Tiny Lund Hard Charger Movie Opening

No... I don't have the film video, but I was thinking of the great opening to the movie TINY LUND, Hard Charger .

If you have not been privileged to see the movie TINY LUND, Hard Charger (I saw it once in spring 1967 in Charlottesville, Va. while a student at the University of Virginia) , it has a fantastic opening. Many reference sites by the way list the wrong release date for that movie as being a year or two later. They are incorrect. I know EXACTLY when and where I saw it.

Shooting through the front windshield of the racing tow vehicle, the movie opened with various highway road signs and overhead signs passing by. They were all signs on roads heading to a race track.... Daytona, Richmond, Asheville.... wherever (wish I could remember the names, but they were the real signs on the real roads going to the races).

The opening footage of the road signs passing by on the open highway was accompanied by the pounding beat of Dave Dudley booming out his classic 1963 hit song "Six Days on the Road."

Somebody, somewhere has to have a copy of the Tiny Lund movie....

I just acquired this original, 40"X60" theatrical release poster for the film. It differs from the other versions of the poster I have seen before in that there are more drivers pictured along the bottom than in other versions, including Dick Hutcherson from my hometown of Keokuk,IA. That is why it was of interest to me mainly, but I too would very much like to find a copy of the film. Perhaps one of the folks involved in the movie might know where to find a copy. I have had some correspondence with Ned Jarrett, perhaps I could ask him or maybe Linda Vaughn would know? I know that's probably a long-shot, but we're all grasping at straws at this point I think. Anyway, my search will continue.

Dave, I saw "Hard Charger" movie at the old, local, drive-in movie.........the "Holiday Drive", long since dismantled.

Dave, you are, of course, exactly correct. It was the opening of the movie that really appealed to me at the time. Remember seeing all the cars on open haulers leaving the track in the rain? Awesome movie. For the record, my friend Ronnie Sharpe and I, actually went through Ted Turner and had his staff attempt to locate the movie for us. After more than six weeks of looking, we were told that, to the best of Ted Turner's knowledge, a copy of the movie does not exist. I had talked with Wanda Lund about that very thing the first time she and I had some time at one of the events we did together three or four years ago and she told me that she had never been able to find it. I understand that, at one time, Wally Bell told Jeff he had a copy of the movie but we never got anywhere on that avenue. Was a great movie and I have many, many memories of personal interactions with Tiny and Wanda. One note here, my Daddy was very, very proud that he was actually in that movie for a total of about 15 seconds. He loved that!

Awesome about your dad being in the film, Tim. My other recollection of the movie was a scene where Tiny was furious with Curtis Turner over what I believe was an incident in a Late Model Sportsman race at Daytona.

Vince, one of my great memories is seeing Dick Hutcherson roll the #29 Ford on its roof at Richmond in the 1965 Richmond 250 on the old Fairgrounds half-mile dirt track. Junior Johnson won against a pretty small field due to the Chrysler boycott. ABC Television shot that race and canned it as part of its Wide World of Sports program later in the year. Dick ran across the track and tried to climb the old wooden board fence down in turn 1. The Richmond newspapers, as well as Southern Motorsports Journal and Southern MotoRacing newspapers had photo sequence shots showing Dick running across the track and then holding on to the top of the fence for dear life as the field passed beneath him. It was pretty funny in retrospect, once you knew nobody was hurt. That crash was the highlight of ABC's program coverage.

Check out this link for interesting info about the movie and the film company, which was co-owned by Hank Williams' wife, Audrey.

http://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2011/10/endangered-list-case-file-115_29.html

I thought the story in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal was worth the read.

On my desktop it blows up just great with a click.

Glad it worked. Better get over to Johnny's post before RC's grandkids take off in their new Dodges, lol!