Our pic for today is not the usual screen cap from one of Timothy’s films. Instead, it’s a portrait of the artist as a young director. It was taken around the time Tim was attempting to film his script A.L. (which is not only the lead character’s name, but “L.A.” spelled backwards). The year was 1956.

A.L. tells the story of a young man from the Midwest named Al and his pet monkey, temporarily stranded in the labyrinths of Los Angeles without a car, while his wife prepares to give birth to their first child in a nearby hospital. Timothy had apparently filmed the first forty pages of his script before realizing that his lead actor simply didn’t have the chops to carry off the part.

“I’ve seen footage of A.L.,” Tim’s son Romeo told Harvey F. Chartrand in Filmfax magazine, “and it is amazing. Crisp 35mm footage on the freeway. Really cool. The monkey and the Midwestern couple are in it. So A.L. exists, but it hasn’t been cut. Much of it hasn’t even been screened. I have a vault with stacks of film cans of A.L. that I haven’t gone through yet.” Here’s hoping that footage soon sees the light of day.