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Remebering George Croonenbergs

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In reading Jason Borger’s blog, http://www.jasonborger.com/ , I came to know of George Croonenbergs.

You may have never heard of George Croonenbergs, but he was instrumental in the filming of The River Runs Through It. Geroge, who passed ion September, 2005, was a close friend to Norman and Paul Maclean. He was taught to tie flies and fly fish by Reverend Maclean. With his intimate knowledge of the Macleans and the time period, he was an advisor to Robert Redford on the set.

John Maclean, the son of Norman Macklean remembers George Croonenbergs:

 

http://johnmacleanbooks.com/george/

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We're "remembering" someone who died 12 years ago? Just because he helped film a movie 25 years ago? A movie that is only associated with fly fishing as a byline?

 

Sorry ... not in my bag of "concerns".

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Mike,

 

You underestimate the movie's influence on the sport which was immense -- if all bad.

 

The movie's zen-like treatment of the sport probably brought thousands of Type A yuppies to the sport in search of a relaxing distraction and an outlet for their ample discretionary play money. That "byline" thus helped launch an ensuing explosion of pro flyfishing schools;, a business model based on high dollar/high tech gotta-have new gear that is re-outmoded each year, and a proliferation of self-described "fly fishing bums" who now clutter the streams before moving on to new fads.

 

It probably had to happen anyway given the times and human nature but the movie was a watershed event in the devolution of the sport.

 

Rocco

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Mike,

 

... if all bad.

 

... brought thousands of Type A yuppies to the sport ...

 

... a proliferation of self-described "fly fishing bums" who now clutter the streams before moving on to new fads.

 

... the movie was a watershed event in the devolution of the sport.

 

Rocco

So, again ... why are we "fondly" remembering anyone from the book or the movie. And again, the fly fishing was an aside. The movie itself, wasn't about the fishing.

 

It's just another of those little pet peeves of mine. Like the playing of Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." for patriotic events. It's a protest song ... NOT a patriotic song.

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Mike, I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why you would be so dismissive of not only a beloved movie for so many but of many members here and Silver Creek in particular. I am very disappointed. Just because that movie or those associated with it are "not your cup of tea", your comments are not appropriate as a monitor of this website, (Not my place to decide this ...but there you have it). I understand your wit is on the acerbic side and I usually give you a wide berth, but in this matter I believe you have stepped over the line.

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Not really too much off topic, so here's another story about a different person that had a part in that movie, that died back in late 2010. He was the guy that played the elder Norman Maclean at the very end of the movie fishing away after tying another fly on his line. I believe that I read it over at FAOL back then and liked it so much that I copied it into my drafts folder on my email where it's been ever since. It's been a while, and many folks here may have never read it the first time it was posted back then.

 

 

 

Article taken from helenair.com - Helena, Montana daily news

By SANJAY TALWANI

Arnold Richardson was not the best-known Montanan to appear in a Hollywood movie, but his solitary bit part – as the elderly Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It” – remains one of the most iconic cinematic images of the state, partly responsible, for better or worse, for the explosion in the popularity of fly fishing in the 1990s.

For Richardson, who retired to Townsend and died Dec. 6 at 96, the response to a casting call in a Livingston newspaper led to an enjoyable brush with fame and a well-paying job one autumn. It was also a fitting highlight in a lifetime of love for Montana’s fish and streams and wild places.

“He could spend literally days on a river,” his stepson, Norman Spencer, said by telephone from his home in Florida. “The whole concept was almost transcendent. … It’s almost like he was transformed when he got on a river.”

“Hours would go by,” Spencer said. “I’d be ready to go home. He’d still be there fishing and have no concept of what time it was. He would just really get lost in it.”

It’s been said, Spencer noted, that trout don’t live in ugly places.

“They live in some of the most beautiful, serene areas, the mountains, in cold clean water,” he said. “It’s always very picturesque types of locations, where the water is always pristine. Because the fish need to have ice cold water to live.”

Richardson was born in Maine in 1914 and worked with his father in construction endeavors. After he finished high school, they moved to Washington state, where the elder Richardson created a company making wooden blinds.

Arnold became a bricklayer and spent much of World War II as a civilian on government projects throughout Alaska, before moving back to Maine.

But the life of a bricklayer involved lots of travel, and some of that brought him to Montana, where he learned to fly fish in the late 1940s, Spencer said.

A big moment in his fishing life came around 1948 outside Mack’s Inn, on the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River in Idaho, where he caught so many fish, in such spectacular fashion, that it earned him a free T-bone steak.

“The chef told me his customers seated at the window went wild over my fishing,” Richardson told the Independent Record in 2005. “He said that any time I wanted to come and fish outside the restaurant, he’d give me a free meal.”

He also got work as a fishing guide, which paid more than bricklaying. He kept on guiding, and his reputation grew, into the 1950s, Spencer said.

A construction accident – an electrocution – send him back to Maine, where he met and married Frances, Spencer’s mother, in the mid-1960s. Construction work kept the family traveling, and finally they settled in Livingston in the mid-1970s, by Spencer’s estimation.

There, they ran the Sherwood Inn, a senior living center, for about 15 years.

In 1991, Robert Redford and crew arrived in Montana, and Spencer persuaded his father to respond to a small ad, seeking men in their 70s. “Must be excellent fly casters,” the notice read.

“I was the one that kind of pushed him into it,” Spencer said.

According to an account by John Dietsch, in charge of what he called the “casting casting call,” for the role of the elderly Maclean in the film’s final scene, he narrowed the field down to two men with beautiful casting ability: a younger one, who tied his knot in his line smoothly and with finesse, and an older man, who struggled and shook, mentioned that his eye’s weren’t so good, and spent a good five minutes trying to tie his knot – a Turle knot.

Dietsch recounts the episode in his and Gary Hubbell’s book, “Shadow Casting: An Introduction to the Art of Fly Fishing.” Dietsch reported back to Redford that the younger old man might be the best choice, but that the older old man’s hands shook, and he might take on awful long time trying to tie a knot on cameras.

Redford asked to meet the older man – Richardson – and eventually hired him.

“The shaking hands struggling to tie a knot at the end of the film are a trademark of the movie, and tell a story in themselves,” Dietsch wrote. “Looking back at it, in my haste to ‘succeed,’ I had lost my sense of compassion while working on the film, and in doing I had missed the magic that unfolded right in front of my eyes. I missed the message on the backs of the old man’s veined, transparent, and leathered hands – the yearning that any man his age, feeling this passage of time, would have for his younger days – the gentle acceptance that indeed those days were gone forever.”

Richardson enjoyed working on the film, although like any, it involved a lot of standing around waiting. He worked with Redford and with Brad Pitt and was paid well, Spencer said.

He had never read the novel – which elevated fly fishing to near-religious status – until he got the part.

In time, the couple retired, and chose Townsend because of the fishing in Canyon Ferry Lake, said Spencer. Richardson switched from wading directly in streams to fishing from boats, of which he owned a few at different times.

Beth Ihle and her husband, Kevin McDonnell, who lived next door to the Richardsons for several years in Townsend, bought Arnold Richardson’s last boat. And they inherited the couple’s cat.

“He was well into his 80s,” Ihle said. “Frances was worried about him because he would stay out all day.”

The boat included a 1970s-era outboard motor, Ihle said.

“He showed us how to run it, since it wasn’t that apparent,” she said.

One time, backing down a ramp, Arnold hooked part of his trailer on the dock, ripping a light off. It was a comic moment, but time to get Arnold off the lake, Ihle said.

“They were just great people as neighbors,” said McDonnell. Frances in particular had a great relationship with Ihle’s and McDonnell’s four children, they said. “She knew more about what was going on in our house than I did,” McDonnell said of Frances.

The couple loved seafood, including lobster and shrimp, which they would buy in large quantities – a legacy of their Maine heritage.

In the tradition of Maine fishermen, Arnold didn’t brag about his movie stardom, although he did have a promotional poster of the movie signed by Redford.

“I didn’t put two and two together,” Ihle said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I was in the movie.’”

Arnold Richardson shared some of his casting ability, along with his prestige from the movie, with local students. John O’Dell, teaches “A River Runs Through It,” each year to his 10th grade English class at Broadwater High School. One year, Richardson came and spoke about the movie and demonstrated fly casting to the students.

“He talked about Montana, how important it was to him, and fishing,” he said. “He kind of lit up. … You could definitely see the youth and vitality come out when he was speaking.”

Speaking just before Christmas break, O’Dell said the students had just finished studying the book and had viewed the movie, including the famous final scene.

“I was thinking today, how skilled he was,” he said. “His rhythm was beautiful.”

The love of fishing was passed to Norman Spencer, who said he’s fished just about every stream in the state, from the Kootenai River to the Bighorn and everywhere in-between.

“He often said, jokingly, that he was one of the main reasons that fly fishing became as popular as it did, and maybe in a way he was right,” Spencer said. “The movie generated – I won’t say a storm – but it created a keen interest in the sport.”

That’s meant more and more pressure on the blue-ribbon streams, with a nearly continuous flow of boats and rafts on some rivers during peak season. On the other hand, more and more people enjoy it, and it’s created an economic bounty in the state from fly shops to guides to motels and more.

“He often said, maybe he created too much of a monster,” Spencer said.

The Richardsons moved into Broadwater Health Center about five years ago after some ups and downs with health, say neighbors, and over the last few years Spencer made several visits from Florida, where he recently retired from a career in the shipping industry. Frances stayed relatively sharp, but Arnold’s mental faculties declined the last few years.

Frances died Nov. 23; Arnold followed Dec. 6.

“The last thing he said was, he was looking for Frances,” Ihle said

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Thanks for going off topic. I am at my desk, tying and also listening to Shostakovich's 7th Symphony (a very emotional work) and for some reason I picked up my phone to check FTF. I stuck with the thread and as I got to the end with Arnold looking for Frances, the tears came. It will take a while for them to stop, but you have had a very positive impact upon my day.

Thanks for the great article!

Tom

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"So, again ... why are we "fondly" remembering anyone from the book or the movie. And again, the fly fishing was an aside. The movie itself, wasn't about the fishing."

 

Yes, kind of like the Civil War was an aside to "Gone With The Wind", but it wouldn't have been much of a movie without it. But if we have to explain, you'll never understand.

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Not really too much off topic, so here's another story about a different person that had a part in that movie, that died back in late 2010. He was the guy that played the elder Norman Maclean at the very end of the movie fishing away after tying another fly on his line. I believe that I read it over at FAOL back then and liked it so much that I copied it into my drafts folder on my email where it's been ever since. It's been a while, and many folks here may have never read it the first time it was posted back then.

 

 

 

Article taken from helenair.com - Helena, Montana daily news

 

By SANJAY TALWANI

 

“The shaking hands struggling to tie a knot at the end of the film are a trademark of the movie, and tell a story in themselves,” Dietsch wrote. “Looking back at it, in my haste to ‘succeed,’ I had lost my sense of compassion while working on the film, and in doing I had missed the magic that unfolded right in front of my eyes. I missed the message on the backs of the old man’s veined, transparent, and leathered hands – the yearning that any man his age, feeling this passage of time, would have for his younger days – the gentle acceptance that indeed those days were gone forever.”

 

That last scene was the perfect ending to the movie along with the voice over by Robert Redford.

 

I remember how I came to read The River Runs Through It. My sister-in-law sent it to me. Her son had gotten into Stanford and TRRTI was on a list of books that Stanford recommended for summer reading by the entering freshman. I never thought it could be made into a movie that did justice to the book but I was wrong.

 

Here is the ending soliloquy of The River Runs Through It as spoken by Robert Redford.

 

"Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives...

look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question

 

"We are willing to help, Lord...

but what, if anything, is needed?"

 

It is true we can seldom help those closest to us.

 

Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give...

or more often than not,the part we have to give...

is not wanted.

 

And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us...

but we can still love them.

 

We can love completely...

without complete understanding.

 

Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead.

Even Jessie.

 

But I still reach out to them.

Of course, now I'm too old to be much of a fisherman.

And now I usually fish the big waters alone...

although some friends think I shouldn't.

 

But when I am alone in the half-light of the canyon...

all existence seems to fade to a being with my soul and memories...

and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm...

and the hope that a fish will rise.

 

Eventually, all things merge into one...

and a river runs through it.

 

The river was cut by the world's great flood...

and runs over rocks from the basement of time.

 

On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.

Under the rocks are the words...

and some of the words are theirs.

 

I am haunted by waters."

 

1665_5.jpg

 

 

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I've seen the movie more than a dozen times and read the book as much. That ending still sends chills down my spine.

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Thanks for going off topic. I am at my desk, tying and also listening to Shostakovich's 7th Symphony (a very emotional work) and for some reason I picked up my phone to check FTF. I stuck with the thread and as I got to the end with Arnold looking for Frances, the tears came. It will take a while for them to stop, but you have had a very positive impact upon my day.

Thanks for the great article!

Tom

Understand fully MuskyFly

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Here is why I flyfish. You can see how the TRRTI influenced my writing. In my opinion, TRRTI is not a book about fly fishing so much as fly fishing as the canvas for the Macleans' family story.

 

http://dnews.com/looking_out/fly-fishing-why-fly-fish-for-this-we-look-to/article_2cecab28-592d-5525-b2ed-27c8f574fc7f.html

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Am I the only one who hated a river runs through it? I never watched it one time as it bored the hell out of me. With that said, if someone wants to memorialize those in it or associated with it, so be it, and it wouldn't be my place to denounce those who see it differently.

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