Bruce Campbell Adamson PO Box 1003 Aptos,
CA 95001-1003
ROBERT EASTON (Nov. 23 1930-Dec. 16, 2011)
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Robert Easton Speech - Click Here be patient for loading.
Watch Video of Robert Easton on Family St. Louis
Oct. 1, 2004
It took five years to take the photograph below of Robert Easton
"Wanted For Bank Robbery." I remember when I took the
photo I took the bus very early in the morning out to meet Easton
at his Pasadena home. I never saw so many books piled up all
over the place. I met Mohamed Ali on the bus on the way to meet
Robert Easton for the first time circa 1985-87. Twenty-seven
years later I have produced a film on our common ancestor Rufus
Easton.
This shows one how busy Robert was with his business "Henry Higgins of Hollywood," as a dialect coach. Easton may be remembered for his work as a dialect coach more than as an actor. He did not have time to visit with his own cousins for his love of his life was working on films.
As I worked on the book "The Life and Papers of Rufus Easton," Easton was always supportive. Yet, Robert Easton did not use his influence in Hollywood to try and help me. Hollywood can be all about Nepotism. On several occasions I had tried to get his help or influence, when I should have known better.
When I had surgery on my nose for a third time, Mr. and Mrs. Easton visited me at the Red Apple Motel and purchased a book. I must have looked a sight with two black eyes and a healing nose. At this time I remember he had reviewed my JFK book and we talked about The Manchurian Candidate. Robert said he asked John Frankenheimer "About the odd similarities to the JFK assassination. What I recall Easton saying he was given the "brush off," by Frankenheimer. I had uncovered that the film was made by a CIA corporation: "Essex Unniversal." What I did not know in 1996 at the time of Easton's visit was that the CIA has been controlling Hollywood since the 1950s, through their conduit Cecil de Mille. A close friend of CIA agent George de Mohrenschildt. I recall telling Easton at the motel that I told Frank Sinatra that he was used in the film The Manchurian Candidate. One should also see the 1955 Sinatra film Suddenly. The Company that produced The Manchurian Candidate was a women's apparel corporation out of New York and they produced one other film the O.S.S. which was developed into the CIA after WWII.
Easton purchased three different versions of the book and used direct quotes of mine when St. Louis honored Rufus Easton in October of 2004 - seven years ago. Robert Easton gave a great and funny speech on the steps of the St. Louis post office. See it in part above. Click here for Rufus Easton biography. The St. Louis post office wanted me to speak on Rufus Easton, they wanted me to stand on a Pink Box in the lobby. I was not comfortable having had won a case against the post office.
A few years later at Robert Easton's request, I spent two weeks on researching his great grandfather Joseph Easton, son of Rufus Easton. I found about 50 articles on how he confiscated property belonging to the confederates and turned it over to the pro-Union government. Which would mean Joseph Easton was working in collaboration with his brother Alton Easton - Inspector General of the Missouri Militia. It took me a couple of weeks to go through the micro-fiche to find these articles from the old newspapers of St. Louis. Easton never knew that his grandfather had been so prominent in preserving the Union. I never heard back from him even though he agreed to pay for the work.
On the trip in 2004, I gather excellent film for the video The Spirit of Alton, Before, During and After the Civil War. The latest version was sent to Robert Easton four months before his passing. Sure hope he was able to watch it! For the past 27 years the book and video have been a labor of love.
Someone Up There Liked Me, was one of Easton's films yet it is true that Someone Up there liked Robert Easton for he had a rich and rewarding life.
Click here for film highlights on Rufus Easton and his son The Spirit of Alton, Before, During and After the Civil War. Documentaries and films usually have hundreds of experts when producing a flm. I am a person whom does not have a large bank account with an open checkbook. Am going to include highlights of Robert Easton's speech at St. Louis to film. In 2004 we were routing for the St. Louis Cardinals - so fitting they would win in 2011. Video has been shown on Public Access TV in Brooklyn and Santa Cruz.
-- Photo to right by Bruce C. Adamson, 1985-87"Will Deal" pun intended - It took Adamson five years to shoot photo "Wanted For Bank Robbery." Easton played in many roles with southern dialects and only one film pro-Union Red Badge of Courage. Robert Easton will be missed by many who depended upon his services as a coach.
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Though born in Milwaukee, actor Robert Easton has earned much of his cinematic bread and butter playing Southerners. Easton first gained national attention as one of the "Quiz Kids" on the radio series of the same name. In films from 1949, the gangling Easton was often seen as a blank-faced, slow-talking hayseed. Actually, Easton's Southern cadence is but one tiny aspect of his talent; for the past three decades, he has been acknowledged and celebrated as Hollywood's leading dialectician and vocal coach. Stars ranging from Gregory Peck to Sir Laurence Olivier have sought out Easton's services to instruct them in the intricacies of specific regional and ethnic dialects.
Robert Easton continues to appear in rustic codger roles (picture above from Red Roses and Petrol, 2003) in such films as The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) and Needful Things (1993); in 1994, Easton was forced to bypass his vast repertoire of existing dialects and come up with a wholly original speech pattern for his role as a Klingon judge in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1994). -- Hal Erickson Production team:
It should be noted that Robert Easton has worked on many other movies not listed below. Today he specializes in training actors/actresses how to speak in certain dialects. Robert knows more than 80 different dialects. He has worked with many famous celebrities and is one of a few if not the ONLY person who does this work in Hollywood. Robert Easton speaks on Rufus at St. Louis honring the 200th anniversary on Oct. 1, 2004. Man under red mark is suppose to be Rufus Easton.
Robert Easton Founder and President Henry Higgins of Hollywood Inc.
"There's one profession that requires an agility and proficiency in unlearning: That profession is acting. Actors are faced continually with the challenge of unlearning how they speak -- and then learning new accents and dialects. But it's very difficult for the ear to hear a sound that the mouth is not in the habit of producing. And it's also very difficult for the mouth to produce a sound that the ear is not in the habit of hearing.
After years of working with actors, I've formulated "Easton's First Law": People in every community feel certain that the way they act, think, walk, and talk is the "natural" way. Once people learn something, they're reluctant to let it go. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the way people speak. When trying to unlearn a speech pattern, people tend to impose their own intonation patterns and permutations of sound on the target dialect. I blast them out of this by exposing them to a realm of soun
ds outside of the familiar ones that they know and cherish. Only then do those habits begin to disappear. But I never approach this process by telling them what they need to unlearn. Rather, I stress what they need to learn. It's a small distinction with huge ramifications.
People learn in three different ways. Some are very "ear minded," or auditory. They can hear something and repeat it with almost tape-recorder fidelity. Robin Williams is a great example of that. For his role in "Good Will Hunting," we worked on perfecting a very subtle Boston accent. All we did was to sit together and talk. He has a phenomenal ear.
Others rely on their visual competence. Charlton Heston is a wonderful example
of what I call "eye mindedness." He would send me his scripts, and I'd respell his dialogue for him in a visual transliteration that we had agreed on -- what we called "Easton's Half-Assed Respelling." He learned by seeing.
And some people I teach kinesthetically: I tell them exactly what to do with their mouths, when to vibrate their vocal chords, how to move their jaws to produce a particular sound. Everyone has a different style and approach to learning. But no matter how a person learns, it's important to remember what French physiologist Claude Bernard said: "It's what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning."
Robert Easton is known in Hollywood as the Dialect Doctor and as the Mr. Fix-it of Phonemes. He has cured accents and strengthened dialects for thousands of actors, including Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, Natasha Richardson, Al Pacino, Jane Fonda, and Tom Hanks. Easton, one of radio's original "Quiz Kids," has also appeared in hundreds of films and television shows.
Robert Easton worked with the following, among many others:
Lamar Trotti (Screenwriter), Edwin B. Willis (Set Designer), Gordon Mark (Producer), Joseph Ruttenberg (Cinematographer), Ben Nye, Sr. (Makeup), Bronislau Kaper (Composer), Alfred Newman (Composer), Irwin Kostal (Composer), James Newcom (Editor), Bill Rebane (Director), Cedric Gibbons (Art Director), Lyle Wheeler (Art Director) Actors: Jeffrey Hunter, Richard Karlan, Charles McGraw, Steve McQueen, Walter Pidgeon, Donald Sutherland, Charles Tyner, Dan White, James Whitmore, Jonathan Winters, John Crawford -TV Schedule -DVD from CDNOW
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