The Lone Pine Film Festival 20th AnniversaryCelebration

Inside you'll find more than 100 pages of rarephotographs and fact-filledarticles, written by notedfilm historians who havechronicled filmmaking inLone Pine!

Found 65 YearsAfter It Vanished:The Classic 1943Republic SerialShot In Lone Pine!

A Tribute ToFilm FestivalCo-FounderDave Holland

A PictorialRetrospective:20 Years OfLone Pine’sFilm Festivals

ED HULSE • RICHARD W. BANN • CHRIS LANGLEY

$12 95

COVER-LP2009-FINAL-revised 7/21/12 11:08 PM Page 1

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LONE PINELONE PINEIN THE MOVIESIN THE MOVIESC O M M E M O R A T I V E E D I T I O NC O M M E M O R A T I V E E D I T I O N

Ed Hulse—Editor

Packy Smith—Publisher

Mike Bifulco—Art Director

Elizabeth Gulick—Design Assistance

Richard W. Bann Melody OgburnEd Hulse Sam ShermanChris Langley Dave SmirnoffDon Kelsen Packy Smith

—Contributors

Lone Pine in the Movies:Commemorative Editionwas published by Riverwood Press for the20th anniversary of the Lone Pine FilmFestival. The entire contents of this issue arecopyright © 2009 Riverwood Press. Nothingmay be reprinted in whole or in part withoutwritten permission from the publisher.

Photo and Art Acknowledgments:Columbia Pictures Corporation, Don Kelsen,Paramount Pictures, Republic PicturesCorporation, RKO-Radio Pictures, Universal-International Pictures, Warner Brothers.

2 Rediscovering a "Lost" SerialFound at last: the legendary 1943 Republic chapter play, Daredevilsof the West.

12 A Tribute to Dave HollandRemembering the Film Festival co-founder and Lone Pine's biggestbooster.

20 Twenty Years of Lone PinePhotographer Don Kelsen's retrospective look at the Film Festival'sfirst two decades.

34 Of Movies and MountainsVeteran director Robert F. Hill's cinematic love affair with theAlabama Hills.

47 Hopalong Cassidy: Birth of a LegendRevisiting the 1935 film that launched the most popular series of "B"Westerns ever made.

57 The Last of the Big-Screen CowboysAudie Murphy's Westerns, many of them shot in Lone Pine, closedout an era.

67 On the Road with Ida LupinoAs co-star of High Sierra and director of The Hitch-Hiker, she made hermark on Lone Pine.

74 Gunga Din: The Making of a ClassicChronicling the long, arduous production of this beloved adventurefilm, a true masterwork.

83 Spotlight on Lone PineJohn Wayne in I Cover the War (1937) and Randolph Scott in SevenMen from Now (1956).

94 B-Western RoundupKen Maynard in The Cattle Thief (1936) and Gene Autry in Boots andSaddles (1937).

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Decades ago, when geographically and chronologicallydisparate film buffs and collectors coalesced to form

what today is known as organized serial fandom, groupconversations frequently revolved around the fabled “lost”chapter plays: those cliffhanging classics of the Thirties andForties that had not seen the light of a projector lamp sincetheir theatrical playoffs many years before.

Most of these long-unseen jewels were never released totelevision or licensed for non-theatrical exhibition due tounderlying copyright issues relating to characters adaptedfrom other media, including the Lone Ranger, the GreenHornet, Jungle Jim, Red Ryder, Secret Agent X-9, and Kingof the Royal Mounted. In some cases, the respective rightsholders had subsequently licensed their valuable proper-ties to other studios and producers. In others, the charac-ters in question—no longer thought to be commerciallyviable—languished in a cinematic limbo, their shadow im-ages eventually fading from sight and memory both.

One particularly tantalizing title, however, evaded serialfans for reasons that remain unknown even today, morethan 65 years after it was made and released. Daredevils ofthe West, a 12-chapter opus produced by Republic Pictures

in 1943, didn’t have any rights issues; its characters, set-tings, and situations were dreamed up by the company’sscreenwriters. In 1951, when the independent studiobegan marketing to a new medium via its Hollywood Tel-evision Service subsidiary, most of the serials not builtaround licensed characters were made available in recon-figured versions consisting of six half-hour episodes. Andyet, Daredevils was nowhere to be found.

What makes this omission especially puzzling is the factthat the serial’s leading man, Allan Lane, was at that time anextremely popular star in Republic-made Western featurefilms geared for the Saturday-matinee market. As “Rocky”Lane, he routinely rated high on exhibitors’ lists of the topten movie cowboys. It seems odd that Republic missed suchan obvious bet: Daredevils of the West would undoubtedlyhave been extremely successful in TV syndication.

Even more frustrating to chapter-play aficionados tooyoung to have seen Daredevils during its 1943 theatricalrun were the appraisals of older fans who’d been more for-tunate. The dean of the first-generation serial buffs, AlanG. Barbour, lavished praise on Daredevils in his booksDays of Thrills and Adventure (New York: The Macmillan

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REDISCOVERING A “LOST” SERIALBy Ed Hulse

Allan Lane andKay Aldridge, theKing and Queenof Republic serials.

Company, 1970) and Cliffhanger (Secaucus, NJ: TheCitadel Press, 1977), calling it “a perfect serial” and “themost action-packed of all Republic’s Western serial ad-ventures.” Alan had seen Daredevils of the West as a breath-less 11-year-old boy in Oakland, CA’s Broadway Theatre,and it so impressed him that, 30 years later, he could stillremember specific sequences from individual episodes.His recollections alternately enthralled and frustratedyounger devotees convinced that the chapter play wouldnever be screened again.

The 29th of Republic’s 66 serials, Daredevils of the Westwas the sixth produced by William J. O’Sullivan, the

dapper Irishman who has never been recognized for hiscontributions to that exacting cinematic form known as thechapter play. It’s not just coincidence that, under his stew-ardship, the company’s episodic epics settled into the fast-ac-tion format for which they are best remembered. His serials

ushered in the era of the lengthy, set-demolishing fistfightand the increasing reliance on exploding miniatures(painstakingly crafted by special-effects wizards Howardand Theodore Lydecker) for chapter-ending thrills. He re-worked a long-established but malleable formula, refiningand compressing it as one would transform a lump of coalinto a diamond—a hard, smooth, glittering thing, perfect inits own way but limited in its functionality. Before O’Sulli-van assumed control of Republic’s serial unit in 1941, thecompany’s chapter-play producers sought, and generally ob-tained, variety in the scope and style of their films. They em-ployed ingenious methods to imbue their serials withproduction values that belied their relatively meager budg-ets. They pushed the writers to devise inventive cliffhangersand staged major sequences in unusual real-life locations—gas plants, electric plants, brick factories, lumber yards, andthe like. They took the form seriously and never allowed anyhint of condescension to creep into the final product.

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Things heat up for Duke Cameron (Allan Lane) when he tangles with henchman Miller (Tom London).

O’Sullivan took the unit on location when the script de-manded, but on his watch Republic serials were increas-ingly made on studio sound stages and around the backlot. The chapter endings became repetitious, their resolu-tions predictable: run out of the warehouse before it blowsup, jump from the speeding car before it plunges over thecliff, wake up and roll away before the heavy object pinsyour unconscious form to the floor. The perils alwayslooked real, thanks to careful staging, daring stuntwork,and skillful editing, but after a while they evoked only feel-ings of déjà vu.

Perhaps we quibble. It can be argued that the effective-ness of any chapter play depends on the willingness of

its viewers—young or old—to suspend disbelief and ac-cept the dubious proposition that the world being shownon the screen functions not according to natural law, butto that vague, amorphous system of governance known tothe form’s True Believers as “serial logic.” On that basis,O’Sullivan’s nine thrillers—which include Spy Smasher,Perils of Nyoka, King of the Mounties, G-Men vs. the BlackDragon, Secret Service in Darkest Africa, The Masked Mar-

vel, Captain America, and The Tiger Woman, in additionto Daredevils of the West—must all be judged wildly andjoyously successful. They were extremely popular with thepredominantly youthful audiences for which they wereoriginally intended, and they remained popular with fanswho discovered them later via TV exposure and home-video availability.

Daredevils was scheduled for release during the 1942-43 theatrical season. (At that time, movie seasons beganaround Labor Day and continued through the late spring.)It was touted as a Western serial with a historical theme;early promotional pieces carried the legend, “Their brav-ery welded America together!” Originally Republic mayhave intended to imbue this serial with the flavor of suchfrontier epics as The Iron Horse or Union Pacific, but in-stead of chronicling the construction of the transconti-nental railroad, Daredevils dealt with the expansion of astagecoach line and the building of a road traversing thelawless Comanche Strip.

O’Sullivan’s crack team of writers—Ronald Davidson,Basil Dickey, William Lively, Joseph O’Donnell, and JosephPoland, veteran serial scribes all—were instructed to cram

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Ward (William Haade) and pals (George Lewis, Ed Parker) get the drop on Duke and the sheriff (Jack Rockwell).

the planned 12 episodes with action while avoiding the interpolation of sequences whose realization would call forextravagant expenditures. Production costs were escalat-ing, and the serials immediately preceding Daredevils onthe ’42-43 slate had gone considerably over budget. David-son and his fellow scenarists devised a straightforward plotdevoid of any mystery element or narrative complexity.They came up with simple situations linking one action se-quence to the next—chases followed by fights followed byshootouts, and so forth.

Calculating production costs based on the first-draft“estimating” script prepared especially for that purpose,O’Sullivan and the front-office bean counters arrived at aprojection budget of $140,000—quite a modest sum for aserial whose total running time would exceed three hours,and less than the major studios were spending on 70-

minute “B” pictures.In the interest of giving the serial some production

value that suggested an epic, O’Sullivan was allowed tobring his cast and crew up to Lone Pine for location shoot-ing. The picturesque Alabama Hills, with the Sierras forbackground, would make a fine backdrop for chase scenesand pitched battles between good guys and bad guys. Re-public relied heavily on Iverson’s Ranch for exterior workon its Westerns and serials. So did other studios. As a re-sult, that San Fernando Valley property had become overlyfamiliar to audiences. Shooting at Lone Pine would be awelcome change of pace for the serial crew, which had notvisited Inyo County since late 1937, when chapter-play di-rectors William Witney and John English filmed most ofthe exteriors for The Lone Ranger, released early the fol-lowing year.

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Above: Red (Eddie Acuff) and June (Kay Aldridge) find Duke victorious after fighting with renegade Indians.Next Page: June is attacked and overpowered by renegades working under the directions of Dexter and Ward.

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Witney, who had helmed all the O’Sullivan-producedserials to date, had just entered the Marine Corps andwould be gone for the duration of World War II. Englishhad quit making chapter plays in 1941 after completingDick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. and was cranking out “B” West-erns and melodramas when O’Sullivan had him tem-porarily reassigned to the serial unit. Since he had alreadyworked in Lone Pine, English was the logical choice to di-rect Daredevils of the West.

The leading roles were given to Allan Lane, who hadpreviously starred in two Republic serials based on ZaneGrey’s King of the Royal Mounted, and Kay Aldridge, whohad recently assayed the title role in Perils of Nyoka, one ofthe studio’s most fondly remembered chapter plays. As afree-lance actor, Lane hadn’t been getting much work. Norhad Aldridge, a former model and 20th Century-Fox con-tract player. But they rated high with serial audiences and,as it turned out, made an attractive screen team—so muchso that, in promoting Daredevils, Republic referred tothem as “their majesties, the King and Queen of serials.”

Villain roles went to accomplished character actors. For-mer silent-screen star Robert Frazer and perennial West-ern heavy Ted Adams played the master schemersdetermined to sabotage the stagecoach line. Doing theirduty work were William Haade, a native New Yorker nor-mally seen as a gangster or some other urban dweller, and

George J. Lewis, a juvenile leading man of the late silent eraand a one-time serial star. Rounding out the principal play-ers were Eddie Acuff, a breezy sidekick type, and sagebrushstalwart Budd Buster, cast as an old-time frontiersman.

The larger supporting parts went to such veteran actorsas Kenneth Harlan, Rex Lease, Edmund Cobb, and Her-bert Rawlinson—each of whom, by the way, was a formerserial star. Many of the bit roles were taken by Republic’sstunt crew, headed by Tom Steele, who doubled for Lane.Duke Green, Ken Terrell, Eddie Parker, Allen Pomeroy,Duke Taylor, and the Yrigoyen brothers, Joe and Bill, mademultiple on-screen appearances over the course of the 12chapters. Even Thelma “Babe” DeFreest, Aldridge’s dou-ble, was pressed into service as an extra.

Principal photography got underway on January 9,1943. Producer O’Sullivan had worked closely with Re-public’s various department heads to outfit the productionas handsomely as possible while remaining within hisbudget. As they typically did, the writers crafted each indi-vidual episode as economically as possible, setting majorsequences in and around the studio. Canyon City, a bustlingfrontier town, was represented by Western Street, the back-lot stretch most frequently employed in horse-opera pro-duction. Standing in for Red Gulch, the lawless communityto which the heavies frequently retreated, was the assort-ment of rustic houses and cabins known as Brazos Street

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Duke finally has a long-awaited showdown with Higby (Ted Adams, back to camera) and Dexter (Robert Frazer).

(constructed for the 1939 Sam Houston biopic, Man ofConquest). More than half of a soundstage was outfitted toresemble a massive distillery, which would be the scene ofa lengthy fistfight and a memorable cliffhanger ending. Thefamiliar ranch house and barn built for a 1940 Gene Autrystarrer, Melody Ranch, figured prominently in the thrillingconclusion of Chapter Ten. The modular network of man-made caves and tunnels, which stood at the northernmostpart of the back lot, underwent rearrangement to providesettings for several major sequences.

Serial makers naturally preferred to stage elaborate ac-tion scenes in the controlled environment of a studio lot,where contingencies could be anticipated and more easilyplanned for. But even the most rigorous preparationssometimes weren’t sufficient. In a 1989 interview, stuntramrod Tom Steele recalled that a jailhouse fire, shot forthe Chapter Two climax, blazed faster than expected andvery nearly trapped him when it got out of control.

The location phase of production offered plenty of lo-gistical challenges, but what bothered cast and crew mostwas the weather. Reminiscing about Daredevils of the Westin a 1979 interview with this writer, Kay Aldridge said ofher sojourn in Lone Pine: “It was beautiful country but,

Lord, was it cold! To get a full day’s shooting in, you see, wehad to get up very early in the morning—while it was stilldark—and be out in the hills ready to go when the suncame up over the mountains.

“My costume included this light cotton blouse and asleeveless, fringed vest, but that wasn’t nearly enough upthere in January! I can still remember being out there, shiv-ering, all bundled up in a coat, and then having Jack [Eng-lish] put me on a stagecoach or a horse or something, andthen shoot the scene. Well, just as soon as he said ‘cut,’ Iwould jump off the wagon or whatever and wrap myselfup in that coat again. Sometimes I would ruin the take be-cause my teeth were chattering so, I could hardly get mylines out. Of course, it would warm up during the day asthe sun got higher in the sky, but, oh, those mornings! Iremember some of the cowboys, you know, they woulddisappear around the far side of one of those big rocks, andthen come back a minute later wiping their mouths. I thinkthey had a little something in some flasks to make themwarm, you know?”

On screen there was scant evidence to suggest that thehigh-desert country wasn’t fiery hot. Keen-eyed viewersmight see some snow caps on some Sierra peaks far in the

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Back in uniform for the serial's big finale, Duke leads his cavalry troop to the rescue of June and Red.

background, but otherwise the winter weather remainedundetectable. And, of course, midday warming tookenough chill out of the air to enable actors to deliver theirlines without the frosty breath that would signaled cooltemperatures.

Climatory challenges didn’t hinder the crew from get-ting spectacular scenic effects. Thanks to Jack English’s di-rection, Daredevils of the West boasted some of the mostexciting outdoor action ever lensed for a Republic serial.Chapter One gets the chapter play off to a rousing startwith an eight-minute tour de force that begins with a wildwagon chase along Movie Road, continues with a lengthyshootout at the stagecoach line’s road camp, and culmi-nates in a pitched hand-to-hand battle between the heroesand their Indian attackers.

This breathtaking sequence contains a shot that, to thebest of this fan’s knowledge, is unique in serial history. Itbegins with a “running insert” that has Republic’s cameracar racing along the speeding wagon containing stuntersBill Yrigoyen and Babe DeFreest (doubling Eddie Acuffand Kay Aldridge, respectively). We can see the girl in theback of the wagon, firing at unseen pursuers. The cameracar pulls ahead, allowing us a view of Indians galloping full

tilt and gaining rapidly on the pair. Then the car zoomsforward and cuts across Movie Road directly in front of thewagon, while the camera swivels to face the onrushingteam, which appears to be only a few feet behind. One canonly imagine how thrilling this shot must have seemed tohowling Saturday-matinee audiences, viewing it on a 40-foot theater screen.

That initial stanza ended with another, slightly lesslengthy chase, this time involving an explosives-ladenstagecoach on which Aldridge’s character is a prisoner.Lane’s character, in hot pursuit, manages to shoot thedriver from his perch but apparently fails to catch the out-of-control stage before it careens into a mountain side andexplodes. Crystal-clear photography, expert stunt work,and exceptionally precise editing makes this sequence par-ticularly memorable.

Despite O’Sullivan’s careful planning, Daredevils turnedout to be a more expensive proposition than originally en-visioned. English finished the final scene on February 13,by which time the serial had been in production for sixweeks, more than a week longer than estimated. Its nega-tive cost ended up being $167,000, nearly 20 percent overbudget.

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From Chapter One: Duke Cameron (on horseback) chases a hijacked stage to recover stolen payroll money.

Released on May 1, 1943, Daredevils of the West openedto favorable if unenthusiastic reviews. Critics for themovie-industry trade journals noted that its surfeit of ac-tion would likely make it a favorite of regular serial atten-dees but lamented the chapter play’s paucity of plot. Morethan one mentioned that Daredevils barely had enoughstory for one of Republic’s six-reel “B” Westerns. It wasprobably a fair criticism.

Chapter One, “Valley of Death,” finds Canyon City inthe 1880s bustling with activity. Having been awarded agrant from the Federal Franchise Commission to expandhis stagecoach line, Ezra Foster (Charles Miller), is racingto complete a new road through the lawless ComancheStrip so that he can make the regular runs for which hiscontract calls. Failure to do so by the deadline will result ina forfeit of the franchise. Foster has capable assistants inhis daughter, June (Kay Aldridge), and his foreman, RedKelly (Eddie Acuff).

Unbeknownst to the Fosters, their supposed friend,local entrepreneur Martin Dexter (Robert Frazer), wantsthem to fail. He is intent on owning the 500,000 acres thatwill be up for grabs if the stage line loses its franchise. Tothis end he conspires with lawyer Silas Higby (Ted Adams)and henchmen Ward (William Haade) and Turner(George J. Lewis), who hire renegade Indians to attack theroad crew. Foster loses his life during one such raid despiteassistance from U. S. Cavalry Captain Duke Cameron, whois soon detailed to Canyon City to work undercover, help-ing June and Red complete the road while trying to findout who is behind these outrages.

The opening episode draws to a close with the afore-mentioned chase and explosion, which results from

Duke’s attempt to recover stolen payroll money. Subse-quent chapters revolve around the efforts of the Foster fac-tion to remove obstacles tossed in their way by the Dexterfaction. Finally, the crooked financier and his cronies arerevealed as malefactors and either captured or killed byDuke, whose last-minute efforts enable June and Red tocomplete their trial run along the finished road, meetingthe deadline with barely a second to spare.

Daredevils made the rounds of the nation’s movie the-aters throughout the remainder of 1943 and most of1944. There’s no evidence to suggest that it was any lessprofitable than the other Republic serials of the period,yet it disappeared from view and remained unseen fordecades. Well, mostly unseen: chunks of it were appro-priated for use as stock footage in Republic’s 1949 serial,Ghost of Zorro.

In the mid-Seventies, record producer Snuff Garrettfounded the Nostalgia Merchant to market 16mm prints of

classic Westerns and serials he licensed from Republic.Daredevils of the West was high on the list of films heplanned to offer, but an extensive search of Republic’svaults failed to yield a complete print. Ultimately, Garrettmade available a brace of chapters, Two and Five. Hestruck prints of Four and Twelve but decided against of-fering them. Word spread like wildfire through serial fan-dom: Daredevils would remain a lost serial.

Further investigation revealed the fact that in 1946, Re-public Pictures sold a 35mm negative (picture only) toWilliam Boyd, who had just acquired the rights to Hopa-long Cassidy, the character he had brought to the screen adecade earlier in films produced by Harry “Pop” Shermanfor distribution by Paramount. Typecast as Hoppy, Boyddecided to make his own Cassidy film after Sherman lostinterest. He planned to shoot many of the films in LonePine, and presumably thought that Daredevils would pro-vide reels of stock footage he could shoehorn into the newHoppy Westerns to give them added production value.Strangely, he never used so much as a single frame fromthe serial in any of the 12 feature films he produced overthe next two years.

A successor-in-interest to the Hopalong Cassidy char-acter unearthed the Daredevils negative some years agowhile inspecting his film holdings. He generously madeavailable a mute print of Chapter One to the Lone PineFilm Festival, which screened it in 1999.

It was long assumed that Illinois advertising executiveJack Mathis, official chronicler of all things Republic,

owned a complete print of Daredevils of the West. In theearly Seventies he had covered it in his series of“Cliffhanger Ending and Escape Pictorial” booklets, re-producing frames from all 11 chapter endings. But Mathisresisted all entreaties from serial fans to make it availablefor screening or purchase. After Jack’s death in 2005, hisentire collection of Republic memorabilia—including16mm prints of many of the studio’s rarest films, which heacquired only after spending considerable time and ex-pense—was donated to Brigham Young University inProvo, Utah. Its preservation has been championed byBYU’s Professor of American Studies, James D’Arc, whoarranged to screen Daredevils last year in Pennsylvania fora small group of serial fans. These aficionados immediatelyproclaimed it as one of the best sound-era chapter playsever made.

This year, attendees of the Lone Pine Film Festival willhave the opportunity to render their own judgments:James D’Arc has graciously consented to allow the serial tobe screened where it was made, more than 65 years ago.The Daredevils have finally come home. ■

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