With this month’s feature story about the early sports car races at Goleta Airport near Santa Barbara, California, we thought a peek behind the curtains of a Universal Studios movie being filmed there at that time might be enlightening.
This site looks at that movie, Johnny Dark, starring Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie, which tells the story, probably familiar to most of us, of a young racer trying to make his mark in a risky profession. It includes footage taken at Santa Barbara to supplement the bespoke segments shot along the fictional race route from Canada to Mexico.
These were the days of infancy for sports car racing in America, and if the action seen here—no doubt “Hollywooded up” to suit director George Sherman’s idea of what sports car racing really should be—may seem a bit basic, we should remember it was made more than 60 years ago, and the realities of our sport have progressed significantly since.
Beyond multiple minutiae about the film, there’s also a link to a “trailer” that includes insights from the legendary Brock Yates. So go have a look and perhaps learn a bit more about one of the first motion pictures to look at sports car racing in the USA.
