Column
By Brandon Reed
“Corky” Races From The Past
For some reason in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a slew of stock car racing movies filmed in the south.
Some were okay, some were terrible, but many of them had one thing in common – they were made by people who really didn’t know what stock car racing was all about.
One of these was a movie filmed around Georgia called “Corky.” The movie, which was made in 1970 and released in 1972, starred Robert Blake as the title character, Corky Curtiss, a dirt track racer and mechanic from Texas.
The story revolved around Corky’s obsession with becoming a big time NASCAR racer, based solely on a picture taken with himself and Richard Petty. Corky leaves his wife and children to travel across the country from Texas to Atlanta in an attempt to break into the big time at the Atlanta International Raceway.
Also starring in the film is Charlotte Rampling as Corky’s wife, veteran actor Ben Johnson, and a host of NASCAR and local racers in cameos. One scene features Corky turning laps in a modified 1966 Plymouth Barracuda (sporting a Superbird rear-wing, no less!) around Atlanta International Raceway, swapping paint with the Dodge Daytona of Bobby Allison. Another shows Buddy Baker, Allison, Cale Yarborough and several other NASCAR stars during a coffee break in a suite at AIR.
But for Georgia race fans, there are some priceless shots. The movie’s finale was filmed at the legendary Peach Bowl Speedway, a raceway that sat closer to Atlanta’s downtown area than the Atlanta Zoo does today. The film shows the track towards the end of its existence. Roy Shoemaker, the owner, builder and promoter of the track, sold the speedway in 1970, and the track closed one year later. A MARTA bus repair depot now sits on the spot where the track was.
Racing scenes were also filmed at the old West Atlanta Raceway in Douglasville. In that scene, Corky takes on local drivers in a borrowed racecar. In that sequence, he picks up a win after a spin by none-other than Georgia racing legend and NASCAR winner Jody Ridley, with Ridley piloting his famous number 98 Ford Falcon. The track would later become Seven Flags Speedway. Sadly, it too is now closed.
Needless to say, Blake didn’t do his own race driving in the film. Georgia Hall of Fame inductee Charlie Mincey was behind the wheel in the racing sequences, one of several movies Mincey worked on in the Georgia area. Mincey was a track champion at the Peach Bowl, as well as at the Toccoa Speedway and the old Athens Speedway.
After its 1972 release, “Corky” fell into obscurity. After a run a drive-in theaters and occasional late night television runs, the film faded into the dust. It never even made it to the home video market.
But this Saturday, it will be resurrected at the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame in Dawsonville. Mike Bell, historian for the Georgia Auto Racing Hall of Fame Association (GARHOFA) has worked to locate a copy of the film, and plans to show it in the theater room at the hall at 1 o’clock Saturday afternoon. Admission is free, but the Hall of Fame always accepts donations.
Bell hopes some of the drivers and participants in the film will come out to talk about what it was like to work on the set, as well as to share memories of the tracks and racing at the time.
It’s the latest in a series of events at the hall intended to bring attention on the number of racing related projects that has taken place in the state. Back in December, the 1965 movie “White Lightnin’ Road,” which was filmed in and around the Cumming Speedway in Forsyth County, was shown at the hall.
Plans are for more such films to be screened at the Hall of Fame later this year.
Despite what the film appears to be cinematically, it is another rare opportunity to see a couple of Georgia’s grand old racetracks in their glory. It’s one more chance to see cars at the Peach Bowl. It’s a chance to see Ridley’s blue Ford on dirt again. It’s a chance to see the winged Dodges on Atlanta’s original layout, before it was turned into a Charlotte clone.
Chances like that are hard to come by.
•Brandon Reed is a reporter for MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. Contact him at brandon@mainstreetnews.com.
