*What is a ‘legacy’? Is it something handed down, never to be forgotten by future generations? Or if you enjoy movies, could it come across as a piece of must-see cinema with each showing long after its theatrical run?
In a time where movies are here today and forgotten tomorrow, “The Five Heartbeats” proudly remains timeless. So much so that the 1991 Robert Townsend-helmed feature has a permanent place in the hearts of those who have fully embraced the story of five friends who form a successful singing group (memorized scenes, lines and all), 25 years after its release.
For the actors involved, “The Five Heartbeats” birthed a lasting brotherhood, with Townsend and co-stars Michael Wright, Tico Wells, Harry Lennix and Leon Robinson staying in touch with each other, no matter how far or near. From rehearsing choreographed moves for the titular singing group to mutual disappointment over the film’s box office performance to its strong vindication on home video, the cast knew they were making something special.
“I remember our rehearsals. I remember no one read the script. Like even with Leon. It was just I met him, we talked and we were just in a room talking. And after the interview I was just like, ‘He’s my brother…that’s the dude right there,’” Townsend shared with EURweb about the feeling he had about Robinson and those who would later be cast as the Heartbeats.
“That’s how it was with all the different actors. And then we went into an intense rehearsal. I just remember before we started shooting, we all went to church. I was going to West Angeles Church of God and Christ. We were in rehearsals and I just wanted to make sure I got God’s blessing over the project. I said, ‘Hey I want all of y’all to go to church with me on Sunday.’ And I think it was like 19 of us. It was a lot because I told everybody, ‘You want to go to church, right’ before we shot. I just remember we were all sixth row center. A whole line of black men. And they said ‘Any first time visitors?’ and the whole row stood up. It was pretty incredible.”
“I don’t know if there is one thing I can say that I remember the most but one of the things I do have to say is that during the rehearsal process and throughout the film, we were like a family. We fought like a family. We got along like a family,” added Robinson, who played J.T., the brother of Townsend’s character, Donald “Duck” Matthews, as he alluded to his co-stars transitioning from not knowing each other to learning about each other while making the “The Five Heartbeats.”
With Lennix, that included a helping hand from fellow Heartbeat Wright, who fans know as Eddie King Jr. Recalling an exhaustive day of shooting, Lennix credits Wright’s acting experience with providing a much-needed boost to nail the scene where his character, Terrence “Dresser” Williams, considers leaving the Heartbeats upon learning his girlfriend is pregnant.
“I remember we were out in Piru, Ca. I said, ‘Man, I don’t know how to do this.’ It’s like 2:00 in the morning. We were exhausted. We’ve been working all day out in the hot desert sun and I was spent and I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to go for it. And he [Wright] said, ‘Thanks for coming to me on this. Just be there. Just tell the truth in the scene and we’ll cover the rest of it.’ He said, ‘I got you.’ [Laughs] That’s exactly what happened,” Lennix said.
“He literally acted the scene sort of indirectly for me, if you will. Because he did that, I was so touched as a person, as the actor playing the part, that it came to me on like the second take. So once I saw what he and Robert were doing in that scene, because it was just the three of us in that scene. Leon and Tico were both engaged in extracurricular activities within the story [Laughs] and so I had those two guys and they were my two closest guys in terms of the movies and real life. I was so touched. I was so moved by that that I was able to find the emotional architecture of that scene.”
Dresser’s personal dilemma is among many that go beyond the music and nostalgia of “The Five Heartbeats.” As Anthony “Choir Boy” Stone, Wells went from being a shy, churchgoing preacher’s son to a confident, womanizing group member with shades of his former life buried amid fame, groupies and hit records.
In fact, the groupies got a little extreme, according to Wells, who detailed a cut scene that involved a woman determined to put Choir Boy “under her spell.”
“There’s this one scene where I tell this woman, ‘They call me Rock. It was Anthony Stone, but they call me Rock,’ Wells told EURweb. “She turns out to be the groupie from hell. She had candles and voodoo and all kinds of stuff, taking my hair and really trying to really get me under her spell. There were scenes like that that were left out.”
Like their onscreen personas, the actors’ relationship off-screen was a reflection of what they shared in front of the camera. So much so that Wells admits, “we became those characters a lot.”
“Harry was like our spiritual Malcolm X kind of guy. I was sort of the comedian, believe it or not. I was cracking jokes on everybody,” said Wells. “Robert didn’t have a lot of time to joke around with us because he was so busy. And Leon, I would call him Brick, the black lover because he was a soap star. Brick, the black lover. And Michael Wright was always, ‘Yeah, you know. You know.’ He was just intense.”
Like Lennix, Wells and the rest of the “Heartbeats” cast hold Wright and his performance in the film in high respect. In their eyes, Wright’s work in “The Five Heartbeats” easily holds its own with any Oscar-worthy performance.
“When I look at Michael Wright’s performance in ‘The Five Heartbeats,’ I can put that performance up with any great performance,” Wells said. “I’ll tell everybody this. Michael Wright was our acting captain. He was our acting inspiration. He’s that good. Michael Wright’s performance in ‘The Five Heartbeats’ is noteworthy.”
As for his inspiration, Wright looked to a certain member of The Temptations to get a solid foothold on bringing Eddie King Jr. to life.
“I studied the performances of David Ruffin of The Temptations and I emulated the character Eddie after the image of David Ruffin of The Temptations. So he’s adopted after him. No question about it.”
Reflecting on his role, Wright mentioned his thrill in being involved in a project that centered on a period of his youth. For him, it amounted to a certified “rock star” moment.
“I remember growing up with The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Dells and all of those groups that we had imitated, but little did I know then that I was actually materializing in the film what the experience of those groups were going through, the musical business experience at the time, “ he said. “It was incredible to me that I was actually doing it and I was actually being it, if you will. I wasn’t a singer, but I was playing a singer and I was using certain templates that formulated the character that I was playing. It was just extraordinary for me to have the opportunity to do that. As a teenager, I wanted to be one of those guys, but I had the opportunity to play one of those guys.”
As a group, The Temptations joined The Dells and other collectives as inspirations for “The Five Heartbeats.” Where Wright drew from Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks was the blueprint for Wells.
“Eddie Kendricks was probably my favorite Temptation just because of his falsetto. I have somewhat of a light falsettoey voice at times, too,” Wells said as he went in to why he opted against styling his hair the same as his castmates. “I just knew that era, man. I just knew that era. I was the only one who didn’t conk his hair because growing up, I used a stocking cap to make my hair slick. Put grease on your hair, put a stocking cap on it and make it kind of wavy. So that’s what I did with my character. Plus, I’m a nature boy and a vegan and a health nut so I didn’t want that conk in my hair.”
“While the other guys were getting lye and Eddie King Jr. got his head burned up with that lye, I figured out a way not to do it. I knew the kind of haircut I wanted. I called it a schoolboy look,” he continued. “For some reason, I couldn’t get my afro to grow as big as I wanted it for the ending scene. Usually, my hair grows really fast and for some reason I couldn’t get it out as fast as I wanted to and Robert was like ‘Man is your hair gonna grow’?”
Turns out, Wells’ lye-free hair fit right in as he embodied Choir Boy and helped famed choreographer Michael Peters make sure everyone was in sync with the Heartbeats’ group moves.
“I was an unofficial dance captain. The late, great Michael Peters who did [Michael Jackson’s] “Beat It” and “Thriller” and all those great videos, [Lionel Richie’s] “Dancing on the Ceiling,” he was the hot choreographer of the ‘80s. He was our choreographer,” Wells said. “Because of my background in dance and in theater, I was able to be the bridge between the guys and Michael. I would ask for certain things because I was such a fan of The Temptations and all those male groups like that and just cocky enough to think that my contribution would mean something.”
“And also taking responsibility,” Wells added while praising Peters’ inclusiveness. “I would make sure that our masculinity and smoothness had the right measure. And Michael Peters allowed me to give input. That was the beautiful thing. He wasn’t ego trippin’ about the things that we wanted to do. It was a great experience.”
Despite the work put in, “The Five Heartbeats” was a box office failure office upon its release on March 29, 1991. In Robinson’s eyes, the poor reception, which he called “disheartening,” was due to “different reasons.”
“It wasn’t because we worked so hard on the movie. Making movies is not an easy thing. Doing period pieces, especially with music and everything else, it’s a lot of hard work and energy that goes into it. We had been out promoting this movie. We were going to different cities and coming out after the screenings and getting standing ovations. So we already knew this movie was hot, you know. We already knew. We couldn’t wait for it to come out,” he said.
“And then all of a sudden, it’s like the numbers weren’t there. That’s the disappointment you really have because you know what happens is that a lot of times, you just hope that a movie is good and then you hope people get to see it. And then you go on this big elaborate press tour funded by the studio who made the movie because they believe in it and you’re getting the response that you’re getting…everybody is there celebrating and it’s like, ‘What? This movie didn’t do well? How?’”
“We wanted it to do great. Obviously whenever you invest that much into a project. I mean we were on that thing five or six months, really,” Lennix said, alluding to extra time put in for rehearsals and re-shoots amid a strike that shut down Hollywood at the time. “When you put that much energy and resources into something, you want it to do great. We thought it was great and all that.”
“It didn’t feel good to go on BET and beg people to come to the theaters to support something we thought that they would love,” he continued. “You look at these images that are out here today, for example, where people are being beat down and downtrodden and enslaved and all of this. You see those images and you wonder why stuff, where you can actually go out to the movies and feel good about yourself, why it doesn’t have traction. But you can only imagine that we were disappointed.”
“It was a tremendous disappointment,” Wells admitted. “I walked around for several years hurt and just disappointed. People would come up to us and say, ‘Man, they did y’all wrong. That was a great movie.’ There was this air of defeat and failure. It was not what we expected.”
Examining the movie’s lack of big screen success, Wells voiced that with Macaulay Culkin’s Christmastime blockbuster “Home Alone” “breaking all kinds of records,” at the time, “The Five Heartbeats” was something he felt was a “tax write off” for 20th Century Fox.
“They didn’t need this to be a success from a financial point of view. If anything, it was probably a tax write off,” he said. “I don’t think they knew how to market it. You have Diahann Carroll, who is a queen of African American history of film and television. You don’t promote her in any scenes. You promote only the comedy part of ‘The Five Heartbeats.’ So the marketing to me was not well crafted in terms of this being a dramedy and more of a drama than a comedy and more of a musical.”
“It’s a musical, dramatic comic piece. There’s funny stuff in it, but it’s not like [Townsend’s first film, the comedy] ‘Hollywood Shuffle.’ It was not like ‘Hollywood Shuffle.’ And Robert Townsend being a comedian, Hollywood thinking, ‘Ok. He’s a comedian. We’re gonna market it as a comedy.’ No. that was a wrong move, I think,” continued Wells. “I didn’t like any of the ads for the movie. None of them. None of them captured the essence of the complexity of the movie. They made it look silly. There’s silly stuff in the movie, but the movie is not a silly movie. And there’s violence. There’s sex. There’s comedy. There’s drama. There’s music. There’s storytelling. The more I look at it, I’m like, ‘This movie is pretty good.’”
Despite universal disappointment, a complete turnaround came for “The Five Heartbeats,” courtesy of home video. The result: a lot of love and continuous appreciation over a film that literally built its success from the ground up.
“I describe it as the little engine that could. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I can. I can. I can. I know I can. I know can. I know it. it crept up. It became a cult classic,” Wells said while touching on how universal the love is for “The Five Heartbeats.” I’m shocked when white folks know about it. Every now and again some white guy will come up to me and shock the mess out of me.”
So why do people love “The Five Heartbeats?”
Robinson cites how different the film was back in the day while summing up its appeal.
“I think first and foremost why this film resonates for years is that there hadn’t been at that time, and for the most part still, a story about five young black men who rose to success and had the trials and tribulations of real life and was done well. I think whenever you break ground in that way, it’s something that is memorable,” he said, labeling the film’s popularity a “gradual build up” that came about through “a very word of mouth kind of thing.”
“At the end of the day, no matter how much money we make or how long of a career we have, it’s all about memorable work. It’s a lot of movies made, but there’s not many we remember and I feel truly blessed this is one that people seem to remember and want to watch every so often. Every holiday season, they pass it on from generation to generation. That’s all you can really expect from anything. That’s like a great painting or anything else that it just continues to just go on and take on a life of its own.”
Currently speaking, the “Heartbeats” stars are still making an impact with Wright being a presence on the big and small screen (the “V” TV movies and series, “Sugar Hill,” “New York Undercover” and “Oz”) as well as Lennix (“ER,” “ “24,” “The Matrix Reloaded,” “The Matrix Revolutions,” “Ray,” “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice”), who is hard at work developing an upcoming film called “Revival”. For Robinson, he divides his time between making music with his band, Leon & The Peoples and “Hosanna,” a film he’s developing about the south immigration system.
Wells’ present lies with self-fulfillment as a director and after-school basketball coach while teaching and mentoring the next generation of actors. Those who have appeared in Wells’ films include his “Five Heartbeats” castmates Hawthorne James, who played corrupt record label owner Big Red and Theresa Randall, who played Dresser’s girlfriend turned wife Brenda.
“Robert has always been encouraging to me in terms of whatever I want to do, just advice, Wells said about Townsend’s support . “I’ve done short films. I haven’t done a feature yet, but he’s always right there. When I went to AFI for directing, he was there giving me some coaching and stuff like that. So he’s always been in my corner.”
Echoing his co-stars, Wells remains in close contact with those in “The Five Heartbeats” including his movie parents, played by David McKnight and Myra Stone,
“We’re like a family man. We’ve gone through a lot. And the guy David McKnight who played my dad, I’m still in touch with him. We talk all the time. We play drums together sometimes,” said Wells. “The lady who played my mother, I’m still in touch with her. I see all these people man. So we’re there, even when we don’t see each other.”
For more details and memories on the making of “The Five Heartbeats,” check out Townsend’s upcoming documentary on the film, which he is working to have done by the end of the year.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
