Category: Allies
Despite my involvement Heart of Dixie was actually quite a flop, earning a bit north of $1 million against an $8 million investment.
When I was in college I was kind-of a movie star. I played in an actual Hollywood movie. It was a ghastly film but an extraordinary experience. I got into a fake fight and inadvertently knocked the movie’s female lead stupid, grinding the entire production to a halt.
The movie was titled Heart of Dixie. Fret not, you’ve likely not heard of it. It was a ham-handed coming-of-age drama wherein Yankee actors shot a movie in the South with atrocious fake regional accents. However, it was my first (and only) real taste of stardom.
How awesome was I, you ask? Well, not meaning to brag, but my left hand figured prominently on the back of the box at Blockbuster, back when Blockbuster was a thing.
I played a National Guardsman safeguarding the arrival of the first black student at a fictitious Alabama university. The entire sordid narrative seemed a thinly-veiled reference to James Meredith’s matriculation at the University of Mississippi in 1962. It was even shot on the Ole Miss campus where the real riots actually took place.
James Meredith was the first African-American student admitted to the University of Mississippi back in 1962. His arrival sparked several days of racial violence. Things are way better today. Our riot scene was recreated at the same spot. Public domain.
I was a freshly-minted paratrooper. Unlike the other college student extras who signed up to be Guardsmen, I actually looked the part. That bought me the prime position in front of Ally Sheedy, the real star of the movie. She was coming off of War Games and The Breakfast Club and was, as a result, a proper movie star. She was skinnier up close than I had expected.
Phoebe Cates, Virginia Madsen, and Treat Williams rounded out the lineup. Don Michael Paul played a substantial role, but his claim to fame at the time was limited to a well-known TV commercial for Doublemint Gum (he actually told me that). Kurtwood Smith played a college professor.
Making movies involves a great deal of waiting, at least for a peon like me. During once dead stretch I enjoyed an extended discussion with Kurtwood Smith. He played the villain Clarence Boddicker in Robocop.
I asked him about the guns they used in that movie. His character logged a fair amount of trigger time behind the Cobra Assault Cannon. This fictitious prop was built around a .50-caliber Barrett M82 anti-materiel rifle. He said it was very heavy.
These Federal Marshals are heading onto the Ole Miss campus to try to help keep the peace back in 1962.
Public domain.
The Setting
They split us faux Guardsmen into two ranks facing outward to form a cordon through which the young female African American student must pass.
Extras playing students and angry redneck townspeople were arrayed on the outside of the cordon. Fake Federal Marshals escorted the young lady toward the building. Because of my military bearing (I guess) I drew the prime spot restraining Ally Sheedy.
The entire scene is maybe five minutes on screen. Making it required two long hot days. Most of that was spent with me holding a welded up M1 Garand rifle while Ally Sheedy stretched to see over my shoulder while looking pensive.
Kurtwood Smith played the villain Clarence Boddicker in Robocop. He said the weapons they carried, which were made from Barrett M-82 rifles like this one, were very heavy.
Most of the weapons were rubber dummies. Because I was in the close-ups, mine was an actual rifle that had been demilled. During our production breaks I entertained the cast and crew by disassembling and reassembling the thing on the sidewalk.
My job was actually pretty cool. Once the director yelled, “Action!” all heck broke loose. The angry crowd rioted, and the poor black girl got jostled. Amidst the chaos this redneck guy breaks through the far side of the cordon and spits on her.
I see him do it, inexplicably hand my rifle to the guy beside me, and proceed to pummel him vigorously before passing him off to a fake cop.
Ally Sheedy takes advantage of the hole I left in the line to slip in and emote with this girl. With the spitting redneck now subdued, I grab my rifle and use it to push Miss Sheedy roughly back into position.
Then the fake Governor makes a rousing racist speech, and everybody goes home. At least that’s the way it was supposed to play out.
I entertained myself over two days of shooting a movie by stripping and reassembling my demilled M1 rifle.
Tragedy Strikes
At one point during the riot scene an overexuberant townsperson jolted me vigorously. I reflexively rotated to regain my footing and caught Ally Sheedy, the star of the entire movie, under the chin with the very real muzzle of my rifle, knocking her right into next week.
We didn’t get any classes on how to be a good extra, but I’m pretty sure cold cocking the movie’s lead would not have been in the curriculum.
Fortunately there was already too much footage with me in it for them to fire me. Miss Sheedy disappeared to her trailer to have her bruises camouflaged by the makeup department, while several hundred extras just sat around … all thanks to me.
When she returned I apologized vigorously, but she clearly didn’t want to talk about it. However, I can sincerely say I once actually beat up a movie star. Ally, if you’re out there someplace — no kidding, I really am sorry.
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C.W. Rowland produced an amazing 0.721-inch, 10-shot group at 200 yards with a Ballard-Pope Schützen rifle chambered for .32-40. That shooting feat was accomplished in 1901, and the name Pope in reference to that rifle belonged to Harry M. Pope. He was known for producing accurate rifle barrels. In fact, he was driven to make the best barrels in the world.
Harry Melville Pope was born on August 15, 1861, in Walpole, New Hampshire, and moved with his family to Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1862. By age six, his mother, his father, and his sister had died, and he was being raised by an aunt. He learned about mechanical things by working in his uncle’s bicycle shop. It was there that he, at the age of 12, rifled his first barrel—a brass barrel for an air-powered dart gun—using a foot lathe and barrel broach that he fashioned himself.
At 20, Harry enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied mechanical engineering. At 26, he made a .25-caliber rifle barrel that he used to win a shooting contest. His load was 25 grains of blackpowder under 100-grain bullets, and he handcrafted the cartridge cases used for that rifle by turning them from solid brass. He soon became obsessed with making the perfect rifle barrel and took up offhand competition shooting.
In his quest to produce the best rifle barrels in the world, he did a fair amount of benchrest shooting, although he stated that he preferred shooting offhand. He was an innovator and invented a special machine rest to eliminate the human factor when testing his barrels. Eventually, he worked with many top shooters, wildcatters, and riflemakers of the time, including Dr. F.W. Mann, Harvey Donaldson, W.V. Lowe, Townsend Whelen, C.W. Rowland, and Ned Roberts, among others.
According to writer Sam Fadala, Harry’s barrels were so accurate due to two factors. One was the special style of rifling Harry used. The other was Harry’s practice of loading the breechloading rifles from the muzzle.
Harry used an 8/8 rifling system. That means he used eight grooves and eight lands. The grooves were wide, flat, and shallow. Groove depth was approximately 0.004 inch. The lands were narrow with the corners rounded off.
Loading the breechloaders from the muzzle fostered better accuracy because it allowed the bullets to be perfectly centered in the bore when they were seated. It also provided more efficient and effective burning of the powder.
As related by Harvey Donaldson, Harry’s method of loading a breechloader from the muzzle was as follows: First insert a dummy cartridge (with the mouth of the case plugged) into the rifle’s chamber. Then carefully place the bullet into the rifle’s muzzle and push it down until it touches the dummy round. Withdraw the ramrod slowly so as not to suck the bullet part way up the barrel. Replace the dummy cartridge with a loaded one that had a grease wad on top.
Some writers have reported that some individual Pope rifles were in use for more than 40 years—after having been fired 35,000 to 40,000 times—and were still able to produce perfect scores at 200 yards. Incredibly, one Harry Pope rifle was reported to have been fired 125,000 times with 700 pounds of powder and 4,000 pounds of lead going through its bore, and it was still accurate.
Harry produced barrels for more than six decades, but he also invented shooting-related products. In addition to his machine rest, he produced a universal bullet mold, a lead melting pot, and an iron front sight that shooters prized. Articles and books have been written about Harry, and he even wrote an article or two himself for various shooting magazines.
Driven to produce the best barrels in the world, Harry often referred to himself as a mechanical engineer, but he also was a self-confessed “gun crank.” Harry M. Pope passed away on October 11, 1950. He was 89 years old.
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