Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Fabulous Bastards from Chicago: Is This Shorty?

Submitted by Farflung:

"Hey Patty,
Need a little help with some more trivia.  Take a look at the ‘extended trailer’ in the below URL.  You may need to first click the ‘Remove Family Safe Filter’ button because it is a soft core flick named ‘The Fabulous Bastard from Chicago’.  No, I’m not trying to get my jollies having you watch a skin flick; this is the movie which is rumored to have Shorty Shea appear:
The footage of interest is (2:06-2:23). 
Is the man with his face strategically hidden throughout the fight, in the western setting and doing some stunts Shorty?  I can’t tell.
There are only a few confirmed images of Shorty and they certainly don’t look like a man who is 35 years of age, but I’m a terrible age estimator.  It just appeared to be worth a glance since so little is published about this man.
What do you think?
Sincerely Farf."
IMDB says that Shorty did appear in this movie in an uncredited role. So, is that him at 2:06?






10 comments:

sunset77 said...

I looked at the clip and I have to say it didn't look like Shea to me. There are about 3 pics of Shea on "Google Images".

2 sites list Shea being in this movie as "uncredited". 2 other sites don't even list him as part of the cast. Wikipedia says the movie was partially filmed at Spahn Movie Ranch. I just looked on an obscure torrent site where I'm a member and bigger than life, it's there with 2 "seeds". That means there are 2 people that have that film saved on their computer I could download it from, it would take 2 or 3 days.

I had a similar problem trying to determine which role Beausoleil played in "Ramrodder". I now have "Ramrodder" saved on my computer and know exactly which role he played.

orwhut said...

If Im looking at rhe right guy in the clip, his shoulders seem to be more rounded, and his lips thicker.

eviliz said...

http://www.eviliz.com/2010/11/donald-shea.html

Here is an old post with Shorty's pic from a small role he had in the movie Hang Fire

eviliz said...

I watched the clip but was unable to tell.

Farflung said...

I managed to find another source, The British Film Institute:

British Film Institute

This lists Shorty as an extra playing a mobster, so there’s another indicator the man in the video is not Shea. It also has Spahn Ranch as the ‘studio’.

Plus there is Shorty allegedly appearing in a film called ‘The Girls from Thunder Strip’:

B Movie Bonanza

Moonshiner sisters being menaced by a motorcycle gang sounds like value entertainment:

Movie Poster

Except who ever did the art work for the poster made the girls look like reject puppets from ‘Thunderbirds’.

sunset77 said...

I can find no evidence Shea was in "The Girls from Thunder Strip", however, a pic in a link in a previous comment called "B Movie Bonanza" shows a guy on a cycle behind a man with a gun. The guy on the cycle looks something like Shea.

Apparently Shea was 6'5" tall and his sign was Scorpio.

I looked on my torrent site, "The Girls from Thunder Strip" has this description:

"Dynamite action. . . souped up cars, illegal whiskey, wild women and souped up thrills!"

There is a screen shot of a dude that looks like Manson riding down the road on a cycle, (almost certainly not him).

There is another screen shot of a woman standing in a creek with no pants on and several bikers sitting on the shore, looks like one has a fishing pole.

"Meet the girls - Three moonshining, bootlegging, hellraising sisters that turn the bluegrass red with blood".

Sounds like an Oscar candidate to me.

Farflung said...

I’ve read the claim that Shorty was 6’ 5” also, but found the autopsy report putting him in the 5’ 10” to 5’11” range (19th page down, 1st paragraph):

Shorty’s Autopsy Report

That eighth page down, where Shorty’s wife was told she had to do something with the remains within ten days bugged me. After being buried for eight years it’s a little hard to believe that Los Angeles County does not have room to store some remains for a murder victim. But then I suppose everyone gets the same letter.

I thought the address looked a little institutional with ‘PO Box 2000’ and that feeling was correct. It turns out that was the mailing address for FMC Lexington, a minimum security women’s prison. Only the government would send a letter to a prison with an action required ten days later.

sunset77 said...

I just looked at that autopsy report and I have to say there is a big difference between 5'11' and 6'5". When I read that Shea was 6'5" I assumed that to be correct simply because of his nickname, "Shorty".

It was what, 8 years before his bones were discovered? I don't think skeletons shrink.

3 things come to mind. First where did this 6'5" height come from? From people that knew him?

Second, was there a possible mistake at the autopsy, someone just didn't measure correctly?

Third, is it possible that Grogan led them to a body that wasn't Shea? Did Grogan just happen to know where another Manson family victim was stashed and used that info to get out of jail?

Farflung said...

I re-read the report and there is no indication as to how the body was identified. Nice attention to detail sunset77. I hope there is a refined answer somewhere.

There is a request for all of Shorty’s X-rays (9th page) and a mention that the Sheriff has Shorty’s dental chart (4th page center).

I see that the IMDB has him listed at 6’5” along with a birth year of 1922. I think (guessing here) that may have come from the age listed on the death certificate as 44 and they did some math using the year he was murdered, even though the certificate has his birth year as 1933. Even his ‘Findagrave’ memorial has his birth year shown as 1935 (on the photo of the grave marker), so that totals three different birth years for Shorty, and that about fits the average for information variations with the Manson case in my experience.

fiona1933 said...

Calling somebody "Shorty" when they're only 5'11" seems highly (as it were) unlikely to me. 'Little John' was so called because he was a giant of a man.
I just went through the pictures to try and gauge Shorty's size. But I am very very bad at stuff like that and I couldn't get a handle on the perspective. Hard to tell if Shorty is taller. Are none of us experts at this sort of thing? Measuring the body size and making mathematical allowances for difference in scale and stuff?
Because, if the body Clem pointed to is only 5'11" then why was Shorty called Shorty? This is super-intriguing.
Can Dianne Lake be asked? 5'11" is shorter than Tex. 6'5" is towering. That's really big and from the pics, Shorty looks to be broad with it.
Not Shorty in the grave. Just imagine. It's making me go shivery all over. Imagine Clem coolly waiting 8 years, till he could be pretty sure the decomposition was advanced and then leading the cops to the body of another victim....
The catch to that is 'dental records' but, for all we know:
the teeth may have been smashed;
the cops in their incompetent way would just take Clem's word it was Shorty, given that it fitted the rumours;
there may have been no records to find;
or Clem may have thought it worth the gamble, as if it turned out to be someone else, so what, he was already in prison for life, he could just deny all knowledge of who this was, and who could prove anything?
And actually, the body DOESN'T fit the rumours. The often repeated story, as we all know, was a long tortured drawn-out stabbing, followed by decapitation because the hulking Shorty just wouldn't die.( Doesn't that part ring true? "He just wouldn't die, he kept saying 'why, Steve?' I always thought that sounded so true, that he was hard to kill. )
followed by chopping into nine pieces and burying it around.
Now, if you were Clem, and you had realized that no amount of good behaviour was going to see any Manson member released, that only Shorty's body would do that, but it really was in nine pieces and therefore unfindable, but you knew of other bodies...what about the boy who believed Clem had killed his brother? Wasn't Clem rumoured to have shot someone with a .45?
So it comes down to how the body was identified, really. Because, wouldn't it be a trip if DNA could show it wasn't Shorty? Didn't anybody say: "hey, I thought this guy was meant to be in pieces?" And then Clem just says...."Oh, yeah, that. Well, we just agreed to tell that story, all of us, all those involved in killing him, which is three to four guys, and those who buried him, several girls, and disposed of his effects,...we all made up a story and never told anyone the truth of the matter. "
At the very least, that would show how together the Family was. Bruce, Clem, Tex, Charlie, Gypsy, and other girls, all knew the truth, and none of them ever whispered that it wasn't true?