Fromtheeditor // insight
“We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls.” – Roger Ebert.
f not quite the windows to the soul, movies do allow us entry into the creative world of another. The way a scene is shot, the lighting that is chosen, the rise or sweep of the music, and the angle, speed and distance of the camera all work together with a single and defined purpose: to convey the mood and theme of the story. The characters and the dialogue may be what we take away from the film as quotable sound bites, but the many elements that happen behind the scenes—a good number of them prior to a single costuming moment or director yelling “action”—are part of what make the iconic films what they are to us today. Without the grip (the crew member responsible for building, maintaining and setting up all of the camera support equipment) and the lighting technician, we wouldn’t have gotten quite the same delivery of Clark Gable’s “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!” as Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind” (1939), or even Tom Hanks’ “There’s no crying in baseball!” from “A League of Their Own” (1992). And without the boom operator and the special effects supervisor, we wouldn’t have had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line, “I’ll be back” from “The Terminator” (1984). All three of the above movies have a direct connection to Sun Valley, and ever since the opening of the Resort in 1936, Sun Valley has had a long and storied relationship with Hollywood celebrities, producers and directors. The “Sun Valley Special,” a Union Pacific train with direct service from Los Angeles’s Central Station, whisked the likes of Clark Gable, Gary Cooper (a frequent hunting and fishing partner to Ernest Hemingway), Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn, Joan Bennett, Claudette Colbert, Madeleine Carroll, Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball to Shoshone, and then by coach to Sun Valley. In more recent years, Sun Valley has played host to celebrities such as Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Keaton and Adam West (both of whom played Batman in different movies or on TV), Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Dreyfuss and Drew Barrymore. But it has been the men and women behind the scenes who have helped define the true movie connection here. After all, it was famous producer David O. Selznick of “Gone with the Wind” fame (ranked as the highest grossing film ever made when adjusted for inflation) who helped fill the seats on Union Pacific chairman and resort owner Averell Harriman’s first “Sun Valley Special” in December 1936 for the grand opening of Sun Valley Resort. Selznick, who can also be credited with bringing Alfred Hitchcock to America, wasn’t the only Hollywood kingpin with ties to Sun Valley. Darryl Zanuck, who helped found three of the major studios (20th Century Pictures, MGM, 20th Century-Fox) and his son Richard Zanuck, who can be credited with launching the careers of Tim Burton and Steven Spielberg, both had ties to Sun Valley, as did Samuel Goldwyn (of MGM), “King Kong” producer Merian Cooper and, more recently, comedy writing and producing duo Bobby and Peter Farrelly (of “Dumb and Dumber,” “My, Myself and Irene” and “There’s Something About Mary” fame). So while Marilyn Monroe, who became one of Sun Valley’s most iconic movie stars with the filming of 20th Century Fox’s “Bus Stop” here in 1956, graces our cover in the most stunning rendition of an Idaho potato sack we have seen to date, this issue of Sun Valley Magazine—our special Film Issue—is about so much more than Hollywood celebrity. It is about storytelling and how that most basic of human activities pulls us together. It is about the magic and the mystery, and even, a little bit about the wonder of film, which is perhaps what drew stars like Marilyn Monroe to the industry and what draws each of us to the theaters again and again.
publisher
24 sunvalleymag.com | Winter 2015
Laurie Sammis / editor-in-chief
photograph: FiveB studios
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