Posted: 06/05/2014 at 12:29pm | IP Logged

BEVERLY HILLS, CA (ANS) -- To receive praise from Hollywood superstar, Jon Voight, who has won one Academy Award, and four Golden Globe Awards, and is the father of actress Angelina Jolie, and actor James Haven, is quite something.

Jon Voight (Photo: Dan Wooding)

But that’s what the actor, who came to prominence in the late 1960s with his performance as a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy (1969), and became a Hollywood star with his portrayals of a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance (1972), a paraplegic Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor, and a penniless ex-boxing champion in The Champ (1979), did during an interview with me on the Red Carpet in Beverly Hills, California, on Sunday, June 1, 2014.

He was one of the many stars who had turned out to “toast and roast” Pat Boone for his 80th Birthday “Celebrity Roast,” and as Pat Boone stood close by, l asked Voight why he had come to the event, to which he replied, “I’m here because of this fellow right here” pointing to Boone.

He laughed and then said, “He’s a good looking guy. He looks exactly like Pat Boone.”

I then asked what it was about the former teenage idol turned veteran entertainer, that he liked, and he said, “Well many things. One is that he’s a very he’s a righteous God-fearing fellow. He does unto others… I mean he gives of himself. He’s one of those guys that if anybody asks him to do something, he’s going to be available for it; and he’s raised his family in that way as well.

Pat Boone on the Red Carpet as his daughter, Lindy Boone Michaelis, looks on (Photo: Dan Wooding)

“He’s an icon, of course, and that goes back many years in everybody’s history in the United States and certainly in my era too.”

I pointed out that it was Pat Boone who recorded some of the songs that, at that time, were only being recorded by black singers, thus making them available to a wider audience, and he agreed.

“Well, he certainly did that. I mean, he did a cover of Tutti Frutti, and he and the song became a success. In fact, a lot of his biggest hits were from that world.”

I wondered if Little Richard would have been a success without Pat Boone’s help in recording that and other “black” songs, and Voight replied, “He pointed the direction for some of us. Maybe he helped. I’m sure he did.”

By the way, Jon Voight was raised as a Catholic and attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York, where he first took an interest in acting, playing the comedic role of Count Pepi Le Loup in the school's annual musical, The Song of Norway. Following his graduation in 1956, he enrolled at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he majored in art and graduated with a B.A. in 1960. After graduation, Voight moved to New York City, where he pursued an acting career, and rest, they say, is history.

The evening at the Beverly Hilton Hotel was held to benefit Ryan's Reach, a charity set up in honor of Pat and Shirley Boone's grandson, Ryan Corbin, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2001, and was making an amazing recovery and even attended the event. His mother, Lindy Boone Michaelis, helped to set up the group to help others with similar injuries. For more information, please go to www.ryansreach.com

Source: Assist News Service