STREET MOVIES TIMBER DAYS IN SHELTON
Get ready for something a little different this summer. As night falls on the Timber Days events in Shelton, get cozy, grab some snacks (and free popcorn), and celebrate community with free classic movies under the stars. The movies kick of Friday, June 4, 9 :00 PM with romance, excitement, heroes, villains – and a whole lot of forest – with two classic movies. Saturday, June 5, enjoy the cult classic royalty tale – The Princess Bride. Generational Mason County residents will want to catch a showing of the locally filmed Ring of Fire – if just to see a familiar sight or family member! To launch our movie nights, the Evergreen Square Cantina Stage will host this 1961 Metrocolor drama. Ring of Fire (1961) This thriller features music from the twangy rock’n’roll veteran Duane Eddy (of “Forty Miles of Bad Road” fame) and the acting of David Janssen (The Fugitive), Howard Hughe’s starlet Joyce Taylor and Frank Gorshin (Riddler, in the original Batman). Although the storyline of three rebels with no apparent cause, a police officer kidnapping, flirtations with statutory rape and the daring evacuation of a town under threat of forest fire is disjointed to say the least, the film is a genuine piece of Pacific Northwest history. Much of the filming was done in Mason County with many of the extras
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and even the police officer uniforms (and few of the officers themselves) sourced from Shelton and the surrounding area. The director/ producer Andrew L. Stone was famous for a high degree of realism in his shooting, not only did he splice in real forest fire footage, but an actual mill in Oregon was burnt for the production, the US Army was used to shoot flamethrowers for some of the scenes and an actual wooden trestle bridge over the Wynoochee River was destroyed by fire in the final scenes. Additionally, a 1924 Locomotive and two ex-Southern Pacific coaches were burnt on the Wynoochee Trestle which plummeted into the gorge below amidst well timed dynamite charges. The train and coaches are still laying in the canyon to this day and are an extreme geocache collector destination. The Big Trees (1952) Tollie Stage hosts the 1952 Western, The Big Trees. Starring Kirk Douglas, Eve Miller, and Edgar Buchanan. Although this film is most famous for the scandal associated with its production – that Kirk Douglas agreed to make this film for free to get released from his contract with Warner Brother’s – there are still some dramatic takeaways of the sweeping storyline of greedy lumber barons, Quaker settlers, and big v trees. A definite timber classic.
