Published: December 06, 2006 10:13 am         

Hollywood Legends Fondly Remembered by Rush County Man

What does Rush County have to do with a classic 1953 movie? One of the soldiers in several scenes in “From Here to Eternity” is Allen Ray Gahimer from Manilla.

The PFC from Rush County got to be in the pre-Pearl Harbor movie after scouts from the studio came to the base where he was stationed in Hawaii. “They came to Fort Shafter and Columbia Pictures screened me and took me to Scofield Barracks,”Gahimer said. “I was in the fight scene and in the beach scene with Deborah Kerr and Burt (Lancaster). In the fight scene the captain pushed past me to stop the fight.” In the then-risque beach scene, Lancaster walked past Gahimer before the infamous prone embrace on the sand.

“The opening scene is troops marching and I was marching in front of the camera. The camera was out of focus on purpose. We marched past the camera but you didn’t see anything,” he said.

“It was a lot of fun and a lot of work,” he recalled. “I worked at Scofield Barracks for three months in filming From Here to Eternity. A typical day was long, with most of the time spent in front of the camera.

In another scene, Montgomery Clift is crawling through mud and Gahimer is one of the soldiers with him.

Although he didn’t have any speaking lines, he enjoyed working on the picture, especially working with Montgomery Clift and director Fred Zinnemann.

“I trained Montgomery Clift. He was good to work with,” Gahimer reflected.

The director shared insider information on some of the actors. “I worked with Sinatra and Montgomery Clift. Claude Akins was working as a drill sergeant,” Gahimer said. He didn’t care for Sinatra, but enjoyed meeting and talking to many of the other actors. Other cast members included Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Warden and George Reeves. Gahimer didn’t get to see the movie until he got out of the service and was back home. “I just saw it when I was here at home. It was all right, I guess, he said.

He’s proud he was in the prize-winning film. One event stands out in his memory. “An interesting thing happened. I was coming in one day and the sergeant was leading us in. He snapped us to attention and most of the guys didn’t snap to attention, but I did,” he said. “We got back to the barracks there at Squad F and he went in and told the company commander they didn’t snap to attention when he was bringing us in. The company commander said, “Have them fall out, double time, to Kolekole Pass. Make them wish they had.’ Some of those guys were really peeved.”

Gahimer and two or three other soldiers who had come to attention didn’t have to go, so he decided to go swimming.

After completing the movie, Gahimer completed his two years in the U.S. Army, serving as a body guard for generals in Hawaii at Fort Shafter also in Hawaii and as part of the Honor Guard for Richard Nixon.

After the Army, Gahimer went back to farming at his dad’s farm near Manilla. Feeling less than successful at that, he went to Indianapolis and was a supervisor for Atlas Paper. Then he had a very interesting job in the research lab at RCA. He was involved in pioneering ceramics for circuit boards for tape players and television sets.

“I ran a kiln at 3,000 degrees. They took the subslate that we made; the scientists took it to Cape Canaveral and fired it into space. They wanted to make the missiles more accurate so they could put a man into space. We pioneered that so we could put a man in space,” Gahimer said.

He then worked at the General Electric water mill in Shelbyville as an inspector.

A 1948 Manilla High School graduate, Gahimer graduated from the short course at Purdue, then studied psychology at the great Butler University.