MTFCA Forum

I recently visited the website IMCDB or "The Internation Movie Car Database" and there are quite a few T's on their list. Does anyone on this forum own a T that has been in a movie? Just Curious.

My 09 got me into the movie business in 1981 at Shepperton Studios, UK - Ragtime, James Cagney's last film. Later in the 80s I had a bitsa T which I put a C cab on and faked up various bodies - stake bed, huckster, ambulance. Had a lot of fun

My 1917 shooting brake was used as a staff car in a made for pay TV world war one military drama. I also got to be the wrangler/driver of a mate's 1917 tourer in near battlefield scenes. Never having taken up the opportunity to pay for my Television entertainment, I have never seen the footage.

Both these opportunities came after being the vehicle wrangler for a TT ambulance and a 1916 Albion truck for an ABC television series called "Anzac Girls." This series followed the Army Nursing corps in WW 1.

Allan from down under.

My '16 was used in "The Babe" - 1992. About Babe Ruth.

This is me in my Pierce Brosnan mask. The second series of ‘The Son’

Our 1911 touring spent most of its existence in the Hollywood area, and the records that came with the car stated that it was used in the movie "Excuse my Dust" in 1951 starring Red Skelton. Supposedly it was also used in two Mae West movies in the 1930s, but I haven't been able to figure out which movies those were.

Here are a couple of pictures showing the car in the Skelton movie, and of the second owner on the movie set. Ironically, the car was used in a dream sequence where Red is envisioning him with the "car of the future"!

The documentation that came with the car also included the MGM receipt that Basil Daniels got for leasing it to MGM for 2 days. I think it was $50/day. The car looked nice in the movie, and had been painted green in 1949 by Basil. The car was not fully restored but just painted. By the time I got the car in late 2022, it was in rather bad shape. I gave the car its first frame off restoration at that time, including painting it all black, which was the overspray color on the body when the original, tattered upholstery was removed. I saved the rear tiny oval glass window with a brass bezel from the aftermarket top that had been installed on the car prior to 1923 (date of earliest picture of the car). It is basically impossible to see anything through it, so I almost always roll up the rear flap when driving with the top up.

I worked in a 20th Century Fox movie about 1971 with my dad's 1915 T Runabout for a couple of weeks around Hutchinson and Mt. Hope, Kansas. There were a bunch of us from a local car club with cars in that movie. It was named Ace Eli and Roger of the Skies. The prop people came around with a garden sprayer and sprinkled the car down with water then shook a bag of dust over it to make it look dirty on camera.

In 1983 my family was in my 1914 T Huckster Wagon in a movie in Halstead, Kansas. The name of it was Parade. It was an updated version of the famous 1955 movie Picnic. My wife's grandfather played the band director in Picnic. He was a band director in real life.

I never watched either movie I was in from beginning to end. My friends, who were "extras" with me, saw the Ace Eli movie. They said I was the only one they saw in the movie. I guess everybody else ended up on the cutting room floor! On the Parade movie, our Huckster Wagon went by the camera as they were rolling the credits. The Ace Eli movie was good money for a kid in high school. My mother, who was an extra too, bought a new Bernina sewing machine with her earnings. I blew my money on old car parts...

When I bought my 1926 Roadster, The owner gave me a photo of the car with Roy Clark standing next to it and beside him was a large movie type spot light on wheels. He told me my car was in a movie but after scouring the net I only found one movie with Roy and old cars in it. I'm guessing my car ended up on the cutting room floor? (ouch!)