Virginia City

Throughout the 1930s, Sedona was exclusively seen on screen as the setting for low-budget "B" Westerns. That all changed with 1940's Virginia City, the first high-gloss, big-name studio production to feature Red Rock backgrounds in the sound era.

Prior to Virginia City, the 1930s had seen the Sedona landscape become the exclusive territory of low-budget Westerns. The box-office failure of two "prestige" Westerns at the turn of the decade - Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (John Wayne's 1930 starring debut), and Wesley Ruggles' Cimarron (1931) - and lack of interest in dragging bulky sound equipment to inaccessible places for an uncertain

But by decade's end, the wheel had turned and big Westerns were back in vogue. A couple of Westerns had scored financial successes for major studios in 1936-'37, and they shot the lock off the corral doors and jumped onto the "A" Western bandwagon with renewed enthusiasm. The acclaim heaped on director John Ford's 1939 Stagecoach would solidify Hollywood's new attitude. Warner Bros., flushed with its own success with Dodge City, rolled on to Virginia City.

It was Warner Bros. location manager Joseph J. Barry who pitched northern Arizona locations for Virginia City in 1939; Barry had visited the area 12 years earlier and recalled its spectacular landscapes. He felt the diversity of scenery within a manageable 50-mile radius around Flagstaff was tailor-made for a film that had to portray different topography in scenes set all over the map.

At 6 a.m. on Nov. 3, 1939, 164 passengers arrived in Flagstaff on a chartered train from Los Angeles, including actors Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Randolph Scott, Miriam Hopkins, Alan Hale, "Big Boy" Williams, Dickie Jones, Moroni Olsen, and Monte Montague. Disembarking with them were almost a small-town's worth of stand-ins, cameramen, technicians, stunt people, cowboys, grips, electricians, prop men, wardrobe specialists, makeup artists, and truck drivers. Production personnel filled all available rooms at Flagstaff's Hotel Monte Vista, Weatherford Hotel and Commercial Hotel, as well as five "auto courts" (motels). An overflow of 25 to 30 visitors, including Hopkins, Scott and Bogart, were lodged at the Cameron Trading Post, some 55 miles away.

Many of Virginia City's scenes were set at Sedona. An amazing chase sequence was staged on the then-unpaved Hwy 89A. Legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt repeated two feats here that he'd performed a year earlier in Stagecoach. First, doubling for Flynn, he jumped from horse to horse on the team of an out-of-control coach; then, standing in for "Big Boy" Williams, he fell to the ground between the wheels as it sped down the road.

Virginia City's participants had bigger achievements ahead of them; but for Sedona, the film was a milestone, the beginning of the town's golden age as a location for Hollywood "A" productions, which would stream in steadily for the next 30 years.

Text © 2006 Sedona Monthly

© 2006-2007 Bar225 Media Ltd. All rights reserved.

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