Charles Martin Smith

In 1973 Charles Martin Smith played Terry the Toad Fields in American Graffiti, where the credits give his name as Charlie Martin Smith. The AFI records that most of the cast was built out of young actors unknown at the time and that the crew worked from nine in the evening until sunrise for twenty-eight days; the project had been developed at United Artists and turned down, other major studios refused it as well, and Universal took it only once Francis Ford Coppola was formally involved. Ten years later he headed the bill as Tyler in Carroll Ballard's Never Cry Wolf. Adapted from Farley Mowat's novel of 1963, the film spread over two years: shooting began in the Canadian Yukon in May 1980 and moved to Nome in Alaska in June, and Smith and the crew who stayed dealt with extreme cold in winter and swarms of mosquitoes and blackflies in summer. The production needed ten trained wolves, and teaching one of them to lift its leg while urinating took fifty-seven takes.