The Bison Film Co

by Marc Wanamaker

The history of the Owens Valley is intertwined with the discovery of gold and silver in the Sierra Mountains both in California and Nevada, water supplies for the Los Angeles area, and tourism at the beginning of the 20th century. Railroads played a major role in the development of Lone Pine and the Owens Valley and by 1883, the Carson and Colorado Railway line was constructed from Belleville Nevada, across the White Mountains to Benton and then down to the Owens Valley where it ended in Keeler. The arrival of the C&C rail line and the stagecoach in Keeler where an economic boost for the area. From Keeler, one could take the stagecoach to Mojave and then either onto akersfi eld or Los ngeles. The Lone Pine area was an important junction for tourists coming to see Mount Whitney, Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, Mammoth Mountain, Death Valley National Park and Yosemite National Park since the late 19th century.

The motion picture industry came to Los Angeles in 1908 with the Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago and it was followed by the Bison Film Company of New York in 1909. Selig

Advertisement in The Moving Picture World magazine of 1909.

made a deal with Charles Lummis, California Historian, to use original Mission properties in lieu of fees to help restore the California Missions. They produced stories about early California life which included stories of Native Americans and Mexicans. They worked with California Tourist authorities to go on locations in California and Nevada for authentic backgrounds. Some of the more popular locations at this early time included, Big Bear Valley in the San Bernardino Mountains, Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and the Mojave Desert areas all north of Los Angeles.

In 1900 the Southern Pacifi c Railroad took over the Carson and Colorado Railroad line and by 1 0 became the Nevada and alifornia Railway. t this same time Los Angeles began the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the Owens Valley. These old mining and supply trains were replaced by railroad lines coming from Nevada, Arizona and south to Los Angeles. The Southern Pacifi c’s southern route had a standard gauge line (the Jawbone Branch) that ran north from Mojave to the town of Lone Pine which was completed in 1910.

When the Bison Film ompany began to fi lm on location throughout Southern California they came to the Owens Valley for authentic Western backgrounds. By 1910 much of California was connected by rail and it was used by tourists, commerce and general transportation that helped California grow to what it is today. A Bison Film Company production fi lmed at Lone Pine was entitled, Iona, The White Squaw (1909) starring the Bison Stock Company of actors. In an advertisement in The Moving Picture World in October 23, 1909 with a photograph of the actors posing by a Keeler Stagecoach at the Lone Pine Railroad Station, ison Films, ne Reel a Week, Iona, The White Squaw. In the release of this subject, The New York Motion Picture Company presents a feature fi lm in the extreme sense of the term. This Picture far surpasses any previous release, and is remarkable for its trueness in portraying Indian life.”

The review of the fi lm, Iona, The White Squaw, her freedom and regains her and they leave the town.

The fi lm was directed by Director/Manager, Fred Balshofer who brought the company from New York and established the studio in Los Angeles. The stock company of actors on location in Lone Pine included, John M. Brown, William Daniels and Evelyn Graham.

described the story of a small child that was taken by a local Indian from a mining camp. The miners could not fi nd the little girl, but she is welcomed to the Indian tribe. Fifteen years later, the stagecoach arrives at the town (Lone Pine) and a young man in the coach says he is the lost girl’s brother and has come to fi nd her. n the end of the fi lm, he fi nds her and fi ghts the ndians for j PMS 247 PMS 556 PMS 7743 PMS 7596 BLACK NORTH AMERICA’S ONLY TRUE DESERT OASIS

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The likely lads from “Down-under,” Ross Schnioff sky and Warren avey pay homage and take a look at those tough, independent women who ourished in the so-called “man’s world” of the Alabama Hills. The long, long history of fi lmmaking in Lone Pine and surrounding areas has benefi ted from the contribution of many great women fi lmmakers. ver the years these great women have not received their due recognition. This is maybe because the great number of actionadventure based fi lms that is, lots of Westerns that were fi lmed in the area have conventionally tended to have masculine attributes with the male hero dominating the plots. Westerns heavily stressed masculinity so many of the women’s roles were seen through the context of the male characters. Men wrote and directed most of the Westerns so women’s roles tended to re ect a male perspective. The women characters displayed traits traditionally thought feminine: passivity, dependence, gentleness and sensitivity, and other traits. f women were given strong characters, they must ultimately depend on a man for their happiness and security. The male perspective dominates many of the fi lms made in Lone Pine and the female roles were played out in accordance with male e pectations of female behavior. Perhaps this has contributed to the lack of attention given to wonderful women of Lone Pine. n e haustive survey of signifi cant female Lone Pine fi lmmakers is not possible in this short article so we will aim to spotlight only a limited number of prominent women who made fi lms in Lone Pine. In the past some attention has been directed towards wonderful actresses such as Peggy Stewart, Beth Marion and others, however for this article we will look to the Hollywood “A” list and focus on some well-known names who made the journey to travel from Los ngeles to make fi lms in Lone Pine. ur cohort will include household names such as Barbara Stanwyck, Maureen ’ ara, Rita ayworth, da Lupino and Susan Hayward. It is our intention to pay homage to these wonderful women fi lmmakers who played smart, unafraid and independent women and who have given so much to the fabulous history of fi lmmaking in Lone Pine. Let’s start with one of Hollywood’s greatest - Barbara Stanwyck. No other actress was quite like Babs – she was virtually without peer in the portrayal of tough, fearsome women of the west. She typically played a wise cracking, cynical and aggressive woman, demanding respect and elucidating fear from her male counterparts. Some of her great Westerns were The Maverick Queen 1 , Forty Guns 1 and The Furies 1 0 . nfortunately, she only made one fi lm

Rita Hayworth with the befuddled Glenn Ford in The Loves of Carmen (1948) in the Alabama Hills and that was the range war Western, The Violent Men 1 . n this fi lm she was able to play with her nasty and duplicitous persona with telling eff ect. nd to boot she was able to work alongside some mighty good actors such as Edward G. Robinson, Glenn Ford and rian Keith. Stanwyck loved getting into the saddle and putting on the gun belt and she loved Lone Pine. efore she died she re uested that her ashes be scattered over the Alabama Hills. No one quite matched

Barbara Stanwyck’s strutting feistiness.

The Love Goddess of the 1940s - Rita Hayworth also made only one fi lm in the Alabama Hills - The Loves of Carmen 1 8 . nd this fi lm was also made with Glenn Ford who it seems had a romantic Lone Pine aff air with his co-star, Rita. One would think that Rita would make a perfect Carmen however this fi lm seems to lack a certain sizzle but the sequences shot out in the Alabama Hills are wonderful to watch. Rita’s Carmen seductively eats an orange and as she drapes herself in the sun across a granite boulder that almost seems to vaporise under her. Poor befuddled Glenn Ford, as Don José, understandably cannot resist her. Rita Hayworth may have had some say in the selection of the Alabama Hills as a key location for this fi lm. This was the fi rst fi lm chosen and co-produced by Hayworth’s production company, the Beckworth Corporation, which gave her approval over her material and production details such as fi lming locations as well as a percentage of the fi lm’s profi ts. 20th Century Fox produced two fabulously entertaining Lone Pine Westerns which feature feisty, spunky female characters. The fi lms were Yellow Sky (William Wellman, 1948) and Rawhide (Henry Hathaway, 1951). The directors, Wellman and Hathaway, both loved strong, tough and assertive female characters and that is what we get in these two fi lms. Anne Baxter, who always saw herself as a serious actor and not a Hollywood personality

Like a spider in a web Natalie Wood snares Tony Curtis in The Great Race (1965)

plays “Mike” - an indomitable, pistol-packing tomboy, she took no lip from the lusty outlaws in Yellow Sky. The year before Yellow Sky was released Baxter won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for her role as Sophie MacDonald in The Razor’s Edge (1946) and a few years later she would receive another Oscar nomination for her performance in All About Eve (1950). Not only does Mike sock Gregory Peck to the ground in Yellow Sky but she also gets to assault Peck’s screen image by requesting that his character, Stretch eliminate his distasteful body odor by bathing post-haste. Another Oscar® winning actress was Susan Hayward – she won hers for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958). In Rawhide, she (Vinnie Holt) and co-star Tyrone Power (Owens) are held hostage by a gang of four murdering prison escapees who are bent on robbing the soon-to-arrive scheduled stagecoach. The couple, with Vinnie’s infant niece (Callie) are virtually locked in a room in the stagecoach relay station. The oppressive claustrophobia of their incarceration within the restricted space contrasts with the grandeur of the Sierra Nevada mountains but Hayward’s Vinnie deals with the so-called woman-tamers and proves to be resourceful and resolute (and like Baxter in Yellow Sky… very handy with a gun!) Another member of the Lone Pine female cohort to win an Oscar® was Joan Fontaine. Joan was the romantic interest for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in George Steven’s ripping epic, Gunga Din (1939). Joan Fontaine won her Oscar® a few years later for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941). A major contributor to Lone Pine movie history is an actress who should have won an Academy Award® but who didn’t. This Hollywood legend was Ida Lupino. And arguably she could have won an Oscar® not only for acting but also for directing. (Ida did win a number of awards including the 1973 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress.) s some fi lm commentators have stated Ida Lupino was one of Hollywood’s best actresses of the 1940s. She supports this claim with her wonderful performance as Marie in High Sierra 1 1 which was fi lmed in and around Lone Pine in 1940. Although Humphrey Bogart’s “Mad Dog” Roy Earle falls from the mountain and dies at the end of the fi lm it is Lupino’s fi nal scene where, through her tears, we can feel that Earle has indeed “crashed through” and found freedom, if only in death. About a dozen years later Ida returned to Lone Pine in 1953 to direct The Hitch-Hiker (1953). The tenacious Ida Lupino was then the only woman director working in Hollywood, and she cleverly maneuvered around daunting gender-based obstacles to direct. Two of her fi lms The Hitch-Hiker and Outrage (1950) - have been selected for the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. The Hitch-Hiker was the fi rst mainstream merican fi lm noir to be directed by a woman. It is a nerve-wracking suspense movie which is now recognized as one of the best movies made in the Lone Pine area. The plot is based on a true story and it tells of two vacationing fi shermen who were taken hostage and systematically terrorized by a sadistic psychopath. The fi lm is brilliantly helmed by Lupino with the very able assistance of ace RKO Pictures cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca. The interior visuals of three men entombed in the late 1940s Plymouth contrasted with the harsh, foreboding, treeless desert of dust and boulders (Alabama Hills) created a very unsettling state of hopelessness.

Far removed from the grim and brutal reality of The Hitch-Hiker was Natalie Wood’s stellar performance as plucky photo ournalist and suff ragette, aggie Dubois in Blake Edwards’ slapstick comedy, The Great Race (1965). Only a small portion of The Great Race was fi lmed in the Lone Pine area but the sequence is pivotal in demonstrating aggie’s doggedness and resourcefulness – she ingeniously uses her carrier pigeons to help The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) who is stuck in the desert without petrol. It is actually a wonderful location and provides a very popular photo opportunity for participants of Lone Pine location tours. aureen ’ ara, ollywood’s ultimate rish lass was in two Lone Pine fi lms. oth are curious considering aureen’s background as they are Arabian-nights adventure sagas set in long-ago Persia. ne, the aptly titled Flame of Araby (1951) sees the ame haired beauty wrestling with Jeff handler out amongst the boulders in the labama ills. The other, Bagdad (1949) makes top use of the Olancha sand dunes fi lling in for the rabian desert. She thought the fi lms were lousy and she is not wrong. She was probably comparing them to the movies she made with John Ford and John Wayne. We have praised a few wonderful women but there are many more and it would be negligent not to also mention some the many women who were not

Felicia Farr stars with Audy Murphy in Hell Bent for Leather (1960).

stars. The gutsy Polly urson, stuntwoman e traordinaire, for one. er amazing fall from-wagon stunt when she was doubling Felicia Farr (another great Lone Pine actress in udie urphy’s Hell Bent for Leather (1960) is jaw-dropping. Independent and profi cient with gun, rope and horse was ail avis, T ’s Annie Oakley (1954 . ail with ale vans The ueen of the owgirls gave girls of the 1 0s two clear positive role models. These girls didn’t want to be uiet and lady like but wanted to play rough and tough with the boys. There have been so many wonderful women who through their stellar star uality, charisma, talent and beauty have added so much to the rich and fascinating fi lm legacy that makes Lone Pine uni ue. arbara Stanwyck, nne a ter, Rita ayworth, Susan ayward and the other ma or actresses who made signifi cant fi lms in the Lone Pine area portrayed strong, intelligent, assertive and capable women who knew how to take care of themselves and were not only the equal of their male counterparts but also women who never

On location in the Lone Pine area Irish lass Maureen O’Hara waits for her next scene in Bagdad (1949)

seemed insignifi cant within the ma estic yet unforgiving landscape of the Sierra Nevada range and the labama ills. These women were the driving force of many fi lms including Rawhide, Yellow Sky and The Violent Men. We salute the ladies of Lone Pine! Lone Pine Festival regulars, Ross Schnioff sky and Warren avey, will beam in via the internet from Australia a multimedia, illustrated talk on the ladies of Lone Pine. The presentation will be in the useum theatre and the guys promise all the usual colored lights, bangs and whistles but nothing to scare the children or horses.

Presentation Friday Oct. 8th 10:30am - 11:30am Museum Theater with Richard W. Bann

It is strongly recommended that you attend this presentation before you take the tour.

Film historian and author, Richard W. Bann presents a video compilation of western excerpts shot at this pastoral venue covering the period from 1926 through 1949.

ncredibly, the many westerns fi lm location books have all ignored the Bar 20 Ranch because until 2011 its storied movie history was unknown, even at our own festival.

Presentation Friday Oct. 8th 12:00 pm - 12:45 pm Museum Theater with Mike Royer

It is strongly recommended that you attend this presentation before you take the tour.

Mike presents a video compilation of John Wayne fi lms emphasizing the directors who helped shape the Hollywood myths of the West that never really was, yet still entertain us to this day. The presentation explores in detail the locations you will visit on the tour.

Presentation Friday Oct. 8th 1:00pm - 1:45 pm Museum Theater with Thomas Kelsey

Please attend this presentation before you take the tour.

Explore the life of the greatest Landscape photographer of the 20th Century. See his life unfold in the Theatre on the big screen from former student Thomas Kelsey and then tour nearby sites where he made enduring images.

His black & white images of Yosemite and the National Parks are regarded by many as the fi nest yet taken, but did you know that many of the photographs he made in the Owens Valley and the Eastern Sierra are considered just as prized as the ones he made in the National Parks? He took images from Manzanar to the Alabama Hills, Mono Lake and Bridgeport. Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco in 1902. He rst visited Yosemite as a 14-year old in 1916 and it changed his life forever.

In the lecture & slide show, photographer omas Kelsey will speak of Ansel Adam’s life, how Adam’s almost became a concert pianist instead of a photographer and later, how he was instrumental in helping to create Kings Canyon National Park.

Presentation Friday Oct. 8th 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Museum Theater with Marc Wanamaker

The presentation will analyze how the B Western got started back to 1909 with the Bison Film Company and the development of the B Western Star and the horses, costuming, side kicks and music used to create a genre of fi lm that became truly an merican cultural icon for over forty years.

Presentation Friday Oct. 8th 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm Museum Theater with Ross Schnioff sky Warren avey

This presentation will bring into focus the very important position that the women fi lmmakers of Lone Pine played in the many fi lms made in the Lone Pine area over the past one hundred years. The women fi lmmakers were not ust decorative but were in many ways powerful role models and added much value to the fi lms they made. t wasn’t ust the men who put Lone Pine on the map. t has been stated that behind every successful man there is a stronger and more empathetic woman. We hope to see you brim full of bonhomie as we visit you all the way across the Pacifi c from the “little” frontier western town of elbourne, ustralia.

Presentation Saturday Oct. 9th 9:00 am - 10:00 am Museum Theater Jay Dee Witney with Moderator Steve Latshaw

fi lmed presentation of the irector’s work is followed by a lively interview by Producer Writer irector and Witney afi cionado, Steve Latshow with the director’s son, Jay ee Witney.

Presentation Saturday Oct 9th 11:00 am - 1:00 pm Auditorium with William Wellman Jr. Wyatt c rea

The irector’s son, William Wellman Jr. and Wyatt c rea, the star, Joel c rea’s grandson, discuss the fi lm and the careers of the star and director. Wellman directed pictures with arbara Stanwyck and c rea worked with her si times. This will be a lively introduction to the fi lm.

Presentation Saturday Oct 9th 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm High School Quad with Rob Word

ur panel discusses the ins and outs of rowing p in ollywood with moderator Rob Word of A Word on Westerns. The panel includes Patrick Wayne, laude Jarman Jr., obby arradine, arby inton, and heryl Rogers arnett. Presentation Saturday Oct. 9th 2:30 pm -5:00 pm Auditorium

Following the screening of Roy Rogers’ fi lm there will be a panel discussion with Steve Latshaw moderating with heryl Rogers arnett and the crew from isual ata edia Services responsible for the remaster.