Earl

If another Cliffside boy ever made good the same way Earl Owensby did, we've never heard of him. There was nothing in his background to indicate he would someday escape cotton mill life, or something like it. Adopted in infancy by Tom and Bertha Owensby, who spent their lives in the mill, his future—like that of many a Cliffside kid—depended solely on how hard he would scratch and claw to whatever he might become.

In his early teens he began hanging around the Cliffside Theatre, sweeping the floor, tending the popcorn machine, taking up tickets and eventually running the projectors. Seeing practically every picture week in and week out, Earl got movies in his blood, but had no inkling how that he'd ever do more than enjoy them.

After high school he went into the U. S. Marine Corps, then into sales. Eventually he created his own hydraulic equipment company. But a few years later that old movie bug started biting, and Earl decided to make a motion picture of his own—but first he had to learn how.

From these six in-depth newspaper features you'll learn how he did it—and what happened next.

The Forest City Courier-Sun, Monday, February 4, 1974

Busy, Busy, Busy . . . .

The Many Moods of Millionaire Movie-Maker Earl Owensby

By CHARLES JOHNSON
News Editor

A friend of mine asked me one day why I didn't do an interview with Earl Owensby, movie star, millionaire, etc. Says I, "He's probably too busy, and how would I get to see him?" She said, "I'll tell you what," she said, "If you'll do it, I'll call him." "Okay," says me. And that's the way it came about.

While driving to Shelby to see him I was trying to think of some things to ask the man everybody has been talking about. What do you ask a man like Earl Owensby.

I decided just to wait and see what kind of questions popped into my head as we talked over coffee and lunch.

I found that the 38-year-old Cliffside native is a millionaire several times over, a movie star, and a plain hometown person that through hard work made it good in the world.

He is a sensitive man, sensitive to others around him, not himself. A man who looks to the future with an air of confidence that makes the people he talks with see his ideas, dreams, and hopes.

An open man who will tell you anything you want to know. He has an answer to anything you might ask. A man who loves his God, his fifteen-year-old son, and Libby Reep.

He loves business too. He dreams of business, at least that is what he said when asked what he dreams about. People is another one of his loves. Earl, as he wants to be called. "Don't call me mister, my name is Earl."

"I would rather talk to people than eat," he told me. "I love people."

He is always looking to the future and thinking of ways to improve something he just finished improving last week. Always on the go, stopping to eat one meal a day. Going from six o'clock in the morning till three o'clock the next morning is an average day for him.

Earl began his days in Cliffside, selling popcorn at the old Cliffside theater. He lived and worked there until he was 18 years old. He then served a hitch with the U. S. Marine Corps. And after that he went to work for a supply company driving a truck on deliveries.

After driving awhile he worked his way into sales for the company, and that's what he's been doing ever since. "I'm
a salesman," he says. "That's how I make my living, that's how I made my money.

"I worked and worked hard for quite awhile and then I went into business for myself." Looking back at the past for a few moments, a strange gleam came into his eyes and a thin smiled pursed his lips as he relived how he made his first million.

"When I started in 1967, I had $200, a seven-dollar brief case and a pocket full of business cards. With a lot of hard work I am where I am today."

How much money do you have? I asked. "I don't know. I know how much I spend, but I don't know how much I make; the only thing I do know is that I make more than I spend."

You got folks: the next question I asked is "How much do you spend a day?"

Without batting an eye he replied "$30,000 roughly." The answer was given as we would talk about thirty cents.

If $30,000 doesn't grab you, just think about it a minute. Thirty thousand a day comes out to about a million dollars a month. Think, too, that he makes more than he spend

He said he was a salesman, a "professional salesman." And sell he does. Just listening to him sell over the phone is something everyone should hear, just once. It's like he's the best in the west.

What about the movie you ask. We talked about it at length. The movie is finished as far as filming goes but more hard work comes into focus now. Editing, dubbing the sound, and putting in the music.

The sound and actual editing is being done in the basement of Earl's home on the KEM editing machine he has there. He said it is the best money could buy. There's none better, even Hollywood.

And that's according to Jack Hofstra, who is editing the film. Earl says the same thing about Jack as Jack says about the KEM machine.

The movie is scheduled to be released sometime in March, and will premiere in Charlotte, Shelby, Forest City, and Asheville.

The movie of which I got a sneak preview looks like its going to be great. The problem is they have 14 hours of film to be cut down into two hours. It was all so good I couldn't decide what to take out and what to leave in.

If you've never seen 14 hours of film is comes out to about 15 miles worth. And brother that's a lot of film.

The picture "Challenge" will be rated G or PG, Owensby said of the motion picture, it's one that the whole family can come see. "It's the way I wanted it. There is no profanity, nudity, or sex in the picture," going on he added, "Don't get me wrong, the movie is good, it's action packed and will keep the people on the edge of their seats, and it will bring tears to their eyes too."

In my own opinion, it will. I saw part of it.

Earl spent a half million dollars on the movie, and he said if it flops, "I'll at least have one I can see at home that I like."

The next movie is already in the works. The movie will be filmed at Cliffside. The filming starts in February. The time will be the years between 1945 and 50, the place, "my hometown, Cliffside."

Talking about Cliffside Earl says "its the greatest place in the world. I still go there sometimes whenever I can and walk the railroad tracks, and kick rocks. That's why I wanted to make a movie there."

He is building an industrial park, too. The park in Shelby, just below his home is something to see. In talking about it as he showed me around the place, it is going to be something to see.

All his companies will have offices there along with a filming studio, sound stage and private airport. "It will be not only beautiful, but workable, and pollution free. This park is my dream, and I'm making it come true."

What is the key to Earl's rise to fortune and fame. He says, "hard work. Those are the only four letter words I use." He added "To be successful you have to do something for someone else. I find a need that the public has and I fill it and I make money at it."

Earl is deeply religious man and is very active in his church. "I don't work on Sunday at all. He is also active with Boy's Club. And on the Board of Advisor's of Gardner-Webb College, along with many more activities.

In writing about him one could write a book but not having the space I'll end the story here and add. If you ever have the chance to meet him take it.

I came away from his office and home with the feeling that I have a new friend, a good friend, so will you.

The Charlotte Observer, Sunday, July 24, 1977

Producer And Actor Earl Owensby: The Self-Made Man — The 'Country Boy' De Mille

By ALLEN OREN
Observer Staff Writer

Variety once called him "the Cecil B. De Mille of the South." And lately Earl Owensby, a self-described "country boy," is bucking to be the De Mille of much more.

He runs what's probably the only feature film studio in the South, and perhaps the largest in the Northeast. It's located - of all places --- in Shelby, a factory town an hour's drive west of Charlotte.

Producer and actor Earl Owensby: The Self-Made Man

A trip to Shelby to find the studio's founder is not an easy journey. Owensby, 41 and self-made, is not a simple man. His roots reach from Shelby to a mill town and back to the mountains.

He started as a Shelby tool salesman, then, at 31, began his own company. Carolina Pneumatic led to 11 other companies, from furniture to textiles to air service.

Owensby even had time for failure. He marketed a foot-powered "pedal car," an idea whose time never came. He ran for the North Carolina House, and was narrowly defeated in a 1972 Democratic primary.

"I'm from a small mill town," he said then. "I only want to get some things done for them."

In 1973, Earl Owensby decided to make movies. In his Shelby studio he made six films, from the 1973 "Challenge" to the soon-to-be-released "Seabo."

The films emphasized violence - 11 close-up killings in "Dark Sunday," a revenge film - and relied primarily on Carolinians for cast and crew.

At the center of the films - as star - was Earl Owensby. He was a strong, silent type, did most of his
own stunts, and, like his films, received better reviews with age.

Owensby distributed his films in 42 countries. He even sparked a still-pending congressional hearing by writing and testifying to a subcommittee that film ratings wronged independents.

"They're harder on the small, humble folks of film," he said then. "We don't have the clout.

"Altogether," says Erv Melton, a veteran producer at Carmel Co. in Charlotte. "Owensby has made the industry aware that film exists in North Carolina."

Earl Owensby seems a man of opposites: a Hollywood competitor who refuses to move from Shelby; a man of wealth who talks like "a country boy;" a violent screen image who neither smokes, drinks or swears.

The Scene In Shelby

The sign off 1-85 reads "Shelby, The City of Pleasant Living."

Other signs - the franchise flags along the way - are less reassuring. But this town of 25,000, supported by small business and factories, seems pleasant enough.

A few miles from its center stands another sign. "EO Productions," it shouts to a quiet road. A massive poster of Earl Owensby as "Death Driver" (one of his movie roles) looks out from beneath.

Behind is a 44-acre, $5 million mini-empire. The long, low buildings are offices, laboratories, a guest house. The large, block buildings are studios and storage. The backlot is still a "Seabo" prison camp.

Near Owensby's work is Owensby's home. An A-frame houses his second wife and their four children - Dennis, 19, from Owensby's first marriage; Jeff, 15, and Todd, 14, both from Elizabeth's first marriage; Elvis, 5 months, from the current marriage.

The home features a sundeck and pool. On the runway nearby is a small Rallye; the larger Aerostar is at the airport. In the parking lot are the Thunderbird and Pantera; the Rolls is with Owensby.

He's out - shooting. But the people who share his empire are willing to talk about him.

Gene Blackburn, vice president for finance, says every part of the empire is paid for.

"Earl's always had the same philosophy," says Blackburn, who's been with Owensby since the original Carolina Pneumatic. "You use the resources you have. As a film makes money, you add to the studio."

Owensby has never lost money on a film. Blackburn says, and went into movies strictly for profit. Films run between $300,000 and $700,000, and "generally return EO double the investment."

Owensby owns every share of EO, says Blackburn, and he's never designated a second in command. He leaves directing and editing to others, but his acting is viewed as another form of control.

"It's partly to save money," says director Jimmy Huston, a young Atlanta native whose first feature was "Dark." "But Earl is afraid to rely on a lead who might leave. This way he always has himself."

Some call that self-reliance. Others call it ego. "He has to have a monopoly over everyone and everything," complains one actor. "We used to call it Ego Productions, not EO Productions," agrees a former associate.

Whether ego or independence, Owensby seems to thrive on opposition. His first film was "Challenge." His first character was named Frank Challenge.

"One thing you learn about Earl," says wife Elizabeth, looking less than 32 years, "is that you never tell him, 'You can't do that.' If you say that, he has to show you. Like Hollywood said it about his filming and everyone said it about his acting.

"..It's all in the challenge for Earl. That proving himself keeps him alive."

Owensby doesn't have hobbies. Instead, he has telephones. Two hundred lines go into EO, seven into his home alone. Two phones in the bedroom, two on the rarely used sundeck, one in the den moved three times with his favorite chair. His office toilet has three lines.

He's a salesman, as he admits to all. "What I love most," he says, "is just getting out there with that attache case and meeting people. Selling."

There are those, like one actor, who complain, "He exaggerates, pushes images instead of truth." But most agree he's a salesman who sells well.

"The best I've seen in 17 years," says Blackburn. "He can deal with the sophisticated because of his self confidence. And with the cruder because of his working class background."

Because of that background, he deals well with his workers. Even those who complain about ego and exaggerations say salaries and side benefits are more than ample.

When filming, he accepts no other name than Earl, sips Tabs and trades jokes between takes, delivers messages taken at home for the crew.

"That's why it's strange to hear he's violent," says wife Elizabeth. "That's for the audiences. Otherwise he's like 'Death Driver' - happy-go-lucky and joking."

The word one hears most about the atmosphere is "family." "Create a family feeling," Owensby instructs his staff. "And that family will create a good thing."

Right now Owensby is filming with his "family" and the journey leads to that location.

The Mill Town

The road to the film site narrows and meanders more as it makes its way through the farm and mill towns. Polksville, Five Forks, much red clay in between.

Cliffside, another mill town, is nearby. There Earl Owensby first experienced family.

Cliffside is now in decline. But when owensby lived there so did 2,500, nearly all working for Cone Mill and nearly all renting from it.

Owensby lived behind the railroad tracks in a small home with an outhouse in place of plumbing. As if to point up the poverty, the mill owner's mansion was next door.

Owensby was adopted, a fact he calls "an honor." And Blackburn adds, "They must have handled it well. You'd expect an inferiority complex, but he overcame it or hides it well."

"He was the only child and they loved him to death," says Lucille Wallace, a cousin. "They were poor but they sold things out of the house to get what he wanted."

Earl helped get what he wanted by working at the movies. He made his first money bringing ice water to the cashier, then graduated to popping corn and running the projector.

"Always gimmicks," says Brownlee Davis, his best friend then, who still lives in Cliffside. "The most amazing one was the bubble gum machines he set up all over town. Never did understand where those machines came from."

Later Owensby worked at the mill and by 17 had acquired a yellow Cadillac. "Before he could drive," says Davis. "It was used, but it had the name .... Earl liked to have the best."

It was Davis who drove Owensby to the Marine recruiter, for what turned out to be a five-year hitch. He'd always been fascinated by combat - saw "Guadalcanal Diary" 12 times - and Davis says, the Marines toughened him.

"He would always be telling everyone, till when he left," says his cousin Lucille "that he was gonna make Cliffside remember him. That he would be more than they thought he was. Be something special."

"You have to understand the mill town," says Blackburn. "The mill owners are looked up to like Big Brother, and Earl resented that. His way wasn't to charge their mountain, but build his own. Just like he says to Hollywood now, 'You keep California. Shelby is as good.'"

Owensby returns to Cliffside often, making all the important funerals. He arrives in the Rolls.

"Everyone has their utopia," he says. "And Cliffside is mine. Never find any finer people. They were family - that whole town adopted me."

The Mountains

The narrow road turns narrower as it reaches a sign saying "Camp McGill." It turns to dirt, then dust, as it moves into the mountains.

Owensby was born in the mountains. He was born out of wedlock to a mother who later shot herself and a father who was killed driving moonshine down a Tennessee mountain.

His mother had three other children - by different fathers - and Earl, the third, was one too many.

She decided to give away Earl because his legs were ill-formed and he would cost more to care for.

He wasn't in contact with his former family - he didn't want to be - until a chance meeting with his first grandmother.

She told him his mother had just died. He said he felt nothing.

"I don't blame them for giving me away," he says. "I certainly have shown it was for the best, haven't I?"
Owensby is again in the mountains. Behind him a long waterfall cascades to his feet. In front of him an escaped convict hides behind the rocks.

Owensby is Seabo, the bounty hunter for whom the film is named. He wears a Mountie hat, khaki shirt and jeans, with an empty hip holster at one side. A sawed-off shotgun is in his hand.

He stands on a boulder, half-crouching but firmly-planted, looking, like one of the flag-raisers at Iwo Jima. He's tall, solidly built, with the dark good looks of the mountains around him. His legs still move ploddingly.

"Freeze," he barks in a bulldog voice.

The convict pokes his head from the hiding place. Seabo lets loose two blasts from his barrel. The outlaw falls face-down into the water.

Seabo has triumphed again. Like most of Owensby's characters, he is a loner striking out.

"Cut!" calls the director to two cameras.

"Good dying," Owensby shouts with a smile.

Then - quickly - he turns salesman.

"We're sneakin' up on 'em," he says. "We're tryin' to break in big, and this may do it. It's not easy - a stigma's there if you're not from L.A."

The words are delivered as gently as the smile.

"We're not trying to make 'Gone With The Wind,'" he goes on, needing no prodding. "No artsy-craftsy - I by-pass on that. Good drama to show we can do it and good gun stuff to sell tickets."

The last gun stuff must be re-shot, he's told. He waves, all ease.

"We're sellin' the state, too," he goes on. "We're sayin', 'Look at us.' We can even make Manhattan; just shootin' the right angles .... Film could bring a pile of money here - actors coming in, tourists galore."

Karo syrup - fake blood - is dabbed on the outlaw. Owensby continues in Sunday School tones - he teaches there - but preaching his own gospel.

"I love the state. I wouldn't go to Hollywood even to star. My favorite story ... is about a man who searches all over for diamonds, and finds them in his own backyard. Well, here's my backyard - and I'm puttin' my films there."

The outlaw is ready. Owensby is called.

"It's been a ways for a country boy," he says, moving out. "Put down by Hollywood. Shelby and Cliffside sayin', 'That Earl - he's a tad off.' Now they say, "Boy, Earl's done it now."

The Greenville Piedmont, June 24, 1982

That's Earl Owensby, founder, producer and sometimes star whose movie company turns a healthy profit with his sure-fire formula

SHELBY, N.C. — Earl Owensby grew up in the hills of North Carolina and has not ever really left -- not even to make a fortune in the industrial supply business or to start a film studio.

A film studio? In the hills of North Carolina? Sounds preposterous, but it's true.

Nestled on a little country road somewhere between Boiling Springs and Shelby lies the EO Corp., a multimillion-dollar film organization that Owensby started in 1973. In the years since, he has made 20 films and starred in 12 of them. He will add another this summer with "Hot Heir," portions of which will be filmed in Greenville, S.C., during the July 3-5 Freedom Weekend Aloft.

His penchant for casting himself in the lead roles of most of his films has caused some people to describe the 46-year-old Owensby as having a giant-sized ego.

And this claim is enhanced by the 40-by-60-inch pictures of Owensby, the movie star, that line the walls of the corporate complex where the Owensby films are made.

But it is Owensby, the businessman, or Owensby, the country boy, that one finds sitting amid the contemporary decor of the main office, Owensby's haven.

"Ego converts to a word called pride," says Owensby, a soft-spoken Sunday school teacher. He then launches into a discussion of how acting is not his "thing." His "thing" is building a business and making money.

He manages to slip into the conversation, however, that he has been offered parts in movies made in California. And he adds that he is a "passable" actor.

"I don't think Laurence Olivier is going to worry too much about losing any work," he quips.

Money is the bottom line at EO Corp. Though Owensby declines to discuss dollars spent and dollars returned in specific terms, he proudly proclaims that none of his movies has lost money. Not many filmmakers can make that statement, he says.

Instead, they can make statements about producing artistic masterpieces and the like. Owensby doesn't make those claims, although he does claim to make good movies.

They are certainly not classics though, nothing on the order of "Gone With the Wind" or "Casablanca." They are movies like "Hootch" and "Living Legend." They are B-grade films, as critics call them, movies packed with violence and action but no sex, no nudity and no message.

Owensby says he gears his films toward blue-collar workers, people who go to movies for entertainment, not to learn, not to get a new perspective on a situation.

"We don't do message pictures," Owensby says flatly. "We're in the business of entertainment, selling escapism. I don't think someone can escape and have a message. Message pictures, as a whole, do not appeal to mass audiences."

Owensby says the only message his films have is, "Don't mess with the good guys."

"Most of our pictures have an international flavor and they just happen to take place in the South," he says, adding that they are not the usual fare showing Southerners to be stupid rednecks.

"Hot Heir" is an example of the Owensby Movie formula — international flavor, filmed in the South, bad guy unsuccessfully tries to get good guy, action, slapstick, no message.

Owensby is not in this one, though. "Hot Heir" is a story about a wealthy man who ties and leaves all his money to his nephew. The bad guys try to cheat the nephew out of his inheritance. We can all guess how it ends.

The predictability of Owensby's movies don't bother him; neither does the ailing state of the movie business in general.

"There's always going to be a place to sell a film — Home Box Office, home video — a lot of places to go with a movie," Owensby says, adding that the trend in declining movie attendance is about to turn itself around.

"This summer will be the largest grossing summer of all time," he says, failing to add that movie-goers will be paying the largest amount of money they ever have to get into the blockbusters that Hollywood is sending out.

Owensby doesn't want to compete with the Hollywood products this summer. Instead, he's waiting until the fall to release "Rottweiler," which he describes as his best yet.

It's a story, filmed in beautiful, bloody 3-D, of attack dogs who somehow break loose as they are being transported. The dogs attack a mountain resort. We can all guess how it ends.

Owensby is starring in this one and sharing top billing with his dog, Damian, a Rottweiler who bit one of the trainers during the filming of the movie.

Building a movie studio isn't easy, he says. He has worked hard and paid his dues. He says he also plays as hard as he works. For his enjoyment he goes to movies. He has seen them all and seems to have opinions about them all.

"E.T., the Extra Terrestial" is about his favorite of the films now being shown in movie theaters. "Reds" he found boring. He liked "Star Wars" and "Superman" and "Porkys" and the "Godfather" but thought "One From The Heart" had no story.

And Owensby doesn't like any of Woody Allen's films.

He's equally critical of his own productions. Some are good, some are bad. One — "Wolfman" — he even considers ridiculous.

He doesn't believe any of his movies will ever win an Academy Award, but says if one is presented, "I would take it and run because it would definitely be a mistake."

He is also critical of critics, saying few of them even know how to make a movie, much less what's good about one. And he throws barbs in the direction of the movie industry itself, much of which has chosen to ignore Owensby and his little studio — an organization he says has assets of more than $10 million, employs 44 people full time and with 130,000 square feet of soundstages is the largest movie studio on the East Coast.

"The easiest thing I could have done was to move to Los Angeles and open an office," he says. "But I didn't have the desire to do that. I desired to do it here with real people."

One of those people Owensby considers a real person is his corporate pilot-production manager-studio manager Mike Allen, who describes Owensby in almost gushing terms.

"He's one of the finest people I've ever worked for," says Allen, who left the armed forces and became a movie-maker, just as simply as that. "He's a businessman. He has no ego. This plant here would probably like to be called somebody's ego trip, but it's not. It's a factory."

A filmmaking factory, of course, and a newcomer to an established industry. But Owensby believes the filmmaking establishment is beginning to take him and his work seriously.

"You better believe it," Owensby says, smiling when asked about whether he is taken seriously. "Very seriously. They cannot compete with us because of the problems they have with unions and all."

Owensby says his production team can cut 35 percent off the cost of a film simply because it is not organized by labor unions.

"They (the films produced by Hollywood filmmakers) become a living, breathing monster and nothing is on film," he said. Conversely, EO Corp. can write a script and get it ready for production without much to-do.

Owensby appears to be a man who likes to have things without much to-do, even though he has built a 7,000-square-foot chalet on the film company property to live in and owns and flies two airplanes.

He adds that he has become a celebrity. "Sixty Minutes" ran a segment about Owensby and his empire, and it is scheduled to be rerun in July. And when he leaves the confines of the studio lot, he's recognized by strangers, he says.

Still, he cautions to avoid thinking that is an ego statement. "It's no big deal," he says, but that's what acting does for you.

For now, Owensby says he is taking one day at a time — just making movies, making money and considering building another movie studio on the coast of South Carolina.

"I'd just like to have one movie in the top 30," he says. "That's all I would ever need."

He'll keep the good guy-bad guy approach alive, he says, but he's not confusing the roles he plays in his movies with his real life character.

"I'm one of the bad guys. There ain't no good guys in this business. It's a business that doesn't do anything to benefit mankind."

The Greenville Piedmont, Friday, September 16, 1983

Hollywood? Earl Owensby won't have it, but he'll take Grand Strand

By Karen Carnes
The Myrtle Beach Sun News For the Associated Press

Shelby, N.C.—His studio and corporate headquarters are tucked away on the slopes of the rolling North Carolina foothills. The sign over his downtown movie theater here blazes his name.

Two billboards on U.S. 501 in Myrtle Beach proclaim the Grand Strand as the future home of Earl Owensby's Studio City. And down in Surfside Beach, bulldozers and workmen are the clearing 426 acres that will be the site of his $200 million studio and theme park.

Right now, Earl Owensby seems more concerned with the production of two movies than with the hoopla surrounding the beach project. He still spends most of his time at home, only flying to the Grand Strand about once a week to check on progress at the construction site and the building of a prison camp for "Chain Gang," a 3-D movie that will begin production this month.

He's a man who, in the cliched words of a popular song, did things his way.

"I bucked and fought the system and beat them (Hollywood) at their own game," said the head of the largest film studio in the nation outside of Hollywood.

In his 10 years as a movie maker, Owensby has become known as the "King of the B Movies." He's written, directed, produced and starred in his movies, sometimes all at once. He's made 25 films since his studio opened on Nov. 10, 1973, starring in 14 of them. The 26th, "Tales of the Third Dimension," will be released in April.

His "Buckstone County Prison," which played 27 times on Home Box Office, starred Owensby as the half-breed Seabo. "Rottweiler in 3-D," a film about a dozen attack dogs ravaging the countryside, was a smash hit in Denmark under the title "Dogs of Hell." Owensby also has been profiled on CBS' "60 Minutes."

Owensby is reluctant to talk about money, but a stroll around the grounds of his empire here tells the story.

A high-standing sign emblazoned with "E.O. Corp.' lets you know you've arrived. A mat at the door of his corporate headquarters tells visitors that Owensby's is "The Most Efficient Studio in the World."

Inside are the offices, the editing and sound rooms, conference and projection rooms. Along the long corridor hang huge posters from Owensby's movies — his very first film "Challenge," plus "Country Girl," "Living Legend," "Wolfman," and "Buckstone County Prison" to name a few.

Adjoining the office complex is an 18-unit guest house. "We provide lodging and meals while the cast is working," Debbie Putnam, director of public relations, said.

Down an incline and over the landing strip is Owensby's spacious A-frame home. A large garage houses his cars (one of which is a Rolls Royce) and hides the swimming pool. A little farther down is the hangar for his two planes. The hangar adjoins the studio itself.

More than 2 1/2 acres of soundproof stage, or 100,000 square feet, make up the studio. The studio also houses a carpentry shop where sets are built.

Inside are a permanent, 60,000-gallon dry underwater filming tank, the proverbial Dew Drop' Inn and the huge and grim ruins of a church from 'Tales of the Third Dimension."

The tank will re-create a sewer for the movie, and long, twisting tunnels draped with spider webs and littered with open coffins offer a grisly background. Beady eyes stare up from the semidarkness as 150 rats scurry around in their cages waiting for someone to yell, "Action!"

Back in his comfortable office, Owensby spends 90 percent of his time.on the phone.

"I work 12 months in advance of each movie," Owensby said. "We already have deposits down on six out of 10 movies for next year."

He said studios like Warner Bros. and Paramount average eight films each year with budgets of about $11.5 million. "We don't spend that much," he said with a smile.

"I fully intend to be the leader. They have committees. We can make decisions fast," he said.

Making movies in North and South Carolina is less expensive than in Hollywood. Why? "No unions," Owensby answered.

"North Carolina has right to work — the right to be gainfully employed without joining a union or a club," he said.

Owensby also gets by without big-name stars. You may recognize the faces in an EO production, but not the names.

"We don't use Paul Newman and Robert Redford. We base it on the story and the movie itself and not someone's name," he said.

Owensby's success has been built on following trends in the movie business — going for the market that's lucrative at the time.

"That doesn't mean we'll make a movie about a little creature just because E.T. was a hit," he said.

"We look at the market to see what you can sell now. It's hard to sell different pictures at different times. We follow in the same vein."

"Tales of the Third Dimension" can be likened to this summer's "Twilight Zone" and last year's "Creepshow."

"It stars a skeleton and three birds who are like the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy. The skeleton leads into the little stories (three segments)," he said.

"This is our best picture. This will stand head and shoulders above whatever we've done," he said. "Everyone else will shoot 3-D to equal it."

EO Productions also is moving into other areas. This summer the company was "subcontracted" to shoot scenes for an upcoming movie titled "A Breed Apart," which stars Rutger Hauer, Powers Boothe and Kathleen Turner.

With the completion of the studio complex in Surfside Beach, Owensby will double his studio space. Until that time, about three years from now, the Grand Strand will be used for exterior shots. Interiors will be shot in North Carolina.

"Chain Gang" and his next feature, "Sleuth Slayer," which stars Mickey Spillane and Hardee's Roadrunner Philip MacHale, will follow that formula.

Owensby hopes to complete 20 films each year when Studio City is in operation. That's about 10 percent of the entire domestic film market. Directors Dino De Laurentis and Frank Capra Jr. have expressed interest in working there.

"Studio City will require in-house producers, just like California studios," Owensby said. "It can do nothing but benefit the area. It could become an international draw."

The Charlotte Observer, Oct. 13, 1985

Earl Owensby: The Self-Made Movie Mogul

By JOANN RHETTS
Movie Writer

Pine, honeysuckle and mountain laurel twine on the air into a nosegay of summer and South in the kudzu-draped remains of Earl Owensby's childhood home. More Cone Mills bungalows — tidy, white porches strung across frame fronts like good pearls on a matron's bosom — used to spill down the rough-and-tumble dirt streets of Ciffside. But most of the mill houses in this southern Rutherford County textile village were leveled in the 1960s.

Teetering along the Cliffside Railroad tracks on a recent, warm and dragonfly-embroidered Sunday afternoon with his sons, Rhett Earl, 10, and Elvis Earl, 8, the self-proclaimed King of the Grade B Movies points out the pine trees in what was the Owensbys' small living room. Although the house was, at most, 15 feet from the rails, Owensby says, "To me, it was a hundred feet.

"Southern's not a geographical location," says the Shelby filmmaker, who was 50 years old Sept. 30. "It's a way of life. The way they look, the way they eat, the way they worship — I mean we, rural America. We weren't poor, because no one had any money.

"I never walked home from school — I always ran. There was always a banana sandwich and a glass of milk, perfectly timed for when I ran through the kitchen. If that hadn't'a been there, I'd'a figured someone kidnaped Mama.

"Dad worked. Mama's the one that really petted me. I could do no wrong. When I got into scrapes, I was never at fault. Of course, most of the time, I was at fault."

The grim, flip side of this "To Kill a Mockingbird" setting is the old mill itself, a turn-of-the-century, dark and hulking brick structure where Owensby went to work at 16 as an after-school quill skinner.

"It looks like a prison," says Owensby's companion Debra Franklin, shuddering at the ghostly windows that stare toward State Road 221A like sightless eyes.

"I promise you," says Owensby, "that's the way it feels."

As a $20-a-week employee in the weave room, Thomas Owensby would have had to squirrel away every penny of his Cone Mills salary for about 125 years to buy the Rolls Royce leased by his only son, Ernest Earl, from Atlanta-based Leasing International.

The '79 silver Corniche convertible, a prominent costar in Morley Safer's 1982 "60 Minutes" Owensby profile, is described by Owensby as "my showpiece. I break out the Rolls," he says, "when the people come out from Beverly Hills high-rolling and name-dropping."

Appearances would seem to be of passionate concern to the Cliff side millworker's adopted son who discovered early on that his ticket out — what he loved to do, what he was so good at the world would sit up, notice and wag its tail — was selling. Anything.

"I started selling in third grade at school," he says. "I'd get bubble gum which was rationed at that time, buy it for a nickel, sell it for 15 cents. It's always been what I was born to do."

First bubble gum, then hooch (as soon as he could drive, he made about $30 a week, skipping school on Fridays to pick up $1 half-pints of Old Stag in a Tryon liquor store and deliver them in Cliffside for $3 a pop), then machine parts, then movies, finally, himself as a movie mogul — "a very minor movie mogul" was the headline on a November 1980 Esquire magazine article.

Earl Owensby loves publicity, probably as much as he loves banana sandwiches, ice cream and popcorn. He cheerfully photocopies for forwarding the August 1984 Washington Post story dubbing him the "red-clay Cecil B. DeMacho." Yet where his movies earn him his King of the Grade B's title is one of the mysteries of the universe.

Seven of the 21 movies produced by and/or starring Earl Owensby — "Challenge," "Death Driver," "Buckstone County Prison," "Wolf man," "Living Legend," "Lady Gray" and "Rottweiler — have played briefly at Charlotte theaters. "Death Driver" was broadcast on late-night WSOC-TV; "Buckstone County Prison," on HBO. "Reuben, Reuben," an artistic gem that earned actor Tom Conti a 1984 Oscar nomination, was filmed in Owensby's studio ("the most efficient motion picture complex in the world" announces his black and silver business card), but producers Walter Shenson and Julius Epstein simply rented the facility.

"I wish somebody would show me some actual proof that Earl's pictures have ever played anywhere," says Bill Arnold, N.C. film commissioner. "I know that 'Lady Gray' thing premiered in Charlotte because I went to it — the rest of his films I don't know where in the hell you'd have to go to find one. I think he makes most of his money in overseas sales."

Yes, agrees Owensby, that's exactly where his low-budget action-adventures play well — in foreign markets. He claims an Indian distributor has just bought the rights to the still-unreleased "Hyperspace" for $50,000. A front-page story in the Sept. 18,1984, Daily Variety — an issue that was, for months, on casual display in Owensby's EO Corp. office — said Owensby's 128,000 square feet of studio, warehouse and office space on 400 acres along Old Boiling Springs Road, about 10 miles from Shelby, had recently been appraised at $36 million.

"That's an overestimate," admits Owensby. I would imagine Variety's putting a lot of guesstimate on the size of studio, what we have, replacement value more than anything else (it's worth) nine million maximum.

(Current Cleveland County tax records credit An EO Corp., his principal corporate entity, with $1,843,415 in 197.65 acres of land, buildings and personal property. Owensby is listed as the owner of 1.7 acres on State Rd. 1123, bought in 1984 for $33,000.)

A teetotaling former deacon of the Poplar Springs Baptist Church, a Sunday School teacher with a 19-year perfect attendance record, Owensby boasts that his head-bashing, car-crashing films are unsullied with sex or profanity. "Since his moral code precludes sex (in his movies)," said Safer on "60 Minutes," "he lets his baser instincts out in other ways." However, if the bare-breasted gang rape in "Chain Gang," a recent Owensby opus starring the producer as a convict of steel, isn't sex, it's sure 14-karat sordie [??]

After Owensby sued second wile Elizabeth for divorce and custody of sons Elvis and Rhett, she submitted a sworn affidavit in 1982, alleging that he had "threatened to kill Defendant (Elizabeth) on numerous occasions and has, in fact, threatened to kill Defendant without leaving a mark on her body. After which he said he was going to 'float her body down the river.' " (He denied her accusations and twice charged her with assault during the prolonged hearings prior to their 1983 divorce.)

A Smiling Host

He is a soft-spoken, charming and tirelessly attentive host, but his ready smile rarely makes its way into his blue eyes. An observer also notices that even the lemon sheet cakes at the "Rutherford County Line" wrap party are monogrammed (in chocolate) with the omnipresent initials that flower on his bath towels, bedroom carpeting, even the headboard over his bed.

Always working his office phone — a combination fishing pole and security blanket that both hooks him into and shelters him from the outside world — Owensby is careless about what a listener can overhear of his confidential business dealings ("There's no way we would give Prudential what they're asking for — EVER! I wouldn't move from here to downtown for $370,000. It's gonna cost $2 million for my name."). He combines bravado and self-deprecating humor with a little boy's conviction that he can defuse any unflattering news by being the first to deliver at least a part of the whole truth.

Says Debra Franklin, a 31- year-old former USFL expansion franchise coordinator who met Owensby last January in New York and moved into his house in February, "My first impression was, he's cute, but he can't be for real. Tim Tremblay (their mutual stockbroker) told me he was honest as the day is long. I thought, yeah, but he's a producer.

He blushed and looked at the ground and called me 'ma'am'," Franklin remembers. "You take him out of this environment and put him in New York, and he gets real quiet and sizes people up and draws his y'alls out a lot, and people underestimate him a lot."

I think it's hard to underestimate Earl's impact," says Bill Arnold. "I think Earl had an impact on Dino's (DeLaurentis) decision to locate here because the man simply looked and saw what Earl was doing in his ragtag fashion and thought, "For crying out loud, if Earl can do it for a dozen years and not go bankrupt .... "

About 16 miles and a few light years would have separated Thomas and Bertha Owensby's mill housing from the Cleveland County compound (about 45 miles west of Charlotte) where their son lives, makes movies and parks the Rolls. Another 30 miles lie between Cliffside and Ernest Earl's birthplace, the Lake James-Bridgewater area of Burke County.

In the 1920s, a girl, Annie Hazel, was born to the Owensbys, but the child died of pneumonia within five years. In 1936, when Thomas was in his early 40s, he made three trips — paying for the gas and oil of Arthur Allen's '29 Plymouth coupe — to the wilds of Burke County where, he'd heard, a woman named Hawkins had too many kids and not enough money to feed them.

"We got started one morning up Route 64 to Lake James and turned off on an old wagon road," Allen told the Shelby Daily Star in 1979. "We forded a creek and went around the side of a mountain and down in a valley to a little one-room house. They had three beds, a cook stove, eating table and fireplace."

"I come from the mountains of North Carolina," says Earl Owensby, resplendent on a recent morning in gray suit, red striped tie skewered with a gold stickpin, two monogrammed diamond rings, a jewel-encrusted Presidential Rolex and slick black slip-ons (instead of his usual exotic skin boots). "And thank God, I got out of them when I was 11 months old. I was the only one who was given away — not realizing, through the mercy of God I was given away. I was the youngest one at the time; I was the baby. They didn't think I was going to walk." (The N.C. Dept. of Human Resources has a birth certificate on record but no adoption order.)

The baby with the curved, malnourished legs was taken to the Owensbys' home in a diaper and a flour sack. Nestled now in the plush brown womb of EO corporate headquarters, Earl Owensby yanks up his right trouser leg to pound a massive, knotty calf muscle the size of a bread loaf, the product of Bertha Owensby's home cooking, five years in the Marines and a daily workout.

"I've had a nice set of legs since that time."

Miming the pulling of a phantom shotgun trigger, Owensby says, "My natural mother committed suicide. The rest of 'em's dead. How many there were, I don't know. Everyone had different daddies. My (birth) father's name was Burch — I never knew the sucker."

His birth mother evidently had tried to maintain contact with her youngest child. "There was always a gift on Christmas and his birthday," according to Elizabeth Owensby. "He threw them in the trash. I think there's a lot of guilt there. If he would ever face that, stop blaming himself for what happened, I think he would like himself more."

A Feisty Mom

When Earl was 5, Burch, who had married a woman who couldn't have children, offered to reimburse the Owensbys for their expenses if they'd let him take the boy back to Burke County. "I remember him offering money to my parents," says Owensby. "I remember my (adoptive) father going in and lying on his bed and crying. I remember my mother — she was a feisty little thing — sending me up to stand on the porch and chasing him (Burch) across the lawn.

"I remember him saying that he would git me. I remember growing up with always that thought that someone would grab me... until I got big enough to know if someone did grab me, I'd punch his lights out."

From the time he was 10 until he was 16 (and went to work at Cone Mills), Owensby looked for that mountain man in the shadows every time he walked between home and his job at the Cliffside movie theater. (A model of that theater dominates his young sons' model railroad.)

That's where he saw — 12 times — "Guadalcanal Diary'! (1943), the movie that cued his next move. "I was going to be a Marine from third grade on when I saw Brian Donlevy sitting behind a machine gun shooting Japanese. I thought, 'This is it!' Plus, I loved those dress blues." (Although Owensby's knowledge of film trivia is usually as impeccable as his taste in reviewing other people's movies, reference books don't mention Donlevy among the cast.)

"I never had any interest in school," he remembers. "I never had any interest in sitting and listening. Everyone probably thought I would be least likely to do anything because my mind was always on selling something, trading a car, buying a car."

A teacher inscribed his Cliffside Public School yearbook, "I have no idea what will happen to you, but good luck anyway."

He joined the Marines on Aug. 2, 1954, just as the mill installed indoor plumbing in his parents' house. He says, "Just my luck — right behind progress everywhere I go" — a rueful pronouncement that's equally applicable to his trying and failing to cash in on the recent mini-boomlet in 3-D filming.

Brownlee Davis, a chum since 1942 and now EO Corp. transportation chief, took the 18-year-old Owensby — wearing sandals, overalls and no shirt — to the bus station when he went into the service. Owensby's first wife, Patricia Ledford, says, "It just about killed Earl's mother when he left for service. Earl said he could hear her crying all the way up the road when he left."

Ledford, an EO Corp. production assistant, is a trim, green-eyed blonde in whose 45-year-old face you can still see the Shelby paint contractor's 17-year-old daughter lighting up like a sparkler at the sight of Ernest Earl and his white Ford convertible. Recalling their first blind date in 1957 (two months before their Gaffney wedding), she says, "He was a pretty flashy-looking guy. He really scared me at first because I'd never gone out with a guy with that much hair on his chest.

"He wore a white shirt unbuttoned to (gesturing to her sternum); he had a gold cross around his neck which caught my eye and he had that little wicked smile I kinda liked. He had on dress pants — my mother and daddy didn't allow me to go out with boys in jeans. He had a little blonde streak here (tapping an imaginary forelock) that was natural. He had a way of combing his hair I'd never seen before with three parts — it sorta hung down in little curls on his forehead."

Mustered out as a Marine sergeant in August 1959, Owensby meant to bring his wife and son (Dennis Earl, now 27 and an EO Corp. film editor) home and join the N.C. Highway Patrol. The Marines asked if Owensby wanted to return to his previous (mill) job, and he told them, "God, I hope not."

Instead, Owensby began driving a truck for Shelby Supply Co. while Ledford joined the swing shift at Pittsburgh Plate Glass. "I knew he wouldn't be satisfied just being a truck driver," says Ledford.

"Earl and I had a lot of fun the first years of our marriage before he got so serious in business. At night he'd come home and fall asleep in front of the TV with his papers — it was a six-day thing with him."

"I was a terrible husband," he admits. "I'd be a terrible guy to have an affair with because I'm married to an idea maybe, to the company."

He was a truck-driver for six to eight months, then went into sales. "I failed miserably as a salesman," says Owensby. 'Shelby Supply Co. did not want salesmen — they wanted order-takers. I've never been an order-taker."

After three years at Shelby Supply, four more with two other industrial supply companies, he established his own company, Carolina Pneumatic and Supply Co., in Gastonia in 1967. He prospered, eventually owning as many as 10 other companies, and was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the N.C. State House of Representatives in 1972. Unsuccessful or not, the campaign, according to Elizabeth Owensby, triggered an itch for attention and adulation that was never going to be scratched as long as he was simply a millionaire Shelby industrialist.

Both Elizabeth, a stylish blonde with Faye Dunaway coloring and cheekbones, and Earl were married to others when they met in a Rutherfordton drugstore during Owensby's campaign. "Someone said, 'Hello, Elizabeth'," she remembers, "and I looked down and saw those shiny shoes. Then it was shiny shoes and cuff links that were eye-knockers. It was flamboyant. It was tacky. I was amused, I loved it — when I saw him standing there... it was as though I had (always) known him.

"In August 1973," says Earl, "I came up with the idea I'd like to be in the film business, figured out what was required, figured I'd go completely broke.

"Movies had always been a hobby. I actually woke up one morning and said, 'I think I'll make a movie — I wonder how you do that?'"

"Challenge," a revenge fantasy In the "Walking Tall" mold, went into production on Nov. 10 and opened the following April at the Rogers Theatre (now the EO Theatre, with monogrammed lobby carpeting, on E. Marion St. in Shelby). It is an ambitious but painfully awful movie in which one car chase is an incredible 11 minutes and 45 seconds long. Owensby, a painfully awful actor, stars as Frank Challenge, "a ruggedly handsome ex-Marine officer,' "a dynamic young construction engineer" running as a reform candidate for the Senate.

Technically, Owensby's movies have improved tremendously (I've seen eight, including three in 3-D), a claim that can't yet be made for the scripts, direction or Owensby's acting. Owensby in person is a veritable Vesuvius of energy and a wicked mimic, but on screen he implodes into catatonia.

"Hyperspace," a science fiction comedy without Owensby in the cast, is a marginal improvement. Writer-director Todd Durham has some sense of humor, and — to be fair — the endless battle between rednecks and dwarf aliens is no more tedious than the carnage of' "Rambo" or "Commando."

"Someone said I was always playing Earl Owensby," says Owensby. "That's not true. I don't turn into a wolf or sing."

"Those are Earl's ideas," disagrees Elizabeth Owensby, who played the lead in "Brass Ring," the 1974 "Challenge" sequel. "That's Earl. When (former Elvis Presley girlfriend) Ginger Alden was out there (filming 'Living Legend'), I think he thought he was Elvis. It gets back to those eye-knocker cuff links."

A Two-Fisted Loner

Like most of his screen characters, Owensby is quick to proclaim himself a two-fisted and rebellious loner. Questioned about assault charges brought against him by Elizabeth Owensby, he pridefully — answers, "I never hit a woman in my life that didn't hit me first — maybe two or three times — and then I put her lights out."

Says film commissioner Bill Arnold, "I think Earl is compelled to insult us from time to time because he has gotten himself locked into this image of being a maverick, and he doesn't want to change that. He's very happy to ask for our assistance, but he'd much rather portray himself as a lone wolf outside the Hollywood system."

Owensby used to refuse to give any budget figures but has lately been tossing them around with abandon. He's been quoted in Variety as saying that his Studio City, a combination movie studio, amusement park and shopping complex in Myrtle Beach, will cost $300 million (Dino DeLaurentis's 32-acre Wilmington studio is valued at $15 million). He told The Observer that "Hyperspace" had a production budget of $3.5 million to $4 million (he has since downgraded the figure to $2 million).

Elizabeth Owensby dismisses the financial hyperbole. " `Challenge' cost much less than $500,000 to make, and it took all he had," she remembers. (Court records list his personal worth by November 1981 at $2,350,000, including the entire $1.2 million worth of EO Corp. stock. The same records show him drawing a $92,892.53 salary from the corporation in 1980.)

Bill Arnold says, "Frank Capra (producer of 'Firestarter') once told me that if Earl ever spent over $300,000 on any movie he's made, it would surprise him. But then again, he's not different from the Hollywood people — they do the same thing.'

Eight limited partnership agreements in Cleveland Co. court records involve Owensby either as general or limited partner in movie production companies. Limited partners range from five to 37 in number, investing capital contributions of $100 to $328,500 (the typical investment ranges from $20,000 to $36,000).

In a 1979 document each of 24 limited partners invested $20,000 in "Lady Superstar," the first production of what was to be a five-film deal. As the only general partner in "Lady Superstar" (retitled "Lady Gray"), Owensby also put up $20,000 of the $500,000 budget. The 1982 agreement for the 3-D film "Hot Heir" raised $1,230,100 from 23 limited partners.

Limited partners do not profit under these arrangements until the movies pay all their bills. Most limited partnerships provide investors with substantial tax deductions if they lose money.

The "Lady Superstar" agreement gives producer Owensby broad discretion, "complete control in his sole discretion, as to the production and distribution of the films including changes in script, choice of cast, directors, designers and all other matters." Again, not that unusual in the world of moviemaking, but how can anyone with so much money available — "Our movies cost $1.2 (million) to $2 million," he said last week — consistently make so many bad movies?

Good movies have been made on low budgets. The recent "Kiss of the Spider Woman," for instance, cost less than $1 million; "Stranger Than Paradise," the hit of last year's N.Y. Film Festival, only $110,000.

"I'm sure the kind of impression he makes feeds his ego," says Bill Arnold, "but he could really get some serious attention even if he got out of the business and did nothing but rent to people like 'Reuben, Reuben'."

A landlord, though, doesn't have the clout of a producer or a star. Says Elizabeth Owensby, "Earl must be in charge. He is too insecure not to be in complete control. Earl will always have one friend — female — and several males — employees, of course — because that gives him control. He doesn't want to be alone, doesn't want to be close, and he decides when close is too close."

Even Debra Franklin, who calls Owensby a "White Knight," acknowledges that his rigidity may close him off to some things. "Earl has a saying," she says, "that when people come into the (studio) park, that it's his way or Trailways."

"I have all the admiration in the world for him," says Patricia Ledford, who, despite her glowing testimony, twice sued Owensby for one-half the stock in his Carolina Tool and Specialty Co. (the 1976 and '78 cases were voluntarily dismissed). "He's done well for himself, and it's something he'd had in his head all along — something he set out to do. I don't try to climb as high as Earl has done. I think of Earl as a happy person."

Not so Owensby himself. "Dudes like myself are never going to be happy," he says. "It wouldn't matter if I bought 20th Century Fox or Universal. I'd want to go farther. I don't want to set around and watch television.

"A successful person is someone who is happy doing what he's doing. I'm never gonna get there. I'm never gonna say, 'Boy, here I am, I'm successful.'"

Reporter Charles E. Shepard also contributed to this story.

The Spartanburg Herald Journal, January 29, 2010

Carolinas filmmaker Earl Owensby is the reel deal

He spent decades in a variety of roles behind, and sometimes in front of, the camera

By Dudley Brown

SHELBY, N.C. — In 1973, Earl Owensby saw "Walking Tall" at the movies and was inspired.

The film was shot in McMinnville, Tenn., and Owensby started thinking that movies could be shot in the Carolinas. Owensby was in his 30s and designed tools and worked as a sales engineer for a Houston-based company. He soon became an actor, director and producer, too.

Owensby grew up poor in the Cliffside community, a North Carolina mill village that's a short distance from Chesnee. He was adopted as a baby after being born to parents in the mountains. He often jokes that he didn't finish high school, but was released before becoming a Marine and successful businessman, who owned five businesses before getting into movies.

"He followed his dreams," said Noel Manning, a friend of Owensby's. "The first was to go into the military and become a successful businessman and then when he got in the movie business it changed everything."

Not only did the man without any acting experience, not even in a high school play, become an actor. He changed the movie business, particularly thoughts on where independent films would be shot. Owensby went on to produce 16 movies in the Carolinas, including scenes in Gaffney, Spartanburg and Myrtle Beach.

"Earl was the first outside that Hollywood mainstream to show I can do this and I'm going to do this," Manning said.

The height of Owensby's career was in the 1970s and early 1980s. He said his films have been shown in 117 countries and dubbed into five different languages. Some are still being shown in China and India.

"Most of my movies are action, so it doesn't matter how we speak," Owensby said. "It matters if something is happening."

Manning is director of university and media relations at Gardner-Webb University. He also teaches a film studies class each semester, and his students are often impressed after visits with Owensby.

Last week, Owensby visited one of Manning's classes and talked about working alongside "Avatar" director James Cameron in the 1980s when Cameron filmed underwater scenes for "The Abyss" in Gaffney at an abandoned nuclear plant Owensby owned. Cameron recalls the feat in his biography, "The Futurist." Manning said it's not a stretch to say "The Abyss" led to Cameron's movie "Titanic," which led to his current blockbuster "Avatar."

"The Futurist" describes how Cameron needed a place to film underwater and was approached by Owensby, who bought the nuclear plant with plans of transforming it into a movie studio. Owensby still recalls removing steel and metal from the plant and pumping water into its large concrete bowl for Cameron's film.

Owensby starred in many of his films, even though he never considered himself an actor.

"I'm not an actor, but you know what I am? A salesman," Owensby said.

Interesting career

Owensby still owns his Shelby, N.C., studio, where he began filming in 1973. It's down the road from Shelby's airport in a rural residential setting. The studio is on nearly 67 acres with eight stages and a 100,000-gallon film tank with underwater camera bays. The property also has a hotel and landing strip for planes and helicopters.

Owensby's first film was "Challenge" in 1974. It was about a candidate for the U.S. Senate whose family is murdered because of his stand against the mob. Owensby starred as the senatorial candidate. Looking back, Owensby doesn't think the movie was that good and said he wouldn't watch it again. However, he realizes it showed that a low-budget film could make money. It made others willing to work with him and return his calls.

When walking into Owensby's office, you're greeted by a collage of photos from the height of his career. There's a shot of him giving an interview with Ed Bradley for a "60 Minutes" story and shots of him on covers of national magazines, including GQ. The building has several items from his movies, including the jumpsuit he wore while filming "Living Legend."

There hasn't been a lot of filming at the studio in recent years, but Owensby shows up to work daily. He often meets people wanting to lease the studio to shoot their own movies, but it doesn't take long for him to realize many don't have the funds for their ideas or understand the work involved in making a movie.

"Most people want a Rolls-Royce and pay for a Ford Focus," Owensby said.

Fond memories

He and Sandra Owensby, president and CEO of the Senior Centers of Spartanburg County, have been married for more than two years. Sandra had never heard of him or seen his movies until they started dating. Earl Owensby tells a story about one of their first conversations. He asked what she was interested in and she mentioned style. He told her that he'd been profiled in GQ and she didn't believe him.

Owensby is proud of his accomplishments and has stories about working alongside Ginger Alden, Elvis Presley's last girlfriend, when Owensby filmed "Living Legend: The King of Rock and Roll," with her. The movie was based on Presley's life.

Singer Roy Orbison spent six months in Shelby staying at Owensby's hotel while acting and recording.

Owensby fondly recalls those days, but says he rarely watches his movies now.

"Once I see them, I've see them," Owensby said.

However, he still gets excited when he sees himself on the screen.

"He will tell you no, but he does," Sandra said.

She said he likes to talk about where scenes were shot and what was involved in making some movies. For example, it took four hours for him to get his makeup on and covered with hair during his version of "The Wolfman." It also took four hours to remove the makeup and hair.

He drove through a house at the end of "Death Driver" and stood atop a flying hot air balloon in another movie.

Last year, one film was shot at Owensby's studio, "The Story of Jesus the Christ." The movie ended with a hymn sung by Dolly Parton.

He's planning to start filming again, wants to do a sequel to "Buckstone County Prison," and he'll probably act in the movie. He also has plans to do a sequel to his version of "The Wolfman."

Sandra Owensby and Manning are in the process of writing a book about Owensby, which is scheduled to be published next year. Manning grew up in eastern North Carolina and was familiar with a few of Owensby's movies, but learned more about him and became his friend after doing a story to commemorate Owensby's 20th anniversary in show business for Headline News in 1993.

"You realize you're in the presence of a legend," said Manning, who said his students' eyes often light up when learning about Owensby and how he lives so close.