October 7, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the choice of three then-minor league hockey players to play the Hanson Brothers in "Slap Shot" starring Paul Newman was a casting hat-trick. When Dave "Killer" Hanson—was drafted for the movie, the Hanson brothers were born. This is his story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and This is Our American Stories.
Decades after it was released in nineteen seventy seven, the
movie Slap Shot holds up as one of the true
classics of American sports film. Its comical depiction of a
minor league hockey team resorting to violent play to gain
popularity in a declining factory town still resonates with audiences
(00:34):
around the world.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Much of the.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Film's success has to do with Paul Newman's performance as
an aging player coach, but the movie might never have
achieved its iconic status without the bespectacled, brawling characters known
as the Hanson Brothers, played by former Johnston Jets players
Steve and Jeff Carlson and David Hanson. Dave Hanson grew
(00:57):
up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he eventually start in football, baseball,
and hockey at Humboldt High School. He played for the
University of Minnesota under legendary coach Herb Brooks, and of course,
that's hockey. Hanson then played for the Detroit Red Wings
and Minnesota North Stars in the National Hockey League. The
following excerpts are from a video interview with Dave Hanson
(01:21):
by Paul Guggenheimer was recorded in Pittsburgh and has provided
courtesy of Primal Interviews with Paul Guggenheimer.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Let's go to Dave Hanson. What I tell people is
the movie is based on more fact and fiction. It
was based on a team that I was playing for
in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, called the Johnstown Jets in nineteen seventy
four seventy five, And pretty much everything that goes on
in the movie happened in one former fashion. There was
three brothers playing for us. There were big tough woar
(01:52):
glasses named Jeff Jack and Steve Carlson. There was a
fell on a team that was called Dave Killer Hanson
E me, he's a killer. And then all the other
characters on the team or on the other teams were
(02:14):
either real characters of the game or a combination of
characters of the games. So when Nancy Dowd, who was
the sister of one of the players on the team,
came down and started follows around and wrote the script,
obviously they wrote into three brothers and the killer and
a few other people. And when they got around to
making the film UH and casting for the film, UH,
(02:36):
they wanted to get a actors like Nick Nolty, Peter Strauss,
and you know, a group of Hollywood actors to play
these roles. Of course, because you had Paul Newman, the
number one actor at the time of Hollywood. Well, these
guys could not skate no matter how they tried to
give them lessons and took them out in hockey practices
and hired you know, private instructors, and they just couldn't
(02:59):
get him skate well enough to make it look like
a professional game. So Nancy basically said, why don't we
go back and let these guys be themselves and see
if that would work out. And basically that's what happened.
They came back to Johnstown. They'd be in the Hollywood
George ray Hill the director, and Nancy and a few others,
and sat the Carlson brothers down, and sat myself down,
(03:20):
and we read a few lines in the script and
they shook their heads, and yet they still took a
shot at us and pretty well cast us. And so
it was going to be Jeff Jack and Steve Carlson.
We're going to be the Hansome brothers, Dave Killer hans
was going to be Dave Killer. Carlson but Jack ended
up going to Edmonton Oilers to play when we got
around the film, and so they just plucked me out
(03:42):
of the Carlson rolling, threw me in as a Hansen
brother and we were off and running, or off and skating.
I should say, okay, guys, show us what you got.
When we got first stuck in front of the camera
and we're told to act and we're given lines, we
(04:03):
really were bad. We were robotic. And it took a
couple of times and you could see where George roy
Hill was getting frustrated. It finally got to the point
where George said, let's stop for a minute and take
a breath and pull the society. Says okay, boys, this
doesn't seem to be working too well. He says, so
let's try a different angle. What would you do in
(04:24):
this situation, you know, here's you'd set it up and
we'd say, I don't know, we would just react. We
would probably just do something off. He said, well, let's
give that a try. Next shot we did and we
pulled it off. I kind of had libs some stuff
and threw in the regular stuff and he just says,
that's great, don't change it. That's the way we'll roll
from now on. So it really boiled down to, quite frankly,
(04:46):
that the actors were the one acting. The hockey players
are ourselves were just being ourselves, the Hansons. We were
twenty twenty one, twenty two years old and had ordered
the three of us, and when they first came to
us and he said, hey, would you guys like to
do a movie? We said, well, how long is it
(05:07):
going to take. It's going to take two, three months,
three your summer, well, we were used to take her
to summers off, going back to Minnesota, playing softball summer long,
drinking beer and getting ready for training camping in the fall.
So it's like, okay, well why not let's give this
a try. So we had no idea for us. It
was just an opportunity to drink a lot of beer,
have free food, get paid for doing something, and you know,
(05:30):
meet Paul Newman and hopefully meet some chicks and hopefully
have some fun doing it. So we had no clue
even to the point where before the film came out,
Universal Studios came back to us and offered us a
seven year, seven movie contract deal, and we said, nah,
(05:50):
we want to be hockey players. We don't want to
be actors. So there's, you know, there's an indication of
how smart we were. I was having a pregame in
my apartment and there's knocking going on the door and
it wakes me up, and there's knocking still going on,
and go what you know? So I opened the door
and I'm in my underwear and my my dirty sweat
(06:12):
socks and I just open the door and go what
And he looks up and he says, you're Dave Hanson.
I says yeah, And he says I'm Paul Newman and
I says, yeah, well you are Paul. He says yeah.
He says, geez, do we wake yet? And I says, well, yeah,
kind of, and he says, well, you know, then he
apologize and I said, you know, I'm going, oh, no,
no problem. He says, what's up. He says, well, I
got some you know, art director with me and a
(06:34):
couple of movie guys. Said guys, and they want to
come in and take a look at a hockey player's apartment.
We want to see what it looks like. Do you
mind if we come in? And I says, Paul, I
got no problem as long as you let me go
back to bed, you know, just stay out of my bedroom.
You can do whatever you want. So and he said,
before I went, and he says, we'll be quiet. We
just want to look around and take some pictures and
some polaroids. And then he says, but hey, Dave, he says, yeah,
(06:59):
you got any beerd He said, yeah, what's up? He says, well,
the race is not He says, you know, I'd like
to maybe crack a beard and sit down and watch
the race with these guys. Says, now, no problem. Drink
as much as you want TVs in there, go for it.
So I was the first meeting of Paul, which was
the start for a very good and long friendship.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Everybody just found the fat screaming guil, Gil guilt, This
is honey.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Really. What we were hearing more than anything was the
reviews in the hockey community. You would hear, you know,
the gms of the teams or you know, the commissioner
of the league would say, you know, that movie's a disgrace.
You know, it doesn't portray hockey. And then of course
you'd hear the players saying that's absolutely right on. You know,
(07:41):
it's it's the way it is. You know, obviously a
little satirical about it, but that's that's the way it is.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
And I'm telling you Prome County is just physically upset.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
By this display. Come on down and get places for
the home games, bring the kids. We got entertainment for
the whole family. It would short lived, it didn't bother us.
In fact, we ended up we would have more fun
than anything, because now we would go into we'd go
into arenas to play a hockey game, and I'll use
Dallas as an example. I'll go I went into Dallas
(08:13):
where they hated me, and I always got booed, you know,
and warm ups and this and that. So typically I'm
skating around the warmups one time and I'm hearing the
bone and I finally look up and there's an entire
section of fans up there with the glasses and the
fake nose and holding them Charlestown Chiefs Booster Club. And
it was just hilarious. So everybody started having a good
time with it. I'd face off against, you know, against
(08:34):
an opponent that we'd fight all the time, and he'd
looked at me and I look at him. He'd say,
buy a soda after the game. So it was good stuff.
The one that I think of mostly is Ciskel and
Ebert on David Letterman Show, and I think the question
was something like David to Siskel and Ebert, is there
ever a movie that you watched, critiqued and then later
(09:01):
on you kind of went back and realized you made
a mistake on And they said, absolutely, Slapshot. He says.
When we first saw Slap Shot, you know, we gave
it a thumbs down. Later on looked at it closely
and realized, you know, what a great film that was.
And now it's historically always in the top ten of
the best sports movies of all time.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And thanks to Greg Hengler as always for finding this
and doing the work he always does for us on
the producing and editing front. And by the way, again,
if you have not seen Slapshot, watch it with a family.
I mean, it is just great family entertainment and you
will laugh and then you'll just keep laughing.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
You don't have to know hockey.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
The Love Slap Shot Dave Hansen's story the story of
one of America's great sports movies.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Here on our American stores
This is Lee Habib, and This is Our American Stories.
Decades after it was released in nineteen seventy seven, the
movie Slap Shot holds up as one of the true
classics of American sports film. Its comical depiction of a
minor league hockey team resorting to violent play to gain
popularity in a declining factory town still resonates with audiences
(00:34):
around the world.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Much of the.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Film's success has to do with Paul Newman's performance as
an aging player coach, but the movie might never have
achieved its iconic status without the bespectacled, brawling characters known
as the Hanson Brothers, played by former Johnston Jets players
Steve and Jeff Carlson and David Hanson. Dave Hanson grew
(00:57):
up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he eventually start in football, baseball,
and hockey at Humboldt High School. He played for the
University of Minnesota under legendary coach Herb Brooks, and of course,
that's hockey. Hanson then played for the Detroit Red Wings
and Minnesota North Stars in the National Hockey League. The
following excerpts are from a video interview with Dave Hanson
(01:21):
by Paul Guggenheimer was recorded in Pittsburgh and has provided
courtesy of Primal Interviews with Paul Guggenheimer.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Let's go to Dave Hanson. What I tell people is
the movie is based on more fact and fiction. It
was based on a team that I was playing for
in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, called the Johnstown Jets in nineteen seventy
four seventy five, And pretty much everything that goes on
in the movie happened in one former fashion. There was
three brothers playing for us. There were big tough woar
(01:52):
glasses named Jeff Jack and Steve Carlson. There was a
fell on a team that was called Dave Killer Hanson
E me, he's a killer. And then all the other
characters on the team or on the other teams were
(02:14):
either real characters of the game or a combination of
characters of the games. So when Nancy Dowd, who was
the sister of one of the players on the team,
came down and started follows around and wrote the script,
obviously they wrote into three brothers and the killer and
a few other people. And when they got around to
making the film UH and casting for the film, UH,
(02:36):
they wanted to get a actors like Nick Nolty, Peter Strauss,
and you know, a group of Hollywood actors to play
these roles. Of course, because you had Paul Newman, the
number one actor at the time of Hollywood. Well, these
guys could not skate no matter how they tried to
give them lessons and took them out in hockey practices
and hired you know, private instructors, and they just couldn't
(02:59):
get him skate well enough to make it look like
a professional game. So Nancy basically said, why don't we
go back and let these guys be themselves and see
if that would work out. And basically that's what happened.
They came back to Johnstown. They'd be in the Hollywood
George ray Hill the director, and Nancy and a few others,
and sat the Carlson brothers down, and sat myself down,
(03:20):
and we read a few lines in the script and
they shook their heads, and yet they still took a
shot at us and pretty well cast us. And so
it was going to be Jeff Jack and Steve Carlson.
We're going to be the Hansome brothers, Dave Killer hans
was going to be Dave Killer. Carlson but Jack ended
up going to Edmonton Oilers to play when we got
around the film, and so they just plucked me out
(03:42):
of the Carlson rolling, threw me in as a Hansen
brother and we were off and running, or off and skating.
I should say, okay, guys, show us what you got.
When we got first stuck in front of the camera
and we're told to act and we're given lines, we
(04:03):
really were bad. We were robotic. And it took a
couple of times and you could see where George roy
Hill was getting frustrated. It finally got to the point
where George said, let's stop for a minute and take
a breath and pull the society. Says okay, boys, this
doesn't seem to be working too well. He says, so
let's try a different angle. What would you do in
(04:24):
this situation, you know, here's you'd set it up and
we'd say, I don't know, we would just react. We
would probably just do something off. He said, well, let's
give that a try. Next shot we did and we
pulled it off. I kind of had libs some stuff
and threw in the regular stuff and he just says,
that's great, don't change it. That's the way we'll roll
from now on. So it really boiled down to, quite frankly,
(04:46):
that the actors were the one acting. The hockey players
are ourselves were just being ourselves, the Hansons. We were
twenty twenty one, twenty two years old and had ordered
the three of us, and when they first came to
us and he said, hey, would you guys like to
do a movie? We said, well, how long is it
(05:07):
going to take. It's going to take two, three months,
three your summer, well, we were used to take her
to summers off, going back to Minnesota, playing softball summer long,
drinking beer and getting ready for training camping in the fall.
So it's like, okay, well why not let's give this
a try. So we had no idea for us. It
was just an opportunity to drink a lot of beer,
have free food, get paid for doing something, and you know,
(05:30):
meet Paul Newman and hopefully meet some chicks and hopefully
have some fun doing it. So we had no clue
even to the point where before the film came out,
Universal Studios came back to us and offered us a
seven year, seven movie contract deal, and we said, nah,
(05:50):
we want to be hockey players. We don't want to
be actors. So there's, you know, there's an indication of
how smart we were. I was having a pregame in
my apartment and there's knocking going on the door and
it wakes me up, and there's knocking still going on,
and go what you know? So I opened the door
and I'm in my underwear and my my dirty sweat
(06:12):
socks and I just open the door and go what
And he looks up and he says, you're Dave Hanson.
I says yeah, And he says I'm Paul Newman and
I says, yeah, well you are Paul. He says yeah.
He says, geez, do we wake yet? And I says, well, yeah,
kind of, and he says, well, you know, then he
apologize and I said, you know, I'm going, oh, no,
no problem. He says, what's up. He says, well, I
got some you know, art director with me and a
(06:34):
couple of movie guys. Said guys, and they want to
come in and take a look at a hockey player's apartment.
We want to see what it looks like. Do you
mind if we come in? And I says, Paul, I
got no problem as long as you let me go
back to bed, you know, just stay out of my bedroom.
You can do whatever you want. So and he said,
before I went, and he says, we'll be quiet. We
just want to look around and take some pictures and
some polaroids. And then he says, but hey, Dave, he says, yeah,
(06:59):
you got any beerd He said, yeah, what's up? He says, well,
the race is not He says, you know, I'd like
to maybe crack a beard and sit down and watch
the race with these guys. Says, now, no problem. Drink
as much as you want TVs in there, go for it.
So I was the first meeting of Paul, which was
the start for a very good and long friendship.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Everybody just found the fat screaming guil, Gil guilt, This
is honey.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Really. What we were hearing more than anything was the
reviews in the hockey community. You would hear, you know,
the gms of the teams or you know, the commissioner
of the league would say, you know, that movie's a disgrace.
You know, it doesn't portray hockey. And then of course
you'd hear the players saying that's absolutely right on. You know,
(07:41):
it's it's the way it is. You know, obviously a
little satirical about it, but that's that's the way it is.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
And I'm telling you Prome County is just physically upset.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
By this display. Come on down and get places for
the home games, bring the kids. We got entertainment for
the whole family. It would short lived, it didn't bother us.
In fact, we ended up we would have more fun
than anything, because now we would go into we'd go
into arenas to play a hockey game, and I'll use
Dallas as an example. I'll go I went into Dallas
(08:13):
where they hated me, and I always got booed, you know,
and warm ups and this and that. So typically I'm
skating around the warmups one time and I'm hearing the
bone and I finally look up and there's an entire
section of fans up there with the glasses and the
fake nose and holding them Charlestown Chiefs Booster Club. And
it was just hilarious. So everybody started having a good
time with it. I'd face off against, you know, against
(08:34):
an opponent that we'd fight all the time, and he'd
looked at me and I look at him. He'd say,
buy a soda after the game. So it was good stuff.
The one that I think of mostly is Ciskel and
Ebert on David Letterman Show, and I think the question
was something like David to Siskel and Ebert, is there
ever a movie that you watched, critiqued and then later
(09:01):
on you kind of went back and realized you made
a mistake on And they said, absolutely, Slapshot. He says.
When we first saw Slap Shot, you know, we gave
it a thumbs down. Later on looked at it closely
and realized, you know, what a great film that was.
And now it's historically always in the top ten of
the best sports movies of all time.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And thanks to Greg Hengler as always for finding this
and doing the work he always does for us on
the producing and editing front. And by the way, again,
if you have not seen Slapshot, watch it with a family.
I mean, it is just great family entertainment and you
will laugh and then you'll just keep laughing.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
You don't have to know hockey.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
The Love Slap Shot Dave Hansen's story the story of
one of America's great sports movies.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Here on our American stores
Host
Lee Habeeb
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