miscellanium | george-étienne cartier: the lion of quebec (1962)

baby boy. baby.

the "is it worth watching this for lawrence dane" rating: N/A

what's this, you might say, not applicable?? how is that possible? well, this educational film isn't even half an hour and his appearance is within the first five minutes, so if you're watching it for him you can tap out almost immediately and i feel like that doesn't really lend itself to a rating.

you can watch it for free here (no cc/subtitles) and i isolated his scene here (barely more than a minute, but at least youtube made an attempt with the autocaptions).

this is the earliest known on-screen credit for him that i've been able to personally view. as far as i can tell thanks to the autocaptions, his character isn't named so i can only assume he's supposed to be an emissary of sorts from macdonald's government. the fellow they're talking to is george brown, an influential newspaperman, and there's a fun little write-up of this guy's history with john macdonald you can read here.

as for dane.... he would be approximately 24 here, depending on when it was filmed. a baby!! this would have been filmed not long after the 1960 interview i posted about previously, and i wonder how he got the role - was it through connections, since the interview mentions he took acting classes from a different NFB director? attention after the interview was published? or it could have been an audition that he landed through talent alone. it's also interesting to speculate what he might have thought of the history being presented here, as a second-generation immigrant. judging by the emphasis he put on supporting canadian media and artists throughout his career, it seems reasonable to assume he would have been proud to contribute to this educational project. as far as i can tell it completely sidesteps the métis part of the canadian history equation, but....

at the moment i don't have much more to add about this one. it's noteworthy for being such an early role of his and he is, as usual, super cute. he has such an expressive face even when you can barely see it. not many screencaps this time so let's get into it!

1. i recognized him immediately and that was how i knew when to stop skipping around the video. don't ask me to explain
2. the chair's low back makes him look like a GIANT i know he was pretty tall but why could people never find desks or chairs proportionate to him lmfao. like guys you could have given him the other dude's chair with the higher back

i'm still trying to get my hands on shadow of a pale horse, among other things *shakes my fist at the cbc researcher who hasn't replied to my last email a month ago* but it's still great to have this example of his early work, especially since some of the things he was in seem to be effectively lost media (never given a home release or it was probably taped over, since there was a lot of that in the 60s/70s unfortunately).