The Shawshank Redemption Revealed by Mark Dawidziak

Author:Mark Dawidziak
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493040995
Publisher: Lyons Press

EXTRAS, EXTRAS! READ ALL ABOUT ’EM!

THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION REQUIRED ENOUGH EXTRAS TO CONVINCingly suggest an entire prison population. That meant the production needed a lot of area residents to play convicts and guards. And many of them had to be available for the entire shoot. If you were an extra playing a prisoner in several scenes, you became part of what was known as “the Core Con.” A technical adviser of sorts was never far away, since some of the extras playing guards were actual guards from the nearby Mansfield Correctional Institution (some of them having been guards at the Ohio State Reformatory), and some of the extras playing prisoners were former prisoners. Other roles required extras to be around for only a day or two: jurors, courtroom spectators, reporters, downtown shoppers, and travelers on buses.

The guards playing guards weren’t the only extras typecast in The Shawshank Redemption. Two of the extras playing reporters were reporters working in Mansfield: Jane Imbody and Lou Whitmire. Imbody was an anchor and reporter at WMFD, the local television station, so she was well aware of the three casting calls for extras in May.

Finally, in July, Imbody got the call from extras casting director Ivy Weiss. “Oh, what am I going to play?” Imbody asked. When told that they wanted her to be a reporter, all Imbody could think was, “Typecasting all the way.”

Whitmire had been writing stories about the making of the film for the Mansfield News Journal. One day, somebody in the company asked her, “You want to be in a movie?” Both Whitmire and Imbody appear in the scene where the 1966 district attorney (Charlie Kearns) arrives at Shawshank and informs Clancy Brown’s character, Byron Hadley, that he’s under arrest. They’re easy to spot in the film. They’re both blondes with big hair. Whitmire is the one with the bouffant hairdo and the distinctive spotted brown coat. Imbody is in a tan dress and holding a microphone.

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