Barbara Harrington wrangled the elderly extras

On the first day of filming "Cocoon," Barbara Harrington faced the daunting task of rounding up the "most decrepit" elderly people she could find "I had been working for two months before that morning to find older people to be in the film, says Harrington, who was involved in casting and wrangling the local "elders."

"We had lined up about 200, including one gentleman who was the oldest at 103, and a retiree. Charlie Rainsbury ...was a sweet old gentleman," she says. "Ron Howard loved Charlie and put him in several scenes."

But on that first day in August 1984, most of the "elders" standing in Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg where in their 60s and 70s. "When Ron Howard showed up, he thought they all looked too young," Harrington says. "So I had to run out and try to round up some older people. They said they wanted 'really decrepit' and this was before dawn. Here I was knocking on doors in downtown apartment buildings and grabbing people off the street."

She says she found enough people to fill the need but the scene was cut from the movie. Harrington also recalls that actor Jack Gilford flirted with her and when she would go out to dinner with the cast, people who asked her for an autograph. "They thought I was in the movie, too," she says. She did have a small part in the film as a Woolworth's cashier.

Another vivid memory was when actor Hugh Cronyn accidently knocked out an actor from Miami. "He was supposed to throw a fake punch in the scene but he hit him so hard, the man was knocked out and his lip was split," she says.

Harrington also found a local man to play Cronyn's double in the movie.

"[Cronyn} was a wiry little guy and he had such a large bony head that they couldn't find a double until I was walking down the street one day and a man passed by who looked him and I got him in the movie."

Extras were paid about $12 dollars a day and given meals. But some locals, such as Rainsbury, made several thousand dollars.

When Harrington found out there was not going to be a gala premiere of the film in St. Petersburg she helped organize one at Crossroads Theatre, complete with limo arrivals for local "elders" and post movie party.