From the S&S archives: Alconbury airmen on camera

WHEN PARAMOUNT Pictures needed 70 extras to portray World War II-era GIs, it turned to the U.S. Air Force folks at RAF Alconbury, England.

The silver screen moguls got their GIs and their shots. The guys from Alconbury made some money and got a good look at how movies are made.

One of them is lined up for a Hollywood screen test next month.

Paramount is shooting a big-budget, made-for-television movie based on James Michener's recent book Space, an account of America's leap into the cosmos, beginning with its early roots.

No one concerned with its production is saying just how much the film is budgeted for, but it's rumored S20 million will be spent on it before it's ready for broadcasting sometime late next spring.

CBS has already bought the film from Paramount and plans to air its total of 13 hours in five episodes.

Aside from a few well-known stars such as Bruce Dern, Michael York and James Garner, the film notably lacks big-name players.

Production companies are at work simultaneously shooting the film in Stamford, England, and the United States. Locations in the United States are being used to film later episodes that are concerned with the effort to get man into space.

THE SCENES BEING SHOT in England are concerned with efforts by the United States in the closing days of World War II to get its hands on some of Nazi Germany's rocket experts (the best in the world at that time) before Russia could grab them and put them to work on its own projects.

In a nutshell, the three hours' worth of scenes mostly revolve around the efforts of an American intelligence agent (Dern) to capture a leading German rocketeer (York) as battle rages in and around the German town of Wittenberg just before the war's end.

Transforming historically rich Stamford - a town filled with beautiful stone buildings and the first community in Britain to be designated as a "Conservation Area" by the government - into a battle-scarred German city came relatively easy to the experienced film makers.

They replaced the street signs with old-fashioned-looking ones in German, draped Nazi banners on the Town Hall, littered the streets with gutted tanks and overturned Jeeps, and methodically snipped off every rooftop TV antenna in sight.

THEY NEXT WERE FACED WITH the task of coming up with enough Americans to play the parts of U.S. infantrymen. The movie experts prefer Americans to play Americans because they say that they move and talk like the real thing, an effect that just doesn't work when they hire Englishmen to play GIs.

The movie's location manager contacted the public affairs office at RAF Alconbury, home of the 10th Tac Recon Wing, about 20 miles south of Stamford for assistance in getting American extras and were advised to place a want ad in the weekly base paper, The Photogram. The response to the movie makers' ad was extraordinary.

"We had the names of 100 people who wanted to be in the movie a half an hour after the paper came out, and the phones did not stop ringing for four days afterwards," said Al Eakle, a public affairs specialist and one of the lucky ones who got to work in the film.

All the men (the film company had no need for American women extras) took part in the filming on their own time - either on days off or on leave - and were paid 50 pounds (about $67) per day for their presence. Additionally, the film company fed them while they were on location.

The guys from Alconbury found out that days are long on a film set. Buses picked them up at the base at 6:30 a.m. and didn't drop back there until after 9 p.m.

"LIKE JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY else, this is the first time I've taken part in a movie. The most interesting part of the whole thing has been seeing how a movie is made," said Bill Mowder, who works in weapons standardization in the 10th Aircraft Generation Sq.

"On Tuesday we were sitting in the convoy in our woolen uniforms in 80-degree weather with the sun beating down on us and the director said, 'Look cold - this is supposed to be March of 1945.' So, we pulled our woolen caps a little further down, looked cold -and continued sweating."

Mowder and some of the other Air Force guys had to pay a penalty for taking part in the movie. For the sake of realism, it was decreed their moustaches would have to go. Off went the brush Mowder had had for the last 17 years. He took its loss philosophically. "That's the price you pay - it will grow back."

The extras found that movie making can be a painfully slow process.

"On Tuesday we did a battle scene over and over again. In each take something went wrong. Finally, we got it right. Just then an F-111 flew overhead and ruined the whole shot," recalled Tom Bont, a disaster preparedness NCO, who plays the only Army MP in the scenes here.

ALL PRAISED THE QUALITY of the food served to them on the set.

"They've been feeding us great. On Tuesday, we had a choice of lasagna, steak or trout. We're all having a ball even though most of the time we are sitting around doing nothing and waiting to be called for our scenes," added Bont.

Although many of the props on the set were hardly the real thing - such as tanks made out of fiberglass and mounted on Land Rover chassis - the Alconbury extras found the movie people to be real people who were fun to be around.

"Bruce Dern's stand-in is his exact double and I couldn't figure out out which was which. We were all standing in the chow line the other day so I said, 'Bruce, can I have your autograph' and they both turned around at the same time and said, 'Sure', said Dale Hafer, 22, a vehicle operator for the 10th Trans Sq.

ONE OF THE ALCONBURY guys may have struck paydirt by volunteering as an extra. Bernardo "Bernie" Fernandez, a short, slight 22-year-old who looks a bit like a young Sal Mineo, was singled out to play a medic during the two days of filming. A conversation with Michael York and the director, Joseph Sargent, then led to a small speaking part in the scenes.

"I don't know whether you can really call it a speaking part or not. It's only three lines and they'll probably dub it out in the edited version," said Fernandez, who spent two years studying theater at Ohio State University.

Further conversations with the powers to be on the set led to the offer of a screen test at Paramount in Los Angeles Aug. 15.

"They want me to have five, 5-minute monologues prepared for the screen test. One of them I'm planning on doing is from the Agatha Christie play, The Mousetrap. It involves portraying an English policeman and is meant to show them that I'm versatile."

Whether the screen test leads to stardom or not, Fernandez, and many of the other Alconbury guys, have already had a taste of stardom since they were mobbed by local kids seeking their autographs.