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 Author  Topic: B&W Movie Still from PT 109
Drew Cook

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Drew Cook  Posted on: Feb 5, 2012 - 8:49am
While playing on the internet, I found this interesting b&w still from the movie "PT 109." It seems to be from a sequence that was filmed but "ended up on the cutting room floor." It depicts Cliff Robertson as JFK and Robert Culp as Barney Ross, paddling a dugout canoe in rough seas at night.

In the real-life PT 109 shipwreck saga, JFK and Ross swam from Olasana island, to which the crew had moved from their initial landfall on Plum Pudding island, to Naru (aka Gross, aka Cross) Island on the fourth day of their ordeal, to try to get closer to Ferguson Passage. JFK and Ross found a native canoe in the bushes, and that night paddled out into Ferguson Passage to hail any patrolling PTs. Here's the description of their attempt, from Robert J. Donovan's PT 109 - John F. Kennedy in World War II:

"From the outset...Kennedy and Ross were in difficulty. The waves...were now smashing over the reef, and the wind was rising. Once beyond the reef the sea ran too high for them. With slats for paddles they could not keep the bow into the waves. water splashed over the gunwales. In the stern Ross tried bailing with a coconut shell, but more water poured into the canoe. As they were shouting to each other about turning back a five-foot wave capsized them. They splashed about in the dark until they got a grip on the overturned canoe..."

Obviously, the sequence of JFK and Ross swimming to Naru (aka Gross/Cross), their wave-tossed night canoe paddle, and their return to Olasana are missing from the finished movie, but it seems to me this photo still is evidence that the entire sequence was probably filmed -- but cut from the final print.

Just thought it interesting.

-- Drew.


Robert Culp as Barney Ross and Cliff Robertson as JFK paddle canoe in deleted scene from ''PT 109''






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