Are you on the mailing list? If not, look at all the great stuff you're missing ...

The Iverson Movie Ranch blog now has a mailing list, which is the best way to be notified whenever I put up a new post. You can join by sending me an email at:

iversonfilmranch@aol.com

Just say "Put me on the mailing list" (or any other words that make the same point).

What you'll get out of it is an email notifying you whenever I post a new entry, which lately has been averaging about once every five days, often slipping to about once a week if I get busy (i.e., lazy).

I'm sure the big highlight for people on the list is that each email includes a silly annotated photo taken on the Iverson Movie Ranch — talking rocks, confused cowboy heroes and so forth.

Here are a few of the "gems" from recent mailings ...

Once again, to join the mailing list, just email me at:

iversonfilmranch@aol.com

and ask to be put on the list.

Thanks!

Chuck Connors and Dale Robertson do some male bonding

Chuck Connors, left, and Dale Robertson in "Tales of Wells Fargo" (1957)

A couple of years before he became famous as "The Rifleman," Chuck Connors helped launch another TV Western, "Tales of Wells Fargo." Connors appeared alongside series star Dale Robertson in the first episode of the show, "The Thin Rope," which premiered March 18, 1957.

"The Thin Rope," 1957: Premiere episode of "Tales of Wells Fargo"

Connors and Robertson shared a stagecoach ride spanning most of the episode, filmed on the Upper Iverson Movie Ranch. The trip gave the two men plenty of time for male bonding … not to mention time to think about whether they might end up trying to kill each other. From a filming location standpoint, the episode was a showcase for the Upper Iverson.

Chuck Connors and Dale Robertson — note the road in the background

The producers tried to get away with a little movie hocus-pocus on that stagecoach trip, through the magic of rear projection and the ability to reverse footage horizontally, or "flip the shot." The above screen shot includes a landmark in the background, Road Up the Hill, and because we've seen the same road in countless other productions, we can see that it appears here horizontally flipped.

This version of the screen shot points out the flipped road in the background, along with the properly oriented actors. Today the Road Up the Hill is part of a firebreak and hiking trail known as Johnson Motorway.

My own "fixed" version of the shot, showing Road Up the Hill in its proper orientation

In the above doctored version of the screen shot, I've flipped the photo to show how the road should look. Unfortunately, this also reverses the actors — in effect creating mirror images of them.

"Go West, Young Lady" (1941)

Here's an example of Road Up the Hill in another production. The road was seen hundreds of times in the backgrounds of movies and TV shows shot on the Upper Iverson. Here the road appears in a scene from the Columbia Western comedy/musical "Go West, Young Lady," which starred Glenn Ford, Penny Singleton, Ann Miller and Charlie Ruggles.

In this version of the shot from "Go West, Young Lady" the Road Up the Hill is pointed out. It's seen more clearly here than in the reverse-projection footage used in "Tales of Wells Fargo," but its distinctive shape leaves no doubt that it's the same road.

 "Tales of Wells Fargo" — Chuck and Dale approach the Reflecting Pool

Here we see the stagecoach negotiating an especially rocky stretch of road through Bobby's Bend. This rough piece of road, which I call the Floor, is ribbed with a series of large boulders, posing a formidable obstacle. While it seems nuts to even try to traverse this section of what could hardly be called a "road" in a rickety wooden stage, presumably this sort of thing was par for the course in the days of stagecoach travel — and here the stage does make it over the obstacle.

The photo contains a number of Upper Iverson features. You can learn more about these features by clicking on the following links: Wrench Rock, Smiling Lion, Two-Humper, the Aztec.

"The Tomb" (1986)

Here's one of the best views of the Floor that I've seen in any production. This view from high above Wrench Rock appears in the movie "The Tomb," a Fred Olen Ray film about an Egyptian curse with a cast that included John Carradine, Sybil Danning and Cameron Mitchell. It was one of the later films shot on this part of the Iverson Movie Ranch, and as you can see, the producers brought a couple of camels to the site for the shoot.

In this version of the photo from "The Tomb" I've identified the area I call the Floor, along with nearby Gold Raiders Rock, which is partially visible here. Please click here if you would like to see more photos from this unusual Upper Iverson shoot and learn more about "The Tomb" — including the Iverson location of the Tomb itself.

Back to that first "Tales of Wells Fargo" episode, this shot from the video clip above illustrates why the Reflecting Pool has that name, with the camera capturing a clear reflection of Wrench Rock in the pool.

The pool continues to be employed as a creative element as the sequence plays out. Here it conveys partial reflections of two of the bushwackers getting the drop on Chuck Connors. We also see Notch Rock directly above the head of one of the bad guys.

Chuck Connors in "Tales of Wells Fargo," with Wrench Rock in the background

The hat says "goofy Western sidekick" but the eyes say "bad intent." Connors plays an enigmatic character here — is he the naive rube Button Smith, or the notorious outlaw Pete Johnson? We get a tasty glimpse of both personas in his "Tales of Wells Fargo" appearance — and as anyone who ever saw "Nightmare in Badham County" can tell you, there was more to Chuck Connors than the upright citizen and loving dad he played on "The Rifleman."

A Western hero rides off into the sunset: Dale Robertson, 1923-2013

I was sorry to hear today that Dale Robertson, a Western hero of both the big screen and the little one, has died. Robertson, whose credits in Westerns are virtually endless, died Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, at age 89 of complications from lung cancer and pneumonia.

Here's a clip that someone put up on YouTube as a tribute to Robertson. The video I originally linked to, which included some Iverson footage, has since been taken down from YouTube — apologies to any of my readers who tried to watch it and were disappointed to discover that it was gone. This newer one doesn't appear to contain Iverson, but it makes up for it by being a little weird. The location clips here are mainly Vasquez Rocks, but the highlight may be the  "Amazing Grace"/"House of the Rising Sun" mashup in the second half:



A number of the Western productions in Robertson's long career were shot at least in part at the Iverson Movie Ranch, with the ones that come to mind right away being the TV shows "Tales of Wells Fargo" and "Death Valley Days." Robertson's series "Iron Horse" also supposedly shot at Iverson, but I've only found a few episodes so far and the movie ranch has yet to turn up.

One movie I know was shot partially at Iverson that features Robertson is "Fighting Man of the Plains" (1949), a Randolph Scott movie in which Robertson has a small role as the outlaw Jesse James.

The Dale Robertson movie "Sitting Bull" (1954) is often cited as an Iverson production, but I have to refute that claim — I've gone through the movie and didn't find any Iverson. I tend to believe the other citation that turns up for this movie, which is that it's shot around Durango, Mexico.

Similarly, the 1964 Paramount Western "Law of the Lawless," starring Robertson along with Yvonne De Carlo, has been cited as Iverson, but I believe that's another erroneous listing.

Robertson acted from the late 1940s into the 1990s — a career spanning six decades. Even with more than 60 movies under his belt — most of them Westerns — he made his biggest impact on TV, including his early success on "Tales of Wells Fargo." Later in his career he appeared in shows including "Dynasty," "Dallas," "Matt Houston" and "Murder, She Wrote," and he headlined his own series, "J.J. Starbuck," for a short time in the late 1980s.