Arizona's Little Hollywood | Sedona Monthly Magazine |

History Remade

For seven years, Sedona Monthly’s creative director, Joe McNeill, has devoted his life to accurately documenting Sedona’s film legacy for the first time ever. This month, the truth is finally revealed when Arizona’s Little Hollywood: Sedona and Northern Arizona’s Forgotten Film History 1923-1973 publishes. Now, Joe shares with readers the details of how Sedona got her history back.

When the first issue of Sedona Monthly was published in 2003, it included a story about the filming of 1950’s Broken Arrow in Red Rock Country. Joe McNeill, the article’s author and the magazine’s creative director, had no idea what he started with the brief story. As the magazine’s series of profiles on Westerns filmed in Sedona blossomed, so did Joe’s research. Three years after the series began, Joe decided Sedona’s film history deserved more than monthly magazine profiles, and the idea that would become Arizona’s Little Hollywood: Sedona and Northern Arizona’s Forgotten Film History 1923-1973 began to take shape.

Sedona played host to more than 60 productions from 1923 to 1973. Arizona’s Little Hollywood tells the story of each of these films in detail. The 692-page, hardcover, illustrated tome also reveals some never-before-heard facts about film history in Sedona and beyond. Readers will get a look at silent cowboy star Fred Thomson’s long-forgotten portrayal of frontiersman Kit Carson in the first Western ever filmed in Red Rock Country; learn the story behind Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, an anti-capitalist Nazi propaganda Western filmed on location in Sedona and the Grand Canyon in 1935; get the details on why Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley isn’t as important to the filming of Stagecoach as everyone thinks and the discovery that some scenes from the movie were filmed in Sedona; and hear the full story behind the making of the classic Johnny Guitar (temper tantrums and all).

Now, as a true-blooded California girl, Western film history never really piqued my interest before I moved to Sedona. I’ll readily admit I never fully understood Sedona’s impact on film history until I sat down and read Arizona’s Little Hollywood cover to cover; now, I’ll never look at Red Rock Country the same way. Though I’ve worked with Joe daily for almost five years, it was exciting to sit down and talk to him about his masterpiece on the eve of its publication. Why do so many Sedonans continue to promote falsehoods about Sedona’s film history? What’s fact and what’s fiction? Was Joe reluctant to bring a Nazi propaganda film shot in Sedona out into the open? Who was really Sedona’s movie man? Read on and find out. Also, we’ve included Sedona’s definitive filmography from 1923 through 1973 – published for the first time anywhere. Pre-release copies of Arizona’s Little Hollywood are available this month exclusively at www.arizonaslittlehollywood.com. The book will go on sale at stores across the country and on Amazon.com in May. It’s a book everyone who lives in Sedona, loves Sedona or loves movies must read.

Erika Ayn Finch: Tell us about how the movie stories in Sedona Monthly began. When and why did you decide to turn the stories into a book?

Joe McNeill: The first time we came to Sedona, which was about 13 years ago during a trip to the Grand Canyon, we drove in on SR 179, and I immediately recognized the rocks but couldn’t place where I’d seen them before. When we got into town, I saw things about the films that had been made here. I’m a lifelong movie fan, so that got me curious, and I did a little follow-up research when we got home. As someone who grew up in an urban area on the East Coast, to be in a place where they made Western movies was kind of interesting. After we moved to Sedona and started Sedona Monthly, we needed editorial content. I had done Internet searches and looked in [film] books, but there really wasn’t anything about Sedona. Very few reference books even mention it. The Internet Movie Database has listings for it – much of them incorrect, as it turned out. So I thought it would be interesting to run stories about the movies in the magazine as an ongoing series. Right away, I discovered there was no trustworthy information anywhere to use in the articles. Putting together these articles turned out to be a lot more difficult job than I had imagined.

I worked in the magazine business in New York for 30 years, so as time went on I was able to expand my research sources to find lots of incredible new details that hadn’t been collected into one place before. So the magazine stories eventually became quite thorough. Our readers liked them a lot, too.

A few years later, we decided to stop the magazine profiles because the films that remained required so much research that it would have been impossible to maintain a monthly schedule. This was probably around 2006, about the same time that I discovered Der Kaiser von Kalifornien––The Emperor of California––was partially filmed here in 1935. That one completely dumbfounded me when I learned it was made here, and it took almost four years to piece together the story behind it. There were about 13 other films that we didn’t cover in the magazine [that are in the book].

EAF: Have you seen all of the movies in the book? Which one do you enjoy the most? Which one has the best red rock visuals? Which movie should every Sedona resident see?

JM: I have seen every theatrical film made in Sedona between 1923 and 1973 that still exists. I’ve also seen just about all the non-Sedona films that I mention [in the book] that still exist. My own Sedona favorites are Riders of the Purple Sage, Stormy, Johnny Guitar, Broken Arrow and, surprisingly, Two in Revolt. It’s a B picture few people know about, but it’s a nice, cute movie for kids. The finest photography of Sedona was probably in Mystery Ranch, one of the best of the B westerns and another of my favorites, which was promoted for the quality of its photography when it was released. It’s a shame the film doesn’t exist in better condition today. The stills from it are spectacular.

Broken Arrow is probably the one film made in Sedona that everybody should see. It was the first major movie made in the sound era by a Hollywood studio in which Native Americans were not portrayed as savages. Most people today probably aren’t aware of how important the film was to its time, how unique it was that the good guys happened to be Indians. Broken Arrow is historically significant for a another reason, too. It was one of the first films written in secret by a member of the “Hollywood Ten,” the group that was blacklisted in the late ’40s and sent to jail because of their refusal to admit membership in the Communist Party.

EAF: What do you think readers will find most shocking or surprising about Sedona’s movie history? What did you find most shocking while doing your research?

JM: I have to say my own biggest surprise was Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, and I think people are going to be shocked when they learn of its existence. I hope they understand that truth can’t be ignored. I sat on this story for a long time to make sure I got the details right. The second biggest surprise was finding that some filming for Stagecoach took place in Sedona and that it had its world premiere engagement in Flagstaff, not LA. With all the books written about John Ford and Stagecoach, it’s incredible to me that these facts have eluded researchers for so long.

EAF: Were you reluctant to shine a spotlight on Der Kaiser von Kalifornien?

JM: I did worry about how people would react to the news and considered not disclosing it, but I felt if I suppressed the truth, I’d be no better than Joseph Goebbels [the Nazi minister of propaganda who played a role in Der Kaiser’s production] because that’s exactly what he would have done.

One of the cornerstones of Nazi doctrine was the need for Lebensraum – “living space” for the German people – which was the major motivation behind Hitler’s territorial aggression. Lebensraum is at the root of Der Kaiser’s plot, and Sedona is specifically shown in the film as the promised land. Aside from one longer main sequence, the Sedona landscape reappears in a series of creepy visions conjured up by the ghost of one of the architects of the German nationalist movement. Der Kaiser is reputed to have been one of Hitler’s favorite movies, but what troubles me most was that the Nazis designated it one of the “Great National Films” [of the Third Reich] in 1944 and showed it to Germany’s home guard of children, invalids and the elderly in an effort to inspire them to fight off the Russian advance toward Berlin. How many kids were killed because they were influenced by this vision of Sedona? It’s sick.

EAF: Do you think Sedona residents are going to be angry that you’ve brought this movie to light?

JM: I don’t know. I sure hope not. To deny anything that happened here, no matter how repugnant, would be a mistake, especially because the film still exists and is readily available in Germany on DVD. Whether we like it or not, Der Kaiser von Kalifornien is a part of our history.

This is important to keep in mind because even though the town assumes everybody knows about Sedona’s film history, in fact, the average person is not aware of it. Sedona was never really known to the world at large [as a filming location], even in its prime. Not long ago, I talked to a well-known film historian who told me he never knew they made movies here. I wasn’t shocked to hear that. Studio PR hardly ever mentioned Sedona by name, and on the very rare occasion it was credited it was usually incorrectly. In one instance, Sedona was even misidentified in the main credits of a B movie as Monument Valley! So the town is dead wrong to take for granted its movie history––the true place of importance Sedona should hold in mainstream American culture. We must begin to promote our film legacy, which, I should add, has the potential to be parlayed into a goldmine of tourism. I’m not talking about as a come-on for a timeshare sales spiel, either. Sedona’s future lies in honoring her movie past.

You see, the one advantage Sedona has over most other Western movie locations is the history. Monument Valley has the cachet of its association with John Ford. Lone Pine in California has the numbers – over 400 films have been made there. But Sedona is American film in microcosm, from silent movies to early talkies to B Westerns to World War II propaganda to film noir to 3-D movies to rock ’n’ roll to ’70s road pictures. Sedona was even the background for an Oscar-winning performance – Art Carney’s in Harry and Tonto. So even though there were only 60 movies filmed here in those 50 years, taken as a body of work they make up a visual record of 20th-century popular culture. And that’s where Sedona has missed the gravy train by misunderstanding its past. Even the constant romanticizing of The Call of the Canyon for all these years has been a misstep – it may have been the first film made here, but it was a minor one. It’s been forgotten by all but a few die-hard movie buffs. It probably hasn’t even existed for years. To most people living in the 21st century, The Call of the Canyon is irrelevant. What about Johnny Guitar? The Library of Congress has placed that one in the National Film Registry as an American treasure. What about Broken Arrow? What about Angel and the Badman with John Wayne? Even Stay Away, Joe, which isn’t a very good movie, has the Elvis connection, just the kind of cool thing Sedona should promote.

EAF: Did you think twice about pointing out the fact that William Boyd, who played the beloved character Hopalong Cassidy, may have hidden in Flagstaff to evade the draft in World War I?

JM: Of all the B Westerns, the Hoppys are my favorites. They are well-made films with really likeable characters. Boyd himself was a very likeable man who never hid the fact that in his younger days he was a party boy and ladies’ man. But according to an oral history project the Flagstaff Public Library conducted in the ’70s, one man who knew him before he became famous claimed Boyd was also a draft evader. Apparently there were a whole bunch of draft evaders that hid in Flagstaff during the first world war. It was a very isolated place back then, but it was a railroad stop, so they could get out of town easily if they had to. Was Boyd really a draft evader? A century later, who can say for sure what’s true? But facts do point to it. I checked and Boyd’s name is missing from World War I conscription records in the National Archives.

EAF: The book touches on some of the errors that have been perpetuated by tour guides, timeshare salespeople and local “historians.” Let’s talk about some of the biggest misnomers. Why do you think Sedona residents have been so lax in making sure Sedona’s history is accurate?

JM: Sedona’s standing in American culture has clearly suffered and I’m not sure if it was done on purpose in every case or was just because of innocent mistakes repeated over the years. I do believe there were some individuals who wanted to profit off of Sedona’s history and not necessarily because they had any right to. I also think Sedona’s suffered from some third-rate journalism and people taking for granted that what they read is always correct. Some good examples are a couple of the streets in the Sedona West subdivision. They’re named after movies, but somebody got the titles wrong. Even after we began running the movie series in Sedona Monthly, inaccurate information showed up on commemorative plaques placed at the Hyatt and in Uptown. We’re supposed to be living in the information age, so it is mindboggling to me that so many fallacies continue to be perpetuated. Doesn’t anybody bother to do fact checking?

One thing I’ve found amusing over the years is how many places have been declared to be the spot where Zane Grey wrote The Call of the Canyon. The fact is, Zane Grey’s diaries still exist and hold the answer. He wrote Call in Catalina [Calif.]. Then he finished it in Oregon and Colorado. He didn’t write a word of it in Oak Creek Canyon or in Sedona or in Flagstaff or in Aunt Minnie’s spare room. Anybody who knows anything about writing knows you don’t need to be sitting at an actual location to write about it.

EAF: Speaking of myths, you practically rewrite the history of the filming of Stagecoach (my favorite chapter) and the involvement of Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley. Tell us about those revelations.

JM: From day one the biggest problem was determining exactly what was filmed in Sedona because wild claims for titles are all over the place. Our big breakthrough came when we learned that the Cline Library at NAU in Flagstaff has complete collections of local newspapers on microfilm. The old Coconino Sun was a weekly paper published in Flagstaff and a good resource. It took years, but we searched through every single issue from 1923 into the early ’50s. In some cases, we went back even further, as far as 1918. It was just a matter of digging and digging. That was the best way to establish a timeline and how I discovered that Kit Carson was the first Western to shoot scenes in Sedona – the Sun covered its production around the area for weeks during 1928. This one came as a total surprise because nobody anywhere had ever mentioned Kit Carson or its star, [silent movie cowboy] Fred Thomson, in relation to Sedona. Facts were confirmed by cross-referencing the information uncovered in Flagstaff with other newspapers and studio documents archived in New York, in Los Angeles at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library, and at numerous other archives here and in Europe. This took time – it was basically detective work. But this was how we stumbled upon the information that some filming took place in Sedona for Stagecoach. In three separate reports published in the Coconino Sun before, during and after shooting, it was stated that Stagecoach locations in Arizona were at Monument Valley, Cameron, Oak Creek Canyon, Schnebly Hill and areas down south near Phoenix.

The accepted back-story about the making of Stagecoach is that [Indian trader] Harry Goulding drove to Hollywood with snapshots of Monument Valley and talked John Ford into going there to shoot. But the first Sun report states that about a month before shooting began, the film company contacted Lee Doyle, the local movie coordinator, who drove John Ford around northern Arizona for a few days to scout locations––standard operating procedure for a film company planning to shoot here. I was able to later confirm this by locating a copy of the telegram that was sent to Doyle to alert him of Ford’s imminent arrival in Flagstaff.

I was also granted access to Wetherill family records that confirm Ford and the primary crew stayed at the Wetherill and Colville Trading Post in Kayenta during the Stagecoach shoot and not at Goulding’s in Monument Valley as it’s usually claimed. All of this challenges accepted film history.

EAF: Talk to us about Lee Doyle. After reading the book, we were surprised he’s not a Sedona household name.

JM: For more than 30 years, Lee Doyle was the local contact man on every Hollywood movie shot in Sedona – and every one made in northern Arizona – and he is the individual responsible for Sedona’s film history. Doyle and his father worked for many years as wilderness guides for Zane Grey, so when Paramount started making movies of his books, Grey had Doyle put in charge of scouting their locations. After The Call of the Canyon, Doyle was put under contract to Paramount, which led other studios to seek out his services when they wanted to film here.

Doyle’s name appeared in Flagstaff newspapers regularly from the ’20s into the ’50s, but by every account he was a self-effacing, publicity-shy rancher who shunned the limelight. He died in the early ’60s. Nobody else came close to being as important to Sedona’s film history as Lee Doyle, but his name has been completely erased from the town’s collective memory, probably because it was to the advantage of others that he be forgotten. The fact that his contributions have been so totally deleted from history here is a disgrace. There are no plaques honoring Doyle in Uptown Sedona, but there should be a 10-foot-tall statue of him standing smack dab in the middle of 89A because he’s he man who put the town on the map.

EAF: For whom did you write Arizona’s Little Hollywood? Do you think it will have an impact on Sedona’s history?

JM: The book is for someone like myself–– a movie lover. I took film history classes in college and loved going to see older movies at revival theaters. I was always interested in behind-the-scenes stuff, so I guess it was only natural that the book grew into being not just the story of the movies made in Sedona, but of its place in American filmmaking.

The book shows for the first time how Sedona’s history is not just locals growing apples. The idea that a small town promoted as a sleepy, isolated place in the middle of nowhere could have been involved in momentous historical events is incredible.

EAF: Your source listings in the back of the book are quite extensive.

JM: I’m just a messenger delivering the facts, but I know I’m going to be challenged on a lot of what’s here, so everything in the book is sourced. It has close to 40 pages of notes and bibliography. I list every newspaper and magazine article, every book, every document that I consulted and every interview that I quoted. So anybody who wants to challenge me can check these sources themselves to see that I didn’t make any of this up.

EAF: For readers who followed the movie stories in the magazine, will they learn something new by reading the book?

JM: Everything that was published in the magazine has been revised, most of it drastically, and every chapter contains new information. Much of the material has been completely rewritten and considerably expanded beyond the magazine stories. The chapter on Broken Arrow is a good example. The story ran as one page of text in the magazine. In the book it covers almost 20 pages. There are 18 sections that cover new titles and related background. I’m confident that anybody who reads this book will discover lots of things they didn’t know before.

EAF: You must feel passionately about Sedona’s movie history to have devoted nearly seven years of your life to this research.

JM: It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. I never set out to be a film historian and still don’t consider myself one. I’m a movie fan. This job was sort of thrust into my lap. But once I started, I felt an obligation to finish it. The truth had to be told, especially after it become obvious how rich Sedona’s past really is – there was no way I was not going to finish it. So I spent seven years putting the story together – it was a big chunk of my life and my family’s life –– because I knew that when it was finished Sedona would own a cultural legacy that it never could have imagined it had. •