Western RoundUp: Lone Pine Film Locations

Western RoundUp: Filming locations for Lone Pine films

In previous columns on Western RoundUp, I have written several times about westerns filmed in Lone Pine, California.

Countless westerns have been filmed in the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine and other nearby areas. Previous columns include a look at Hop-a-Long Cassidy (1935) On Location in Lone Pine and Lone Pine Favorites; the last column contains photos from Lone Pine locations Rawhide (1951), 7 men as of now (1956), and The rented gun (1957).

Western fans can enjoy exploring the area and seeing where their favorite films were made. Check out this month’s column for a few more western locations filmed in the Lone Pine area.

The Cisco Kid and the Lady (1939)

Cesar Romero plays the Cisco Kid in a very entertaining film that I saw for the first time at this year’s Lone Pine Film Festival.

In a story that is somewhat reminiscent of the one that has often been filmed Three godparents The ingenious bandit Cisco Kid and his friend Gordito (Chris-Pin Martin) find the baby of a dead miner in the middle of the desert. The baby ends up in the care of a lovely teacher (Marjorie Weaver); Meanwhile, the Cisco Kid works to find the mine that is the baby’s inheritance.

After seeing the film, we took a tour of the places with guide Greg Parker, who prepared a booklet with screenshots that we could compare with the actual places.

Here are two sample screenshots and my photos from the actual Alabama Hills locations that haven’t changed since we were filming. A few decades are only a small moment in the history of these rocks!

Yellow sky (1948)

Yellow sky is a great western from William Wellman starring Gregory Peck as the outlaw, with Anne Baxter as the wife, whom Peck and his gang (including Richard Widmark and John Russell) meet while they are hiding in a ghost town.

I wrote about the movie in my 2018 Lone Pine Favorites column, but at that point I didn’t have any location photos to share. This year we explored something on our own and found the waterhole seen in the film.

First up, here are a few screenshots of the area as seen in the movie. This is Baxter, standing on a rock holding a rifle; Russell is drinking water in the photo below.

Compare these scenes with the actual location, see below; the waterhole was in the foreground. We were delighted to discover that a tiny man-made “dam” still exists today, created by the film crew to create the watering hole.

Visitors to the Alabama Hills may also notice permanent changes made by the crews of several other films, including Army girl (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Hitchhiker (1953), and King of the Khyber Rifles (1953); They may not be readily recognizable to the casual observer, but those in the know can easily spot them.

The Law and Jake Wade (1958)

Robert Taylor plays Marshal Jake Wade, who pays back an old debt when he brings the outlaw Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark) out of jail.

The ungrateful Clint later takes Jake and Jake’s girlfriend Peggy (Patricia Owens) hostage, and they eventually have a confrontation in a ghost town.

Unlike many westerns filmed in the Lone Pine area, The Law and Jake Wade didn’t shoot in the Alabama Hills; Instead, the crew built a ghost town on the opposite side of town, in the same area where a town was built a few years earlier Bad day at Black Rock (1955).

Like films shot in the Alabama Hills, the ghost town scenes offer the same great views of Lone Pine Peak and Mount Whitney in the background.

…and I also have a 2019 photo of tour guide Jerry Condit holding a still image of the ghost town set:

The big T (1957)

The big T is one of the outstanding westerns that Randolph Scott shot in collaboration with director Budd Boetticher.

For the majority of the film, Scott and Maureen O’Sullivan are held captive in a cave by the outlaw Richard Boone.

Ride lonely (1959)

I wrote about another Scott Boetticher film Ride lonely in my very first Western RoundUp column. It’s a movie I’ve seen multiple times that gets better with each view.

This year our friend, Lone Pine tour guide Don Kelsen, and a few other people took us on a hike to a place that was shown at the beginning of the film. It was a bit of an uphill climb to get there but well worth it!

Here is a screenshot of an opening scene from the film with Randolph Scott capturing James Best:

And here is the location today. The rocks in the screenshot can easily be assigned to this photo.

Visiting film locations like this one is both entertaining and informative, and offers the western fan new perspectives to enjoy while watching films shot in Lone Pine.

The photographs of the Alabama Hills accompanying this article are from the author’s personal collection.

…

– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Laura can be found on her blog Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she has been writing about films since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. As a lifelong film fan, Laura loves classics like Disney, film noir, musicals and westerns. She regularly reports on classic film festivals in Southern California. Laura will write everything about westerns at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.