December 26, 2018/Deliverance

Hi, I’m Ben Mankiewicz. Thanks for joining us tonight on TCM as we celebrate the life and movies of one of the more controversial and, I think, underrated careers of the last 50 years, Burt Reynolds. He died September 6 in Florida. Up next, the movie that made Reynolds a box office star, one of the top-grossing movies of 1972, from Warner Bros, *Deliverance*. Reynolds leads three friends, all of them Atlanta businessmen, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronnie Cox, on a canoe trip down treacherous river rapids in the Appalachian region of North Georgia. The river named in the movie, the Cahulawassee, is fictional. The canoe scenes were shot on the Chattooga River. The struggles the four men endure go far beyond the challenges of the river when they encounter mountain men who fail to abide by the rules of civilized society. Jon Voight was the only established movie star in 1972, based on his performance in *Midnight Cowboy* from 1969. Beatty and Cox each made their big screen debuts in *Deliverance*, an auspicious start to impressive character actor careers for both of them. But the movie’s most dazzling performance came from Burt Reynolds. Reynolds had been making television and landing bit movie roles for nearly 15 years. But his stint as a guest host for Johnny Carson on *The Tonight Show* piqued the curiosity of *Deliverance* director John Boorman. After seeing Reynolds demonstrate such commanding authority, presence and personality in Carson’s seat, Boorman became convinced Reynolds was right for this alpha male role in *Deliverance*. James Dickey wrote the screenplay based on his own bestselling novel. Dickey, who also has a cameo playing the sheriff in the end of the film, understandably felt proprietorial about the material and on the set, he always called the actors by the names of the characters. From 1972, nominated for three Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director and featuring the Grammy Award-winning song “Dueling Banjos,” this is *Deliverance*.

**Outro**

At various points during pre-production on *Deliverance*, three of the biggest names to emerge from the Golden Age of Hollywood were considered to star in *Deliverance*. Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando. It would have been a very different movie. I’m just guessing, but if the stars had been in the movie together, I’d imagine Fonda in the Jon Voight role, Stewart in the Ronnie Cox part, with Brando in the Burt Reynolds role. Casting the Ned Beatty character with a classic Hollywood leading man would’ve posed a fascinating challenge. What a different movie that would’ve been. Anyway, according to Reynolds, the three classic heavyweights backed out when they learned they would have to endure the dangers of the Chattooga River rapids that doubled for the fictional river in the movie, the Cahulawassee. After training with canoe experts, Reynolds, Voight, Cox and Beatty did many of their own stunts. Something that came naturally to Burt Reynolds. He was a former stuntman and played football in college in Florida or Florida State, I can’t recall which. They’re basically the same, right? Just trying to get you guys mad, he played at Florida State. Reynolds volunteered to do one of the most dangerous scenes in the film, going over a 90-foot waterfall, because using a dummy wasn’t working, it looked too much like a dummy. Reynolds said he went over the waterfall as a 35-year-old daredevil in perfect shape. He said he was a 75-year-old man when he came out of the water. Reynold sustained several injuries and the strength of the water stripped him of his wetsuit and shot him 200 yards down the river. After being released from the hospital, Reynolds asked director John Boorman how the footage looked. Boorman replied “like a dummy going over a waterfall.” Up next, Florida State’s Burt Reynolds uses a football game to demonstrate the dignity of man behind bars.