‘Ghost Town’ brings big-name Hollywood bad guy to town
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Bill McKinney
deanteaster — 19 years ago(December 08, 2006 04:01 PM)
Ghost Town brings big-name Hollywood bad guy to town
published November 5, 2006 12:15 am
Bill McKinney is a regular guy who served on a minesweeper in Korea and after that war made his mark in Hollywood. He has played many roles in both major and minor films, but the two I remember best were his work in the last picture John Wayne made, The Shootist, and Clint Eastwoods The Outlaw Josey Wales, both filmed in 1976. He played arch villains in both pictures.
I had hoped to meet McKinney after his performance as a villain in Deliverance, and finally we got together last week at Ghost Town in Maggie Valley, where he is a prominent member of the cast of the movie, Ghost Town, being shot in the theme park of that name.
Bill is a native of Chattanooga, Tenn., who left home at 19 to join the Navy and served on a minesweeper in Korea, and from there studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. That launched him into films, both movies and television, much of the time as a bad guy. His work has been steady. Hes in demand by Hollywood producers.
Forty years ago he made his motion picture debut in a $50,000 production called She Freak. To him, his best roles were in Deliverance and The Outlaw Josey Wales. He enjoyed working with Wayne in The Shootist, in which he, Hugh OBrian, and Richard Boone were the last three men Wayne had the pleasure of shooting on the screen. He made seven movies with Eastwood.
Deliverance was his first role as a bad guy, and it launched him into Hollywoods graces as a good man to be bad in the movies. Among his credits were the films City Slickers, Against All Odds, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can, and Every Which Way But Loose.
Dean Teaster is a native Haywood County man who has made good both as an actor and director. He co-directs Ghost Town and plays the role of Digger the Undertaker in the film. That returns him to a previous engagement of Digger, which he did in person at Ghost Town years ago.
Its a good feeling, he said, to watch everyone work here bringing my great-great-grandfather, Harmon Teaster, back to life.
Harmon was a man who killed another for slapping his son, and then lived in hiding for seven years in an unused bears den in the Haywood County Balsam Mountains.
And its also a good feeling to be bringing back to life a character that I portrayed in the early days of Ghost Town in the 1960s, that of Digger the Undertaker, Dean added.
He has joined many old friends in the cast of this movie, Alaska Presley and Robert Bradley, both of Maggie Valley, who are executive producers and actors in the movie, and several of the original gunfighters from Ghost Towns early days.
Dean hopes the movie Ghost Town will accomplish two things.
Im hoping it will bring memory of my great-great-grandfather, Harmon Teaster, back to life, and that it will help revitalize and promote the theme park, Ghost Town, which will reopen in May.