"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.

Girl Fearless of Tomorrow

Cecilia Parker in cheesecake still promoting Universal Pictures' serial The Jungle Mystery.

“If anything should happen to make me drop out of pictures right now, I feel as though I would be much ahead of the game for the experience I’ve had. Of course, I hope to be able to carry on for some years yet. But there is no telling when one’s picture life will come to an end. And when mine comes, I won’t cry––I will be glad to have had a taste of it.

“The first thing I would do if I were forced out of pictures would be to look for a job in an office. I believe the poise and experience I have acquired in pictures would be of help to me in getting a such a job, too. Poise is just as important in an office as anywhere else, although most girls don’t seem to consider it so."––Actress Cecilia Parker quoted in a newspaper interview published on May 10, 1932, a few days after she completed Sedona location work for Fox Film’s Mystery Ranch. Ms. Parker made her credited movie debut seven months earlier in Zane Grey's  The Rainbow Trail, the Grand Canyon-filmed sequel to the photographed-in-Sedona Riders of the Purple Sage. All three Westerns starred George O’Brien. In a joint TV interview fifty years later, both Parker and O’Brien recalled that the 17 year-old neophyte actress had an on-set tutor while filming Rainbow Trail. They were probably referring to Fox’s staff acting coach Minna Gombell, who was also a member of Rainbow Trail’s cast and went on location in the Grand Canyon with them.

Sedona Fashion Gets Back in the Saddle!

A lot has changed in Sedona, including fashion, since Zane Grey’s The Call of the Canyon was filmed in the area in 1923, but the red rock skylines aren’t really fazed by the years. While Arizona’s Little Hollywood was in the works it was exciting to find that many of the backdrops from some of Red Rock Country’s most famous films are still accessible and unimpeded by houses and strip malls – what better locations for showcasing hot Western wear? Paris and New York may have the runways, but we have the red rocks. Even our well-heeled models agreed: Nothing compares to Sedona’s natural beauty (not even the chunky turquoise jewelry that had everyone at the photo shoot making their Christmas wish lists early). So saddle up and take a look at Sedona scenery and fashion, then and now. What would you rather be wearing?––Erika Ayn Finch




Inset: George O’Brien and Noble Johnson fight to the finish in Mystery Ranch (1932, Fox Film Corp.). Photographed in Sedona in 1932.




Inset: Gene Autry (l), Dick Jones (c) and Jack Holt in The Strawberry Roan (1948, Columbia Pictures). Photographed in Sedona in 1947.




Inset: Elvis Presley and unknown starlets in a publicity shot from Stay Away, Joe (1968, MGM). Photographed in Sedona in 1967.




Inset: Randolph Scott and Dorothy Hart in Gunfighters (1947, Columbia Pictures). Filmed in Sedona in 1946.




Inset: John Wayne and Gail Russell in Angel and the Badman (1947, Republic Pictures). Filmed in Sedona in 1946.