By James V. Horrigan

"Whenever people ask ‘Where are you from?‘ I say I’m from Maine,” Kurt Russell, 55, laughs. “That’s my home base. Rangeley is my home town.” The Hollywood legend is speaking from a ski-lift in Colorado, where he and actress Goldie Hawn have a home. He’s 2,000 miles and two time zones from Maine, but it’s clear he wishes he could get here from there.

Sure, he admits, “old family friends and stuff” still “get a kick” when Hawn accompanies him to Franklin County, but for the most part the former teen idol isn’t treated like a celebrity. No matter how great his box-office appeal, Russell knows “there’s still quite a few people” among Rangeley’s 1,100 year-round residents “who were there when I was a little boy.”

He’s arguably not the most famous Russell in town, anyway. That honor goes to his grandmother, 103-year-old Ruth Russell, who is known to the family as “Ooie.” “She’s the oldest member of the community,” Russell says. “She’s got that cane, you know, the Boston Post cane” to prove it.

But it’s the patriarch, Bud Russell, Kurt’s grandfather, who comes to mind first when the family name is mentioned. He founded the Kennebago Lake Club in the 1940s, a resort hotel and cluster of cabins and cottages on the mile-wide, 12-mile-long lake just north of Rangeley.

“That’s where I learned to hunt and fish,” Russell recalls. “I believe my grandfather had the first fly-fishing-only lake in the state. My father and my grandfather were hunting guides on the land surrounding Kennebago Lake, from Flatiron Pond to Black Cat Mountain.” When he moved to Colorado in his twenties, Russell became a “much more serious hunter,” but “it was my time spent in and around the Kennebago area that was really my first experience.”

When he goes back to Rangeley these days, he says, “I’m more the son of Bing Russell and the grandson of Bud Russell” than a Golden Globe and Emmy award nominee. His life isn’t much different than anyone else’s. “We go shopping at Stubby’s and the IGA, have lunch at the Red Onion, dinner at the Saddleback Lodge. And once in a while,” he says, “we go to Loon Lake and hit every place there.”

Doc Grant’s was another former haunt. The landmark eatery is now closed, but the famous sign is still there, claiming it’s “halfway between the equator and the North Pole.”

Hawn “really enjoyed her time in Rangeley and had a great time with my family,” Russell says. “She enjoyed shopping and meeting some of the people there,” whom he describes as being “very, very nice to Goldie.”

Left at home while the shopping expedition was mounted, Russell noticed that “the snow was really good for snowmobiling,” so he, his sisters, and cousins “went on a snowmobile excursion and had a heckuva good time.” But that’s not his only winter pursuit. “Saddleback is where I learned to ski and I went over to Sugarloaf quite a bit with my dad.”

During summer visits, Russell spends his time golfing at the Rangeley Country Club, fishing in Lake Kennebago, and renewing old ties. “I always try and drop in to see Scott Morton,” who was a childhood friend. “They’re people we’ve known forever,” he says of the Mortons who, like the Russells, have deep roots in Rangeley.

Russell and his son Wyatt first ran into Walsh at the 1999 Frozen Four in Anaheim, as the Black Bears battled for their second NCAA championship. The actor, now 55, says, “I’ve sort of always, from a distance, followed Maine hockey,” and when the finals were held in California “we went down to watch Maine play.” They arrived in time for pre-game practice, after which, Russell says, “Shawn came up to the stands and we met each other.”

“We got out on the ice,” Russell says, “and from that point on Shawn and Wyatt became really close.” Russell took a photo that day of his son and the 1999 national champions. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful picture, and it sits right next to Wyatt’s bed” at the family home in Los Angeles.

By the time Walsh died of cancer in 2001, he’d become a close family friend. “He came out and stayed with us at our house” in Los Angeles, Russell says. The entire family, including Hawn and Wyatt, “really liked Shawn. He and I just got along great.” And when he was well enough, “we played a little golf together.”

Though the treatment at UCLA’s Johnson Comprehensive Cancer Center made Walsh “very sick,” Russell recalls, “he wanted to play really badly, so we went to Palm Desert,” which proved quickly to be both foolish and dangerous. “It was about 125 degrees; I’m not kidding,” he insists. “That’s no exaggeration. I kept begging him to stop,” but Walsh, ever the fighter, wouldn’t hear of it. “At the end, he looked like he was going to die right there.”

But Walsh’s inspiration no doubt lives on. The UMaine coach passed away on September 24, 2001. Russell’s acclaimed portrayal of Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks would hit the screens three years later, in 2004.

“At that level,” Russell knows, “they come to you. So if Grant Standbrook,” assistant coach and chief recruiter, or current head coach Tim Whitehead, “decide that Wyatt is someone they want to look at…then Wyatt would obviously jump at that opportunity because he would love to do that.”

Perhaps the biggest influence in his life is his father, Neil “Bing” Russell, who, like Kurt, played minor league baseball until an injury drove him from the game and turned his attention toward acting.

After landing a bit part as a bartender in Fear Strikes Out, the 1957 bio-pic starring Anthony Perkins as troubled Red Sox slugger Jimmy Piersall, Bing Russell “came back to Maine, to Rangeley, and decided that he was going to California.” Kurt was too young to remember how his dad “packed the family up, but I heard many times how just about everybody in town came by to say goodbye and they all said, ‘We’ll see you in six months, Bing,’ because they all thought he was absolutely crazy. They really did,” Russell laughs a half-century later. “The whole town thought he was nuts, but as it turned out, he lived a long and prosperous life as an actor in Los Angeles,” most notably in a recurring role on Bonanza as deputy sheriff Clem Foster that spanned 51 episodes from 1961-1973.

Young Kurt Russell, tapped by Disney as a child star in scores of films, including The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit and The Barefoot Executive, attended high school in Thousand Oaks, California—where his father founded the local Little League—and went on to play minor league baseball until an injury forced him, too, from the game and likewise convinced him to concentrate on acting.

“It’s a very specific sound and a very specific accent, and I’ve always wanted to incorporate that into a role. And I hope that I get the opportunity someday because,” he says with the certainty of one who knows, “I don’t know if I’ve ever really seen justice done” to the distinctive Maine accent.

Before hanging up, Russell is asked to comment on two rumors concerning his connection to Maine. The first involves Saddleback and whether there’s any truth to the scuttlebutt a few years back that he and Hawn were interested in buying the 8,300-acre ski area. “No,” he laughs. “That was never true.”

He laughs even harder when asked about the story that he once told Oprah Winfrey that Rangeley is “the most beautiful place on the planet.” “I don’t remember saying that,” he says. “That doesn’t sound like my way of putting something.”

But a moment later he reconsiders. “I may have said that; I don’t know. But I won’t take that away from Rangeley, one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been. I really do think that’s true. Rangeley is a spectacular place.”

© 2007Portland Magazine Colin Sargent, Editor & Publisher editor@portlandmonthly.com Click here to subscribe