My first post/
I became a Duke fan waaay back in the 60's watching TV westerns with my manly-man uncle on Sundays. He was a duke fan and a fan of westerns in general. I didn't have a dad, so he was my male role model growing up--my uncle, that is.
Recently, thanks to a TCM western night a couple yrs ago [or was it AMC?] on TV, I fell in love with B westerns. I didn't see many Gene Autry or Roy Rogers westerns before then, but I was hooked. I'm a film guy anyway [NYU film school] and I'm a fan of cinema history in general...silent film, screwball comedies, comedy shorts, etc.
Since then, I've been researching B westerns with no real purpose in mind, but to entertain myself. Obsessed is a word that comes to mind.
Anyway, I discovered a DVD of early Wayne films pre-Stagecoach that I found fascinating--that Wayne was swimming in the poverty-row pictures that would soon be dominated by Gene Autry is amazing to me. Gene is fun and all, but Wayne is a man. Gene seems too doughy to take seriously as a movie hero. Roy Rogers was more in the Wayne mold.
And since I live the SF valley in the Los Angeles area, I knew there were old movie ranches nearby...though I didn't know where exactly. These were ranches that were used to make movies in the B western golden age....some with western town sets. Roy had one, Gene had one [Melody Ranch], Crash Corrigan had one, Disney had one, Republic had one, etc.
So it was a few months ago, I was looking for a place to hike and lose some weight. I thought I'd stick to the north end of the SF valley...close to the hills/mountains to find some good hiking trails.
Lo and behold, I came across Corriganville Park...the remains of Crash Corrigan's Movie ranch. I parked in the near-empty lot and started to explore. I didn't expect much, but I was surprised to find photo-markers that pointed out some of the ranch's main features. Of note are the Jungle Jim lake [a concrete-lined artificial lake that's not been filled with water since the 60's, I think]. I saw the "lake" in a Gene Autry western just today [The Old West].
The western town is gone--the buildings having been burned down in two brush fires in the 70's---too bad. But the foundations are still there, so sharp-eyed fans like me can see where film cameras were set up from certain shots in the old films.
Back to the John Wayne connection--one of the major sets on the ranch was the Fort Apache set from the John Ford/John Wayne film.
Just yesterday I saw the set featured throughout a film called Escape from Fort Bravo [the sets were reused a buncha times in different films]. I had been hiking there just the day before. The terrain was familiar, but sadly the buildings are gone now.
The day before, too, I was able to locate the area of the ranch/park where the underground bunker in Fort Apache was located--the trading post run by the corrupt Indian official in the movie. Of course, not much remains of the set except for a ditch.
The original ranch was about 2,000 acres. Thanks to Bob Hope buying the ranch and selling parcels off to developers, only about 300 acres remain as a state park. It's still an amazing place, though--I think my favorite place on earth [next to my bed].
I try to hike there at least twice a week. Five, if I can manage it.
Down the road is what's left of the Iverson Ranch--where the famed Lone Ranger rock can still be seen [from the show's opening theme sequence]. Since I was a kid I wondered where that rock was. I was on the East coast then...who knew yrs later it'd be a few miles from my house?
Kurt Hathaway
film freak
Western nut
