Meet the Beatles: They're just about the only survivors from a little-known Southern California movie location ranch

The Beatles: "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967)

As you probably know, the Beatles were a super-popular band back in the Sixties. It turns out they also have a small role in this story, although it's mainly about the Jack Ingram Movie Location Ranch in Woodland Hills, Calif.

"Have Gun — Will Travel": Charles Bronson on the Ingram Ranch in the 1962 episode "Brotherhood"

When Charles Bronson worked the ranch in the early '60s for a "Have Gun — Will Travel" episode, the Ingram Ranch was already starting to wind down a two-decade run as a busy filming location.

The Beatles perform in Hamburg's Star-Club, 1962

This was around the same time that an early version of the Beatles was still a bar band, hard at work at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, and almost nobody in America had heard of them yet.

The Beatles at the center of the age of psychedelia

The rise of the Beatles would coincide with the decline of old Western-oriented movie ranches, part of a sweeping cultural shift that would come to define the '60s — with the Beatles considered to be among the most important catalysts for that shift, helping to usher in one of the most colorful periods of the 20th century.

It's tenuous at best, but the Beatles have a connection to these trees

We'll be taking a detour from the Beatles here to talk more about the Ingram Ranch, so if you're mainly looking for Beatles content, you may want to scroll down until you see a picture of the Beatles in their "Sgt. Pepper" uniforms.

"Five Guns West" (1955): Mike "Touch" Connors and Dorothy Malone on the Ingram Ranch

Largely forgotten today, the Ingram Ranch wasn't one of the most famous movie ranches. But from the late '40s into the early '60s, back when Westerns were a mainstay of first the movie industry and then early network TV lineups, the low-budget Ingram operation was able to carve out a healthy slice of the filming location pie.

 

"Man Without a Star" (1955): The Ingram Ranch's distinctive sloping Western street

Ingram's makeshift Western town set offered production companies a cheap alternative to Southern California's backlots and higher-profile movie ranches, including places like Corriganville and the Iverson Movie Ranch.

 

"Son of Billy the Kid" (Western Adventures, 1949): Ingram Ranch high jinks

The ranch's budget-friendly pricing helped attract Poverty Row outfits like Western Adventures, which cranked out a series of Lash LaRue pictures from 1948-1952. Many of these B-Westerns were shot on the Ingram Ranch.

 

Jack Ingram — movie bad guy and Ingram Ranch founder

The Ingram Ranch was the pet project of Jack Ingram, a B-Western actor and stuntman who chalked up hundreds of screen credits, usually playing a bad guy in B-Westerns.

 

Poster for live Jack Ingram appearance

Ingram was cast so often as a heavy that he came to be billed as "the best bad man in motion pictures," as seen in this poster from back in the days when movie cowboys — even bad guys — made live appearances.

 

"Ridin' the Trail" (1940): Jack Ingram with Iris Lancaster

Here's a promo still for the obscure 1940 B-Western "Ridin' the Trail," which starred Fred Scott. That's Jack Ingram glaring menacingly at the lovely Iris Lancaster.

 

"Mark of the Lash" (1948): Lash LaRue and Suzi Crandall on the newly built
Ingram Ranch Western street

Ingram bought a former goat farm off Topanga Canyon Boulevard in 1944, recruited some of his movie cowboy buddies to help build Western sets, and had a movie ranch up and running within a few years.

 

Kenne Duncan, left, and Pierce Lyden

The story as it's been handed down to us is that the crew of mostly B-Western henchmen who helped Jack build the place was made up of familiar faces including Pierce Lyden and Kenne Duncan.

 

"Pals of the Saddle" (1938): Ray Corrigan, left, with Max Terhune and

John Wayne in an early film shoot at Corriganville

It's a pretty good bet that Jack Ingram got the idea for his location ranch from another movie cowboy and stuntman, Ray "Crash" Corrigan, who did the same thing several years earlier when he built Corriganville.

 

Corrigan hams it up with a movie camera at Corriganville

Ray Corrigan bought the land back in 1937 for what would become Corriganville, and began filming at the location ranch as early as 1938 — almost a decade before Jack Ingram would open his own movie ranch about 15 miles to the south in Woodland Hills.

 

A landmark movie rock looms in the distance

Readers may recognize Corriganville's "Gorilla Rock" in the background of this shot. The rock, which can still be found today in Simi Valley's Corriganville Park, appeared in countless movie and TV Westerns.

 

Flier inviting the public to the Ingram Ranch (ca. 1947)

But in 1947, Jack Ingram went a step further than even Ray Corrigan had gone. Almost as soon as filming began on his ranch, Ingram created a second revenue stream by bringing in tourists on Sundays — at 50 cents a head.

 

Is this where Ray Corrigan got the idea for a Corriganville theme park?

At the time, Ingram could legitimately claim that his ranch was "the only movie town in the world open to the public." This was still two years before Ray Corrigan would open Corriganville to tourists.

 

Visitors to the Ingram Ranch are treated to a stagecoach chase
during the "Woodland Hills Western Jamboree"

Ray Corrigan probably got a look at Jack Ingram's flier, and may have even milled about among the tourists visiting the Ingram Ranch. My hunch is that Ray would have made it out for the "Woodland Hills Western Jamboree," which the Ingram Ranch reportedly hosted for a few years.

 

Postcard for Corriganville, which opened to tourists in 1949

It didn't take long for Corrigan to set up a similar operation on his own movie ranch. In 1949, two years after the Ingram Ranch started taking in tourist dollars, Corriganville became a Western theme park.

 

Tourists explore Corriganville's "Silvertown" (ca. 1950s)

Corriganville got into the tourist business on a much larger scale than anything Ingram was able to pull off. With the heavily filmed Silvertown as its centerpiece, Crash Corrigan's movie ranch soon blossomed into a major tourist destination, drawing weekend crowds rivaling the turnout in the early years at Disneyland, which opened in 1955.

 

"Trackdown" (Four Star Productions): The Ingram Ranch's hotel and general store

Jack Ingram got out of the movie ranch business in 1956, handing over the Ingram Ranch to Four Star Productions, which was rolling out a number of early TV Westerns and needed a filming location.

 

Four Star Productions' four stars

Four Star Productions was an unusual television company, as it was literally run by four stars — four movie stars. Joel McCrea was initially involved but dropped out early in the company's formation, and it wound up in the hands of Charles Boyer, Dick Powell, David Niven and Ida Lupino.

 

"Wanted: Dead or Alive" (1958): The Ingram Ranch's distinctive Saloon

Four Star quickly grew into one of the most successful early television production companies, with a particularly strong lineup of Westerns. Besides "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and "Trackdown," the company's early Western hits included "Zane Grey Theatre" and "The Rifleman."

 

"Have Gun — Will Travel" (Filmaster): A fistfight draws a crowd on the Ingram Ranch's
"Crooked Street" in the season one episode "Winchester Quarantine" (1957)

Four Star also continued to lease out the ranch for use by other production companies, such as Filmaster, whose popular "Have Gun — Will Travel" shot regularly at the ranch.

 

"Have Gun — Will Travel" episode "The Last Laugh" (1958)

Over its six-season run from 1957 to 1963, "Have Gun — Will Travel" became one of the best showcases for the Ingram Ranch. This shot features a barn that found its way into just a handful of productions.

 

"Young Gun" (Have Gun — Will Travel," season 2): Jack Ingram's house

Another "Have Gun" episode offers one of the best shots we've seen of ranch owner Jack Ingram's house, which was part of the town set and was typically configured as a church when it appeared in productions.

 

"The Search" ("Have Gun," season 3, 1960): The Saloon as a stage depot

This shot from the episode "The Search," the final episode of "Have Gun — Will Travel's" third season, again shows off the Saloon, with its easily recognized curved facade. Here the Saloon building plays a stage depot.

 

The trees behind the Saloon building show up again

Once again, we get a glimpse of two trees behind the Saloon building — the same trees that framed Charles Bronson's hat in a shot higher up in this post. I'll encourage you again to keep these trees in mind as you read on.

 

"The Horse Mixup" ("The Roy Rogers Show," season 5, 1956)

Another popular series that made use of the Ingram Ranch was "The Roy Rogers Show." This shot includes the ranch's version of the Eureka Hotel and Cafe, a gathering place that had a recurring role on the show.

 

Sign on the front of the Ingram Ranch's "Eureka Hotel and Cafe"

The Eureka was run on the show by Dale Evans, whose name appears on the sign on the front of the building. But the building that was seen as the Eureka on the Ingram Ranch was just one of a number of different sets to play the Eureka during the run of "The Roy Rogers Show."

 

Another Eureka Hotel — this one located at Corriganville

Another Eureka Hotel, part of Corriganville's Silvertown, was also used on the show. While similar in appearance to the Ingram Ranch's Eureka, this was a completely different building on a different movie ranch.

 

Corriganville's Eureka Hotel — a fixture along the main drag in Silvertown

The building used for the Eureka at Corriganville was one of the major buildings along Corriganville's Western street, known as Silvertown. The Eureka building was more commonly seen as a saloon.

 

"Death Valley Days" episode "Stagecoach Spy": Corriganville's "Silver Dollar Saloon"

The Silvertown saloon became familiar to tourists visiting Corriganville as the "Silver Dollar Saloon," and often appeared as the Silver Dollar in productions, as seen in this example from "Death Valley Days."

 

An earlier incarnation of the Eureka Hotel and Cafe on "The Roy Rogers Show"

Other buildings also appeared from time to time as the Eureka Hotel, and we don't always know where they were located. We discussed this in a post about "The Roy Rogers Show" that you can see by clicking here.

 

Trigger freaks out at the sight of Pat Brady in a scary mask

If you do click through to the post about "The Roy Rogers Show" (here's that link again), watch for a sequence of shots in which Trigger goes wild after Roy's sidekick Pat Brady puts on a scary mask.

 

A blurry Trigger frantically tries to get away from Pat

The scary mask sequence is shot on the Ingram Ranch, and in this shot from the sequence, we see a blurry Trigger, about to roll out of camera range.

 

Behind Trigger, the Ingram Ranch Saloon — and the two trees

Behind Trigger, we again see the Ingram Ranch's familiar Saloon, and behind the Saloon building, one of the better views of those two oak trees we keep seeing.

 

The Beatles

By now you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the Beatles, since I mentioned them all the way at the top of this post. It's about those two trees.

 

The "Beatles" of Calabasas: Two rare survivors from the Jack Ingram Movie Ranch

Here are those same two old oak trees as they appear today — and the fact that they've survived is some rare good news about the Ingram Ranch. I took this photo of the trees on a visit to Calabasas in 2024.

 

The Beatles in concert: Paul and John lean in opposite directions

I call the two trees "the Beatles" because they lean away from each other, similar to how John Lennon and  Paul McCartney used to appear onstage.

 

The Calabasas tree survivors appear to emulate the Beatles

As a movie historian, it's always exciting to me when I'm able to find anything from the old movies that managed to survive the ravages of development. In the case of the Ingram Ranch, which was almost completely redeveloped, it's a bit of a miracle to find the two old oak trees — and today there's even a younger "Ringo" behind them.

 

The similarities extend to the old trees' major limbs

Being left-handed, Paul held his bass to the left (his right), while John held his guitar out to the right (his left). Sure enough, the tree versions of the Beatles have their own "instruments" positioned in tribute to John and Paul.

 

"Five Guns West" (1955): An overview of the Ingram Ranch

But what makes the trees interesting from a movie history stamdpoint isn't any tenuous connection to the Beatles — it's their appearances in old movies and TV shows, along with the fact that they managed to survive.

 

The Beatles-like trees lurk in the background in "Five Guns West"

The trees' location on the Ingram Ranch, right behind the Saloon, makes it relatively easy to spot them. And those two old trees — the Beatles, as I like to call them — found their way into many productions.

 

Aerial view of the Ingram Ranch Western sets at their peak, in 1959

Unfortunately, there's also some bad news, which is that almost nothing else of historical significance has survived from the Ingram Ranch. The above aerial view from 1959 shows the layout of the Western town and other sets back when the ranch was still a working filming location.

 

The former location of the Ingram Ranch, after decades of development

This Google aerial shows what the site of the former movie ranch looks like today. The space where the town and other sets once stood is now filled with suburban homes.

 

Where the Western sets were located

The approximate footprint of the old Western sets is seen in this modern shot of what today is a residential section of Calabasas.

 

A typical suburban Calabasas neighborhood

In the current landscape, the location of the old movie ranch is centered around where two quiet residential streets, Waterford Way and Dunmore Drive, intersect.

 

Ingram Ranch's two main Western streets

Taking another look at the 1959 aerial photo, we can see that the Ingram Ranch's filming area was centered around two main streets. In my research, I refer to them as "Crooked Street" and "Slope Street."

 

The location of the two trees — "The Beatles" — in 1959

In the 1959 aerial, it's easy to see where the "Beatles" were positioned, behind the Saloon at the northeast end of the Ingram Ranch's "Slope Street."

 

The location of "The Beatles" in the modern landscape

Today the same trees can be found near the end of a cul-de-sac, across the street from some houses, along Dunmore Drive.

 

The Beatles of Calabasas — long retired now after a career in the movies

Other trees scattered about the suburban area presumably also go back to the filming days, but none are as readily identifiable in movies and TV shows as the two surviving "Beatles."