Barry Fotheringham
barry@barryfotheringham.com
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Ability Realty
7360 E. 22nd Street
Tucson, AZ 85710
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Old Tucson
Know what a "hot set" is? How about a "cattle call"? Tucsonans know. Most of them have been near a hot set or have thought about going to a cattle call. No it is not a fire with still hot embers or a whistle used to call the cows home.
A "hot set" is a movie set that is set up ready for filming. A "cattle call" is the request filmmakers put out to the town asking for people to play as extras in a film. They are the ones who are seen in the background or walking down the street of a town. They are seldom thought of at all but would be sorely missed if they weren't there.
Tusconans have been in many movies that have been filmed at the Old Tucson Film Studios. The first movie filmed there was Arizona in 1939. An idea came to life that has grown into a multi-million dollar business and tourist attraction. Columbia Pictures wanted the setting and Pima County owned the land at that time and built the first set. In 1945 the next picture was filmed there. It was The Bells of St. Mary's starring Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. From then on studios and actors began wanting sequences and entire films to be shot there. Gene Autry, Bert Lancaster, James Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Ronald Reagan, Glen Ford in the 50's.
In the 1960's the idea of a theme park as well as continued use as a movie set was developed.
John Wayne chose Old Tucson to film four of his movies. Rio Bravo, McClintock, El Dorado and Rio Lobo all left their buildings added to the growing "town". Lilies of the Field (Sidney Poitier won and Oscar), the TV series Have Gun Will Travel, episodes of Bonanza and many scenes of High Chaparral were filmed there. We have friends who own land in the surrounding area who often received requests (and checks!) for permission to run cattle drives on their land.
In 1968 a 13,000 square foot sound stage was built. Frank Sanatra, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Charles Bronson and, Harrison Ford are some of the actors who came to the studios which had expanded in the acquisition of another studio about 45 miles east of Tucson in Mescal Lakes. It was at the Mescal Lakes set that much of Little House on the Prairie was filmed.
Three Amigos was filmed there in the 1980's with Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short. Also CBS-TV's Poker Alice starring Elizabeth Taylor. Later Tombstone (1993) with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer; Lightning Jack (1993) starring Paul Hogan and Cuba Gooding, Jr., and The Quick and the Dead (1994) with Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio showed that westerns were popular again.
The list goes on and on but the best thing to do is to go out to Old Tucson Movie Studios, and spend several hours (there are restaurants, gift shops, stunt performances and some rides). Learn of the history and look at the buildings and the settings you know you have seen somewhere, sometime in some movie and will likely see again.
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