Proud Papa

“Father of Film” D.W. Griffith (right) presents the 1946 Oscar for Best Color Cinematography to Leon Shamroy for his work on Leave Her to Heaven, the first Technicolor film shot in Sedona's Red Rock Country.

Burl Trouble

In 1948, popular folksinger Burl Ives was one of the main selling points for RKO Radio Pictures when it was promoting Station West, the partly filmed-in-Sedona cowboy film noir; he was fourth-billed in the credits and featured in all promotional materials. But when the film was re-released in 1954, Ives’ name mysteriously vanished, and his screen time greatly reduced. Bizarrely, Ives’ role in Station West seems to have been a little-noticed casualty of Cold War paranoia.

In May 1948, Obsessive-Compulsive millionaire Howard Hughes took control of financially struggling RKO. A virulent anti-Communist, Hughes fired approximately 1,900 of RKO’s 2,500 employees, virtually shutting down production for six months while his investigators dug into remaining workers’ pasts. “It is my determination to make RKO one studio where the work of Communist sympathizers will not be used,” Hughes told the Holly­wood Reporter in April 1952. To that end, Hughes set up a “security office” at RKO; one of its tasks was to purge suspected Communists from the credits of older RKO films being re-released to theaters.

Here’s where Ives appears to have run into a problem. In 1950, Counter­attack: The Newsletter of Facts To Combat Com­munism, published a book called Red Channels: The Report of Com­munist Influence in Radio and Television, which listed 151 people in entertainment and broadcast journalism linked to “subversive” organizations, either at the time or in the past. Red Channels claimed Ives had had past association with three obscure leftist organizations in the early 1940s.

But on Sept. 25, 1952, under the headline “Reds Dupe Artists, Senate Group Says,” The New York Times reported that the Senate Internal Security Sub­committee cited Ives and three other show business personalities as examples of how Com­munists were using the respected American entertainers to unwittingly strengthen subversive aims. Ives was not accused of being either a Communist or a deliberate “fronter.” In a statement included in the Times story, Ives wanted it on the record that he’d voluntarily gone before the Senate to show he “never knowingly approved anything Un-American.” He closed the statement by saying: “I am not and never have been a Communist.”

By the looks of it, Hughes was not impressed. With no fanfare Ives’ name was erased from posters, ads, and the film’s credits when Station West was re-released to theaters in 1954. Look at the poster from 1948 (at top), which displays Ives’ name and image. This was typical of the film’s entire publicity campaign, which clearly aimed to leverage the folk­singer/radio personality’s popularity. In ‘54, however, Ives is conspicuously missing from all promotional materials, such as the poster above– funny that the campaign now sported a “red” color scheme.––Joe McNeill

Sedona Movie Alert!

The woman some call the most beautiful in movie history earned her only Best Actress Academy Award nomination in 1945's Leave her to Heaven: her best scene was shot on Sedona's Schnebly Hill.

Co-starring Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain and Vincent Price, Leave her to Heaven will air on Turner Classic Movies November 22 at 11 a.m. Eastern Time.

Film Rouge (Rocks) No. 3

While the bulk of Desert Fury’s exteriors were filmed in Sedona and other scenic spots around northern Arizona (with a quick detour to Palmdale, California, for a short bronc riding sequence), most principal photography took place on Paramount soundstages in the City of Angels. Which makes this staged promotional still (the kind of lurid hoopla studios don’t produce anymore, but should) an entirely appropriate peek at the over-the top tone of the movie. That’s John Hodiak on the receiving end of a whack from Burt Lancaster, with film noir goddess Lizabeth Scott being restrained by Wendell Corey.––Joe McNeill

Sedona Movie Alert!

Blood on the Moon launched Robert Wise onto the “A” list of Hollywood film directors in 1948. The Western noir starring Robert Mitchum gave the Sedona terrain a darkly sinister look, though some credit must go to Mother Nature, who sent in the ominous clouds that provided the familiar scenery a chill unique in its on-screen history.

Co-starring Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Preston, Phyllis Thaxter and Walter Brennan, Blood on the Moon will air on Turner Classic Movies September 28 at 4 a.m. Eastern Time.

Rocky Road to Rome

Obsessiveness, madness, and an immoral female hellbent on destruction were the signature themes of film noir, and in 1945’s Leave Her To Heaven (“the first psychological drama to be shot in color”), Gene Tierney, the woman Darryl F. Zanuck once called the most beautiful in movie history, earned her only Best Actress Oscar nomination for portraying a sociopath with a deep-rooted Oedipal complex. After World War II, American films made during the conflict received belated distribution in Europe, and Leave Her To Heaven finally reached overseas screens in 1948. This Italian photo­busta boasts a stunning view from Sedona’s Schnebly Hill; the title literally translated means “Crazy Female.”

John M. Stahl’s Leave Her To Heaven, starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, and Jeanne Crain, will air on Turner Classic Movies September 10 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time.

Sedona Movie Alert!

Catch a film ­featuring our red rock scenery on TV: Leave Her to Heaven (1945, filmed in Sedona, Flagstaff and Prescott) starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde and Jeanne Crain; directed by John M. Stahl. Airing on Turner Classic Movies August 14 at 8 p.m. Eastern time.

Film Rouge (Rocks) No. 2

Lizabeth Scott is a true Hollywood legend, a film noir icon. Her intriguing beauty, unforgettable smoky voice and commanding screen presence gave life to several of the most memorable femme fatales and “good girls gone bad” ever to delight movie audiences. I was honored in 2003 when Ms. Scott, who rarely grants interviews, agreed to share with me some memories of her 1946 visit to Sedona to film Desert Fury. “It holds up magnificently,” she said when asked her opinion of the picture today. “I find that’s true of all the films I made. I get an enormous amount of fan mail from 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. I fit into their...[contemporary] personas. I can’t explain it, nor have they ever been able to explain it to me.”––Joe McNeill

Film Rouge (Rocks) No. 1

A film noir photographed in bright, cheery Sedona? And in Technicolor no less? Yep. That’s Lizabeth Scott coming between John Hodiak (left) and Wendell Corey in the innuendo-laced 1947 crime drama Desert Fury. Filming locations included spots in front of the Nuns Formation (pictured here) and the main drag of nearby Cottonwood, which was rented in its entirety for a couple of days to stand in as the fictional burg Chuckawalla, Nevada.