Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/brian-dambrosio/)
In the days before World War I, Clarence Sinclair Bull took his first photograph — of a ladder leaning against a building on his father’s ranch south of Sun River, using a camera he bought in a Great Falls hardware store. Not too many years after that, he was photographing Hollywood’s elite. (more…) Continue Reading →
“Wolf Point is not the biggest town in the state of Montana,” the July 1975 issue of Western Horseman said,” but it’s famous beyond its size.”
“One reason is that it’s the home of the Wild Horse Stampede, Montana’s oldest rodeo,” the article went on. “The other is that it has a native son named Owen Harlan Mickel, who grew up as Montie Montana.” (more…) Continue Reading →
“Wallace D. Coburn, the original shoot -’em -up, watch-my-smoke, whoopee-ky-otee cowpuncher and movie star, is in town.”
That was how the Honolulu Star-Bulletin trumpeted the May 1917 arrival of northern Montana’s original cowboy poet and movie star in the islands. (more…) Continue Reading →
She was the fabulous Baker, Mont., girl who had built “Irene” into a quality trademark. This fabled designer of magical gowns for the movies once led such a charmed career that she was known simple by her first name: Irene. (more…) Continue Reading →
Jonah is a bilingual desk clerk working an emotionally wearisome hotel job in Montana. Buster is a puzzling mountain man who breaks into people’s vacation homes for food and shelter and occasionally defecates in their kitchen pots. How the two men are connected and the relationship between them is the crux of “Buster’s Mal Heart,” a well-crafted mystery-thriller in which the title character is haunted by visions of a past life while being pursued by the authorities. The movie was shot in and around Kalispell in October and November 2015. (more…) Continue Reading →
Jerry Kramer is best known for playing with the Green Bay Packers when they won the first two Super Bowls, in 1967 and ’68. The offensive lineman also played a big role in helping the Packers win seven world championships in the 1960s. Any discussion of his career is also likely to include mention of the epic contests Kramer participated in, such as the Ice Bowl (1967 NFL Championship Game), or his interactions with almost sanctified figures like Vince Lombardi. (more…) Continue Reading →
Director Ron Howard remembers seeing Ireland for the first time at age 4. His plane stopped at Shannon Airport for refueling en route to Austria, and the verdant greens of the Emerald Isle were instilled in his memory. Howard also remembers being on the set of “The Music Man” (1962), shot in the wide-screen Technorama format. “I recall huge, oversized cameras that took five or six people to lug around, and all day to set up,” he said. (more…) Continue Reading →
Hunger is not political discourse to Jeff Bridges. When the actor discusses the inability of children to access food, reduced food quality, the importance of food banks or federal nutrition programs, he evaluates them as societal or communal problems as opposed to explicitly political ones. (more…) Continue Reading →
Former Montana Film Commissioner Gary Wunderwald was adept at finding what directors and producers needed, including dated cars, railroad beds, carnivals and waterfalls. One August afternoon in 1986, he fielded an especially challenging request. He was asked to find a 1930-period bridge—but it couldn’t be just any 1930-period bridge. On this bridge, Prohibition-era whiskey runners would clash with lawmen as part of Paramount Production’s “The Untouchables.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Paul G. Eitner left New Jersey in 1914 at age 37 and ended up in Miles City, Mont. Physicians had recommended the drier climate as a treatment for his tuberculosis. He found work as a ranch hand in Custer County and later at a liquor store. In 1918, Eitner was accused of murdering Joseph Nugent, a man who supposedly tried courting a woman Eitner was in love with. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison at Deer Lodge. Continue Reading →
