Old Tucson

Where Countless Cinema Cowboys Died With Their Boots On is Still Very Much Alive and Breathing by Julian Reveles

Early in 1981, Marie Osmond mar-ried Wyatt Earp at Old Tucson, and Bob Shelton couldn't be happier. But perhaps an explanation is in order. The comely Miss Osmond was only starring in what promises to be an offbeat TV movie, I Married Wyatt Earp. And Shelton, the driving force behind Old Tucson, was happy to see a “return to Westerns” on his renowned make-believe sagebrush set.

“We've had a good year,” he assured, “but it just doesn't seem like Hollywood is putting out as many Westerns as they have in the past. It's fewer and fewer all the time. And let's face it: Westerns are one of our staples. Oh, we've had a lot of TV shows . . . lots of com-mercials from all over in the past year . . . but only two or three features.” Very true. In fact, prior to Wyatt Earp, the most recent Western shot at Old Tucson took place in May of 1980, with the TV version of the Gary Cooper classic High Noon, starring Lee Majors. And the regular big screen variety hasn't been that frequent either. The last theatrical Western shot on the set (actually at Mescal, Old Tucson's off-shoot site near Benson) was with Steve McQueen in I, Tom Horn. Scenes from the film were also lensed in Nogales and Rio Rico, in Southern Arizona.

No doubt about it. Hollywood's just not making that many oaters anymore. But there was a time when Old Tucson's stock-in-trade was a whole bunch of shoot-em-ups. Things were busy. Busy with John Wayne in Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, El Dorado, and McClintock. Busy with Jimmy Stewart in Winchester 73. Busy with Glenn Ford and Barbara Stanwyck in The Violent Men. Busy with Randolph Scott in Buchanan Rides Alone.

Busy. Busy. Busy.

But not to worry, says Shelton. The $5 million Old Tucson set is doing quite well. Even without as many Westerns, thank you.

“There are some good things upcoming. Right now we're hoping that everything will work out for Maverick to begin shooting here. They did the pilot here and in San Manuel, you know, and now we may get the whole series. And we're also negotiating with a producer for a film called, Arizona Mary . . . we're keeping our fingers crossed.” Keeping his fingers crossed plus good old-fashioned business acumen has helped Shelton and associates parlay Old Tucson into one of the best-known movie sites in the country.

And not just because it was one of Duke Wayne's favorite locations. It has also been, and remains, a favorite filming locale for a Who's Who of Hollywood's biggest directors and producers.

The story of Old Tucson, itself, is probably all too familiar by now. At least many know that it was specifically built in 1939 as a set for Columbia Pictures' Arizona, based on the popular work by local scribe Clarence Budington Kelland. The film starred a young William Holden and Jean Arthur - and a cast of dozens. And while it may not be the one that skyrocketed them, it was one of their most important pictures.

Columbia reportedly paid a cool $150,000 to re-create Tucson as it might have looked back in the 1860s.

And it paid off. The film looked authentic for the time. More real than reel. It was a popular success. And soon after that, Hollywood discovered Old Tucson. And an exodus of sorts took place.

Bing Crosby came with Ingrid Bergman to do The Bells of St. Marys. Gene Autry followed in 1947 with The Last Roundup. A non-political Ronald Reagan with The Last Outpost. Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster had a Gunfight at the OK Corral, and other films, as the man says, too numerous to mention.

The Crosby film, apropos, was one of a handful of non-Westerns to shoot at Old Tucson. Others were: Bottom of the Bottle with Van Johnson, The Reward with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Night of the Lepus with Janet Leigh, and Another Man, Another Woman with James Caan. But the mainstay of the biz continues to be Westerns.

Around 1959, the old adobe walls and buildings began deteriorating from the ravages of time and weather and perhaps too many gunfights at the OK Corral.

Enter Bob Shelton, from Kansas. The good guy wearing a white hat. And looking, according to lore, for a Western town with a historic background.

He didn't have to look far.

Old Tucson was in dire need of a face-lift (more like a complete overhaul), and funds were unavailable.

Since 1959, with Shelton at the helm, more than 50 major motion pictures have been made there. Big films. Immediately recognizable to buffs and non-buffs alike. And more than an equal number of TV shows. countless commercials.

The site for Old Tucson was sheer inspiration. Surrounded on the north and east by the rugged Tucson Mountains and on the west and south by the vast and magnificent Avra Valley, with Baboquivari Peak and the Quinlin Mountains in the distance.

It was so expertly done that, even with the advent of widescreen photography, it remains an ideal location for outdoor motion picture filming.

It has been described as a trip into the rip-roaring past. And it is all of that. Its more than 100 adobe and frame buildings are strung together by old boardwalks and comprise several Western streets (to serve any era, fictional or otherwise), a Mexican plaza, and the ranch set for the High Chaparral TV series.

It's always fun a trivia buff's delight, in fact to try to pick out Old Tucson amid the many disguises Hollywood has imposed on it since the filming of Arizona.

It was post-Civil War Arizona for Outrage with Paul Newman, in 1963 (a remake of the Japanese classic Rash-omon). It was Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1880s with Greer Garson as a lady doctor in Strange Lady in Town. It was Tombstone in the already-mentioned Gunfight at the OK Corral. It was Kansas City for director Claude Lelouch's Another Man, Another Woman. It was a not-too-sophisticated Yerkey's Hole, New Mexico, for Frank Sinatra in Dirty Dingus Magee in 1970. It was Nogales in 1909 for the TV version of the Butch Cassidy saga. And it was the Cavalry versus the Indians in Dodge City for Jimmy Stewart in Winchester 73.

And Sidney Poitier picked up his Best Actor Oscar as an ex-GI trying to help a group of nuns build a chapel in the arid Arizona desert of Old Tucson, in Lilies of the Field.

William Holden came back to the old set in 1970 for The Wild Rovers with Ryan O'Neal. It was his first visit back since Arizona. But it's said he didn't recognize it at all.

And little wonder. Shelton is continually adding to the property. A false front here. Another there. A make-believe boarding house from an earlier era. And on top of that, he continues to develop it as a recreation park and amusement center. Shelton, former chairman of the Arizona Governor's Motion Picture Advisory Board, remains optimistic about the whole of Arizona's future in film making . . . not just for Old Tucson. After all, films were being made in the state before Old Tucson was even a gleam in Leo the Lion's eye.

"We're the third-ranking state for filming," he offers. "Just behind New York and California." We're the only state where you can shoot year-round . . . 12 months out of the year. Really, no other state can do that." And what about the future for Old Tucson? "That's too far ahead to look. But I see us continuing to get our fair share of features, TV, and commercials. I see increased work for the entire state, in-cluding lots more Westerns, and when the state does well, we do well. That's just the way it works."

Shot on site. Since the 1940s, Old Tucson has been home to a long run of classic Western film epics whose stars are still top box office names. (From far left) Angie Dickinson in Young Billy Young; Walter Brennan and John Wayne in Rio Bravo; Robert Walker, Jr. in Young Billy Young, top; Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, John Hudson and DeForrest Kelly in a scene from Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, below; Robert Mitchum in Young Billy Young.