WE'RE DOING OK!

Sixty-five years ago this summer, we sent Allen C. Reed to Southern Arizona to do a story about the filming of ‘Oklahoma!,’ which opened to rave reviews in 1955. Today, the movie still rates a 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and a new production of the play debuted on Broadway in April — it's the fifth since the original production opened on March 31, 1943. It's an old story that never seems to get old.

BY ROBERT STIEVE · PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALLEN C. REED

BRENT REED ISN'T OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER his father's summer visit to the San Rafael Valley. He was just a hypothetical in 1954. He does, however, remember his dad talking about Fred Zinnemann, the director of Oklahoma!, who would become a good friend to Allen C. Reed.

"My dad had a way of earning the respect and trust of the movie people," Brent says, "which made those folks unusually accessible to him. During the filming of The Searchers in Monument Valley, he allegedly was the only photographer or journalist that John Ford, the mercurial director, would allow on the set."

Fred Zinnemann felt the same way, and put it in writing: "The advance copy of Arizona Highways arrived a couple of days ago," he wrote in a March 14, 1955, letter to the photographer. "I am afraid that most of us in the course of our work in motion pictures have become conditioned to the aggressive type of newspaper and magazine reporters and photographers. However, I am very glad to say that I found you to be aware of our problems at all times. Having you on the set was a pleasure."

SIXTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER, Allen C. Reed was on assignment for Arizona Highways in Southern Arizona to document the unlikely filming of a movie that many people mostly Okies thought should have been shot where it was set. But that wasn't an option. "The decision to film Oklahoma! in Arizona was not a difficult one," film historian John B. La Due III said. "Oklahoma in 1954 did not look like the Oklahoma of 1854, but parts of Arizona did."

"It has too many oil wells, airplanes and people," producer Arthur Hornblow said of the Sooner State. "Our camera angle is so wide we need a tremendous expanse of wide open spaces."

According to The Hollywood Reporter, that decision bred controversy: "When Oklahoma's then-Representative Victor Wickersham learned that the musical was to be filmed in Nogales, Arizona, rather than his state, he protested in writing to the producers, and publicly in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C."

In addition, there was "a movement in Oklahoma to boycott the picture," Mr. La Due said.

Not that a protest would have slowed the Rodgers and Hammerstein juggernaut. By that time, more than 12 million people had seen the play on Broadway, and many millions more were about to see it on the big screen. The anticipation was high, like waiting for the return of Halley's comet. And the critics were all thumbs-up. Especially Bosley Crowther of The New York Times.

"Inevitably," he wrote in his October 11, 1955, review, "the question which leaps to every mind is whether the essential magnificence and gusto of the original has been retained in the sometimes fatal operation of transfer to the screen. Under the direction of Fred Zinnemann and, we might add, under the hawk-eyed observation of Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein a full-bodied Oklahoma! has been brought forth in this film to match in vitality, eloquence and melody any musical this reviewer has ever seen. With his wide-angle cameras catching backgrounds of 'genu-wine' cornfields and open plains, red barns, yellow farmhouses and the blue sky full of fleecy clouds, Mr. Zinnemann has brought into the foreground all the warm, lively characters that swarm through this tale of the Oklahoma Territory and sing and dance its songs."

The movie would eventually win two Oscars, in the sound and music categories. It also received Oscar nominations for best editing and best cinematography one of the cinematographers was Floyd Crosby, the father of rock 'n' roll legend David Crosby.

None of the success came as a surprise. In his April 1955 column, Raymond Carlson, our editor emeritus, predicted a mad dash to the box office and raved about Arizona's starring role in the film.

"Our interests this April are many," he wrote. "To start off with, we take you to the San Rafael Valley, near Nogales, where last summer exterior scenes for the motion picture Oklahoma! were taken under the guiding genius of Fred Zinnemann, Academy Award winner for his direction of From Here to Eternity. About the time you read this, Oklahoma! should be ready for national release [the actual premiere was October 11, 1955]. It is one picture we heartily recommend. The Rodgers and Hammerstein classic of the American theatre, of course, needs no further introduction, because, as a stage production, millions have seen and enjoyed it. The only thing the motion picture will have to make it even better than the stage production are blue Arizona skies filled with great big, puffy, white clouds and incomparable Arizona scenery portrayed in Todd-AO, a new three-dimensional screen process. This production should be an epic in the history of American motion pictures."

For the cover of that issue, we looked through Mr. Reed's transparencies and selected an image titled Aunt Eller's Farm. The caption reads: "The barn, fence, windmill and smokehouse are Hollywood's. The trees, sky and the beautiful San Rafael Valley belong to Arizona. Together, they make an ideal set for the exterior filming of the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein

'OKLAHOMA!'

A visit to the motion picture location in Southern Arizona. A story originally published in the April 1955 issue of 'Arizona Highways.' By Allen C. Reed JUST TWELVE YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, destined to be a fabulously successful hit, opened on Broadway. In the dozen ensuing years, Oklahoma! has played more than 8,000 performances to a delighted world-wide audience well over 12,000,000, with a gross of over $30,000,000. Such a record causes little wonder when taking into consideration the loved musical score that seems to have the immortal quality of never growing old: numbers like The Surrey With the Fringe on Top, Oh What a Beautiful Morning, People Will Say We're in Love and the title number.

Now the great musical Oklahoma! can reach a still wider audience, for the long-awaited screen version about to be released in full color is expected to smash this twelve-year record in a fraction of the time.

Oklahoma! is not only being filmed in CinemaScope, but this production marks the introduction of a new camera, the Todd-AO big screen process, which uses a single strip of 65 mm film and is designed to give audiences a sense of participation on the order of Cinerama. [Unlike other formats, such as CinemaScope, Cinerama and VistaVision, which required multiple cameras and projectors, Todd-AO used a single wide-angle camera and required a single projector to screen.] After turning down a host of offers to film Oklahoma!, partly to avoid outside tampering with their creation, Rodgers and Hammerstein formed their own company, leased facilities and equipment from M.G.M. and hired Arthur Hornblow as the producer. The director is Academy Award winner Fred Zinnemann, who has such top-flight pictures to his credit as Seventh Cross, High Noon, From Here to Eternity and many others.

The cast of Oklahoma! includes Gordon MacRae as “Curley” [James Dean and Paul Newman also tested for the part]; a sparkling and capable newcomer making her film debut, Shirley Jones, as “Laurey”; Charlotte Greenwood as “Aunt Eller”; Barbara Lawrence as “Gertie”; Eddie Albert as “Ali Hakim”; Gene Nelson as “Will Parker”; Gloria Grahame as “Ado Annie”; Rod Steiger as “Jud”; James Whitmore as “Andy Carnes”; Jay C. Flippen as “Skidmore”; and Roy Barcroft as “Cord Elam.”

Before the film got under way, more than 250,000 miles were logged by R.&H. officials in search of the ideal location site. An extensive survey crisscrossing the state of Oklahoma revealed that it would be rather difficult to capture the feeling of wide open spaces that the territory was noted for 50 years Ago, with an oil well or some such modern structure showing up in the background. Other drawbacks of the Sooner state were too many airplanes that would disturb the sound system and force costly delays, to say nothing of the great distance to transport tons of equipment and the 325 member cast and crew back and forth from the home studio in Culver City, California.

One day, Arthur Hornblow, leafing through the pages of Arizona Highways, saw a color photograph of the spacious San Rafael Valley of Southern Arizona. When research revealed this area was noted, during the summer, for its green grass and picturesque clouds, arrangements were made to film the exterior sequences in this ideal setting 36 miles northeast of Nogales. There, in the shade of stately cottonwoods by a quiet country

'OKLAHOMA!' ON DISPLAY

To learn more about Oklahoma! and other movies made in Arizona, check out the Western Films Exhibit at the Bowman and Stradling History Center in Sonoita. The museum is open from 1 to 3 p.m. on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month from August through April. For more information, or to arrange a tour, please call the Santa Cruz County Fair and Rodeo Association at 520-455-5553.

stream, “Aunt Eller’s” farm of 1900 vintage took form, complete with two-story house, barn, silo, windmill and smokehouse.

The shooting schedule called for a bearing peach orchard, a field of ripe wheat and a field of corn “as high as an elephant’s eye” — in July at an altitude of 5,000 feet where harvest time is normally in October. The peach orchard was purchased and transplanted. From the studio prop department came some 2,000 lush looking wax peaches, complete with fuzz, to be hung out each morning and taken in at night.

The corn field, running up and down hill, presented an especially tough problem. Each stalk had to be coddled and nurtured with chemicals and a constant supply of water to yield what was doubtlessly the world’s most costly corn crop: ten acres at something like $8.95 per ear. Of more than 6,000 props bought, borrowed or built for this picture by Irving Sindler and his prop department, the Arizona sky proved to be the most magnificent, with white thunderheads boiling up into the afternoon blue a daily occurrence.

There is nothing small time about the production of Oklahoma!, with filming cost reported upwards from five to eight million dollars [the final cost was approximately $6.8 million]. The fine cast, the excelling abilities of director Fred Zinnemann, the outstanding capabilities of producer Arthur Hornblow, cameraman Robert Surtees and of the entire hand-picked crew, along with the musical and story genius of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, are combined to give the world an entertainment experience surely worthy of all the awards and “splendiferous” adjectives that Hollywood can come up with, one in which Arizona can surely be honored and proud to have played such an important role.

OPPOSITE PAGE: “It may interest you to know that we have fallen in love with the San Rafael Valley to such an extent that we bought a small piece of land near Aunt Eller’s farmhouse,” director Fred Zinnemann (center) wrote to photographer Allen C. Reed. “There is a small house and a well on the property at present. Sooner or later, we hope to build an adobe house and spend as much time there as we can.” TOP: The broad, flat grasslands of the San Rafael Valley made ideal stand-ins for the setting of the movie.

ABOVE: Cast members, in costume, took buses between the production site and their hotels in Nogales and Tucson.