Halitsky, Henry Blythe

Henry Blythe Galicki was born in Dunkirk , New York , on October 18, 1940 and was the 13th child in the family. Each of the 13 children had a nickname, which he was called close relatives. Henry was called "Toby." The Galitsky family had their own business, engaged in cargo transportation. A passion for cars with Henry appeared in the process of participating in the family business. He began to drive a car at a fairly early age, and already at the age of 10 he had a deep knowledge of cars and their structure. As a teenager, he, following the example of two older brothers, went to California with his own uncle.

Henry began his career at a gas station in Garden, California . He began collecting cars at the age of 16. The exhibits of his collection were various machines - from the classics of the 1920s to lowriders and Ferrari .

At 17, he opened a car repair shop, where he himself worked. Then, while still a high school student, he signed a contract with an insurance company, under which he undertook to make minor repairs of 2000 cars at a price of $ 25 apiece. With their partner Ron Light, after a while, they acquired a tire store. At the age of 21, with a partner J.S. Agadzhanyan, Jr., they bought a company for the disposal of raw materials. By that time, Henry himself had already entered the high society and began to invest in various property, which allowed him to acquire a lot of land tenure and set up a waste management business.

In 1974, Galitsky planned to make a film, which later became known as "Gone in 60 Seconds." His participation in the film took place on a grand scale: Henry was both a screenwriter, and a director, and a producer, and he also played a major role. With his business acumen, he registered the names Gone in 60 Seconds and Eleanor as trademarks.

The official script for the film never existed. There were only a couple of sheets of handwritten text with a few dialogs. Galicki himself provided the majority of the machines for filming. In order to make the film more capacious, he often used the same machines, only shot in other places and from a different angle. Some scenes were impromptu. So, the initial scene with the train off the rails should not have been. However, on the eve of one of the shooting days, near Los Angeles, the train really crashed. Henry decided to shoot this scene for the film.

According to people from the set, after an unplanned collision of Eleanor with a pillar at a speed of about 160 km / h, the first thing Galitsky asked when he got out of the car was “Was it taken off ?!”. For a scene where a police car rams up a standing Cadillac at the Moran Cadillac car dealership, engine oil was poured under the wheels of the first Cadillacs to make it hit more effectively. The trick turned out to be extremely successful, but the cars were so crumpled that Galitski forced them to buy them back. After the final jump, when the Eleanor flew 40 meters and landed so that the body panels collapsed, Toby earned an offset of 10 vertebrae and began to limp.

Since most of the dialogues and actions were improvisation, this was a real headache for the editor Warner Leighton, who never knew what the next shot would be and where it will be located in the film. Leighton drew a circle on a piece of cardboard, Galicki looked at it and said: “This is a dusty hole. We'll ride here twice. There you have the script. ”

After the release of the film, which alone in the United States and Canada raised more than $ 40 million, he created a dump of his own name and founded the company Mercantile Company. G.B. Galicki was named the owner of "The largest antique collection of toys, junk and cars", which consisted of more than 100,000 copies. He brought every model, every car to his huge building, which was the size of a football field.

This collection was akin to his private oasis. He loved to drive in his cars, motorcycles and loved all the exhibits of his collection - toys, cars, weapons, motorcycles, antiques. For this, he received another nickname - the Elder (orig. "The Junkman").

Galicki met his future wife Denis Shakirian in 1983 . Six years later, they got married on May 11, 1989 in Dunkirk, New York .

On August 20, 1989, Henry began filming The Gone in 60 Seconds 2 in New York . He was preparing a grandiose trick, where the “eighteen-wheeler” knocks down a 50-meter water tower. In the fall, the tower caught on an electric cable, which cut off a pole that fell on Galicki. He died on the spot, at that time he was only 48 years old.

The misfortune led to the fact that many claimed Galitsky property. Only in 1994 , after seven court hearings, all copyright and property was transferred to Denis. However, she had to sell almost the entire collection of the deceased spouse in order to pay legal fees.

In 1995, Denis signed a contract with Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer to create a remake of Gone in 60 Seconds . The film premiered on June 5, 2000 and Denis Shakirian-Galitsky was an executive producer.

In 2008, Denis won a copyright lawsuit against Carroll Shelby for the name Eleanor, which was used by many car dealerships to create copies of the 1967 Shelby Mustang featured in the remake.