Sedona’s rush to silver screen

Janeen Trevillyan, a historian with the Sedona Historical Society, speaks at an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute brown bag program on Tuesday, Nov. 28, at the Yavapai College campus in Clarkdale. Trevillyan discussed the history of Hollywood movies, mostly Westerns that have been shot in Sedona over the last 100 years. Daulton Venglar/Larson Newspapers

While Jerome’s history grew out of copper and gold mining in the Mingus Mountains, a large portion of Sedona’s history was intertwined with that of the silver screen, with nearly 100 movies being filmed among the red rocks during the Golden Age of the American Western from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Janeen Trevillyan, a historian with the Sedona Historical Society and the Sedona Heritage Museum, made an appearance at the Yavapai College Verde Valley Campus in Clarkdale on Tuesday, Nov. 28, to discuss the history of movie-making in Sedona as part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute’s Brown Bag series.

In “1923, 100 years ago, the very first film [Zane Grey’s ‘Call of the Canyon’] was made in Sedona, and since that time there’s been almost 100 feature films made in the vicinity of Sedona and our natural beauty,” Trevillyan said. “It started in black and white, moved into Technicolor … and it was one of the few industries Sedona’s ever had. We went from agriculture to the movie industry and then to the tourism industry.”

The rise of filmmaking in Sedona coincided with the decline of agriculture and the growth of modern consumerism as the nation became increasingly urbanized.

The origins of Sedona’s modern tourism industry can be traced in part to the movie industry, reflecting both the end of the physical American frontier and the embodiment of how the nation saw its own history played out in movie theatres.

“When John Wayne came to Sedona to make a film in 1944, called ‘Tall in the Saddle,’ that’s when everything changed in terms of Sedona getting a lot of repeat business and attracting a lot of movie crews,” Trevillyan said.

“Tall in the Saddle” is a Western film shot in the Sedona area starring John Wayne and Ella Raines. the film is about a tough quiet cowboy who arrives at an Arizona town and discovers that the rancher who hired him has been murdered and that the kindhearted young woman who just inherited the ranch is being manipulated by her overbearing aunt and a scheming Judge who are planning to steal her inheritance. Here a posse rides across what is now West Sedona near the Foothills South subdivision with Capital Butte, Sugarloaf and Coffee Pot Rock in the background.
Photo courtesy of Bob Bradshaw

“He’d met the movie outfitter in Flagstaff named Oscar Giles, the company was the Anderson Boarding and Supply company and they were a cattle outfitting operation. But they had expanded into supporting the movie crews by providing things that movie crews need, including catering.”

A still from “Tall in the Saddle.” Photo courtesy of RKO Pictures

Wayne announced that he was going to produce and star in his next movie, “Angel and the Badman.”

John Wayne and Gail Russell on the farm set of “Angel and the Badman” in 1947. Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte appear in the distance. Photo courtesy of Sedona Heritage Museum #2016.30.2

“Giles and Wayne made [an] agreement that if Wayne would bring his film crew to Sedona, Giles would build the first motel in Sedona,” Trevillyan said. “Prior to that, if you were making a movie here, you were living out of a tent, or you were driving down gravel road switchbacks every day from Flagstaff. Maybe you were lucky enough to rent a house, but there were no motels in Sedona.”

The Quaker farm set, later to become the Chapel area subdivisions. Photo courtesy of Sedona Heritage Museum #1000.2.758.

Giles had an ambition to replace the aging structures of the Civilian Conservation Corps camp and eventually was able to do so with the Sedona Lodge. The lodge, which stood where the Arabella Hotel is currently located, was designed to accommodate 300 people and two film crews. Following Wayne’s commitment to shoot the film in Sedona, construction of the Sedona Lodge commenced to coincide with the movie’s production.

The movie industry in Sedona served as an income source for many locals, as tourism at the time was limited to two to three months out of the year. Carpenters, cowboys and cooks were all needed. Locals who took jobs in the industry might be providing onset security, acting or leasing their livestock, like Faye Crenshaw, who owned around a thousand acres of ranchland near where the Hilton in the Village of Oak Creek currently stands.

Stars Glenn Ford and Edmond O’Brien pose for a photo with Faye Crenshaw during the wrap party for the 1951 movie “The Redhead and the Cowboy.” Photo courtesy of Sedona Heritage Museum #1000.2

“She would rent out her animals,” Trevillyan said. “She was a riding double for a lot of the women’s stars in these movies and she would ride whenever they needed somebody to ride fast through brush, and that would be Faye. Faye Crenshaw noticed what was happening and, smart woman she was, [in] 1950 she put a sign out and was the first licensed realtor in Sedona. Because she could tell where this was going to take the whole community, stars and crews patronized the local stores, the bars and they did sometimes stay in private homes. It all meant cash to the town.”

Sedona’s film era began to come to an end, at least for famed director Delmer Daves, who directed the original “3:10 to Yuma,” in 1956 while he was shooting “The Last Wagon.” Aircraft noise from the airport on Table Top Mesa that had been completed the previous year kept interfering with his audio recording.

The cast and crew of ‘3:10 to Yuma’ only spent two days in Sedona in 1956, as it was getting harder and harder to make a Western film as housing developments started popping up everywhere in town. What filming they did was mostly at the Western town set in West Sedona with Coffee Pot Rock in the background. Whereas Sedona had once hosted several film crews per year, only a handful of high-profile features would be made in Sedona in the next 10 years.
Photo courtesy of Sedona Heritage Museum #1000.1.2013

“These guys were trying to shoot between takeoffs and landings,” Trevillyan explained. “[Daves] said it came to him why he wouldn’t be able to come back to Sedona and make a Western anymore when he went down to Phoenix and got on the plane to fly home. And he pulled out a little airline brochure for Frontier Airlines and the brochure advertised, ‘Fly Frontier Airlines between Phoenix and Winslow. We fly over spectacular Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon, the setting of many major motion pictures.’”

Henry Fonda ridding a horse on the top of Schnebly Hill filming part of the opening montage of the 1968 movie “Firecreek.”
Photo courtesy of the Elizabeth Rigby Collection/Sedona Heritage Museum

Movie production in Sedona would continue for another decade, but modernity was encroaching on the collective dream of Western movies and the genre was waning in popularity.

“It’s the New West!,” proudly proclaimed the trailer for the 1965 bawdy modern comedy movie “The Rounders,” starring genre stalwarts Glen Ford and Henry Fonda. “Where the old swimming hole is now the state fish hatchery,” referring to the Page Springs Hatchery where some of the scenes were shot.

The end of Sedona’s run as the backdrop for Westerns, Trevillyan said, was the Elvis vehicle “Stay Away, Joe,” another comedy set in contemporary 1968 in which “The King” played the half-Navajo Joe Lightcloud.

Elvis Presley made what is arguably his worst film in Sedona in 1967 with “Stay Away Joe.” Co-star Susan Trustmann and Elvis were joined by director Peter Tewsbury and producer Douglas Laurence in front of the First National Bank of Arizona in Uptown at Forest Road and State Route 89A. This bank is now the location of Cheers, the T-shirt and gift shop.
Photo courtesy of the Elizabeth Rigby Collection/Sedona Heritage Museum 1996.1

In the film, “Joe Lightcloud persuades his Congressman to give him 20 heifers and a prize bull so he and his father, Charlie, can prove that the Navajos can successfully raise cattle on the reservation,” according to Letterbox. “If their experiment is successful, then the government will help all the Navajo people. But Joe’s friend, Bronc Hoverty, accidentally barbecues the prize bull, while Joe sells the heifers to buy plumbing and other home improvements for his stepmother.”

Elvis Presley in Sedona during the production of “Stay, Away Joe.” Sedona Liquor’s business also had a boom during movie productions, narcotics also tended to follow film crews.
Photo courtesy of the Elizabeth Rigby Collection/Sedona Heritage Museum 2018.22

Trevillyan charitably described it as “probably the worst movie Elvis ever made, [but] we are very proud to say it was made in Sedona.”

“In Sedona we were never a transportation hub, never had a factory, [we] didn’t have mining,” Trevillyan said. “When you look at other places in the country, locals may say, ‘Our town was created because the train came through.’ That’s not the reason Sedona is here. Because we didn’t have any of those things. But when you look at our economy, we start with agriculture, we go to movies, and we go to tourism … Maybe that’s the legacy?”

Joseph K Giddens

Joseph K. Giddens grew up in southern Arizona and studied natural resources at the University of Arizona. He later joined the National Park Service in many different roles focusing on geoscience throughout the West. Drawn to deep time and ancient landscapes he’s worked at: Dinosaur National Monument, Petrified Forest National Park, Badlands National Park and Saguaro National Park among several other public land sites. Prior to joining Sedona Red Rock News, he worked for several Tucson outlets as well as the Williams-Grand Canyon News and the Navajo-Hopi Observer. He frequently is reading historic issues of the Tombstone Epithet newspaper and daydreaming about rockhounding. Contact him at jgiddens@larsonnewspapers.com or (928) 282-7795 ext. 122.

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