The Endurance of On Any Sunday

Words by Brett Smith | Photos courtesy Bruce Brown Films

Bruce Brown was done telling stories. He had nothing left to say, and he asked us if we wanted to see something. Sitting on his front porch back in 2012, we realized the interview was over. Besides, the gnats were holding court in front of our faces, and Brown’s Australian shepherd, Rusty, was anxious to run around. Brown rose from a driftwood bench and motioned for us to follow him inside the house. He had something a couple of fellow gearheads and storytellers would love to see.

Wearing his usual long-sleeved denim shirt and jeans, Brown, a few months shy of his 75th birthday, shuffled down a hallway that was not unlike any typical corridor in a ranch-style home. Keep in mind, this house was north of Santa Barbara, California, and had a view of the Pacific Ocean. The walls were neutral, and the carpet was the color of beach sand. We walked past a plaque that read “Certificate of Nomination for Award,” official recognition that one of his documentaries had been nominated for an Oscar in 1972 (The Hellstrom Chronicle, a movie about insects potentially taking over the world, wound up winning the Academy Award that year). 

Nothing short of actually seeing them could have convinced us what was behind the double doors: hundreds of film reels from 1970 and 1971 in stacks eight high and on six shelves. A 6-foot-tall 1x4 braced the shelving up the middle so it didn’t collapse. “These are the originals,” Brown said of his now-legendary motorcycle film On Any Sunday. He said he kept them in his residence because he once lost a collection from another film in a storage unit fire. 

Scrawled in black marker, the labels — by then peeling and yellowing — indicated where the shoots took place. Some of the locations were unrecognizable to those familiar with the film. Not every shoot made it into the final 96-minute-long documentary.

It was a heavy sight to behold, especially in a world where media is no longer physical. Today it’s only data, ones and zeros inside a hard drive. That closet was a time capsule; more than 300 reels of raw film stacked floor to ceiling, documenting American motorcycle racing in the early 1970s, a truly halcyon era when bike sales were on the brink of exploding. Maybe Brown created the boom. Maybe it was coming regardless. A former Navy man who started surfing in the 1940s, Brown never took credit for his contributions to surfing and motorcycling, the sports he documented. He was humble, but deep down, he knew he had met his intentions. 

After his ninth surfing movie, he had wanted to do something different. The goal with On Any Sunday was similar to that of his most popular surf flick, The Endless Summer; he wanted to change the public’s perception of who motorcycle riders were. That’s why the early minutes of the movie include a scene with a clean-shaven man walking through San Francisco in a suit. That’s why the movie features a lanky yank in El Escorial, Spain, going through a six-day torture test to represent the United States of America. 

“The general perception was ‘Hell’s Angels, bad guys, losers, blah, blah, blah,’” he said. “That’s my favorite thing with Mert [Lawwill], is that his grandmother had never been to a motorcycle race, and they thought he was the black sheep of the family. She went to the theater and saw On Any Sunday, and when Mert came on, she stood up and went, ‘That’s my grandson!’ He went from zero to hero.”

Brown discovered motorcycles late in life. He started riding after making The Endless Summer. He went to Ascot Park for the popular Friday-night races with the same mental picture as the general public: that motorcyclists were all big and burly with nasty demeanors and looking like longshoremen. At Ascot, he experienced friendly, passionate people and a family atmosphere. He bought his first Husqvarna from a talented rider named Malcolm Smith, who worked at K&N Motorcycles at the time. 

“I figured that if I got a Husky, which is what he was riding, then I could ride like Malcolm,” Brown said. “Well, it turns out it wasn’t the bike, it was him [laughs].” Brown marveled at how fast Malcolm could tear down a bike when it needed to be repaired. 

Luckily for the motorcycle world, Brown wanted a break from making surf movies, and he floated the idea around to document racers and racing. For financing, he approached actor Steve McQueen, whom he didn’t know other than his general awareness that the highest-paid Hollywood star was a motorsports fanatic and weekend warrior motorcycle racer. 

“I said, ‘I want to do this movie about motorcycle racing.’ And he said, ‘Oh, cool. What do you want me to do?’ And I said, ‘Well, pay for it.’ He started laughing and said, ‘Hey man, I make movies; I don’t finance them.’ And then I said, ‘OK, then you can’t be in my movie.’ He started laughing. The next day he called me and said, ‘OK, let’s go for it.’ He was the one who put the money up to do it.” 

The Solar Productions film credit in the movie was Steve McQueen’s company. 

A great way to ignite an argument is to bring up the topic of who deserves the praise. In later interviews with Mert Lawwill and Malcolm Smith, they blamed Bruce Brown. Brown blamed Mert and Malcolm. Nobody wanted to take credit for On Any Sunday’s influence on motorcycling, still strong nearly 50 years past its release. Was it Malcolm’s diverse skillset and constant smile? Mert’s unflappability in a failed title defense? Or was the real hero of the movie Brown, the man who sparked the idea, assembled the characters, found the money and directed the film? Brown became aggravated when the subject of how Mert and Malcolm became legends was brought up at all. 

“They’re really good at what they did, and the movie showed it,” he said. “I always say they would have been that anyway. I just basically showed it as it happened. We didn’t make anything up. I don’t want to take credit for something like that. Go on to something else.” 

Malcolm wouldn’t let Brown off that easy. Although he admitted that people still approached him to say that he was the reason they started riding motorcycles, Malcolm was hesitant to accept that responsibility. “It isn’t me!” Malcolm said. “It’s Bruce Brown who did that. He’s the guy who could make people understand the thrill of it and the excitement of it. I was just one of the guys he used.”

When asked how the movie affected his life and career, he smiled and admitted that Husqvarna sales increased considerably. But it’s a little-known story that Malcolm almost said no to what became the biggest opportunity of his life. Luckily for him, Brown was a persistent producer. 

Six months passed after Brown told Malcolm that he was making a motorcycle movie, and he wanted Malcolm to appear in it. In that span, Malcolm had purchased the dealership he worked in. Now a business owner, he had much more responsibility. When Brown called to let Malcolm know about the shoot schedule, Malcolm said he couldn’t do it because he was overwhelmed with learning the financial side of running the business. Brown said he wasn’t starting for a couple of weeks, and that he would call back. 

Today, it’s unimaginable to think of someone else in that starring role, but Brown said Plan B didn’t exist. “I had never thought about it. I wanted Malcolm, and I always knew I was going to get him even if I had to cry.” 

Brown didn’t have to beg. In that two weeks, Malcolm determined on his own that it was something he needed to do. When Brown called back, Malcolm said he had his affairs in line and was ready for the first shoot. But there were still moments where Brown had to pry. Competitions like the International Six Days Trials and the Mexican (Baja) 1000 were events where Malcolm shined, but Brown wanted to see how truly good this man was. He asked him to come to the Widowmaker hill climb, which at the time had not been conquered. 

“Malcolm said, ‘Well, I really can’t leave the shop. How many days is it?’” Brown said.

“Three days,” Brown says Malcolm answered. “What do you make at the shop?”

“Oh, about $100 a day,” Malcolm said. 

“OK, then we’ll give you $300 to go to Salt Lake.”

Malcolm knew Brown was blanketing the country, shooting at motocross, desert and dirt track events as well as drag racing, ice racing and even sidecar. Although OAS filmed with Malcolm several times, he had no idea what was actually going to be used. Brown never told Malcolm that he was going to be one of the three main characters of the movie, along with Mert and McQueen. “I thought I was going to be two or three minutes and gone,” Malcolm said. 

Twenty-four minutes of the film includes Malcolm riding everything from desert events, trials, hill climb, the ISDT, a grand prix and “cow trailing.” The memorable final scenes with all three characters together were filmed in three locations: Baja Peninsula, Brown’s ranch in San Juan Capistrano, and Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps Base Camp that sits on 17 miles of prime Pacific coastline north of San Diego. When Brown called the military to get into Pendleton, they told him, “No way.” When McQueen called, they said, “How’s tomorrow?”

The ending was part of Brown’s original plan before he shot a single frame of film. It was those moments — three buddies riding together, having fun — that fully represented why people ride motorcycles. Flanked by a movie star and the nation’s top professional motorcycle racer, Malcolm represented the rest of us. He was technically not a professional rider, and we wanted to think we were just like him. 

Realistically, we were the ones stuck in the mud bog at the Elsinore Grand Prix, but Malcolm gave us the impression we could all do it (he still does). 

When Malcolm saw the movie in the theater for the first time he was shocked, and it hit him that he almost said no to the project.  

“And that was the best decision that I ever made.” 

Mert was easy to cast. The 1969 AMA Grand National Dirt Track Champion, Mert’s title defense in 1970 was the primary part of his story. Mert wasn’t (and still isn’t) a particularly outgoing or extroverted man. He didn’t have the cocksure attitude of Gary Nixon, or the youthful spirit of Dave Aldana, but he was the number-one rider, and that title held a lot of weight. “We thought about Aldana, [Mark] Brelsford and different guys, but we thought, ‘Well, there’s a story there whether [Mert] wins it or loses it,’” Brown said. And when asked to participate, Mert just shrugged. 

“I was really narrow-minded at that time and only focused on just racing,” Mert said. “I had no idea who [Bruce Brown] was. He was just another guy, and if the movie turned out great, then that’s really cool. That pyramided into a much more gigantic thing that I ever could have imagined.”

Because of his participation in the movie, Mert is forever 29 years old, the young man with the thick brown hair walking through San Francisco, looking like he just left a board meeting. He still lives in the same house in Tiburon, California, even though the entire neighborhood today is completely unrecognizable from the scenes in the film. The Lawwill home is surrounded by other dwellings that sell for seven figures and come with views of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

The garage where Mert tuned his Harley-Davidson is now a living room with a billiards table. Mert likes to point out the exact spot where, in the film, he closely examined his transmission’s gearing, searching for a way to shave weight and increase power. He has a new and bigger garage where he developed the first mountain bike suspension (he’s in the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame) and now builds prosthetics for amputees.

His wife, June, was pregnant in the early days of filming, and she wouldn’t allow Brown to film her because she “didn’t want to be pregnant forever.” June Lawwill, who died in the summer of 2018, may have been the only person to foreshadow the unending relevance of the movie. Mert was too busy trying to win another championship to give something like that much thought. 

Mert still gets phone calls from random fans. Some come in the middle of the night because the caller is on a different continent. On his birthday (September 25), his phone is particularly busy.

Six months younger, Malcolm was also 29 during the making of the film, and his favorite moments today are when children think he is Malcolm Smith’s grandfather, which happens when he meets kids in his shop or at dealer meetings. Unable to understand how the elder in front of them could possibly be the same man they saw in the movie their dad recently showed them, they deduce that this must be Malcolm’s grandfather. But they shake his hand and ask him to sign a hat, because he’s still pretty cool.

Although he enjoyed the making of it, Malcolm never imagined a lifetime of recognition from the movie. He shakes lots of hands at gatherings and smiles when people give him the credit for convincing them to ride motorcycles. He still can’t believe the movie’s endurance. “They’re still selling the movie; kids are still watching it,” he said. “I really thought the movie, in a year, would be completely forgotten, shelved, and nobody would even remember it.”

When pressed for answers on why a decades-old motorcycle documentary still endures, why it still influences and inspires, and how it’s even still relevant, none of these men ever raised their hands. Brown might not have directly helped them win any championships or gold medals, but Mert and Malcolm became two of the greatest mononyms in motorsports history — just say the words “Mert” or “Malcolm,” and everyone knows to whom you’re referring. 

Brown died in December 2017, nine days after his 80th birthday. He holds a special place in the surf and motorcycle industries (including their respective halls of fame), and his son Dana Brown will soon release a tribute documentary to his dad called Bruce Brown: A Life of Endless Summers. At the center of the movie is a road trip Brown took with his three children to visit as many of his old friends as he could. The film is due out in the summer of 2019. 

And the On Any Sunday film reels? They’re still in that closet, awaiting their own afterlife.