‘Dangerous Company’

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 12

‘Dangerous Company’

“Dangerous Company,” the movie screening on One tonight, is an unusual kind of American success story about Ray Johnson, a man who wheeled and dealed his way in prison into extraordinarily good fortune. Robin Robinett, his partner in crime since they were both 14, is today still in prison. “Dangerous Company” is a story of a friendship, a partnership between two men, one of whom can make it on the street, one of whom cannot.

Ray Johnson spent one month of his life committing crimes and 27 years in jail paying for them. Johnson, with his partner, Robin Robinett, made the first and only successful escape from Folsom maximum security prison, for which he spent four and a half years in the subterranean gloom of solitary confinement — The Hole.

Still at Folsom after his release from The Hole, he engineered the first prison strike in history, and then after being transferred to Vacaville had an affair with a vjiman inside the prison

walls, long before conjugal visits were permitted. He later married the woman, but not before his mother had authorised permission for him to be sterilised while in prison. Paroled from prison, he went through a rough period of adjustment, and after a series of jobs landed a position as chief of security for the mammoth Southland Corporation, flying around the country in the company Lear-Jet. This led to 58 appearances on the “Johnny Carson Show.” “Dangerous Company,” says TVNZ, is the story of men living close to the edge, and who rely on humour and imagination of the most creative kind to make the edge as liveable as possible. Ray Johnson’s story dramatises the creative capacity in men for con- ■ structive rather than destructive ends. “Dangerous Company” stars Beau Bridges, Carlos Brown and Jan Sterling. It was produced by Bill Finnegan and directed by Lamont - Johnson.