"Lightning" Deal

Smoke Lightning had a two day run at Fredonia, New York’s Winter Garden Theatre in May 1933, but the headline attraction wasn’t all-American George O’Brien. Topping the bill that week was Mussolini Speaks!, A six-reel documentary produced by Columbia Pictures and promoted with ad art showing a crowd of Blackshirts giving “today’s man of the hour” the fascist salute. Cult director Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour) reportedly worked on it as a director.

When Hollywood cowboy George O’Brien left Flagstaff for Los Angeles in October 1932, having completed three weeks of filming in and around Sedona for Robbers’ Roost, he had good reason to expect he’d be back. Before Roost’s cast and crew departed, Fox Film representatives told The Coconino Sun that David Howard (who’d directed O’Brien’s Mystery Ranch in Sedona six months earlier) was coming back soon to film the Zane Grey story Canyon Walls. Beyond that, Fox intended to shoot one or two unspecified Zane Grey stories in the area immediately afterward. Local rancher Lee Doyle was already engaged to help select locales and, as usual, handle transportation and supplies. O’Brien, whom Fox was now declaring the “most popular Western actor in pictures” had every reason to expect he’d be back on the train soon to star in one or all of these pictures.

But it didn’t turn out that way. While O’Brien did star in Canyon Walls, it wasn’t in Sedona. When the project was released on February 17, 1933, it was retitled Smoke Lightning, bore little resemblance to Grey’s story and was filmed entirely in California. Fox cameras would return to Red Rock Country, but not until almost a year later, in August 1933. And then it was not for an O’Brien/Grey western, but for Smoky, based on a best seller by cowboy author/illustrator Will James and starring Victor Jory. Given that Fox would chalk up a devastating $19.96 million loss in 1932, and surely had an inkling of that by the time the Roost company left town, it’s not such a leap to imagine that filming a low-return Western in Arizona had become a luxury Fox decided it could no longer afford; the three post-Roost Grey adaptations starring O’Brien (Smoke Lightning, Life in the Raw, and The Last Trail), were filmed entirely in California, a sign of the changes to come that would contribute to O’Brien and Fox parting ways.

Stock Answers

Richard Dix and Lois Wilson in 1925's The Vanishing American...

Between 1923 and 1928, Paramount Pictures released almost a dozen films based on Zane Grey stories that were photographed on Arizona locations, including To the Last Man, The Call of the Canyon (1923), The Heritage of the Desert (1924), The Light of Western Stars, Code of the West, Wild Horse Mesa, The Vanishing American, (1925), The Last Frontier (1926), Drums of the Desert (1927), Under the Tonto Rim, Avalanche, The Water Hole and Sunset Pass (1928). But when talkies took the movie business by storm the studio decided to cut costs by shooting its Zane Grey westerns close to home in California.

However, Paramount continued to churn out low budget movies in the 1930s based (sometimes barely) on novels written by Grey, and by cleverly stitching in footage lifted from the silents, these also appear to have sequences photographed in Arizona. Some of the film shot on location in Payson for the lost silent version of To the Last Man has survived because cash-stricken Paramount saved a few dollars during the Great Depression by recycling scenes from it for the 1933 sound remake with Randolph Scott. A few glimpses of the silent Heritage of  the Desert (filmed north of Flagstaff at Cameron) can still be seen because Paramount plundered it as economy footage for its 1939 remake.

... and Buster Crabbe wearing Dix's duds in 1936.

Even The Vanishing American, the only northern Arizona-lensed silent Grey adaption that still exists in good condition, was mined for stock. The 1936 remake of Desert Gold had star Buster Crabbe dressed identically to Vanishing’s Richard Dix, which made a reasonable enough illusion in longshot to fool unsuspecting matinee crowds into thinking that the California production had crossed the state line into Arizona.––Joe McNeill

Quiet on the Set!

James Stewart confers with Italian-American “Indian” Iron Eyes Cody in Sedona.

Suspicious PR item from the pressbook for Broken Arrow, filmed in Sedona in 1949: 

Broken Arrow star Jimmy Stewart was known as a nice guy throughout his life, but he was never much of a talker. While on location in the Coconino National Forest near Sedona, the tall, gangling actor stopped for a moment to admire the magnificent view. An uncredited Apache player, Phillip Sky Bird, sidled up to gaze in the same direction.

Minutes passed and not a word was exchanged between the two. Finally, Stewart, feeling the awkward silence, let himself go and came up with an observation.

“Nice country,” he ventured.

“Yes,” replied Sky Bird, “but don’t spoil it by your idle chatter.”

'The Call of the Canyon' is Still Lost

Bad news, Sedona movie fans. The Russian film archive Gosfilmofond’s much-heralded gift to the U.S. of a digital copy of The Call of the Canyon has proven a bust. The long-lost silent film, shot in Oak Creek Canyon in 1923, had its first viewing on June 24 at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va.; unfortunately, the copy yielded just four minutes and 10 seconds of footage. Image quality is reportedly good, but scenes are so brief, and interspersed with Russian intertitles, that archivists found it difficult to even tell how they fit into the story.

Quite a disappointment. The Russian archive always promised the best chance that a copy of The Call of the Canyon still existed somewhere. But at least we can see a few short fragments of it now.––Joe McNeill

‘Legion’ of Honor

I uncovered a lot of obscure facts while researching my book Arizona’s Little Hollywood, but one of the most unexpected finds was a gushing trade review for The Vanishing Legion, the 1931 Mascot Pictures serial that paired cowboy star Harry Carey with Flagstaff’s own Rex, the King of Wild Horses. So now we have confirmation: The Vanishing Legion is American cinema’s most critically lauded examination of an unseen archvillain’s use of radio to command minions to do his evil bidding.––Joe McNeill

ACE SERIAL
“This is probably the best serial ever turned out by an independent. It has everything that a thrill serial can pack into the footage. Harry Carey and Edwina Booth, with the reps they made in Trader Horn, are a strong combination to exploit. Directed by B. Reaves Eason, who has utilized every device to crowd the reels with action, thrills, surprises and some beaucoup camera work that is not often seen in a serial. The story is a hummer, with Harry Carey as the contractor engaged to drill an oil well on a property that seems to have a jinx. Mysterious forces are at work on the oil field. Harry starts with a fleet of trucks loaded with machinery and equipment. Then you see the gang at work, with several different groups all endeavoring to stop the hero, also to get their hands on a certain mysterious person who knows some damaging evidence against them. This person is the father of Frankie Darrow. Frankie and his dad secrete themselves in one of the trucks to escape the sheriff. The trucks are wrecked by the gang, who destroy the brakes, and they go crashing over the side of a precipice. This is a big thrill scene, with the runaway trucks careening down the side of a mountain and the drivers jumping for their lives. This bit has been realistically handled, and packs a terrific wallop. In fact the first two chapters caught are replete with fine bits of this calibre that will have the fans hanging onto their seats. Frankie Darrow does splendid work in a strong part. His acting on the death of his father is as good a bit as any juvenile has ever done on the screen. Can’t miss on this one. It should pack ’em in––kids and grown-ups, who like their thrills fast and plenty.”––The Film Daily, August 2, 1931

Sedona Movie Alert!

Catch a pair of films ­featuring the red rock scenery on TV: Broken Arrow (1950, filmed in Sedona) starring James Stewart and Jeff Chandler; directed by Delmer Daves. Airing on Fox Movie Channel July 15 at 9 a.m.; Wild Rovers (1971, filmed in Flagstaff, Sedona, and Monument Valley) starring William Holden and Ryan O’Neal; directed by Blake Edwards. Airing on Encore Westerns July 15 at 9:30 a.m. (All screenings are Eastern Time.)