Sedona Gone Hollywood

Did you know there were two John Wayne movies filmed in Sedona, Arizona? Hollywood often chose Sedona as a backdrop for classic Westerns such as John Wayne's "Tall in the Saddle," Gene Autry's "The Strawberry Roan" and Joan Crawford's "Johnny Guitar." Best of all, Sedona movies captured gloriously pristine views of Red Rock Country in the era before development. Read about some of the fascinating movies filmed in Sedona Arizona over the past 80 years right here!

A Happy Ending
Five years and 47 in-depth film profiles after we began researching Sedona’s movie history, we’ve reached the end of our magazine series – but it’s really only a start. Next up: A book that, for once and for all, will get the facts straight about Sedona’s golden age as a Hollywood film location.

The Strawberry Roan
When a proud horse throws a rancher's son and nearly paralyzes him, the owner derides the pony -- and wants it dead. It's up to good-hearted singing cowboy Gene Autry to save The Strawberry Roan, which holds the key to the boy's recovery. A rare Autry western in color, the red rock vistas make this '48 movie a real Sedona chestnut.

Tall in the Saddle
What do you think of when you think of John Wayne? The pigeontoed swagger? The squinty gaze? The slow vocal delivery? All were born in Tall in the Saddle, a film that put Wayne in Sedona even if he never set foot here on the shoot.

American Anthem
By the 1980s, Hollywood rarely ventured to Sedona to shoot feature films. One curious exception was American Anthem, a tale of two hot-bodied aspiring Olympic gymnasts that found room only for fleeting glimpses of the distinctive local landscape, yet managed to squeeze in every MTV-inspired cliche of the decade's coming-of-age flicks.

Drum Beat
Sedona became a mountain town on the California-Oregon border in Drum Beat, a 1954 cowboy vs. Indians flick that uses the basic facts of a real-life clash (culminating here in hand-to-hand combat between Alan Ladd and Charles Bronson) but omits key context.

Stormy
Wild horses couldn't have dragged some film crews to Sedona in 1935, but not so for Stormy, a now-obscure Western melodrama notable for its still-impressive climactic stallion stampede.

Yellowstone Kelly
See how this solid 1959 Western helped signal TV's coming of age for the big Hollywood studios

Leave Her To Heaven

It may be the most dramatic scene ever filmed in Sedona. Gorgeous but deeply troubled Ellen (Gene Tierney) gallops furiously down Schnebly Hill to scatter her beloved father's ashes to the wind, the emotion of the moment whipped to the max by nine-time Oscar-winning composer Alfred Newman's thundering musical score.

Viva Cisco Kid
Mother Nature turned a cold shoulder to Viva Cisco Kid when the production arrived in Sedona in 1940.

Johnny Guitar
When Joan Crawford arrived in Sedona in fall 1953 to shoot her new movie, Johnny Guitar, she was one of the world's most glamorous stars.

Copper Canyon
Gazing at the stars was a popular pastime in Sedona in 1949, but it didn't require a telescope; the glitterati were easy to spot, making stops here all year long to shoot five different studio productions.

Singing Guns
Singing Guns' legacy is helping 'Mule Train' - sung to a Sedona backdrop - shoot to the top of the music charts. But using singer Vaughn Monroe as a gunslinger ultimately misfired.

The Call Of The Canyon
Of all the films made in the Sedona area over the years,1923's silent The Call of the Canyon casts the longest shadow, yet odds are it never will be seen again. It may be gone, but thanks to vintage sources, we can make sure it's never forgotten.

Mystery Ranch
Mystery Ranch, filmed almost entirely in Sedona, has never been included on any list of locally produced films. Here's the inside story of a fascinating "gothic western" -unfairly excised from our town's rich movie history for too long, and finally back home where it belongs!

Gunfighters
When Randolph Scott strapped on his holster in Sedona for Gunfighters in 1946, he was a middle-aged actor trying to escape a future of character roles; by the time he left, a meteoric rise that would make him a '50s movie icon was set in motion.

Apache
What hurts worse - tumbling 60 feet down a steep mountain pass, sustaining painful torn muscles in your leg and hip, or seeing the film for which you risked life and limb ripped from your control and your vision for its emotional payoff summarily discarded? Burt Lancaster found out in 1953 courtesy of Apache, a project that became a Sedona film - literally - by accident.

Texas Trail
Texas Trail brought Hopalong Cassidy to Arizona in 1937 to film in two unique locations: A former summer camp for well-heeled boys perched high over Sedona, and a desolate canyon north of Flagstaff that later would be literally wiped off the map.

Pony Soldier
Pneumonia. Shattered bones. Cuts. Infections. Flu. Ice. Sleet. Gale-force winds. The cast and crew filming Pony Soldier experienced all of it for 56 days in 1952, when they were more or less trapped by weather in Sedona Ð enduring the longest stay by any movie production in the area's history

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.

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