Rarely seen classic features Toledoan

11/13/2007

A 1958 movie that helped launch the Hollywood career of native Toledoan Andrew J.

Fenady will be shown tonight at 8 on the Turner Classic Movies channel.

The rarely seen Stakeout on Dope Street, written and produced by Fenady, was chosen by crime novelist James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia), one of Turner s celebrity guest programmers for this month.

Fenady recalled that the low-budget film a tale about three youths who find $250,000 worth of heroin abandoned by dope peddlers in a gun battle with police was produced at a cost of just $21,000.

We sold it to Warner Bros. for $150,000 and thought we were the richest people in the world, he said in an interview. He said he put up a couple of thousand dollars himself and borrowed the rest from his partners, including director Irvin Kershner

and fi lmmaker Roger Corman, often called the king of B movies.

Since then, Fenady has written more than a dozen novels and produced a number of

movies, including John Wayne s Chisum, and many made-for-TV movies.

Fenady noted that another former Toledoan, actor Jamie Farr, was offered a role in Stakeout, but had to decline because he was drafted into the Army.