LONE PINE
IN THE MOVIES
LONE PINE FILM FESTIVAL 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Packy Smith —publisher
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Introduction
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Tim Holt
Ed Hulse
—editor Michael Bifulco —design & page production Elizabeth Gulick —cover design Don Kelsen —special photography
Lone Pine in the Movies editor Ed Hulse reminisces about the origins of the Lone Pine Film Festival, which celebrates its silver anniversary this year.
A second-generation movie star, Tim Holt followed in the footsteps of his famous father Jack by working predominantly in Westerns—but unlike Jack he was a frequent visitor to Lone Pine, making some of the best “B” horse operas of the postWorld War II years right here in the Alabama Hills. David Rothel, author of a newly published book on Tim and his films, offers an overview of an illustrious career.
20 Black Rock Diaries
Bad Day at Black Rock, one of the finest motion pictures of the Fifties, is a unique title in Lone Pine’s filmography. Practically all of it was shot here because Metro-GoldwynMayer took the unusual step of eschewing back-lot production and built the entire town of Black Rock just a mile north of Lone Pine itself. Rex Wainscott presents a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at the making of this classic.
Lone Pine in the Movies is published by the Beverly and Jim Rogers Lone Pine Film History Museum, 701 South Main Street, Lone Pine CA 93545. Published in conjunction with the 2013 Lone Pine Film Festival. The contents of this issue are copyright © 2014 by the Beverly and Jim Rogers Film History Museum. All rights reserved. Nothing in this magazine may be reprinted in whole or in part, in any media or format, without prior written permission from the publisher and/or the copyright holder.
36 The Duke of Lone Pine
Special Thanks to: Don Kelsen, Packy Smith.
60 Her Majesty’s Empire
Photo and Art Acknowledgments: All publicity stills, movie posters, and lobby cards reprinted in these pages were/are copyrighted © by Columbia Pictures Corporation, MetroGoldwyn-Mayer and Loew’s Incorporated, Republic Pictures Corporation, RKO Radio Pictures Incorporated, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, Universal Pictures Corporation, Warner Brothers Pictures Incorporated and The Vitaphone Corporation, and their respective successors in interest. Photos appearing in “Introduction” and “Film Festival Retrospective” are copyright © 2014 by Don Kelsen and are reprinted here with his permission.
John Wayne worked here far less than many of his contemporaries, but when his producers deigned to shoot in the Alabama Hills the results were always pleasing, and in some cases outstanding. Thankfully, most of the Duke’s Lone Pine films are now commercially available on DVD and Blu-ray, so Ed Hulse’s notes on them will be particularly useful to would-be collectors interested in acquiring these favorites.
Although many people associate Lone Pine and the Eastern Sierras almost exclusively with Westerns, the area was employed as a location for numerous classic adventure movies dealing with Britain’s rule of India and its influence in nearby regions. The Alabama Hills also stood in for rugged parts of what are now known as the countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In this survey Ed Hulse revisits such memorable films as Kim, Gunga Din, Storm Over Bengal, King of the Khyber Rifles, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
86 Film Festival Retrospective
Veteran Los Angeles Times shutterbug Don Kelsen, an early supporter of Lone Pine’s efforts to recognize and celebrate its role in movie history, presents an extensive photo essay documenting the history of our annual Film Festival, which began in 1990 and turns 25 this year. Don’s pictures bring back fond memories of the many actors, writers and directors who worked here and returned to the area to help us honor the area’s cinematic heritage.
Introduction by Ed Hulse
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ith this 2014 issue of Lone Pine in the Movies we celebrate a very special anniversary. It was just 25 years ago that local hotel owners Kerry and Ray Powell teamed with author/historian Dave Holland along with a group of Lone Pine business and community leaders to pay tribute to the extensive Hollywood heritage of the Alabama Hills and to the actors, directors and producers that had been coming for years to make films in and around Lone Pine. At that time the area had been seen in hundreds of feature films, TV programs, and cliffhanger serials, most of them Westerns. Hollywood’s long-standing love affair with the unique landscape of the Eastern Sierras had cooled somewhat and film historians had largely overlooked the tradition of moviemaking in Inyo County. But Lone Pine’s rich history could not be denied. The Alabama Hills and the Eastern Sierra terrain had been used in movies made by such prominent directors as John Ford, Cecil B. De Mille, William Wellman, William Wyler, Budd Boetticher, Henry King, and William Witney. The stars who worked here were legion, the standouts being John Wayne, Spencer Tracy, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Randolph Scott, Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and William “Hopalong Cassidy” Boyd. The Lone Pine group, along with the Inyo Council for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Lone Pine Chamber of Commerce sponsored a very special gathering to be held in Lone Pine. The first Sierra Film Festival took place on October 6 and 7, 1990. It was a unique event. For two days, attendees were treated to screenings of films—big-budget movies and lowly B-Westerns alike—largely shot in the Alabama Hills. Film collectors Packy Smith and Mike Royer corralled and projected 16mm prints of the films, some of them quite rare. The special guests were actors, directors, and stuntmen who had worked on those films and others made at Lone Pine; among them were Roy Rogers, Terry Moore, Michael Gross, Richard Farnsworth, Rand Brooks, Eddie Dean, Linda
LO N E P I NE IN THE MOVIES
Hayes, Pierce Lyden, Loren Janes, Jack Williams, William Witney, Irene Cuffe, and Joe Yrigoyen. The Sierra Film Festival trumped similar events with an innovation that left indelible impressions on those fortunate enough to take advantage of it: Dave Holland, who moderated panel discussions with the guests, mapped out a tour of locations in the Hills where specific scenes of the famous movies being shown had been shot. He tape-recorded a narration to be played on buses that drove attendees directly from the film screenings to the Alabamas. In other words, you could watch a movie in the morning, and then in the afternoon visit the spots where its memorable scenes had been staged and photographed. An unqualified success, the Sierra Film Festival— originally intended as a one-off tribute—became a yearly event that was soon drawing more than a thousand people from all across the country, and some from Canada and Europe. Year after year the Festival showcased movies, both obscure and well known, that had been produced in the area. The guests included major stars and B-Western stalwarts alike. Folks like Gunga Din’s Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Yellow Sky’s Gregory Peck rubbed shoulders with former Republic Pictures ingenue Peggy Stewart and veteran stuntman Loren Janes. Lone Pine’s singular history was enriched with
the anecdotes they shared with attendees about working in the Alabama Hills.
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n 1991 the annual confab was called the Lone Pine Sierra Film Festival. In 1993 it was renamed the Lone Pine Film Festival. That was the year I began attending. Although I had been collecting 16mm prints of vintage movies for many years and had attended countless film-buff gatherings, I’d never seen anything like the Lone Pine event. Like most people who visit the Alabama Hills, I fell in love with the area. Year after year I returned every October for the Film Festival, and in 2003 I published the first issue of Lone Pine in the Movies— a 32-page magazine with profusely illustrated articles about movies made in the Alabama Hills and other Eastern Sierra locations. That first issue included what was then the closest thing any of us had to a complete list of feature films shot wholly or partially in Lone Pine. In 2006, with the help of Jim Rogers of the Intermountain West Communications Company, the community realized a second dream—the opening of a museum acknowledging and celebrating Lone Pine’s contributions to our motion-picture heritage.
At the Museum groundbreaking ceremony in 2005.
Roy Rogers addresses attendees of the 1990 Sierra Film Festival.
On October 23rd of that year, the Beverly and Jim Rogers Lone Pine Film History Museum was dedicated. In addition to helping fund construction of the building Jim endowed the Museum with his personal treasures and collectibles from Western films: saddles, costumes, cars, posters, and hundreds of collectibles that are among the exhibits. Jim passed away earlier this year, but his support of and contributions to the Museum will never be forgotten, and we continue to honor his memory. Since 2014 marks the Silver Anniversary of the Film Festival, this year’s Lone Pine in the Movies is a starstudded edition with some very special contributions. Ace Los Angeles Times shutterbug Don Kelsen, the Film Festival’s official photographer, has graciously shared with us his collection of pictures taken at the previous 24 confabs. These terrific shots will give you readers an idea of what goes on in Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills every October. They certainly bring back a lot of warm memories for me. Author and Western-movie scholar David Rothel appears in these pages for the first time with excerpts and photos from the revised Second Edition of his groundbreaking book on cowboy star Tim Holt, who made many of his best Westerns here in the Alabama Hills. Although Tim himself is long gone, the article features reminiscences from his cast mates of working in Lone Pine. David’s book is available at the Museum’s gift shop and via its web site as well. ☐☐☐
LONE PINE IN THE MOVIES
TIM HOLT One of Lone Pine’s favorite sons was a top cowboy star who returned frequently to the Alabama Hills to make his popular films.
by David Rothel LO N E P I NE IN THE MOVIES
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nly nine years old when first he went before a movie camera for a role in his father’s Zane Grey feature, The Vanishing Pioneer (1928), young Tim Holt enjoyed the experience enough to make him contemplate following in his famous parent’s footsteps. Although Jack Holt did not necessarily push his son in the direction of a film career, there can be little doubt that he was proud to have Tim enter the business that he had found so satisfying. But there undoubtedly was also some trepidation because of the roller-coaster nature of the business, and Jack was well aware of that too. Neither could have guessed that Tim would eventually become one of the most popular B-Western stars in movie history, or that his career would become inextricably linked with Lone Pine, the magical place where many of his best films were shot. LONE PINE IN THE MOVIES
Many of Tim’s best post-WWII Westerns were shot in and around Lone Pine’s Alabama Hills.
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ine more years were to pass before the then 18year-old Tim had his next opportunity to play a film role, the tiniest of bit parts in History Is Made at Night (1937). He was now under personal contract to producer Walter Wanger, who cast him in several of his own productions but also frequently loaned him to other studios for supporting roles that would give the boy valuable experience. The Law West of Tombstone (1938), starring Harry Carey, was a turning point for young Tim. His Tonto Kid role, a good/bad man modeled somewhat after the legendary (if not actual) Billy the Kid, was the kind of leading role that allowed him to show his capability as an action performer, demonstrate his natural flair for comedy, and reveal his vulnerable,
somewhat shy romantic nature. In addition, the kid had shown that he could hold his own with veteran scene-stealer Harry Carey. In 1939 Tim made six films for three different studios, and his roles ranged from small supporting parts to leading men. His role in Stagecoach was certainly small, but he had the opportunity to work with director John Ford in a prestigious production which has come to be a classic. Tim’s other “important” film (read “big-budget”) for 1939 was Fifth Avenue Girl, where he got to romance no less a star than Ginger Rogers (although the picture only received mediocre reviews and a tepid reception at the box office). His other films for the year were B programmers that provided him with roles in
Tim Holt and Jeff Donnell in the Alabama Hills for a scene from The Stagecoach Kid (1949).
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support of George O’Brien, Jackie Cooper, and Leo Carrillo. The Rookie Cop was the only film in which Tim played the top role in the cast. Late in 1940 Tim undertook his first Western series for RKO, but prior to saddling up for that, he completed Laddie, another B picture in which he was top featured; Swiss Family Robinson, a big-budget adventure in which he played a strong supporting role as the oldest son of the shipwrecked family; and Back Street, another top-of-the-line film which he made at Universal on loan to the studio. In addition, he made the first two films in the aforementioned Western series. All in all, a rather busy year for the young actor. Back during those years Hollywood tradition pretty much held that once you got typed as a BWestern star there was little opportunity to graduate to roles in higher budgeted pictures. The most notable exception to this rule, of course, was John Wayne—and he had the highly respected John Ford to help push him to the top. Tim was certainly another exception, and, like Wayne with director Ford, he could thank the perception and support of three top directors (Orson Welles, John Huston, and John Ford) for giving him the opportunity to
take important roles in major productions. (The interesting and somewhat perplexing thing about Tim was that he kept returning to B-Westerns of his own volition because he just liked making them.) The first director to take Tim from his B-Western series was Orson Welles for his production of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), a film now ranked by international film critics as one of the finest ever made. Indirectly, Tim could thank John Ford for the opportunity to work in Ambersons. When novice director Welles was preparing for his first film, Citizen Kane, he repeatedly viewed and studied Ford’s Stagecoach to, as he put it, learn how to direct a film. Welles was very much taken by Tim’s performance in the small role of the Lieutenant and remembered it in 1942 when he was casting Ambersons. (Tim’s other big picture ventures were in post-war films and are dealt with in Chapter Six of my book.) Tim’s last non-Western effort before he went into the service for World War II was the startling and somewhat provocative film, Hitler’s Children (released in 1943 but made in 1942). The role of a young Nazi was certainly a stretch for the actor and a zillion miles away philosophically from the superpatriotic Tim. Now it was time for him to serve his
Several Holt films took advantage of the hacienda set (seen here in later years) built on Russ Spainhower’s Anchor Ranch.
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country in its time of need. There would be time for more film making when it was over over there. Tim Holt got his chance to top-line a series of sagebrush sagas because a legendary Western star retired from the game. George O’Brien made 20 high-quality and reasonably popular features for RKO between 1936 and 1940, and then, for reasons which have never been totally clear, left the studio. The mantle of resident RKO Western-film star was passed to young Tim Holt. I suspect there were several factors that came into play during this time of transition. The war situation with Germany and Japan was heating up and O’Brien would shortly reenter the Navy (he’d been an officer in years past) and serve throughout World War II. In addition, he was 40 years old at this time and his popularity rested more with adults than with the kid audience to which the “B” Western was primarily directed. Add to all of this the fact that, indeed, his films undoubtedly would cost somewhat more to produce because he was pulling down a considerably higher salary than the youthful Holt could command. Tim, on the other hand, seemed a natural for the Saturday-matinee youth audience by the RKO studio brass; after all, he was only 21 himself and was the perfect “older brother” for every kid in the audience. In addition, he was a great horseman, could handle action scenes well and deliver his lines believably, and was the son of a famous action/Western star— the Holt name was already well known on theater marquees. So it all came together in the summer of 1940, and Tim Holt became RKO’s Western film star until 1943, when he received word that he was to be inducted into the military service for World War II. During those three years Tim made 18 modestly mounted but high-quality Westerns. The RKO studio had always turned out a product that was technically excellent—photography, sound, and direction were usually first rate. And while the scripts to Tim’s first series were generally typical B-Western fodder, the extraordinarily appealing manner of the young star, his excellent supporting casts, fine direction, and the established production gloss of the studio all combined to produce films of which the studio (and all concerned) could be justly proud. But being turned out on short budgets—many of them well below $50,000—meant that producers simply
Author David Rothel under Gene Autry Rock in the Alabama Hills.
could not afford the expense of location shooting in Lone Pine, some 200 miles from Hollywood. Most of Tim’s early oaters were filmed in the nearby San Fernando Valley, where RKO maintained a Western town set and such popular spots as Iverson’s Ranch and Corriganville were just minutes away by car. Especially noteworthy among the pre-war films are Wagon Train, Along the Rio Grande, The Bandit Trail, Dude Cowboy, and Land of the Open Range. They meet the criteria established in the preceding paragraph (including strong scripts), and they certainly rank among the best B-Western action films ever made—and Tim was just beginning to hit his stride when he had to leave the series for duty in World War II. During the years that Tim was serving in World War II, RKO didn’t have a regular B-Western series in production. The closest thing to it was a package of five films very loosely based on Zane Grey novels. The first two—Nevada (1944) and West of the Pecos (1945)—starred Robert Mitchum, a recent RKO
LONE PINE IN THE MOVIES
Bandits waylay Tim’s stage and pull off a desperate robbery in this tense scene from The Stagecoach Kid (1949).
contractee, who had in the preceding several years gained attention as a heavy in several Hopalong Cassidy pictures and then had made a big impression in the war epic, The Story of G.I. Joe. Mitchum had no intention of limiting his career to B-Plus Westerns, and so he capitalized on his initial successes by moving into big-budget films of all genres. RKO by this time had entrusted B-Western production to Herman Schlom, who had joined the studio in 1942 after several years as a producer for Republic Pictures. Schlom, an old hand at turning out acceptable screen fare for limited money, knew that getting “production value” into Westerns meant photographing picturesque vistas as backdrops for the often-stereotypical action. Paramount’s Zane Grey adaptations had transcended their budgetary class by employing this strategy, and Schlom urged RKO brass to let him take his production unit to Lone Pine, whose rugged Alabama Hills—with the
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Sierra Nevada mountains behind—provided all the outdoor visual splendor a producer could hope for. The next three Zane Grey pictures starred film neophyte James Warren, who made little impression on Western fans in Wanderer of the Wasteland (1945), Sunset Pass (1946), and Code of the West (1947) and very quickly faded from the motion picture scene. The production values provided by Lone Pine locations were unassailable and critics often commented on the pictorial beauty of Schlom’s Westerns. But Warren’s shortcomings ultimately proved insurmountable, and RKO’s remaining unfilmed Zane Grey properties languished temporarily for want of a star who was both charismatic and marketable. Thankfully, that star was not long in coming. When Tim got his military discharge on December 8, 1945, he had headed straight for Hollywood to get his film career back on track. He found that his old mentor, director John Ford, was prepping a film based on the legendary OK Corral gunfight between
the Earp boys and the Clantons. Ford asked Tim to play Virgil Earp in a cast that would include Henry Fonda, Victor Mature, Linda Darnell, Cathy Downs, and Walter Brennan, among others. He planned to film the picture in Monument Valley on the ArizonaUtah border, the same location where Tim had first worked with Ford in Stagecoach in 1939. It seemed like a great way to forget the travails of the war he had just experienced, so Tim signed on with Pappy Ford. The film was entitled My Darling Clementine and was released in November of 1946. During this same time RKO execs discussed reinstating Tim’s B-Western series, but the studio decided to first finish up its option on the remaining entries in the Zane Grey series with Tim as star, since James Warren’s episodes had been considered weak. Thus it was that Tim returned to the RKO lot and his second Western series for the studio. The Zane Grey trio initiated Richard Martin’s sidekick affiliation and personal friendship with Tim. Martin had played the character of Chito Jose Gonzales Bustamonte Rafferty in the two Mitchum Zane Grey films and one of the Warren features (Wanderer of the Wasteland), after having created it for a 1943 war picture entitled Bombardier with Pat O’Brien and Randolph Scott. The chemistry between Tim and Richard Martin was so good on and off the screen for those first three Grey films that they and the studio wished to continue the association in Tim’s ongoing regular series. The quality of Tim’s post-war Western film series was among the best in the industry, and, to a great degree, it was due to Tim’s new-found depth in his portrayal of the cowboy hero. The war years had had a profound effect on him, which was apparent in his acting. No more was he the callow, youthful cowboy with the big, silly grin on his face. Now he exuded a steady, serious, no-nonsense type of mature cowboy who was less impulsive, more contemplative, and somewhat “world weary.” I suspect the acting reflected the real man, but it also made for an interesting cowboy hero on the silver screen. From a “total production quality” standpoint (scripts, acting, direction, use of locations, cast sizes, musical scores, photography, etc.) the Tim Holt pictures really only had the Bill “Hopalong Cassidy” Boyd series as serious competition in this writer’s opinion. Many of Tim’s films from
the 1947-1949 period have the appearance of bigbudget Westerns, and, indeed, his Zane Grey films did have increased budgets. The background music scores of the Tim Holt films certainly deserve special mention. They were particularly exciting and were very effective at highlighting, reinforcing and punctuating the activities on the screen—which all scores should do but frequently don’t. For Tim’s pre-war series Paul Sawtell composed and conducted the scores. While those scores were very good, it was in the post-war series, as Sawtell continued to compose the music and C. Bakaleinikoff began to conduct the actual scoring of the pictures, that the background music became (again, my opinion) the best in the B-Western business. For the Western film fan who may want to first sample the post-war Holt films before viewing them all, I would recommend the following as some of the best: Thunder Mountain, Wild Horse Mesa, The Arizona Ranger, Guns of Hate, Gun Smugglers, RKO producer Herman Schlom occasionally used the “Hoppy cabin” on Tuttle Creek Road.
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Brothers in the Saddle, and Masked Raiders. All of these films are from the 1947-1949 period, before television gave B films a knockout punch from which they never recovered. The later films (195052) are also very well done, but budget restrictions began to show; for example, the more picturesque distant locations such as Lone Pine and the Garner Ranch near Palm Springs were no longer utilized, and cast sizes began to shrink. But from whatever period you choose a Tim Holt Western, you are not likely to be disappointed. The first eight entries in Tim’s post-war series— from Thunder Mountain (1947) through Gun Smugglers (1949)—were shot at Lone Pine. They were directed by skilled journeymen Lew Landers, Lesley Selander, Wallace Grissell, and John Rawlins. These men had learned their craft from the bottom up, three as assistant directors and one as a film editor.
Herman Schlom gave them top-notch production support, first by securing excellent scripts and casts, then by shooting in Lone Pine with experienced crews on adequate if not overly generous schedules. Unlike many B-Western performers, Tim took a personal interest in production and comported himself soberly and efficiently to set a no-nonsense tone during the filming of each picture. Shooting on location in the Sierra foothills near Lone Pine was— and still is—an arduous business, especially since cast and crew are constantly exposed to the elements while taking exterior sequences. Years later, Tim’s sidekick Richard Martin recalled working in the area. “[A] great location for making Western films, but it could be a rough place to shoot a film if it was the wrong time of the year. I remember once when we were up there in December and it was bitter cold and there was a hard wind blowing off
This scene, taken under a crystal-clear sky, shows the Alabama Hills and the Sierra Nevada mountains in striking detail.
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Mount Whitney that cut right through you. Myrna Dell was in the picture [Guns of Hate]; we were filming out near a little cabin we used quite often. I remember that she said, ‘What am I doing up here freezing to death?’ She left where we were shooting, got into the car and said, ‘I am not going to get out there and perform any blankety-blank more.’ And she could use pretty colorful language when she felt the need. I said, ‘Myrna, we’ve got to get the scene done; the poor crew is freezing to death out there.’ It was damned near below zero, I would guess. Of course, the wind really rips through there in December. We had heaters and everything else in an attempt to keep warm. Well, we finally got Myrna out of the car to complete the scene, but it was rugged. I remember that little cabin only because of the weather that one time when we were shooting there.”
(Until recent years that cabin still stood, and adventurous attendees of the Lone Pine Film Festival often make yearly pilgrimages to it.) “I don’t remember that we ever shot in the cabin,” Martin continued. “I would say no, because acoustically the sound is so poor when you try to pick it up in those kinds of buildings, and we had a budget that warranted a little more quality than just trying to get it on film. No, I would say that the interiors were done down on the RKO lot. As you indicated, we shot quite a number of films up in Lone Pine, and it was one of the best locations for shooting Westerns—except occasionally when the weather would turn on you.” Nan Leslie, who was Tim’s leading lady in a number of his post-war Westerns, looked back with fondness on her tenure with the Holt production unit. “There
A nicely composed scene from Guns of Hate (1948), one of Tim’s best Westerns in the postwar group produced by Herman Schlom.
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Tim’s son Jack (named after his movie-star grandfather) visited Lone Pine in 1992 and toured the Alabama Hills, which his dad and Richard Martin traversed countless times in their joint six-year stint for RKO.
was a kind of camaraderie about the Westerns— although I didn’t realize it until much later—that you don’t find too many times,” she recalled years later. “We went to beautiful places like Lone Pine and Apple Valley. When we were on location, there were always practical jokes being played on everybody. It was just a wonderful opportunity to have fun while you were working. I suppose that’s not the most professional attitude one could have. (laugh) I remember them all with such fondness. “You know, Richard Farnsworth and Ben Johnson were both stuntmen on those early pictures. I was so thrilled later on when they got their chances [to star in pictures], because they were both so nice to be around. Dick Farnsworth was the wildest stunt man you can ever imagine and the most fun. Stuntmen in those days were really crazy, the Evel Knievels of the horse set. “Tim was a natural for the Westerns because he was a good horseman. Dick Martin was also a natural for the comedy relief, and he was such a darling man. He was genuinely funny and perfect for the part he played. Dick always gave the impression while acting that he was relaxed and at ease, and that’s always reassuring to an actor playing opposite him. We didn’t have all that many scenes together, but Dick’s
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presence there loosened us up. I think it did for Tim too. Tim was also very good to work with. Because I was usually playing the typical Western heroine, we didn’t have very many personal or romantic scenes. But I had the feeling that if Tim and I had had occasion to play a more personal relationship on screen, rather than just the superficial romance thing, we probably would have done very well together. “Dick was just a wild, crazy kid. And, you know, they played so many practical jokes while we were making the films. They put a burro in my dressing room once! “It was so funny. They used to bring trailers for dressing rooms and make-up. It was a terribly hot day, and we were at Lone Pine. You know the costumes we wore—black cotton stockings and hoop skirts, all of that sort of paraphernalia. After about half a day’s work—and it was really hot and steamy—I thought, ‘Oh, just to get back into the trailer is going to be so wonderful!’ I noticed a lot of people were ringed around the trailer area and thought that it was funny because they were still supposed to be shooting. I opened the door of the trailer and inside there was a little burro standing, looking back at me. I thought, ‘What are you doing in here?’ He seemed to be thinking, ‘Why am I in here?’ (laugh) I finally got my
Another striking shot of Tim in the Hills, superbly lensed by veteran cameraman Harry Wild, who knew from long experience which filters to use for that “3-D” look.
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Tim and long-time sidekick Richard Martin (as Chito José Gonzales Bustamonté Rafferty) made one of the most appealing teams in “B” Westerns.
wits together, turned around, and said, ‘Well, it isn’t the first time that a jackass has been in this dressing room!’ Everybody broke up! You see, this was the type of fun things that happened then. I think it adds to the whole show when you have that kind of fun.” Like most B-picture crews that worked in Lone Pine, the Holt production unit stayed at the Dow Villa Hotel, which has recently been restored with a new facade simulating the one it had during the
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Twenties, Thirties, and Forties. Convenient for its proximity to the stores and eateries in town, the Dow had already seen decades in service when Tim Holt’s casts and crews roomed there. Nan Leslie remembered it well: “Oh, I tell you, that hotel creaked from top to bottom. If anybody came in late, everybody who was already asleep or just about asleep knew that they were coming up the stairs and down the hall.
(laugh) We did our make-up down in the lobby every morning at five or five-thirty—I don’t know how I did it. “I can remember the sun coming up over the Death Valley side of the Lone Pine area. I would tell myself, ‘Now this alone is worth being awake for, isn’t it?’ By the time the make-up was done, the day looked wonderful. I especially remember the sunrises and the sunsets and Mount Whitney in the background. We would all go to dinner together at the cafe, the cast and crew, and have fresh-caught trout and things like that. As I said before, there was a family sort of feeling. We only had one day off each week then, so on Sunday we would frequently drive to Independence and rent a burro pack and go up into the trout streams and catch fish. It was so beautiful up there. I loved going trout fishing.” Robert Clarke was a young actor who joined Tim on the star’s first B-Western made after his return from the war: Zane Grey’s Thunder Mountain, which was developed and went into production as To the Last Man. A considerably streamlined version of that novel, the picture was subjected to a title change when RKO’s legal department belatedly discovered that Paramount still held movie rights to that particular Zane Grey novel, which it had adapted for the screen twice before. This explains why Tim’s Thunder Mountain bears no resemblance either to the novel or George O’Brien’s 1935 adaptation of it. Oklahoma-born Clarke, who worked long and hard to rid his voice of its native twang, was still a relative newcomer to moviemaking when he worked in Thunder Mountain, but he retained vivid memories of Lone Pine. “The nights were cool and beautiful,” he said, “and the days were hot and almost unbearable during the times that we were up there filming. Mostly I remember how much I wanted to impress the producers and directors at RKO with the kind of acting I was capable of in those parts as an outlaw and as the renegade brother—playing two or three drunk scenes, gambling and all. It was an opportunity that I didn’t want to let slip by, and Lone Pine provided some wonderful atmosphere for those roles. “I’ll certainly never forget one Lone Pine incident from early in my film career. We were shooting a chase scene through the Alabama Hills just outside of town. It was a single shot of me on horseback
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18 LO N E PINE IN THE MOVIES
behind a camera car that was going probably forty miles an hour. Unfortunately, the horse I was riding kept stumbling and, as a result, threw his head up to keep from falling, making it very difficult for me to ride him. My job was to stay in the saddle with my left hand on the reins, fire the .45 with my right hand, and at the same time somehow try to keep my hat from blowing off. Although there were only blanks in the pistol, they contained a full load—and a full load was a real blast! To do these three things— ride the horse, keep the hat on, and fire that pistol in the direction of the camera—was difficult enough, but to add a stumbling horse was the last straw! I thought I was going to go right over that horse’s head every time he stumbled! Boy, I didn’t know if I was going to make it or not! “At one point the horse ran off the shoulder of the road and started to slip down into a small ravine. Fortunately, it was at about the time the director called “Cut!” That was my initiation into the chase car and how they filmed run-bys. I was one scared young actor! I was trying to act as if I really knew what the hell I was doing, but I’m not sure I succeeded too well. It’s funny as I look back on it now, but it was scary at the time.” The somewhat diminished but still potent allure of Zane Grey’s name gave Tim’s first few post-war B-Westerns a welcome boost at the nation’s box offices and reestablished him as a horse-opera favorite. Thunder Mountain, Wild Horse Mesa, and Under the Tonto Rim reflect the extra care afforded them by producer Herman Schlom, who remained at the helm of Tim’s series following RKO’s exhausting of its Zane Grey properties. The series entries that immediately followed—Arizona Ranger (in which Tim co-starred with his famous father Jack), Western Heritage, and Guns of Hate among them—showed no diminution of quality. Lone Pine continued to be Schlom’s favorite location, at least for the next year or two, and periodically thereafter. J. Roy Hunt, the Holt unit’s director of photography, helped frame shots in the Alabama Hills and skillfully employed lens filters to bring out detail in the distant mountains and the clouds above. Even when their scripts were pedestrian, the post-war Tim Holt Westerns were consistently good to look at. And their star remained one of the most popular to stride a saddle during the pre-television era. ☐☐☐
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