The mud-spattered 1930 Ford Model A pickup sat huddled with its classic contemporaries from the teens and twenties in a huge, heated garage in Monroe, Mich. But the dirt dotting its dark body was from Chicago, 250 miles away.
And though it looked like just an old truck, this Model A quarter-ton was a star of “The Untouchables,” the television series, which airs at 7 p.m. Sundays on WGN-Ch. 9, filmed in the Windy City.
Beside the quarter-ton pickup was a coupe with its engine exposed.
“The hood wasn’t properly fastened and it blew off on (Interstate Highway) 94 when the vehicle was being transported between Chicago and Detroit,” said Pierre Laginess, owner of Antique and Classic Rental Service, a Michigan-based business that deals in used collector cars, trucks and bicycles and rents them to film studios.
“We went back and got the hood, but not until after several people had run over it,” Laginess said, pointing to the wavy hinged piece resting against the wheel of one of the 100 or so special vehicles in his inventory.
While Laginess has been in the “used” car business for close to 30 years, his adventures in filmmaking are fairly recent.
The studios own some special vehicles, but they can’t begin to meet their needs, he said. So he filled a niche, beginning in the early 1970s, by providing a stately but menacing 1928 Buick sedan for the original “Godfather.” And it was “Billy Bathgate” (1990) that swept the car nut into the movies.
When Paramount Pictures was doing “Bathgate,” a producer called Antique and Classic. They were right on deadline (Laginess said that’s almost always the case). The studio needed a second black 1936 Packard in Wilmington, N.C., as soon as possible. Could he help?
Laginess didn’t have one on hand, but he remembered selling a dark-blue ’36 Packard to Al Omet in nearby Wyandotte several years earlier. Omet was unwilling to part with the beautiful vehicle permanently-Laginess prefers to buy what he needs-but he would make it available. As part of the deal, Omet wanted a certificate signed by “Billy Bathgate” star Dustin Hoffman.
“The Packard was the right year and basic body style, but it had side mounts and of course it was blue instead of black,” Laginess said. “So (Paramount) took the side mounts off, filled in the fenders and painted the whole thing black.
“When they returned it to Omet, they had put back the side mounts,” he said, “but Omet said it was all right to leave it black.”
In spite of its New York City and Saratoga Springs settings, most of “Billy Bathgate” was filmed near Wilmington, N.C., which is gaining favor among filmmakers. Sylvester Stallone, for example, built a studio there, named it Carolco after his mother, then gave it to her. It’s where Laginess and members of his staff were initiated into moviemaking.
“We closed our operation for a while so the whole crew could go down,” he said. “Several of us served as extras, and we always have at least one person accompany the cars to make sure they are in perfect running condition.” The attention to detail in movies and television is amazing, he said. Laginess said one of his sons tried to tuck his longish hair under a cap for a scene, but he was nailed by a fastidious film staffer who gave him an appropriate haircut.
Even personal jewelry like rings must be removed, he said.
Since “Bathgate,” business has grown to include the recently released “Hoffa,” and new television series such as “The Untouchables” and “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,” which airs at 7 p.m. Saturday on WLS-Ch. 7.
In one of the large garages behind the Antique and Classic dealership showroom sit several mid-’30s cars used in “Lost in Yonkers.” Scheduled for release this year, the film, starring Richard Dreyfuss, was shot largely near Cincinnati. Some of the cars have been in other ’30s scenes-in “Hoffa,” which was shot in Detroit, for example-but Laginess said producers shy away from a vehicle that has had too much exposure. Eagle-eyed fans recognize them, he said.
So they go on sale. Their Hollywood histories may influence buyers, but they don’t drive up prices much. Laginess, who has a substantial amount of money in his unusual inventory, advertises vehicles for sale in local and national publications-the same way he finds them. He wants to get his money back out of the cars, he said.
On one winter morning, a young man swathed in two flannel shirts and topped with a flaps-down hunting cap had driven some 80 miles to Monroe to pick up a chocolate-brown 1936 Chevrolet Deluxe sedan that had had a role in “Lost in Yonkers.” The purchaser and a brother were buying it as a golden wedding anniversary surprise for their parents, who had owned a similar vehicle when they married in December 1942.
Dan Hoffman, longtime colleague of Laginess and manager of his late-model used-car business in nearby New Boston, helped move the dozen vehicles that hemmed the Chevy against a wall. Hoffman had just returned from the “Indiana Jones” set, where he tended vehicles and taught actors to drive them.
The movie-making business is grueling, but the long hours and extraordinary attention to detail are offset by being a part of the excitement and working with the stars, he said. Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Hopper impressed him.
“Hoffman used to keep a football with his monogram, DH, on it and he was always throwing it to people,” Hoffman recalled. “One day I happened to be in the line of fire. I caught it and told him it must have been mine, since those also are my initials.”
Dan Hoffman monitors vehicles, fills in as an extra and does chauffeuring and “gofer” work at a shoot. He said he soon learned he had to know every inch of a town because he was always being sent, at top speed, for something or someone. “I’d study maps and drive around until I knew every alley, building and one-way street,” he said.
A problem he couldn’t control was the day a distributor cap in a ’30s-vintage Packard cracked. Hoffman said they looked frantically for a replacement.
“I worked 48 hours to get one and put it on the car, which was running so rough it couldn’t be used,” he said. “Then that scene, like so many, wound up on the cutting-room floor.”
Laginess said the “Lost in Yonkers” producers called for two identical green Plymouth sedans. One they left intact. They removed the windshield and hood from the second so they could mount a camera on the front of the car and film Dreyfuss and his “family” driving around lost.
“But instead of Dreyfuss actually doing the driving, the vehicle was mounted on a moving platform on the back of a truck,” Laginess said. “Natural” shadows came from branches fastened to something that looked like an umbrella-shaped clothesline.
“We had about three weeks to come up with the identical Plymouths,” he said. “Two weeks ago, we sent a guy 1,500 miles away to Watertown, S.D., to get a 1956 four-door Chrysler for a producer.
In one of the Antique and Classic garages, several vehicles were marked “Hoffa,” referring to the 20th Century Fox production starring Jack Nicholson. “We provided most of the vehicles for this movie, and we also were extras,” Laginess said. “It was a tough assignment because most of the filming took place at night.
“I remember how cold it was for the outdoor scenes done in Detroit near the old Cadillac Fleetwood plant,” he said. “They would routinely work through the night and quit about 6 a.m.”
“The Untouchables,” a revival of the earlier TV series that’s full of ’20s and ’30s vintage vehicles, began shooting last fall in Chicago.
In the new “Indiana Jones” TV series, a 1924 Model T was dumped into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina; a 1954 Chevy pickup was intentionally rolled over in another film expedition.
Though such attrition is not common, Laginess said a vehicle’s movie career is limited. Producers don’t like to feature a car in more than a couple of movies. Hence, a 1935 Chevrolet sedan used in “Bathgate” and “Hoffa” is on sale for $6,750. It sits under the neon Embassy Club sign Paramount gave Dan Hoffman after filming.
Laginess said it’s getting hard to find old ambulances, hearses, buses and light-duty trucks. People who have them aren’t willing to sell, he said.
His collector car retail business is healthy, he said. The Monroe dealership, built in 1984 of reclaimed bricks from Detroit, is a copy of a Packard dealership in Minnesota. Blue-and-white Packard service signs hang outside. Glass-top fuel pumps stand outside the door, which opens into a small showroom with space for only a couple of cars on the dark-wood floor.
The company offers free transport of vehicles to the East Coast. Laginess said overseas business is growing steadily, especially to Japanese customers. He said a ” ’50s” theme park is in the works in Japan; he thinks he’ll be providing 75 to 100 vehicles for it.
“The Japanese seem to feel America peaked in the ’50s,” he said. “They really like those cars.”
In the car business for almost 30 years, virtually alone in this part of the country in the cars-in-movies business, Laginess admitted one automotive regret. His first car was a 1926 Hupmobile given to him by his father when Laginess was in high school.
“I got greedy and sold it,” he said. “I’m still looking for one like it.”
