Note: This article highlights just a few of the many Harvard residents who were extras in “Little Women.”
Who hasn’t dreamed—at least once—of being in a Hollywood movie? Of wearing a fabulous costume, mingling with celebrities under bright lights, and being seen by thousands of people?
Many Harvard residents got to live that dream as extras in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women,” filmed in 2018 at different sites throughout Massachusetts, including Harvard. It turned out to be far less glamorous than one might have imagined because of course being an extra is far different from being a star. Still, judging by the descriptions four people sent to the Press, their experiences were rich and memorable. While it was boring at times and they were maneuvered around like “human props,” all agreed it was fascinating to witness the large number of people, incredible creativity, and attention to detail that went into making each scene.
Karen Van Cleef prepares for the Paris promenade scene. (Courtesy photo)
People had different reasons for responding to the casting company’s ad for extras. Karen Van Cleef of West Bare Hill Road sent in head shots of herself, husband Roy, and son Shea, age 10 at the time, motivated mostly by a lingering childhood memory. When Karen was in middle school, parts of the movie “A League of Their Own” with Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and Geena Davis were filmed in her hometown of Cooperstown, New York. She remembers some of her friends missing school to be extras and how “cool” she thought it was. “I wanted that experience for my family,” she said. “It was neat to be part of such a female-driven film,” she said, noting it was “oddly coincidental” that “A League of Their Own” was also about women breaking a societal barrier.
“A friend cajoled me into submitting an application, and I thought it would be interesting to see how movies are made,” said William Kellogg. He also liked the idea of a short commute. Living close to the center on Oak Hill Road, all he had to do was walk up the street into “old Concord town” (the transformed General Store parking lot) on each of the two days of filming. He was lucky it turned out that way. Cary Browse of Still River Road sent in her photos “as a lark and assumed nothing.” She did expect, though, that if she were selected, she would be here in Harvard. “It was quite a surprise when I was instructed to appear in Lawrence at 4 a.m. for street scenes of old New York City,” she said.
Jonathan Bulger of South Shaker Road grew up watching movies and wanted to become an actor to kiss a pretty girl, which always seemed to happen on the big screen. (Instead, he met that goal by marrying a “beautiful woman . . . sometimes, she even lets me kiss her.”) As an extra, he didn’t know what to expect. “Hollywood is presented as glitz and glamor,” he said. “Really, it was a lot of sore feet and repeating the same thing over and over in slightly different ways.”
‘Is that you? It’s you!’
In the film Bulger is a wealthy man attending a ballroom party in Paris, shot at the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston; Bulger estimated the scene occurs about a half-hour into the film. Dressing and makeup were in a different building, and the actors were bused to the Copley ballroom. Bulger said one of the crew told him there were 200 extras, the most for any scene in the movie. He wore a Victorian-era tuxedo, vest with the same fabric as that of Timothée Chalamet (Laurie), which he thought was odd, very uncomfortable shoes, and stretchy white gloves, which were made for a small woman, not his men’s XL hands. He said of the scene: “I was supposed to pretend to talk to a woman. We spent hours coming up with categories and taking turns listing objects from them without repeating any. You would be surprised how many fruits you can name.” He said he is in the part where Laurie, who is quite drunk, has flopped into a chair; Bulger is to the left of him as the camera moves away from Laurie’s seat. Bulger said he didn’t clearly see himself when he watched the movie at the theater, but his wife yelled, “Is that you? It’s you!” No one shushed her.
William Kellogg on his way to “First Parish Church. (Courtesy photo)>
For her role as an “old-world woman” in the New York City street scenes, Browse wore a heavy, ankle-length skirt of green and black checks over many petticoats, a white blouse, black shawl, and her own black leather boots. “They brought in hairdressers from Hollywood!” said Browse, describing her experience: “I spent about 25 minutes with a woman who does Faye Dunaway’s hair. She used a hairpiece and lots of hairspray to make a beautiful and elaborate hairstyle, which was later totally covered by my shawl for all the scenes. Apparently no self-respecting woman in the 1890s would leave home with her hair uncovered.” All this seemed ironic, as Browse said she signed up because all the ads asked for people with “natural hair.”
The day of the filming was cold and rainy, said Browse. “I was standing with a very tall man under an umbrella. Saoirse Ronan (Jo) ran right by my shoulder—many times. Sometimes they filmed her face, sometimes her feet, sometimes the whole view.” Browse hadn’t seen the film yet but she imagines that if you can see any of her, it will be just her shoulder. (Jo’s running through the street occurs right after the opening scene of the film.) Browse was in a few scenes after that—chatting with a group of women buying fish, crossing the street during evening “rush hour.” There were 150 extras that day; “We really were just background,” she said.
Kellogg was in a few different scenes on Main Street in old Concord. One day he was the mayor, wearing a three-piece brown suit and a bowler. “I stood near the top of the exterior stairway of the General Store … and shook hands with a few citizens coming up the stairs.” On the “snow day,” he was one of the group walking up to the “First Parish Church” at the top of the Common. He said the scene is fairly near the beginning of the film and he is a well-dressed citizen in a black suit and coat, with a stovepipe hat and a walking stick.
At the beach
“We are both blurry in the background of that scene,” said Karen Van Cleef of herself and Roy, speaking about the beach scene shot at Crane Beach in Ipswich. “I’m holding a pinkish parasol. I wore a plain-looking dress and had to sleep with my hair in rollers the night before.” Roy is in a straw hat. In the moment where Jo and Laurie are close to the water on the left of the screen, Roy is behind them, and Karen in back of him.
Roy, like Bulger, is in the Paris ballroom scene, in a proper suit, with actual yak fur glued to his face to look like long sideburns. In a shot of Amy (angry at Laurie), center screen, holding a champagne glass and facing right, Roy (half his face, anyway) is on the far right of the screen, also holding a glass.
Shea Van Cleef as a well-dressed Parisian boy. (Courtesy photo
All three Van Cleefs are in the Paris promenade, the second setting of the movie, filmed at Arnold Arboretum. (For this they gave up Halloween in Harvard. Bulger was also asked to be in this scene but, having a 2-year-old son at the time, he chose trick-or-treating in Harvard over promenading in Paris.) Shea’s costume was a mystery to him, and he had to ask at wardrobe, “Mommy, what are knickers?” Karen is wearing a small hat and dark dress with hoop skirt (“very drafty”), strolling with an older man. When the carriage with Aunt March and Amy paused, Karen was very close to the side of it.
Extras were not to converse with the stars, but what could Karen do? In between takes, Meryl Streep spoke to her and told her she looked beautiful. “She was sitting in a horse-drawn carriage in a purple cloak, looking extremely old as Aunt March. I know in real life Meryl is very beautiful, but in the moment as Aunt March, telling her she was beautiful too just didn’t seem like the right response, so I stumbled with my words and said something about the cold weather.”
A down-to-earth guy
Kellogg, as mayor on the steps, had “only a pane of glass’ separating him from Marmee, who was inside shopping. “All the ‘little women’ skipped and sang within a few feet of me,” he added. Bulger recounted that in one take, Timothée Chalamet accidentally bumped into one of the extras when lunging into a seat and was very apologetic. “He seemed like a very down-to-earth guy,” Bulger said. As well as being close enough to touch Jo, Browse described an interaction with Gerwig. “The extras waited in place for a long time until Greta Gerwig was happy with the scene. She spoke to us through a megaphone, thanking us for our patience and telling us the scene looked just as she imagined it.” Kellogg said that in one scene he and another actor were getting conflicting directions, so Kellogg decided on a third way to carry it out. After the take, one of the producers told them he liked what they were doing and to keep going with it.
For all their standing around waiting, being paid only minimum wage, not even visible in the scene they were in, or if they were, being blurry, and all the “waste” of film, the extras were crucial to “Little Women.” We may not be able to recognize any of our Harvard neighbors in the movie, but we know they are there, background for the stars.
