These Nursing Home Residents Recreating Classic Movie Scenes Are Beyond Awesome
A nursing home in Essen, Germany, had some of its residents dress up as great movie characters and pose for pictures replicating famous shots from classic movies, and if these pictures don’t make you smile, well, maybe your mother didn’t love you or something. Because these shots, taken for a limited edition calendar to be given as gifts to nursing home residents and their families, are beyond awesome.
For you young ‘uns who don’t recognize some of the films from which these shots were re-staged, they include such cinema classics as Rocky, Titanic, Mary Poppins, The Blues Brothers, Breakfast at Tiffany’s — even Easy Rider.
That one features Contilia Retirement Group nursing home resident Kurt Neuhaus as the Peter Fonda “Wyatt” character in the groundbreaking counterculture film, sitting astride a Harley chopper — at age 90.
“It was really exciting to sit on such a vehicle,” Neuhaus told the German magazine Der Spiegel. “Ideally, I would ride off on it.”
Of course, Mr. Neuhaus would have already been 55 years old when Easy Rider came out in 1969, still far from his nursing home days, but perhaps too advanced in age to have appreciated the movie’s portrayal of hippie rebellion and aimless youth. But who knows?
Then again, Neuhaus was but a kid compared to his partner in the scene, Walter Loeser, who at the ripe young age of 98 recreates Dennis Hopper’s leather-clad character “Billy.”
“This was tremendous fun,” said Mr. Loeser. “Wow, what a thrill, in full leather and fringe. I felt macho.”
In a shot duplicating a scene from the 1987 dance-romance flick Dirty Dancing, 92-year-old John Liedtke in the Patrick Swayze part lifts Marianne Pape, 79, over his head, just as Swayze did to co-star Jennifer Grey 27 years earlier. But Mr. Liedtke was all-too-quick to give away the secrets behind the shoot.
“I am not quite so strong anymore that I can lift a lady over my head,” he quipped to Der Spiegel. “Back when I was young, it would have been easy. Nowadays, a few computer tricks help.”
The nursing home calendar photos were spotted by some sharp-eyed users on the popular Reddit forum, where members comb the internet incessantly for odd, bizarre and occasionally, as in this case, inspiring stuff.
Wilhelm Buiting, 89 as James Bond
Erna Rütt, 86, and Alfred Kelbch, 81 in Titanic
Marianne Brunsbach, 86, as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Erwin J. von der Heiden, 80, as Rocky
Erna Schenk, 78, as Mary Poppins
Ingeborg Giolbass, 84, and Erich Endlein, 88, in The Seven Year Itch
Margarete Schmidt (r.), 77, and Lothar Wischnewski 76, as The Blues Brothers
Martha Bajohr, 77, as Liza Minelli in Cabaret
Joanna Trachenberg, 81, und Horst Krischat, 78, in Giant
Irmgard Alt, 79, and Siegfried Gallasch, 87, in Saturday Night Fever
Johann Liedtke, 92 & Marianne Pape, 79, in Dirty Dancing
Walter Loeser (l.), 98, and Kurt Neuhaus, 90, in Easy Rider
