Those who know Saul Holiff know the 2005 Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk the Line did a great injustice to London, Ont.
For one, the 1968 scene labelled as “Ontario, Canada” instead of London, when Cash proposes to June Carter on stage, gives no hint that, in fact, they are playing a concert at London Gardens (or the Ice House, as it was also known) and not a Massey Hall-type venue. But the bigger sin is the popular flick, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny and Reese Witherspoon as June, had no mention at all of London’s Holiff, Cash’s manager from 1960-73.
Thankfully, his son Jonathan, 47, with some help from Western Libraries, is setting the record straight in a new documentary, My Father and the Man in Black, which has a special London (yes, Ontario) screening on Saturday, June 23 at the Hyland Cinema, 240 Wharncliffe Road S.
“When Walk The Line identified the location of Johnny’s proposal to June as ‘Ontario, Canada,’ which upset Londoners, I made it my mission to use only stock footage and photographs of London. Many filmmakers order stock footage based solely on period, but I went to great lengths to be authentic and true to London, my hometown. And Western was integral to this effort. They bent over backwards to help me and I shall always be in their debt,” Holiff said.
Barry Arnott, media assistant with the Archives and Special Collections Team at Western Libraries, worked directly with Holiff in selecting several images, many from the London Free Press Collection of Photographic Negatives.
“It was my pleasure to assist Jonathan and his family in his tribute to a father whose life story can now be told with candour and respect,” Arnott said.
University Archivist Robin Keirstead at the Archives and Research Collections Centre said historical images provide both context and atmosphere for films, which is why they are often sought out by filmmakers, particularly documentary filmmakers.
“Their inclusion helps people visualize the subject matter in a way that the narration or a dramatic reconstruction may or may not be able to do,” he said. “From the perspective of Western Archives, we see value to the university and Western Libraries as this type of use highlights the importance of our role in acquiring, preserving and making available archival documents and images for many different purposes and users.”
This isn’t the first time items from Western Archives have ended up in films. One fairly recent example was a documentary on the Donnellys that appeared on the History Channel. It not only used images and footage of original documents from Western’s holdings, but also had some of the scenes shot in the archives reading room.
Holiff was Cash’s manager during the singer’s most successful – and tumultuous – years which included his arrest in El Paso in 1965 on narcotics charges, the breakup of his marriage to first wife Vivian in 1966 and also his subsequent rise to success with the Grammy Award-winning Jackson duet with June Carter (1967) and Live at Folsom Prison album (1968).
Holiff’s story is full of tragedy and strangely parallels in ways the tumultuous relationship he and Cash had as manager and artist. Ironically, it wasn’t until after Holiff’s death (suicide) in 2005 that his son discovered a hidden treasure trove of Cash memorabilia locked away in a storage locker: audio diaries of his father’s, never released conversations he had with Cash, home movies, pictures, letters, telegrams, gold records. Basically, it was enough to reconstruct a missing portion of the senior Holiff’s life as Cash’s manager and the father who was often M.I.A. when Jonathan was a child.
“(The film) was never supposed to be a documentary. My father had just committed suicide and didn’t leave a note. We had been estranged for 20 years. I started a notebook as part of my effort to make sense of things (therapy). That turned into six notebooks,” he said. “Leafing through them one day, my mother (Barbara) said ‘Son, you should write a book.’ I told her ‘I’m not a writer.’ But I had started my career as a TV producer and, after writing a treatment, friends in Hollywood told me it should be a movie – and it should be told from my point-of-view.”
For six-and-a-half years, the documentary became his sole occupation and focus. When people ask Holiff how much the film cost to produce, his answer is: “My marriage and a trip to the hospital.”
Holiff says his father’s absence in Walk The Line played no part in his decision to make the film; it was a personal journey to finally get to know the father from whom he was estranged for 20 years.
“Having only gotten to know my father in death, I had nothing to say to my father before he died,” he said. “I only wish I had known the man then, like I do now.”