NOTE: This feature film about 100 years of film and television in Utah is tied to the premiere of the first part of the Sundance Film Festival.
When James D’Arc arrived at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, as a student, he was already familiar with some of Hollywood’s most prominent names, such as John Ford and John Wayne, who came to Utah to photograph some of the most prominent examples. of westerns for the big screen. A native of Southern California, D’Arc was familiar with the network of dormitories in Glendale, California, where many Hollywood professionals lived. He was already a movie fanatic, D’Arc said in an interview with The Utah Review. “I enjoyed everything. “
Utah became his home. His BYU career stretched more than four decades, as a speech and theater arts professor and as curator in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections department for the BYU Motion Picture Archive, and contributor to the Motion Picture Archives Film Series. In 1976, he made his first connection in what would become a 33-year research project about the history of Utah film, when he met the ex-wife of Whitney Parry, one of the three brothers who established the Parry Lodge in Kanab. The work culminated in the 2010 publication of When Hollywood Came to Utah by Gibbs Smith. An updated fourth edition to coincide with this year’s centennial is expected to be released later this month.
When it comes to Utah film history, several familiar examples come to mind: Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Thelma
THE BIRTHPLACE OF UTAH’S FILM HISTORY
The Parry Lodge was the birthplace of a Utah cinema, which started with The Deadwood Coach starring legendary silent film star Tom Mix. In 1923, the silent The Covered Wagon, which was a major box office success, included scenes of a buffalo hunt and stampede, which were filmed on Antelope Island. While The Deadwood Coach has been lost, D’Arc was able to verify its provenance with photos of Tom Mix, which had been taken in the area including spots like Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and areas near Kanab and Cedar City. Kanab literally became “Little Hollywood,” where the lodge would be home to stars and production crews for more than 100 films.
Long before the vision of Sundance crystallized, Utah understood that its connections to Hollywood would fortify a growing tourist trade in the state. In the early 1920s, Cedar City emerged as an agricultural, mining, and commercial center for southwestern Utah and parts of Nevada and Arizona. Tourism naturally followed. There were four parks near Cedar City: Bryce and Zion National Parks, Grand Canyon’s North Rim and Cedar Breaks National Monument.
In fact, the path to Utah’s access to the film industry was already laid out about a decade before the first feature film was shot in the region. The Parry brothers were shrewd promoters. In 1915, Gronway Parry, who worked as an agricultural agent and was an expert in animal husbandry, believed that the new national parks were gateways to a flourishing tourist trade. So he convinced his brother Chauncey to join him in starting a freight forwarding company. Corporate visitors to the park. The company was so successful that the Union Pacific Railroad acquired the company in the mid-1920s and the brothers were hired as superintendents. During this time, the brothers explored and photographed the area, first on horseback and then by plane, adapting to the state. Early equipment finders and film production studios. Previously, most western scenes were shot against cardboard backgrounds.
The two older brothers enlisted the help of their younger brother, Whitney, when they bought a nearby restaurant and motel games to turn them into a hotel that still bears their name today. The trio has become one of the most successful developers in southern Utah. making sure that the domain can suffer the worst effects of the Great Depression.
As the Utah Film Commission has noted, the economic impact of tourism connected to Utah’s place in film and television. History has been substantial. A 2023 survey indicated that 37% of visitors cite film and/or television among the primary motivators in selecting Utah as a destination. Over the last 10 years, those visitors have spent an estimated $6 billion in the state.
“A CORNUCOPIA”
Beginning in the 1920s, the effects meant “a cornucopia” for southern Utah, D’Arc added. One of the most prominent examples at the time was the 1928 film Ramona, the first to feature a synchronized recorded soundtrack. Based on Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1884 novel of the same title, the film starred Dolores del Rio and Warner Baxter in a romantic drama with subplots dealing with bigotry and racism. The story revolves around a woman raised in a Mexican-American family, who discovers her Native American roots and reclaims them. identity to marry a Native American you love.
During the Great Depression, Utah’s popularity as a prime location for film production was a boon, especially for the state’s rural and agricultural regions, D’Arc explained. After World War I, when demand gave way to surpluses, costs plummeted, but farmers were squeezed by the costs of modernization, leading to persistent droughts and crop degradation. Tourism and traffic generated by film production teams have enabled these regions to do their best to stay afloat in their networked economies.
‘WHERE GOD PUT THE WEST’
Long before the creation of the Utah Film Commission (which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year), the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission was organized, making it the oldest entity of its kind in the world. For Utah, the domain “was the home of cinema in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s,” D’Arc said.
Similarly, the sets of Duck Creek Village, Zion National Park, and Dixie National Forest are ideal production positions for popular heavyweights in the glory days of the Hollywood studio era, adding the films of the My Friend Flicka franchise in the 1940s. A 90-second scene in Monument Valley in Stagecoach, the classic 1939 western directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and other screen giants, turned the area’s tall red sandstone monoliths into iconic depictions of the western genre. As D’Arc explains, Wayne described the position as “the position where God placed the West. “
The valley also served as the backdrop for Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), which was part of the director’s Cavalry trilogy, and at least nine other films from that period. Decades later, the final installment of the Indiana Jones trilogy (1989’s Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade, directed by Steven Spielberg) would include shots of The Organ and Double Arch of Utah’s Arches National Park in the opening scenes.
D’Arc’s old force-excursion narrative includes anecdotes from The Greatest Story Ever Told, the 1965 devotional epic directed by George Stevens. Several scenes involving Charlton Heston, who played St. John the Baptist, were filmed in Canyonlands at Dead Horse Point. , and at the then-newly formed Lake Powell, which occurred after the final touch of Glen Canyon Dam. The lake represented the Jordan River, as indicated in the New Testament. D’Arc recalled that Heston remembered how bloodless the waters were. especially since Stevens was constantly converting his camera settings and angles to shoot shots for a quick scene.
THE INDUSTRY DEVELOPS TOWARDS THE NORTH
The importance of Utah’s contributions to film history is multifaceted. For example, the films captured the appearance of southern Utah spaces that no longer resemble what they were before the exponential expansion and development of the state’s population, D’Arc noted. Additionally, over the decades of his paintings in the book, he conducted many interviews with other people who were long dead. His words have now been documented in the published chronicle, as first-hand evidence.
The industry gradually migrated to Salt Lake City and the northern regions of the state, especially at a steady pace, beginning in the 1950s and continuing to the present. As locations and productions moved to northern Utah, Hollywood learned that other genres, adding drama, comedy, and science fiction were just as suitable as the old stories of the West. Notable examples are Three O’Clock High, a 1987 mystery comedy filmed in Ogden and directed by Phil Joanou, and the 1984 blockbuster Footloose, the musical drama. through Herbert Ross who filmed in many locations in Utah County.
But the Parry Lodge in Kanab, where Utah’s film industry was born, was still considered a place to celebrate. This included the 1957 American mystery The Girl in the Black Stockings, directed by Howard Koch, which D’Arc described as the B-film edition of a primary Hitchcockian thriller. Southern Utah is also desirable due to its proximity to Las Vegas, the popular hangout of the stars of the Rat Pack, along with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. , Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop. The stars were filming Sergeants 3, a 1962 Western comedy directed by John Sturges. “Even today, stories are still being shared about wild parties and pranks performed at the shelter,” D’Arc added.
Similarly, the spaces surrounding Moab and Arches National Park were shown to be in many scenes from the 1991 film Thelma and Louise, directed by Ridley Scott. Meanwhile, the 1994 hit comedy Dumb and Dumber, created by the Farrelly brothers, included scenes. filmed on the streets of Salt Lake City and the nearby airport, as well as Park City and American Fork Canyon.
THE GROWTH OF TELEVISION
Utah proved versatile and attractive, as attention shifted to growing numbers of independent film producers as well as television production studios along with the rise of cable television and more recently, streaming platforms including Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Hulu and others. Television has led to some of the largest revenue streams Utah’s film industry has enjoyed, including The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams series in the 1970s which was adapted from an indie film, the mega-hit pop cultural series highlighting High School Musical and what D’Arc considered one of the most profoundly impactful examples — the nine seasons of Touched by an Angel (1994-2003), which employed many Utah production professionals.
Incidentally, Sharpay’s pink locker at East High School in Salt Lake City, as seen in the High School Musical franchise, is preserved, to the delight of incidental tourists who visit the school to see the gym and commons, as those school,areas were filmed for the pop culture juggernaut. In more recent years, made-for-TV films that have premiered on Hallmark and Lifetime channels have become regular staples in the state’s film industry, especially the consistently popular strings of Christmas-themed productions.
THE CAPITOL EXHIBIT
D’Arc’s extensive and meticulous studies included watching the movies and TV series featured in the book, an astonishing feat when you consider that more than 1,000 feature films and TV series included Utah production lots (which are indexed at the end of the book). ). One of Arc’s most intriguing discoveries is how the physical evidence he exposed doesn’t fit the stories he hears from local citizens about various productions. In fact, the final finish beats the facts, a clever indicator of the deep social footprint Hollywood’s presence has had on maintaining the network’s pride.
The exhibition includes several rare examples of memorabilia D’Arc has discovered, including the press books that studios regularly issued to theater operators and distributors to use in promoting a premiere of a film. One prominent example highlighting a unique Utah event comes from the premiere of the 1940 dramatic biographical film of Brigham Young, directed by Henry Hathaway. It was lead actor Dean Jagger, who played the role of Young, who donated items to the library collection.
In fact, if ever there was an occasion that demonstrated the extent to which Utah can be the center of attention in the film industry, as it is every January with the Sundance Film Festival, it was Brigham Young’s film. D’Arc documented the buzz around which Darryl Zanuck, head of production at Twentieth Century Fox, had invested to bring the film to Salt Lake City. His production, which featured some of the biggest Hollywood stars of the time, including Tyrone Powers and Linda Darnell, had earned the blessing of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
SLC’s population at the time was 150,000 people, however, the events, which included a parade down Main Street, drew more than 200,000 people to the state capital. Tickets were sold out at all venues, even with ticket costs more than double the previous price. . The premiere earned Fox Movietone Newsreel of the day, narrated by Lowell Thomas and screened in theaters nationwide. As D’Arc sums it up: “All of this happened over seventy years ago, when Utah was on the verge of becoming a film production location that would soon rival any filming location other than Hollywood and perhaps New York. In a non-holiday culture, Salt Lake City hosted one of the biggest movie releases of all time.
Celebrating the centennial of Utah’s entry into the world of the moving image industry in the same year that Sundance celebrates its 40th anniversary may not be better timely than in those historical realities. “The cinema opened up what was once an island state and showed Utah to the world,” D’Arc said, adding that to this day, normal bus flows bring tourists from all over the world to Monument Valley and central southern Utah, where the state’s seat is located. The film industry was born. It was also Robert Redford’s intuitive insight and prescience that amplified the historical significance of hosting one of the world’s largest and most influential film festivals in a state that has appreciated and understood the benefits and multifaceted virtues of fresh artistic expression in visual form.