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Motorcycles, cars, rat rods and more will be part of Bikers on the Bayou on Saturday in Franklin. The event will mark 50 years since the release of "Easy Rider," which features St. Mary locations.
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From the Editor: St. Mary remembers 'Easy Rider'

Bikers on the Bayou will mark 50th year release of film featuring local locations

Ever wish you could throw your leg over a chopped hog and just take off, in any direction?
Ever wish you could put a little money into a little movie and make it to the big time?
St. Mary Parish will celebrate the convergence of those two desires this weekend with Bikers on the Bayou, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the release of “Easy Rider,” parts of which were filmed in the parish.
The St. Mary Chamber of Commerce and the Cajun Coast Convention and Tourism Commission have been working together on the event. It runs 9 a.m.-dark Saturday and promises music; photo ops; car, motorcycle and rat rod shows; pirogue races; and swamp tours. Bikers on the Bayou will be in downtown Franklin.
St. Mary has long owned a piece of Hollywood history. Elmo Lincoln’s “Tarzan of the Apes,” the first motion picture adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic, was filmed in the jungles of Morgan City for 1918 release.
And, of course, the Travel Channel’s “Ghosts of Morgan City” is in the middle of its eight-episode run on Friday nights. The show’s Facebook page is promising a season finale party 6-9 p.m. Aug. 9. Watch for details.
So every 50 years, our name goes up in lights. And maybe this is a good time in St. Mary’s history to remember “Easy Rider.” It started with a little dab of money and struck oil.
According to all the movie history I can Google up, the movie began as a project by actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and writer Terry Southern.
Southern had already shown a gift for satirical writing in “Dr. Strangelove.” Hopper was an Actor’s Studio product who had been close to James Dean.
Hopper appeared with his friend in classics “Giant” and “Rebel Without a Cause” and with Clint Eastwood in “Hang ‘em High” before he teamed up with Fonda for “The Trip.” Then “Easy Rider” came along.
Fonda was a big name in movies, of course. Peter’s father Henry was a bonafide Hollywood legend, and sister Jane was already famous for “Barbarella” and “Barefoot in the Park.” But Peter Fonda had been slogging along in biker movies and the work of B-movie impresario Roger Corman.
By reputation, Corman has a gift for making movies on the cheap. Maybe Fonda learned it.
Together, Fonda, Hopper and Southern managed to put together $400,000 to put their dream on celluloid. That wasn’t a lot of movie money, even in the Sixties.
Fonda and Hopper played hippies who buy cocaine in Mexico and sell it across the border. Then they set off across the desert on motorcycles for New Orleans and Mardi Gras.
Along the way, they encounter a free-love commune, various hippie-haters, St. Mary Parish and a whiskey-saturated lawyer with a football helmet and weird ideas about UFOs. That role was played with gusto by another young actor named Jack Nicholson.
If you find me in error, please leave an indignant post on Facebook. But a quick look at the movie (it’s available on Amazon Prime Video) reveals scenery from Franklin, the hump-back bridge and a swamp scene from Amelia, and a trek across the old bridge between Berwick and Morgan City.
One bit of text visible in the movie pinpoints a specific location: St. Mary Parish Waterworks District No. 2 in Centerville. It’s painted on a window.
The geography seems a little confused. As the hippies roll — maybe I should rephrase that, because this was before “just say no” — they seem to go through Amelia, then Franklin, over the old bridge and then what looks like Amelia again.
Call it special effects.
The movie turned out to be a smash, relatively speaking, and gets credit for being the first American mainstream hit about the Sixties counter-culture. It also kicked off the indie movie movement of the 1970s.
Along the way, “Easy Rider” made more than $41 million at the U.S. box office, or $100 for every $1 originally invested. The producers had to spend more than that in post-production to obtain music licenses.
And what music “Easy Rider” has. It includes “The Pusher” (written by Hoyt Axton, believe it or not) and “Born to be Wild” from Steppenwolf; the Band’s “The Weight”; Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s “Wasn’t Born to Follow” by the Byrds; and “If 6 Was 9” by Jimi Hendrix. Roger McGuinn of the Byrds wrote “Ballad of Easy Rider” and covered Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” for the soundtrack.
The cast, like the movie, included some interesting characters. Luke Askew, who plays the hitchhiker who leads our boys to the desert commune, appeared in Preminger’s “Hurry Sundown” with Jane Fonda as well as in “Cool Hand Luke.”
When Hopper and Fonda make it to New Orleans, they hook up with some shady ladies. One of them is Toni Basil, who was also a dancer and singer and had a bubblegum hit called “Mickey” in 1981.
Another lady of ill repute was played by Karen Black. A few years after “Easy Rider,” Black became famous in a TV horror movie called “Trilogy of Terror.” Her one-actor segment about a woman terrorized by a doll that comes to homicidal life was the talk of my high school the next day.
The little guy in the Nehru jacket who buys the cocaine from Hopper and Fonda was Phil Spector, the music producer who invented pop’s Wall of Sound. His hits include “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” by the Righteous Brothers and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”
Spector, now almost 80, is in prison for killing his girlfriend, direct-to-video actress Lana Clarkson, in 2003.
Without spoiling, the movie includes some on-screen violence, too. But it’s a way to hear some great music, relive a unique time and get a glimpse of St. Mary as it was 50 years ago.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.

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