Where did Fuzzy Knight place the dynamite in "Boss of Bullion City" ... and how much damage did he do?

Fuzzy Knight, left, Johnny Mack Brown and Maria Montez in "Boss of Bullion City" (1940)

Veteran B-Western sidekick Fuzzy Knight has a scene in the Universal picture "Boss of Bullion City" where he places some dynamite in a rock, and in the process he appears to use an ax to chip away at the rock. I wanted to see whether I could find the exact spot, and whether any actual damage was done to the rock.

"Boss of Bullion City" — Fuzzy Knight at work on the South Rim

Here's a shot of Fuzzy at work on the rock. Finding the spot was easy, as it's in a widely filmed part of the Upper Iverson and the instantly recognizable Wrench Rock appears at the left of the shot. The area where Fuzzy is working is part of the T-Cliff, also known simply as the Cliff, one of the largest rock features on the South Rim.

In this shot Fuzzy is swinging the ax right into the hole as he tries to make the hole large enough to fit the dynamite. Some of the screen shots I was able to get off my DVD version of the movie are a bit ... well, fuzzy. But the shot pinpoints where the ax came in contact with the rock.

Fuzzy checks his work, and we get a look at the hole in the rock.

Even in a wider shot, the hole is plainly visible. One thing that makes this spot relatively easy to locate is a missing piece of rock surface right near the dynamite hole. This section where the surface has fallen off can be seen in other productions and can be easily found at the site.

This version of the shot points out two key elements in finding the dynamite hole: the hole itself, and the nearby area where the surface material has fallen off the rock. I have pondered the question of whether the missing hunk of surface material has anything to do with the production of this sequence for "Boss of Bullion City."

A closeup shows Fuzzy placing the dynamite in the hole he has apparently created in the rock. The question of whether the antics of Fuzzy and the rest of the "Boss of Bullion City" crew may have helped pry loose the nearby surface material is probably unanswerable — but that doesn't prevent us from contemplating it.

Is Fuzzy contemplating the damage to the rock?

Production on the movie would have taken place in 1939, which was still early in the use of the Upper Iverson as a filming location. I have yet to run across any earlier movie shots of this area, which could help determine whether the damage to the rock was fresh at the time "Bullion City" was in production. In the absence of such evidence, I'm willing to assume the slab fell off as part of the natural erosion process.

It may be worth pointing out that I'm not investigating any damage from the dynamite itself, as any explosions would have been handled by special effects. The possible damage I'm tracking involves the creation of the hole in the rock where the dynamite was placed and any collateral damage to nearby rock surfaces.

"Teenage Caveman" (1958): Robert Vaughn, the dynamite hole and the missing slab

Here's the same spot as it appears almost two decades later in Roger Corman's cult film "Teenage Caveman." That's future "Man From U.N.C.L.E." Robert Vaughn in the title role of the Teenage Caveman. I may be stating the obvious, but Vaughn was no teenager at the time — he was about 25 when the movie was made.

The pertinent features seen in "Boss of Bullion City" are easy to spot again here, but to avoid ambiguity, here's a labeled version of the photo.

This is what the rock looks like today, with Fuzzy's handiwork still easy to spot. The site retains both its presumed natural scars — notably the missing slab of surface material — and its movie scars, such as the dynamite hole.

The dynamite hole and missing surface hunk are marked again here. One thing you may have already noticed is that a bigger, better hole for setting up dynamite appears to already be in place at the base of the rock — seemingly a more logical place to do meaningful dynamite work.

The obvious question comes to mind: Why would the filmmakers want to bash a hole into the rock in the first place — especially in such a silly spot, and especially when a better hole was already available directly below that spot. Of course, we're beating our heads against a rock wall if we're looking for logic in a B-Western.

Field operative Cliff Roberts snapped this closeup of Fuzzy's dynamite hole on a recent visit to the site. My faith in human nature tells me to assume the hole occurred naturally, rather than being created by Fuzzy or a crew member swinging an ax into the rock. But it does have the appearance of something that was created intentionally, and I'm probably giving the film crew too much credit.

"The Gene Autry Show" in color

Prominent Rock, aka Medicine Rock, at top right, in "The Gene Autry Show"

Over the course of its 86 episodes spanning 1950-1955, the early TV Western "The Gene Autry Show" filmed about one episode in five on the Iverson Movie Ranch. At the end of the run the series was filming in color, leaving us with a few relatively rare color views of some of the ranch's rock features.

"Stage to San Dimas" ("Gene Autry" episode, premiered Oct. 8, 1955)

George J. Lewis appeared in more than 400 features, shorts and TV episodes, from the silent era well into the 1960s, including more than 10 episodes of Gene's TV show. He was a regular in Republic serials, including a starring role opposite Linda Stirling in the 1944 Iverson Movie Ranch showpiece "Zorro's Black Whip." He also appeared as Don Alejandro de la Vega in Disney's "Zorro" TV series.

By the time Gene got around to doing TV he had already made bagloads of money as a cowboy star in the movies, which helped him round up a big enough budget to shoot much of the TV show out of town.

Pioneertown's "Mane Street"

One place he filmed a number of episodes — and it was film in those days — was around Pioneertown, near Palm Springs, Calif. In fact, Gene was one of the key players in setting up a movie town at Pioneertown — a town that still exists, although it's important to keep expectations low if you plan a trip there.

One of the many distinctive rock clumps near Pioneertown

The rocks around Pioneertown have a certain look to them — I call it "desert scrabble." It's similar enough to the look of the distinctive rock formations of the Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, Calif., that many filmmakers — including Autry — would blend the two locations into a single scene.

The Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, Calif.

The "desert scrabble" look of Lone Pine's Alabama Hills, however, is nicely augmented by the often snow-covered peaks of the Eastern Sierra — including Lone Pine Peak, seen here in the background just left of center.

Smiling Lion (at right), a happy rock formation on the Upper Iverson ("The Gene Autry Show")

I want to get back to the Iverson Ranch and show a couple more color shots from "Autry." I've had a hard time finding good prints of the series, so I hope readers will forgive the lower quality of some of these screen shots.

Upper Iverson Movie Ranch in modern times — Smiling Lion, bottom left

Smiling Lion can still be found on the former Upper Iverson, but because of the terrain and the homes that have been built in the area, it's hard to duplicate the angle seen in the "Autry" episode. Above is a recent shot of Smiling Lion from about as close as I could get to the same angle.

Smiling Lion can be seen in the bottom left corner of the photo. Unavoidably, you'll also see, just above Smiling Lion, one of the estate homes that now occupy much of the former Upper Iverson Movie Ranch.

Also visible in this shot are Turtle Rock, at the right, and a couple of the key background hills of the Upper Iverson, Two-Humper at top left and Notch Hill at top center.

"The Gene Autry Show": "The Stage to San Dimas" (1955)

Another screen shot from the "Stage to San Dimas" episode shows a cliff area along the South Rim. I call this the T-Cliff because of the distinguishing capital "T" that seems to be carved into it (along with sort of a cross to its right, creating a square or a tic-tac-toe board).

The markings could be interpreted any number of ways, but T-Cliff works for me as a way of identifying it. This cliff is also sometimes referred to as simply "The Cliff" among Iverson historians — a term that may be a bit too generic considering that the movie ranch features a number of cliffs.

Here's a little bit of that same cliff area, photographed during a recent visit. The tree has grown quite a bit in the half-century-plus since "The Gene Autry Show" taped at Iverson, and much of the cliff is now hidden. But the prominent T-shaped crack still identifies it as the T-Cliff.