Western RoundUp: Final Resting Places, A Tribute to Western Filmmakers

Final Resting Places, A Tribute to Western Filmmakers

This
month we’ll be again paying tribute to Western filmmakers as we visit their
Southern California gravesites.

We’ll
begin by honoring several Western directors. The prolific George Sherman began
his career in ’30s “B” Westerns. My favorite Sherman films are his
Universal Westerns of the late ’40s and early ’50s, which are always well-paced
and exciting. Sherman titles I like include Black Bart (1948), River
Lady (1948), Border River (1954), and Dawn at
Socorro (1954). He’s buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.

Also at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills is director Andre De Toth. De Toth was married for several years to Veronica Lake, the star of one of his best Westerns, Ramrod (1947); Lake’s leading man in that “Western noir” was Joel McCrea. De Toth also directed several Randolph Scott Westerns, including Man in the Saddle (1951) and Riding Shotgun (1954). His most impressive Western might have been Day of the Outlaw (959), which I wrote about here in my column on “Snowy Westerns.”

Multi
Oscar winner William Wyler is buried at Forest Lawn Glendale alongside his
brother Robert and Robert’s wife, actress Cathy O’Donnell. Wyler worked on all
types of films over his long career. He started out working on silent Western
shorts; his feature-length Westerns included an early version of the “3
Godfathers” story called Hell’s Heroes (1929); The
Westerner (1940) with Gary Cooper; and an all-star cast in The
Big Country (1958).

Cecil B.
DeMille isn’t always associated with Westerns, but he made several over his
long career, including The Plainsman (1936) and North
West Mounted Police (1940) with Gary Cooper and Union Pacific (1939)
with Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. DeMille is in the DeMille family plot at
Hollywood Forever.

Michael Curtiz was another versatile director who worked in every genre. He made multiple Westerns with Errol Flynn, including Dodge City (1939), Virginia City (1940), and Santa Fe Trail (1940). Two of those films costarred Olivia de Havilland, who years later would appear opposite Alan Ladd in Curtiz’s The Proud Rebel (1958). I wrote about The Proud Rebel here in 2020. Curtiz is buried at Forest Lawn Glendale.

Errol
Flynn is likewise buried at Forest Lawn Glendale, alongside his wife Patrice
Wymore. Aside from his Westerns made with Curtiz, Flynn was in several other
Westerns, including Silver River (1948), Montana (1950),
and Rocky Mountain (1950). The latter film costarred Wymore.

The
great cinematographer Archie Stout is also at Forest Lawn Glendale. Stout
worked extensively with both John Wayne and John Ford, with his films
including Angel and the Badman (1947), Fort Apache (1948),
and Hondo (1953), as well as second unit work on She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950),
and Wagon Master (1950).

Nicholas
Musuraca is most commonly associated with his cinematography of film noir
titles such as Out of the Past (1947), but he also filmed many
Westerns. He worked on several Tim Holt “B” Westerns both before and
after Holt’s service in World War II. He also shot Devil’s Canyon (1953)
with Dale Robertson and Virginia Mayo. Musuraca is interred in the mausoleum at
Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

The
great cowboy star Tom Mix is at Forest Lawn Glendale. In recent years I’ve
loved getting to know some of Mix’s silent Westerns, such as Just Tony (1922).
In addition to his silent films, Mix appeared in sound Westerns through the mid
’30s. Mix tragically died in an Arizona car accident at the age of 60.

Earlier this year I paid my first visit to San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California. A number of prominent filmmakers are buried there, including three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan. Brennan made many Westerns in his long career, including William Wyler’s The Westerner (1940), in which Brennan won an Oscar for playing Judge Roy Bean. Other favorites include My Darling Clementine (1946), Red River (1948), Blood on the Moon (1948), The Far Country (1954), and Rio Bravo (1959), which I reviewed here.

Another Rio
Bravo cast member, Estelita Rodriguez, is also at San Fernando Mission
Cemetery. Rodriguez played Consuelo in that favorite Howard Hawks Western. She
also appeared in numerous Roy Rogers Westerns.

We’ll
close this month’s tour of final resting places with a tribute to Virginia
Vale, who is interred at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills under her birth name,
Dorothy C. Howe. Vale was George O’Brien’s leading lady in half a dozen of my
all-time favorite “B” Westerns; she would later tell an interviewer
that O’Brien was “a gem of a fellow.” At her request she even
designed some of her dresses for the films, which were later reused in other
RKO Westerns. She was later a longtime competition judge for the U.S. Figure
Skating Association.

For additional photos of the burial sites of Western filmmakers, please visit my columns from May 2019, February 2022, November 2, 2022, November 29, 2022, and April 25, 2023.

…

– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns.  She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals.  Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.