    But, when Howard brought home a couple of movie stars and started peeling poles and erecting Indian teepees, a number of nearby neighbors began shaking their heads.
    "What's Howard going to do now?" they asked. "Suppose he's quitting the horse and cattle business?"
    The Howards have no intention of calling a halt to raising livestock. They still have their top senior stallion, the 12-year-old "High Eagle," a string of quality brood mares and a group of registered young "Appeys" and foals. As a sideline, out on the range is a healthy herd of beef cattle, and a few goats. Around the barn is the regular run of chickens and geese, as well as some dogs and cats. The Howards are still raising and selling tons and tons of hay. To quit farming is the furthest thing from their minds.
    The recent splurge of activity is an added effort to entertain the ever-increasing number of children groups and spectator crowds and to make more parking space available to the public over the weekends and during the summer vacation season, without crowding the ranch farm animals.
    Howard acquired the two movie stars, "Bessie and Sadie," last winter in Jacksonville, after the filming of the "Great Northfield Bank Robbery." They are two Shire mares believed to be about 17 years of age, and they will be used to pull one of the wagons used on hayrides. Howard found locating harnesses big enough for the team quite a chore, but secured identical tack with silver brads and all the decorations. They'll be a chic pair when hitched to one of the recently restored original wagons at Diamond L.
    The tepees are being made to partially accommodate overnight crowds, especially Camp Fire Girls, since they were the ones who suggested the tepees for sleeping.
    It takes 30 yards of material and 10 hours sewing time in the construction of each tepee. Mrs. Howard is the designer and seamstress. Howard does the waterproofing and sets up the poles.
    The Howards are making preparations for the second annual 4-H endurance ride at the facility. The event, open to any 4-H member, is to be held May 23. About 50 members participated in the 1970 affair. More than 100 are expected this season.
    There are few idle hours for the owners of Diamond L. If Howard isn't busy with the stock, he's hauling and shoveling gravel for the new parking area, polishing or repairing tack, or restoring and painting wagons and surreys. He's always chief cook for the buckaroo breakfast crowds.
    Mrs. Howard has charge of the concessions. In her spare time she makes all ribbons for contestants in the arean events.
Capital Press Regional Agriculture and Forest Weekly, Salem, May 28, 1971, page 5


    MEDFORD (UPI)--"The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," movie filmed on location in nearby Jacksonville, will have its Northwest premiere at Medford’s Holly Theater May 24.
    The Jacksonville location work was done in late 1970.
    The film is about the 1876 robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minn., by the Cole Younger-Jesse James gang.
    Cliff Robertson stars as Younger and Robert Duvall as James.
Capital Journal, Salem, April 17, 1972, page 17


    'The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," movie filmed in Jacksonville in late 1970, will have its Northwest premiere at Medford's Holly Theater at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 24.
    A poster for the film occupies the Tempo cover this week.
    The premiere showing is being sponsored by the Jacksonville Booster Club. Tickets are now on sale at $3. They may be obtained at the U.S National Bank in Jacksonville or at the Craterian Theater during regular movie hours prior to the 24th. If there are any left, they will be on sale at the Holly box office the night of the premiere. For more information, call 772-5562.
    Patrons attending opening night are encouraged to wear period costumes, or otherwise dinner dress.
    The movie will remain at the Holly for an extended engagement starting May 25.
    Cliff Robertson stars as Cole Younger and Robert Duvall as Jesse James in the film, about the 1876 attempt by the Younger-James gang to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minn.
    Writer-director Philip Kaufman, who has drawn much critical praise for the film, uses the incident as the basis for comment on the nature of hero worship by a fickle public, corruption in high places and violence as a spectator and participant sport.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," May 19, 1972, page C2  "Northfield" was held over for a three-week run, ending June 15.


    JACKSONVILLE--A book of sketches depicting the filming of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" will be off the press in time for the Medford premiere showing of the movie that was filmed in Jacksonville.
    Dave Jackson, 27-year-old Medford artist who is a junior in art education at Southern Oregon College, did sketches, water color and oil pictures while he worked as an extra in the movie.
    He said his role was "not too demanding. In fact, it left me a lot of free time to sketch."
    More than 30 of his pictures of movie scenes, character actors, main actors and extras are included in the 20-page, 5½ by 8½-inch book that will sell for $2 a copy. It is being printed by Artisan Press, Ashland.
    Jackson said he has permission to sell the book in the lobby of the Holly Theater, where the film will premiere on May 24 for a 13-day run. [The film was held over for a three-week run.]
    Titled "The Celluloid Raid," the book will also be available at the Old Curiosity Shop, Jacksonville; the SOC bookstore and McCarley's Books, Ashland; and the Minute Man Car Wash, Riverside Avenue, Medford.
    Jackson has studied art at the Art Institute in San Francisco, at Long Beach City College and at SOC. He said he grew accustomed to "carrying a sketch pad everywhere I went" while he was in the Navy, and that it was this habit that led to the collection of "Raid" pictures he is now publishing in book form.
Medford Mail Tribune "Tempo," May 19, 1972, page C6


    The motion picture filmed in Jacksonville in December of 1970 will open in Medford tonight.
    "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" will have its Northwest premiere at the Holly Theater. Tonight's showing is sponsored by the Jacksonville Boosters Club, and a special program is scheduled in connection with the opening.
    Warren Merrill, Motion Picture and TV Special Services Director for Gov. Tom McCall, will be master of ceremonies. Merrill is to speak at 7:30 o'clock tonight, prior to screening of the film.
    The program at the Holly will include can-can girls from The Gilded Cage Theater in Jacksonville's Pioneer Village, and a honkytonk piano. Merrill and other special guests of the Boosters Club will arrive at the Holly in antique cars provided by the Rogue Valley Old Timers Car Club.
    "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" concerns the robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minn., in 1876 by the Cole Younger-Jesse James gang. Cliff Robertson is Younger and Robert Duvall is James. Many local people appeared as extras or bit players. Most local persons are either in the baseball game or in the parade scene, which occurs near the end of the picture.
    According to Mrs. Jack Bate, president of the Jacksonville Boosters Club, the conclusion of the film will be replayed in order that people may have an extra opportunity to see themselves or their friends in that sequence.
    Following the picture, punch will be served in the main and balcony lobbies of the Holly.
    General admission is $3 for tonight's premiere. Tickets will be available at the Holly box office from 6:30 p.m. Student rush tickets are to be sold at half price from 7:30 p.m.
Medford Mail Tribune, May 24, 1972, page 7


    The motion picture filmed in Jacksonville more than a year ago opened in Medford's Holly Theater last night to a near capacity audience.
    The Northwest premiere of "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" was sponsored by the Jacksonville Boosters Club. Master of Ceremonies was Warren Merrill, Motion Picture and TV Special Services Director for Gov. Tom McCall. Merrill and more than 20 local persons were honored guests of the Boosters for opening night festivities. They were transported to the Holly from the Red Lion Motel by the Rogue Valley Old Timers Car Club.
    Among local dignitaries introduced by Merrill were Mayor John Sullivan of Jacksonville and Mrs. Sullivan; Medford Mayor William Singler and Mrs. Singler; Mr. and Mrs. Don Stathos of Jacksonville and Robertson Collins of Jacksonville. Merrill credited Collins for being instrumental in getting the "Northfield Raid" unit to select the Jacksonville area.
    Many western and 19th century costumes were worn, by both men and women at the premiere. Some who appeared as extras in the film wore their motion picture costumes.
    Mrs. Jack Bate, president of the Boosters, introduced Merrill and the four can-can dancers from the Gilded Cage Theater in Jacksonville's Pioneer Village. Pianists were Mrs. Alvin Minshall and Mrs. Jerry Hunter.
    In a brief statement preceding the film, Merrill noted the state's efforts to bring film companies into Oregon. He said that since 1968, when "Paint Your Wagon" was filmed in Baker, more than $14 million has been put into the Oregon economy from the motion picture and TV industry.
    Merrill noted that "The Kansas City Bomber" with Raquel Welch is nearing completion of its Portland filming schedule. Certain exteriors for the musical remake of "Lost Horizon" were filmed on Mt. Hood in April, and, he said, Lee Marvin, who was in "Paint Your Wagon," is to return to the state this summer. Marvin will be in Cottage Grove for a film presently titled "King of the Hobos." Merrill said that picture has a 77-day shooting schedule.
    Locally he noted that "Gunsmoke" and "The FBI" TV series will each film two-part episodes in Jackson and Josephine counties within the next few weeks.
    "Gunsmoke" will film on the Rogue River near Grants Pass, and "The FBI" will be in the Grants Pass and Medford areas.
    Last night when the first scenes of Jacksonville, starring as 1876 Northfield, Minn., appeared on the Technicolor wide screen, the audience applauded. The wildly comic baseball scene, filmed on the Buckley property on the Applegate, also drew laughter and applause.
    Most local people who appeared as extras were either in the baseball scene or the parade scene which ends the film. Last night these two sequences were repeated.
    The film's closing credits express thanks for the cooperation of the residents of Jacksonville, Oregon.
    While audience reaction of the picture itself was mixed, nearly everyone agreed that Jacksonville and Southern Oregon scenery were beautifully represented.
    Champagne punch was served following last night's screening.
    "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid" is booked at the Holly for an extended run.--A.R.
Medford Mail Tribune, May 25, 1972, page 11


    By now 1,000 or so local people have seen "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," filmed mostly in Jacksonville during December, 1970. This is a picture that virtually no one locally can view objectively. Different persons will react differently, some because they were in it; others because they were not, and others who simply don't care that much.
    At Wednesday evening's opening, a number of people said they liked the way the Jacksonville downtown area and cemetery were shown. Yet they didn't care for certain aspects of the picture itself. Some, who don't often attend movies, were turned off by the language, violence and partial nudity, all contained to a modest extent, by present filmmaking guide lines.
    An aside point along those lines: "Raid" was placed on the approved list by the American Humane Association, which indicates that animals were treated in accordance with the association's standards. Some may have wondered at the scene in which Robert Duvall as Jesse James apparently shot a horse. He didn't.
    The picture is due to open in New York next week, which is one reason writer-director Philip Kaufman could not be here this week, although he had hoped he could come here when plans were originally made for the Northwest premiere in Medford. It is receiving mixed reviews, but most are favorable.
    Even those that disagree with the picture often commend Kaufman, director of photography Bruce Surtees and Duvall's acting. They also remark about the picture's realism, enhanced by the setting and the appearance of the townspeople.
    I admit to being one of the many who applauded Wednesday night at the first view of Jacksonville (Northfield) from the cemetery hill, looking down toward trees in fall leaf; then a quick cut to ride-bys of the Presbyterian Church and the museum (Northfield College).
    With the slow-roll credits at the end, the picture expressed an appreciation to the residents of Jacksonville that will be seen in various parts of the world. "Raid" is a major motion picture that will be around for awhile and will be increasingly noted as Philip Kaufman asserts more of his career.
    At several points in the story, members of the gang say that people will always remember the Northfield Raid. Years from now, when the film is shown on television or revived, many of us will see our friends or families as they were then, and the way the sun reflected off a church window in Jacksonville on a particular December day.
    Each of us will hold his or her own special thoughts, different from any hired critic's, but personal and important. The reaction may be emotional, but the ability to evoke it is art.
Cleve Twitchell, "Potluck," Medford Mail Tribune, May 28, 1972, page C18


    Editor's note: The following is reprinted from the editorial column of the Oregon Journal, Portland. It was written by Donald J. Sterling, Jr., the Journal's editor, who participated in the recent workshop on historic preservation in Jacksonville.
    Recent activities in Jacksonville are worth pointing out to a statewide audience. The way that Southern Oregon town has made healthy capital out of its gold-rush history sets a pattern which many other Oregon communities could follow.
    Last week Jacksonvillians trooped over to Medford 5 miles away (Jacksonville has no movie house of its own) for their first look at Universal Pictures' "The Great Northfield Minnesota, Raid," which was filmed in and around Jacksonville.
    The reason Jacksonville people found their buildings and their faces, as extras, on the screen is that in recent years they have made remarkable progress in revitalizing, and at the same time preserving, the Victorian atmosphere of their 130-year-old town.
    Jacksonville was the seat of Jackson County for 75 years after the discovery of gold there in 1851-52. But by what turns out to have been a lucky accident, after the railroad bypassed it in the 1880s the town went into a sleepy decline from which it has only lately begun to waken.
    Not everyone there goes along yet with the idea that supermarkets and neon-lit motels are what Jacksonville doesn't need. But unlike some similar organizations elsewhere, the Jacksonville Booster Club has decided that Jacksonville's future lies in taking advantage of its past. It is working hard for preservation.
    This month the Boosters held an all-day meeting on historic preservation, mainly for Jacksonville's people, and nearly 100 of them showed up. The theme was that good preservation makes good business.
    John Frisbee III, field representative for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, estimated that every visitor to a historic place like Jacksonville leaves an average of $4 behind. Pointing out that 100,000 visited Jacksonville's museum last year, and that probably another 100,000 came to the town but skipped the museum, he pointed out that preservation therefore probably brought $800,000 in tourist money to Jacksonville in 1971, which would have multiplied to some $3.6 million as it passed from hand to hand in the Rogue Valley neighborhood.
    The key to good preservation is use, added Elisabeth K. Thompson, senior editor of Architectural Record magazine. She showed slides of dozens of buildings in her home town, San Francisco, which have been preserved in their Victorian or immediate post-Earthquake elegance on the outside. This has been done not in spite of, but in most cases because of, the fact that they have been thoroughly refurbished on the inside into usable and attractive stores, offices and homes.
    Jacksonville's message increasingly is that a town with interesting old buildings can actually make itself a busier and at the same time a pleasant place to live and work by preserving them. Man has a natural hunger to know where his own roots lie. A well-preserved town can feed that hunger--to its own profit.
    Listening to the Jacksonville Boosters seminar were delegations from Astoria, Klamath Falls, Lakeview, Dayville and Yreka, Calif., among other places. All of those communities, and many more as well, have history to sell.
Medford Mail Tribune, June 4, 1972, page 5


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