Charles Starrett scrambles over movie rocks in 1939 — with Roy Rogers sidekick Pat Brady slappin' a fierce bass

The 1939 Columbia movie "Western Caravans" was filmed partially on the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif., with additional outdoor footage shot in the Western town on the Columbia backlot. The Charles Starrett B-Western also features a lot of rolling hills shots, which in that period usually means it was filmed in or around the foothills of Agoura, Calif., northwest of Los Angeles.

Charles Starrett in "Western Caravans," 1939

I haven't made a positive ID on the rocks in the above shot, but I'm pretty sure that's Cactus Hill in the background ... which would make it Iverson. If any readers recognize the rocks, please let me know. UPDATE: Never mind, I got this one — that's Water Wiggle directly behind Mr. Starrett, which puts Charlie somewhere between the North Cluster and Garden of the Gods — definitely on the Iverson Movie Ranch, and yes, that's Cactus Hill in the back. Click here to read more about Water Wiggle and its neighboring rocks in Iverson's North Cluster.

Another shot of Starrett from the same movie, this one is definitely Iverson — Elders Peak in the background nails it down, even if the foreground rocks have yet to be positively ID'd. It's another hard shot to be sure about. I've been tempted to say that's Crown Rock at the right, but I keep coming to my senses and realizing that it's probably some other rock that has a similar look. I'm still working on it, but again, if anyone can help, please speak up.

Pat Brady on bass, "Western Caravans," 1939

Pat Brady appears in an uncredited role as the bass player in the movie's cowboy band — which in real life was the Sons of the Pioneers.

Pat Brady 

Pat played bass in a ton of the old Charles Starrett B-Westerns from Columbia — typically uncredited — before building a name for himself as Roy Rogers' "comical sidekick," first in Roy's Republic B-Westerns and later on "The Roy Rogers Show."

 

William Herbert "Lum" York — Ride 'em, Drifting Cowboy!

Pat Brady was part of a long tradition of bass players providing the comic relief in old cowboy bands — a tradition that includes William Herbert "Lum" York of Hank Williams' Drifting Cowboys, among many illustrious others.

Much of "The Roy Rogers Show" was also taped on the Iverson Movie Ranch, including this shot from the episode "The Hijackers," originally aired Oct. 24, 1954. On the TV show, Pat had his own "comical sidekick" — his willful Jeep, Nellybelle. That's Pat walking behind the Jeep, Roy's German shepherd Bullet in the back of the Jeep, and Nellybelle with — as usual — her hood up. In the background is Flat Rock, which is still in place on the Lower Iverson.

Nellybelle — or a close approximation — even made it onto the cover of the Pat Brady Coloring Book in 1956. To my eye, the depiction of Nellybelle looks a little closer to real life than the drawing of Pat. Note that the setting appears to be a version of Monument Valley, on the Utah-Arizona border — which was generally too far from the studios' L.A. headquarters (in other words, too expensive) for the budget-conscious producers of the B-Westerns and early TV shows that showcased the talents of Pat, Roy, Starrett and the rest. That's one big reason Iverson got so much work: It was close, and it had great rocks. What more do you need?

Roy, Dale, Pat ... and Nellybelle

Click here to see additional shots of Pat Brady and Nellybelle in an earlier blog post about a flooded Iverson Village.

Here's a music video from 40 years before MTV got started, shot at the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, Calif.

The clip below comes from the 1942 Charles Starrett B-Western "Pardon My Gun," and features the cowboy singing group Texas Jim Lewis and His Lone Star Cowboys. It's shot on the Iverson Movie Ranch, among a group of buildings called the Middle Iverson Ranch Set, also known as Halfway House. The song is "Sing Song Kitty." It's not in sync, but it makes up for it by being short!



The clip features a couple of the buildings that made up the ranch set — especially the main house. The early barn can also be seen in the background. Click here for more photos of the place in a detailed blog post focused on the Middle Iverson Ranch Set.

Behold the Window of the Gods — a fixture of movies going back to the silent era

"The Paleface" (1922)

Here's a screen shot from the Buster Keaton silent short "The Paleface" showing a couple of the lesser-known formations on the Iverson Movie Ranch. These beauties are found just north of Garden of the Gods, in an area I call the North Cluster. The actors sprinkled among the rocks are portraying Native Americans, as you may be able to tell or may have guessed from the title. The large rock at top right and the one behind it are still around, and from a different angle they form a sort of "window" — a crack, really, between two huge boulders (see first color photo, below). The proximity of this formation to Garden of the Gods led to its being called Window of the Gods, at least in my own research. The rocks seen in the foreground — including a partially visible Man in the Moon at top left — no longer exist.

"Rocky Mountain Rangers" (1940)

Another look at the same group, this time from Republic's Three Mesquiteers B-Western "Rocky Mountain Rangers" and from much farther back, showing Elders Peak, above Chatsworth Park, in the background — the highest point seen in this shot. Both of the above shots are essentially looking south. Most but not all of the main rock features seen in the center of the shot remain in place today. As mentioned above, Man in the Moon and the rest of the group in front are gone, having given way to development. The area where the riders appear is occupied by condos now.

This is the Man in the Moon part from the above shot, near the front of the group of rocks at the center of the photo. But I have a much better shot of it elsewhere on the blog. Click here to see that blog entry, which is all about Man in the Moon.

"Bullets for Rustlers" (1940)

Here's the angle that got me thinking about the Window of the Gods group for the first time in a while. It's from Columbia's "Bullets for Rustlers," a Charles Starrett B-Western that also stars Lorna Gray — known for her tour de force performance as the evil Vultura in the 1942 Republic serial "The Perils of Nyoka." The giant clump of rocks at top left, consisting of three big sandstone boulders, is Window of the Gods again, from a much different angle, kind of looking northwest. It's hard to be precise about the directions.

Window of the Gods today

Behold the Window of the Gods, as it survives to this day — "kind of" looking west.

Here's a look at those same three big boulders in modern times, from yet another angle ... along with a glimpse of a gray-haired movie location researcher. The "window," as seen in the shot above this one, would be between the rock at the far right and the one next to it, looking out between them to the right. This view is "kind of" looking south again.

For those of you who might be into this sort of thing, the image up above from "Bullets for Rustlers" is full of mysterious and elusive "rock faces." Try these next couple on for size ... and for the more serious researchers out there, feel free to skip this part. I just figure it can't hurt. Who among us has never once enjoyed seeing faces in the clouds and so forth? This is kind of like that.

This one's as good an example as any. I see a big-brained alien with a number of possible faces at lower left, nearly all of them portraying some degree of malicious intent ... but your mileage may vary.

Part of that alien head intrudes again here, in the top right corner, but focus on the center and the lower left. I don't know, I keep seeing faces here, including one pretty good cyclops, but they tend to shift around.

"Riders of the Badlands" (1941): Old pro cinematographer Benjamin Kline showcases the Upper Iverson

"Riders of the Badlands," a 1941 Columbia B-Western starring Charles Starrett and Russell Hayden, contains some fine cinematic images of the Iverson Movie Ranch. The movie was shot by Benjamin Kline, who was a regular at Iverson in the B-movie era — both as a cinematographer and as a director. Kline was DP on this one, with Howard Bretherton directing. Here are a few sample shots, all filmed on the Upper Iverson.

Nothing flashy here — just a nicely composed shot of a stagecoach at speed, filmed looking west. The riders have broken off part of the team and are making a getaway. In the background, the flat area on the other side of the trees is the neighboring Brandeis Ranch, which was also a filming location for a few years in the 1930s and 1940s. Visible in the foreground and beyond the stage are a number of the chase roads and insert roads that ran parallel to each other to enable the camera car to track the movement of the horses, wagons and stagecoaches being filmed.

Another stagecoach shot, this one shows a couple of the Upper Iverson's native oak trees along with another corner of Brandeis Ranch in the background. Parallel chase roads can again be seen, along with the line of trees separating Brandeis and Iverson, directly in the center of the shot. The line of white dots visible against the line of trees is made up of the white tips of dark fenceposts supporting a nearly invisible fence between the two properties.

A portion of the line of trees separating Iverson Ranch and Brandeis Ranch included the double row of trees seen above, in the top left corner of the shot. This is a relatively rare view of that double line of trees, revealing a dirt road running between the tree rows. This little stretch of road ran north and south, culminating in a cluster of rocks, visible at the top left. Early in my Iverson research I began calling this formation Rocks Across the Way, as the rocks are usually seen in the distance, across the expanse of the Upper Iverson. These rocks have also been referred to as the Festival Rocks by some film historians, but in my own research the name Rocks Across the Way has stuck. By my designation, the cluster of rocks in the top left corner is Rocks Across the Way-West, and the clump seen at top right is Rocks Across the Way-East. Most of these rocks remain intact today, but now they're surrounded by a gated community of large estates.

Here's a shot that combines an impressive view of about 14 of those fencepost tops — the white dots at the top of the shot, along the left half — along with a peek up the road between the double line of trees, now near the top right corner. These aren't spectacular shots at first glance, but the Iverson features depicted in these scenes generally weren't filmed in a way that made it possible to discern any detail, and these unusual angles are quite revealing. Location researchers live for this stuff.

Why Corriganville and the Iverson Movie Ranch will never be the same

When the 118 Freeway opened in the late 1960s connecting the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley, two casualties were the Iverson Movie Ranch and Corriganville. The freeway bisected both filming locations, not only changing the appearance of both sites but also bringing with it traffic noise that made filming difficult.

Here's a prime example of the sedimentary rock formation, or "strata," that is characteristic of the Santa Susana Mountains between the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley. This rocky hillside is commonly seen in the backgrounds of productions shot at Corriganville, which occupied the eastern end of Simi Valley. This shot looking north from Corriganville is found in Columbia's 1947 Durango Kid (Charles Starrett) B-Western "Riders of the Lone Star."

Here's what that same formation looks like today, with the lower half of it now buried under a large manmade buttress that was built up in front of it to form the foundation for the freeway as it traverses the hills between the two valleys.

 

"The Lone Ranger" TV series, 1949-1957, 

filmed at Iverson and Corriganville

The freeway came in during a period when the business model that made movie ranches like Iverson and Corriganville profitable was already in decline. The B-movie was dead and the early TV production that replaced it had outgrown the "Lone Ranger" and "Roy Rogers" period that kept both movie ranches humming during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Traffic on the 118

Meanwhile, the development pressure and rising land values that came from a rapidly swelling L.A. population — population growth fueled in large part by the burgeoning Hollywood movie industry that places like Iverson and Corriganville had helped nurture — meant that the sprawling movie ranches could no longer be sustained.

Malibu Canyon Fire, 1970

If that weren't enough, the incredibly destructive Newhall-Malibu fires swept through the area in September 1970 and destroyed most of what was left of the movie sets at both sites. Today, virtually all of the movie ranches that once were a prominent feature of the Southern California landscape have disappeared.

The great Iverson Movie Ranch cinematographers: Fayte Browne

born June 1896, Oregon

died July 1952, Los Angeles (age 56)

Fayte Browne filmography on IMDb

Fayte Browne had a sadly brief career, working full time as a DP for only four years, from 1949-1952. He filmed at least one bona fide Iverson masterpiece in the Charles Starrett B-Western South of Death Valley (1949), part of a solid body of work rich in Iverson material. Trail of the Rustlers (1950) and Smoky Canyon (1952), both Durango Kid features with Starrett in the lead role, are other examples of his best work at Iverson.

Fayte Browne's Iverson masterpiece, the 1949 Charles Starrett feature 

South of Death Valley; at left is the Upper Iverson rock formation known as Grumpy.

He spent his entire career with Columbia, initially shooting a variety of projects but eventually specializing in Charles Starrett’s Durango Kid B-Westerns. From the time he shot his first Durango Kid movie — Challenge of the Range, released in 1949, on which Browne served as camera operator under DP Rex Wimpy — he virtually made a career out of the Durango Kid. He shot 24 of the remaining 30 Durango Kid movies that were filmed — his first two as camera operator and the rest as DP. Most, if not all, of these productions filmed at Iverson and featured extensive action sequences among the rocks.

He did a considerable amount of work as camera operator early in his career, some of it uncredited, working in essence as an assistant to more established — although perhaps less inspired — DPs. Browne was still doing camera operator work in 1948 and 1949, even after he had begun his career as a DP — including around the time he shot his Iverson masterpiece. After South of Death Valley he appears to have finally established himself as a DP, and he no longer was relegated to working as an assistant.

I suspect he wallowed in relative obscurity, knowing he had something more to bring to the process than was generally acknowledged. I envision him living a life of frustration and disillusionment, but who knows.

He apparently worked up until the time of his death, shooting a number of movies in 1952 before dying at the age of 56 in July of that year.