5 Things You May Not Know About 'Deliverance' 1972

Deliverance is the classic on the latest edition of the Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast. The film was chosen because, regardless of its legacy, it remains arguably, the most famous role in the career of actor Ned Beatty. The beloved character actor Beatty passed away in early June of 2021 at the age of 83. Plus, my co-host, Bob Zerull has never seen Deliverance and we both felt that the movie would make for an interesting conversation.

With that being said, I watched Deliverance for the first time in nearly 20 years and came away with a few observations and I learned a few things about this nearly 50 year old adventure starring Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ronnie Cox and Ned Beatty.

Here are 5 things you might not know about Deliverance.

5. Billy Redden didn’t know how to play the Banjo and wasn't mentally challenged -

One of the most memorable moments in Deliverance is the iconic Dueling Banjos scene. In the scene, Drew, played by Ronny Cox, is picking at his guitar when he hears someone playing a banjo. That person turns out to be a young boy who appears to be mentally handicapped and is played by Billy Redden. Redden was a local to Rabun, Georgia, the setting of the movie. Redden was chosen for the role by Director John Boorman who felt that Redden’s eyes had just the right ‘Inbred’ look to them. Yes, it’s awful and part of the overall terrible legacy of Deliverance.

Nevertheless, what is notable about the scene is that Billy Redden didn’t know how to play the banjo. In the scene, Redden was dressed in a shirt that provided room for someone to get behind him and put an arm through the shirt and pick the banjo for Redden. Camera angles did well to hide the trickery and the scene became iconic. For his part, Actor Ronny Cox was an accomplished musician who had his own band and was known to pass on lucrative acting gigs to tour with his band. Cox played for himself in the movie.

4. Dueling Banjos was a major hit on the radio -

Today, the legacy of Dueling Banjos is… unfortunate. The song is now associated with horrible stereotypes of southerners and is used as a shorthand for the fear of being sexually assaulted by a male hillbilly stereotype. Even with that bizarre and horrible association however, people loved Dueling Banjos in 1972 and 1973. The song, attributed in the movie to Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel, though it was actually written in 1954 by Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith, hit the Billboard charts shortly after Deliverance became a Box Office smash.

Dueling Banjos made it all the way to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, topped only by Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly, and managed to hit number 1 on the Adult Contemporary Chart on its way to being nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, despite having been proven to not be original at all, in classic Golden Globes fashion.

3. Ned Beatty was told to ‘Squeal Like A Pig’ for Years after Deliverance -

For the years following his debut in Deliverance playing Bobby, the insurance agent who is raped by a backwoods dwelling assailant, Ned Beatty suffered bullying and catcalls on the street, invariably from young men, telling him to ‘squeal like a pig.’ Things got so bad for the actor that 17 years after the movie debuted, Beatty wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times about how he’d endured the yelling of ‘squeal like a pig’ on the streets, in restaurants and even in professional settings. Beatty wrote in the Times:

“ ''Squeal like a pig.'' How many times has that been shouted, said or whispered to me, since then?

I suppose when someone (invariably a man) shouts this at me I am supposed to duck my head and look embarrassed at being recognized as the actor who suffered this ignominy. But I feel only pride about being a part of this story, which the director John Boorman turned into a film classic. I think Bill McKinney (who portrayed the attacker) and I played the ''rape'' scene about as well as it could be played.

It was my first film, and my best. So it hurts my pride when some jerk hollers ''squeal like a pig'' at me. I get mad - real mad.”

2. Deliverance provided a tourism boom for Georgia -

It appears counterintuitive given what takes place in Deliverance, see the previous entry, but indeed, Deliverance was a tourism driver for the state of Georgia. Rafting and Canoe trips in the state shot upwards as tourists proved eager to recapture the macho thrill of braving the rapids as Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight did in the movie. The boom in tourism even forced many who were uncomfortable with the portrayal of the people of rural Georgia to embrace the movie. That included then Governor of Georgia and future President, Jimmy Carter who said of Deliverance at the 1972 premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival “It’s pretty rough. But it’s good for Georgia . . . I hope.”

1. Lewis Medlock is yet another famous role turned down by Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando was linked to just about every famous role in the late 1960s until his death in 2004. Thus, it’s no wonder that Brando was the first actor approached by director John Boorman for the role of man’s man, canoe trip leader, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance. The role would eventually go to Burt Reynolds of course, in his pre-mustache career. Other actors reportedly considered for roles in Deliverance include Robert Redford in the role that eventually went to Jon Voight and Jack Nicholson who was passed over in favor Voight for the role as Ed in Deliverance.

Not even director John Boorman was the first choice. According to author, screenwriter and poet, James Dickey, who wrote the original story of Deliverance, he wanted Sam Peckinpah. Warner Brothers shot down Peckinpah, preferring Boorman's more commercial approach. A later documentary revealed that Boorman and Dickey did not get along and an urban legend around the movie claims that Dickey knocked several of Boorman's teeth out before filming was completed. This anecdote has never been confirmed.