Thursday, December 28, 2023

Robert Forster's father was a logger, and then an elephant trainer for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, but left to join the Army and flew in WW2


As a tribute to his father, Forster hung one of his father's Barnum & Bailey Circus posters in the office of his character in Jackie Brown, as well as his dad's short elephant hook. 


When he received his draft notice for Vietnam, his mother suicided by burning herself at home. "“She was hysterical about the thought of my going to Vietnam,” he says, his voice suddenly choked. “She used to say, Who has the right to come and take my son and kill him?’

Forster kicked off his film career on as high of a note as one could imagine—a film directed by John Huston and co-starring two of the biggest actors in the world at the time, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.




He starred in Delta Force with Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, he worked with Gregory Peck on The Stalking Moon (western), who sponsored him into the Motion Picture Academy (and Peck was it's president, who with Candace Bergen, were actively changing it from stodgy old guard Hollywood to performers who had a 1st hand perspective vs financial interest in what won) 

He got the starring role in a 1972 tv series, Banyon, as a Los Angeles private eye that would work any case for 20 a day, and drove a 32 Packard model 900 Light Eight convertible Coupe

Banyon’s office was down the hall from a secretary school in the Bradbury building. They have an agreement for him to use one of her students whenever needed. This gave the young secretary-to-be some experience, and Banyon got a different pretty young secretary for free every week




He was nominated for best supporting actor Oscar for Quentin Tarentino’s 1997 hit “Jackie Brown, and was Tim Allen's dad on Last Man Standing, and had a great role in Breaking Bad's sequel El Camino

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/04/archives/robert-forster-how-to-succeed-in-flops-about-robert-forster-robert.html
https://www.wranglernews.com/2019/10/31/robert-forster-recalling-a-memorable-encounter/

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