At one time, we actually had passenger trains come into Brownwood and stop at the depot. There were two or three restaurants close by and people would get off for coffee or a meal before boarding for the next stop in their journey. One of the things that always amazed me, although I have no great memory, was when I was a small kid and my mother and some of her friends heard that a “Hollywood train” was going to make a stop in Brownwood. My mother woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and took off to the depot. A fairly good crowd, mostly of mamas excited to see a movie star, gathered at the depot. I was right there with them. This “Hollywood train” pulled up in Brownwood – a passenger train – and stopped. We waited until it took off again, hoping for famous movie stars to get off and have a cup of coffee, but it never happened, at least not while I was there. But the big movie stars that you saw on the movie screen and now you see on TV, hey, they knew where Brownwood was. Back in the old days, there were a lot of stars that came through here.
One of Elvis’s last stops before he became super famous was in Brownwood. Elvis performed at the old Memorial Hall on July 4, 1955. Very few had heard of him at that time, at least not nationally, but shortly after that date, his first hit came out and he became one of the most famous entertainers in the world. Again, this was right after he appeared in Brownwood.
There have been a lot of people, even famous ones, who have not lived in Brownwood but at least been in Brownwood. There’s Elvis, Bob Hope, Willie Nelson, and many more. But maybe as famous as anyone is a man named Robert Duval. Duval is a great actor and has been for a lot of years. He was in “To Kill a Mockingbird”. He was in “True Grit”, “Mash”, and he won the Academy Award for “Tender Mercies” back in 1983. He was in “Godfather 1”, “Godfather 2”, and “Apocalypse Now”. He was in “Network”, “The Natural”, and the list goes on and on.
He’s a great actor and believe it or not, he knows a guy named Lawrence Elkins, and a lot of you do too. He met Lawrence, I have no idea where, but when Duval got the role for “Tender Mercies” it was set in Texas so he needed to learn how to be as Texan as he could be. He contacted Lawrence and arranged to come for a visit. Lawrence called me at the radio station the day before Duvall was to arrive in Brownwood. He said, “Do you know my friend, Bobby Duval?” I started thinking of all the people I knew in my life named Duval and I said, “Never heard of him.” He said, “Yeah, he’s an actor. I think they call him Robert Duval.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” Sure enough, the next day he came to town and stayed for a day or two. He spent the majority of his time listening to cases at the Brown County Court House, listening to the dialects, listening to the drawl and trying to pick up the Texas “talk”, if you will. Apparently he learned them well because, as I mentioned, he won the Academy Award for that movie. He’s a tremendous actor and Lawrence said he’s a pretty good guy. That’s good enough for me.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].