John Payne and Emile Meyer join forces in the Iverson rocks on "Restless Gun"

Emile Meyer

Emile Meyer was one of those actors you probably recognize by face, but almost nobody knows by name. He appeared frequently in Westerns, both on TV and on the big screen, with notable performances in "Shane" (1953) and on the James Garner TV show "Maverick" (1957). And like most of the Western actors of the period, he put in his time on the Iverson Movie Ranch.

"The Restless Gun" (1957): Emile Meyer on the Upper Iverson

Meyer worked the Upper Iverson with John Payne when Meyer made a guest appearance on Payne's TV show "The Restless Gun." Meyer played Sheriff Wade Lawson opposite Payne's idealist cowboy-gunfighter Vint Bonner in the episode "Man and Boy," which premiered Nov. 25, 1957.

John Payne on Iverson's South Rim in "The Restless Gun"

Here's a shot of Payne from the same episode of "The Restless Gun," taken during the lead-up to the climactic shootout at the Miner's Cabin on the South Rim.

The episode features some unusual lighting, at times creating the impression that the rocks are lit by campfire light. This one looks like day for night, given how well-lit the background is.

A unique image seen in the episode is this silhouette of a cactus in full bloom, apparently taken atop Iverson's Cactus Hill. Meyer and Payne are the riders.

Here's a shot of a rider traveling along the top of Cactus Hill against a dramatic Chatsworth sunrise — although I get the impression we're supposed to see it as a sunset. In the distance we can see a little bit of Chatsworth Reservoir from back when it was an actual reservoir. It appears as a tiny lighter-shaded horizontal strip to the left of the horse's snout.

Another interesting shot from the episode is this one filmed against the backdrop of Oat Mountain, with a radar dish visible that was part of the Nike missile defense system that was in place during the Cold War. The missile base slips into the backgrounds of a number of Iverson Movie Ranch productions of the 1950s and early 1960s — to read more about it, please check out this earlier blog post.

The "Restless Gun" episode makes ample use of the Iverson rocks, but they're often shot using lighting and angles that make identification difficult.

The climactic sequence plays out behind the Miner's Cabin, on the Upper Iverson's South Rim. This is a relatively rare view of the back of the cabin, looking north toward Oat Mountain, visible in the background.

Much of Meyer's on-screen time is spent against the same background rocks.

Meyer did break out from that one rocky background just long enough to be shot against a different rocky background. Here Meyer displays his trademark frown — and the rock behind him seems determined to match it.

Cowboys and Aliens? Something's going on in the skies above a beloved TV Western

I love a good anachronism — who doesn't? Here's one in an early episode of the TV Western "Have Gun Will Travel." The episode, "Show of Force," originally aired Nov. 9, 1957, and the show was set in the Wild West days (obviously). But you can't miss the jet contrails in the sky — especially given that they did a nice wide pan shot.

It's a little bit surprising that the producers of the show didn't think it mattered — or just didn't notice, which is a good possibility. Contrails were so common at the time (not that they're uncommon now) that they could easily be overlooked. These were almost certainly military, as they were formed by two jets flying in formation. It was the Cold War era, and the military had a big Nike missile installation at Oat Mountain (the lighter-colored hill that appears at the right of the shot), which probably had nothing to do with the jets flying over, but who knows? Parts of the missile base were also regularly creeping into the backgrounds of productions shot around this time — you can see an example here (from "Panic in Year Zero," appropriately enough — a nuclear war movie).

The above photo is a two-part composite taken from a pan — a nice shot even without the contrails as it provides context for the bunkhouse, which was part of the Middle Iverson Ranch Set. I posted a detailed entry not too long ago about the set, which you can see here. I know these photos start out pretty small — especially in a wide format like the one above — so you may want to click on the picture to enlarge it for a better look.

Panic in Year Zero ... Where to go in a nuclear holocaust

The 1962 Cold War movie "Panic in Year Zero," starring and directed by Ray Milland, with Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchell and Joan Freeman, tells the story of the Baldwins, a family that escapes Los Angeles just before a nuclear attack and starts a new life in the wilds of what we now know was the Iverson Movie Ranch. The movie features some of the more interesting shots of Iverson to survive from its later years as a working movie location.

The adventure begins innocently enough ...

The above shot is taken on the former Republic Pictures backlot in Studio City, Calif., where countless B-Westerns were also shot. It shows the start of what was supposed to be a normal family vacation — this was before the bomb fell — and we can see that the neighbor's house, at the left in the above shot, is a converted barn. The same barn, formerly known as Melody Ranch, was seen in a number of Gene Autry's Republic movies along with many other Westerns. (Gene later used the name Melody Ranch for his own movie ranch in Newhall.) As it appears here, converted to something like a large suburban house, the same building also reportedly functioned as the family home on the TV show "My Three Sons." The Republic lot went through many incarnations over the years — it was originally the Mack Sennett-Keystone lot, then home to Mascot Pictures before Republic took over — and eventually became CBS's Radford lot, which it remains today. (The barn, however, is long gone.)

In a pivotal sequence in "Panic in Year Zero," the Baldwin family looks back on L.A. and gets the bad news in the form of a massive mushroom cloud. The shot is taken from Santa Susana Pass Road between the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley, which was the main road between the two valleys before the 118 Freeway went in. (The 118, completed around 1969, effectively wrote the epitaph for both Iverson and Corriganville, two of the most important movie ranches of the old Hollywood era.)

Another view of the mushroom cloud, without the family in the picture, reveals a distinctive rock at the bottom of the shot, which is a key to finding the location today. While it's hard to make out in the distance, much of the Lower Iverson Movie Ranch appears in the shot, just above and to the right of the large rock near the bottom center of the photo. The shot is taken from a short distance west of Iverson.

Here's another shot from the movie with the same general view before the bomb hits, where it's a little easier to make out the Lower Iverson in the background, along with a portion of the still relatively undeveloped San Fernando Valley, circa 1962. You may be able to spot Garden of the Gods and other Iverson features. (Click on the photo to enlarge it if needed.)

Here's what the site looks like today. The spot can be easily found — thanks to that one distinctive rock — and is viewable from a turnout along the side of the road. Here again, Iverson is visible near the center of the shot. The Rocky Peak Church also appears in this shot — the white complex with a red roof, just above that distinctive rock — and some of the condos and other features of the modern-day Iverson Ranch are also seen.

As the bomb turns loose millions of panic-stricken Angelenos on the highways, the Baldwin family seeks refuge in the wilderness, which means Iverson. Here they arrive at a secret camping area, through a gate marked by a couple of formidable boulders that can still be found on the Upper Iverson. In other movies this pair of boulders had horses and stagecoaches riding between them on a regular basis.

Here's a better look at the rock on the right. To me it looks kind of like a duckbill. Today these same two rocks frame a  private driveway, shown in the photo below.

I don't have the right angle, but this rock — the one that fills much of the right half of the shot — is the same "duckbill" seen in the shot above. I'm sorry to report that the duck's bill was shaved off to allow for a wider driveway. (You can see in the shot of the trailer above that it's a tight fit.)

Deeper into the backcountry, the Baldwins drive past a familiar rock formation, at the top left in the photo, seen in many old Republic serials and B-Westerns. I call it Smiling Lion. An interesting touch here is the bridge, which apparently was just a temporary construction for this movie that was then quickly torn down. It appears to cross the tiny creek that traverses the Upper Iverson. (I've been calling it Iverson Creek, because what else would it be. But I have since learned that some of the hikers and other people who are familiar with the area call it Fern Ann Creek or Fern Ann Falls Creek.)

Here's a modern view of Smiling Lion, again not exactly the right angle — it looks more like a grouchy lion from this angle. But you get the idea.

In a twist that's either ironic or coincidental, depending on how you define those terms (a lot of people get it wrong, so I won't even try), this shot of the family car and trailer continuing the journey across the Upper Iverson contains a barely visible and yet significant sighting. In the background, at the very top of Oat Mountain, toward the left of the photo, is a tiny white circle. (You can see it better if you enlarge the photo by clicking on it.) This is believed to be a radar dish, part of the Nike missile base that is known to have occupied much of the top of Oat Mountain during the Cold War. The base, known to insiders as LA-88, was operational from 1956 through 1974 as part of the nationwide Nike missile defense system. A detailed history of the Oat Mountain Nike facility can be found here.

Here's a shot of more or less the same section of Oat Mountain in more recent times. The radar dish is no longer seen, although other electronic equipment is visible. During the years since things cooled off with the Soviets, much of the area atop Oat Mountain has been converted to microwave towers for use by cell phones and other mobile devices. If anyone is feeling nostalgic for the "good old days" of Nike missile bases in the hills above L.A., don't be. The Nike base atop Oat Mountain was an artifact of the period before even the 1980s-era Strategic Defense Initiative, when the prevailing doctrine of nuclear defense was "mutually assured destruction" — the same nightmare scenario that plays out in "Panic in Year Zero."

Here's another section of Oat Mountain, just to the west of the shot above. This shot provides a pretty good look at some of the equipment in place today atop the mountain, presumably mostly microwave towers. However, the white building that is the most prominent feature at the top of the hill, seen to the left of center, has been there for decades and does show up sometimes in the productions. I'll post some examples later, but I've seen it in the TV show "Bonanza," among others. I've traditionally assumed it was part of the base, but I don't know what its function is today. I do know that at least part of the property atop Oat Mountain remains in military hands. I've seen a few videos of the former Nike site in recent years (here's one of them) and it appears to be completely dismantled. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out they're still keeping track of things from up there — even if they're no longer ready to fire off a nuclear warhead in the blink of an eye.

One last shot from "Panic in Year Zero": Later in the "camping trip from hell," dad and his teenage son — Ray Milland and Frankie Avalon — go hunting, with the rock wonderland that is the Lower Iverson's Upper Gorge in all its glory in the background. This shot is taken from the camera mount in Garden of the Gods.

The Middle Iverson Ranch Set also appears in "Panic in Year Zero," and those shots can be seen here. (Scroll down to about the 14th and 15th photos to see the "Panic in Year Zero" stuff.)