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Southwest town provided settings for beloved films Western Heritage
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Published: May 31, 2009
Editor's note: Paul O'Connor, a free-lance editorial writer for the Journal who works from Raleigh, is traveling across the country this spring by car. We will publish his weekly travelogues each Sunday.
KANAB, Utah -- Travel the roads surrounding this pretty southern Utah town and you can't help but feel that you've been here before. It all looks so familiar.
That's because, for fans of old Westerns, Kanab is Hollywood. It's the place where TV shows like The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel, and a great many movies, like The Outlaw Josey Wales, were filmed.
We've seen horses galloping across the mesas and up the steep hills. We've seen settlers struggling to cross the desert or to fight off marauding Indians in the mountain passes. And some of this country has certainly been the backdrop for a few pickup truck commercials.
Dumb luck brought me to Kanab -- after spending the day at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona, I couldn't find a hotel room for 60 miles. But on Kanab's main street stands the Parry Lodge and a big piece of our cinematic history. You can't miss it: It's right where the city parks a police car -- manned only with a dummy -- to scare visiting drivers into slowing down.
Back in the 1920s, two brothers from Kanab traveled to Hollywood with an idea and film of their region. The Parry boys persuaded movie location directors to shoot in their town. They provided the sets, the cattle, the extra cowboys, the stunt performers -- everything a movie director would need to make his film look more authentic to the Old West than did the hills surrounding Los Angeles.
Then the Parrys had another idea. They bought an old house and remodeled it into a lodge for the actors, actresses and film crews.
Today, each room bears the name of a famous star who stayed at the lodge. I had the Yvonne DeCarlo room. I also saw rooms dedicated to Jimmy Stewart, Ava Gardner (and her mother), and Don Knotts. Frank Sinatra didn't stay there, but he partied there, along with the rest of his Rat Pack. Photos of them all line the walls of the lobby and dining room.
Americans are quite nostalgic about their cowboys, and Kanab demonstrates that we feel the same way about our old Westerns. Main Street, with numerous historical markers, is an outdoor museum to the industry. And there's a festival each year to celebrate the old movies. (One of my favorite stars, Clint Walker of the old Cheyenne series, helps promote the festival.)
In other places, most notably the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, I saw displays not just about real cowboys but also about the celluloid version of the Old West.
At the Parry Lodge, the best attraction is the old barn where stars like Trigger, Silver and Scout were once stabled at night. Renovated, it is now the site of the nightly free cowboy movie, all of the movies having been filmed in the area. On the night I stayed, The Fargo Kid, a 1940 lightly comedic film starring Tim Holt, played. It is so much more fun watching it on a big screen -- even if the screen is just a large bedsheet -- than on TV.
Kanab is a long way from everywhere. But if you're headed in that direction and you were a fan of Matt Dillon or Tonto, it's a great place to stop and reminisce. You'll know the place when you see it.
■ Paul O'Connor can be reached at ocolumn@mindspring.com.
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