Producer Mary Young Leckie was looking for a big name star to play the role of Crawford Gordon, a key figure in Canada's AVRO Arrow controversy, when she ran across a photograph.
"We were trying to get ideas of high-profile casting for this show," says Leckie, one of the three producers of this week's CBC drama. "And we came upon this shot of Gordon, and he looked exactly like Dan Aykroyd from the Blues Brothers, right down to the Homburg and the shades.
A script was quickly sent down to Aykroyd's agency in the U.S., where it sat for months. "We were told that Mr. Aykroyd doesn't do Canadian pictures--every excuse in the book," says Leckie, whose husband Keith wrote the script. Leckie finally imposed upon a friend of the star, who offered an address used by Aykroyd's pals. A letter was sent, and "about a week later, I was out in the garage and the phone rang," says Leckie. It was Aykroyd on the line. Five days later they flew to Los Angeles to seal the deal.
For seven years, the $8- million project dramatizing the rise and fall of Canada's most amibitious aircraft had been shopped around to the studios and networks. But the American studios had no interest in such a Canadian story, and unless a big Canadian star headlined it, not enough Canadian investors weren't interested either.
Enter Aykroyd, who's been a Ghostbuster, a Conehead and a Blues Brother, and has also been a recognized dramatic star since his Oscar nomination for "Driving Miss Daisy." The producers felt he could bring to life the complexities of Gordon's tragic character. Gordon, who was born in Winnipeg, made his mark during the Second World War on the munitions team headed by legendary Canadian politician C.D. Howe. After the war, Howe chose Gordon to drive the Canadian aeronautics industry . That brought him to A.V. Rose, an engineer's dream factory where some of the most ambitious--and ultimately too costly--aeronautical achievements were being built.
As spending on the Arrow escalated, so did Gordon's drinking and womanizing; both contributed to the company's downfall. Despite producing one of the most advanced fighter planes ot its time, the Arrow project was shut down by the Diefenbaker government in 1959. Gordon never recovered from the blow: he moved to Manhattan and died of cirrhosis of the liver.
It was the dark side of Gordon that attracted Aykroyd. "It's nice to play the tycoon, but it's also nice to play the more vulnerable side," says Aykroyd on the Winnipeg set during shooting.
Dressed smartly in a brown pinstriped suit straight out of the '50s, Aykroyd strides off the set--a wharehouse converted to a studio--and signals that he's ready for the interview. His hair, slicked down and combed back while in character, seems to instantly revert back to its familiar spiky self once inside the trailer, where he lights the first of many cigarettes. It's a habit he shares with his character, as Aykroyd learned from research.
"I met with his son for lunch and found out whether he was right- or left-handed, what he smoked, what he liked to drink, what some of his mannerisms were," says Aykroyd, who also studied film footage and read press clippings and company memos to get inside Gordon's skin.
Director Don McBrearty ("Butterbox Babies") urged Aykroyd to use his own busy career as a model to portray Gordon. "Apart from being a professional actor and musician, he's a businessman," says McBrearty of Aykroyd, "and from what I've been able to observe, a very demanding one. I simply encouraged him to bring that element of his life to the character."
Aykroyd, whose mother once worked for C.D. Howe and knew Gordon, says what he took to the role from his own life was "the speed and pace that you have to move to stay ahead of things."
Fortunately, life doesn't always imitate art. Unlike the tragic figure onscreen, Aykroyd says he is able to balance things thanks to "an incredible wife [actress Donna Dixon] and a great family."
During Dan Aykroyd's seven-week stay in Winnipeg last summer, he owned the city, with "Dan Sightings" cropping up on daily radio stations and in local newspapers. Most of these outing were conducted with Walter High, his personal driver, cook and chauffeur, who's a biker buddy from Aykroyd's days in Kingston, Ont. "He's the best," said High. "He even got me a bit part in this movie."
"You see this in a lot of the big stars," observed Aidan Devine, who plays Avro's chief engineer Jim Chamberlin. "Same thing with Stallone or Schwarzennegger. They only really trust the people they knew before they were famous."
With High at his side, Aykroyd rode up to the steps of the Manitoba legislature on a police service BMW motorcycle as the main attraction in Winnepeg's Canada Day parade on July 1, which was also his 44th birthday. It was an offer that Aykroyd, who bought his first motorcycle when he was 19 and boasts a rare Ontario Provincial Police Harley among his collection, just couldn't refuse. "Never dropped one," said Aykroyd, who catches a knowing look from High. "Well, once I was in Louisiana with the boys and sort of went through a mud puddle at slow speed and it slid out from under me. Now they call me Mud Man because I was covered from crown to heel in mud."
Aykroyd explored Winnipeg with his usual abandon. "They've got a great blues scene, some great tap rooms," he said. "Arrow" producer Mary Young Leckie marvelled at Aykroyd's accessibility. "I get a feeling that Dan has a blast wherever he goes," she said. "He'd heard a rumor that a woman had wanted him to come and sing at her wedding. So he showed up at the reception and did a Blues Brothers Routine! He's unbelievable."
TV Guide (Canada), 1/11/97
By Bill Brioux
Transcribed by L. Christie