Johnny Dark Movie Book

119 Part 5: Additional Information Chuck Tatum Memories I interviewed Chuck over several years …. • Originally film was going to be in 3D, but 3D was falling off in popularity, and changed to non - 3D. • No doubles for cars because if you wrecked a car, they just wrote it out of the script. • During the movie, they wanted to roll one of the cars, (Johnny Daheim ’ s car) but the studio did not want to spend the money. • Tony Curtis never drove a car in the race scenes. • After first day of filming, the co - driver of Idaho Special quit because scared of driving. Andy Botto (Chuck Tatum ’ s business partner) got the job on day number 2 (or evening of 1 st day). • Race #1 was at airport and that's where stunt director met Chuck Tatum and tried to get his car in movie. The race was at an airport at little costal city off of 101 near Los Angeles - near Santa Barbara. Many races were there early on. This was at the Santa Barbara Airport at Goleta California in 1953. This was only the 3 rd or 4 th race Chuck brought his car too, and he raced it Sat and Sun. Filming of the race for the movie was on Monday and Chuck returned to see that occur. • Tony Curtis was married to Janet Leigh then - Chuck got to know them both fairly well • This was the start of movie - related career for Chuck Tatum • Movie Director wanted his car, but Chuck would allow him to do so only if he was driver and they paid for his SAG card too - cost of about $250. After the movie studio balked several times, they finally said "yes". • Chuck made about $10,000 over course of film • Andy Botto (Chuck ’ s business partner) got $5000 at end of film for keeping Wildfire running each day. • Chuck became good friends with Carey Loftin (stuntman, driver for Johnny Dark) over time. Went to races together, and Carey raced his car in actual race at least once.