Ward Bond, "Wagon Train" and the hidden secrets of the hills above the Upper Iverson

Ward Bond rides the Upper Iverson in "Wagon Train"

I spotted an interesting sequence near the end of "The Tent City Story," an episode of the long-running TV Western "Wagon Train" that first aired Dec. 10, 1958.

The sequence features Ward Bond, who was the wagonmaster and the series star during "Wagon Train's" first four seasons. In the sequence, Bond was filmed on the Upper Iverson Movie Ranch.

The location might have escaped notice had it not been for this glimpse of a stand of Douglas fir trees in the background. Luckily, the camera drifted just high enough to catch a portion of the stand of trees.

"Radar Men From the Moon" (Republic serial, 1952)

The triangular stand of fir trees, which resembles a "brand" on Oat Mountain, is located northeast of the Upper Iverson. It turns up repeatedly throughout the filming era, as in this promo still from the Jerry England collection.

The promo shot for the Republic serial "Radar Men From the Moon" uses special effects to superimpose a model rocket ship over the Upper Iverson, with Oat Mountain and the fir trees visible in the background.

"Radar Men From the Moon"

Other shots in "Radar Men From the Moon" were filmed on the ground on the Iverson Ranch. This shot, which includes a large prop version of the rocket ship, offers another look at the Douglas fir trees.

The scene was filmed on the Upper Iverson's South Rim, with the camera aimed northeast. The triangular stand of trees is noted here.

A portion of Oat Mountain, with the ancient stand of fir trees, in 2016

The stand of Douglas firs remains in place today, as seen in this shot taken on a recent visit to the site. The Douglas fir commonly lives to be 500 years old, and can reportedly live as long as 1,000 years.
 

When I first began noticing the stand of trees in productions, I did not know what it was. Needing a way to identify it, I settled on calling the dark triangular shape the "Triangle Brand."

The Triangle Brand turned up on the cover of a comic book featuring the "Arizona Cowboy," Rex Allen. I blogged about Rex, his TV show "Frontier Doctor" and his comic books in 2014, and you can click here to read that post.

"Border Corsairs" — an episode of the TV series "Adventures of Kit Carson"

Another interesting sighting of the Triangle Brand appears in an episode of "Adventures of Kit Carson" filmed in 1951, where the shot is horizontally flipped. Click here to read my 2009 blog post about this shot.

Jean Willes in "Wanted — Dead or Alive"

Here's a shot from the TV series "Wanted — Dead or Alive" that again shows the triangle of Douglas fir trees. The shot comes from the episode "Eager Man," which first aired Feb. 28, 1959.

Actress Jean Willes is seen on the Upper Iverson, with the house that was part of the Fury Set visible at the left of the frame. Along with the fir trees, I've also noted a "tiny cowboy" who's riding up to join the action.

"Wagon Train"

Getting back to the "Wagon Train" episode, as the sequence plays out, Ward Bond turns to order the wagon train to move out, and the action heads west — to the left of the screen.

As the camera pans left we see more hills to the north of the Upper Iverson, which are relatively nondescript. Without the Triangle Brand it would have been easy to miss that the scene was filmed at Iverson.

"Go West, Young Lady" (Glenn Ford, 1941)

While it can be a challenge to identify the hills north and northwest of the Upper Iverson, it's not impossible. A few landmarks in this screen shot from Columbia's "Go West, Young Lady" match the "Wagon Train" sequence.

Notice the hills marked "A" and "B" in the "Go West, Young Lady" screen shot.

The same hills are seen in the "Wagon Train" sequence, as noted here. The hills are separated here because the scene is filmed from northwest of where "Go West, Young Lady" was shot.

The "Go West, Young Lady" shot is pinpointed by another landmark — a road heading up the hill above the northwest corner of the Upper Iverson. This road, which I've referred to in my research as the "Road Up the Hill," does not appear in the "Wagon Train" episode. Today the road is known as the Johnson Motorway.

Johnson Motorway, sometimes called Johnson Mountain Way, is highlighted in this recent Google aerial view of a portion of the Iverson and Brandeis movie ranches in the northwest San Fernando Valley. For more about the Johnson Motorway, aka the "Road Up the Hill," please click here to read an earlier blog item about it.

Rex Allen — the Arizona Cowboy — in the Shootout at the Fury Corral

Rex Allen

Rex Allen was one of the last of the singing cowboys, chalking up a string of credits in B-Westerns in the 1950s and 1960s and headlining his own TV show, "Frontier Doctor," in the late 1950s. The Arizona Cowboy, as he was known, was a regular on the Iverson Movie Ranch.

Here's a shot of Allen from "Frontier Doctor" in which the doc is engaged in a shootout at the Fury Set on the Upper Iverson. He did as much shooting as healing on the series, but always for a good cause.

Visible behind Allen are a number of features of the Rocky Peak area in the Santa Susana Mountains to the west of the Upper Iverson. "Frontier Doctor" aired in syndication for one season — 39 episodes — in 1958 and 1959. This shootout took place in the episode "Drifting Sands," which premiered March 28, 1959.

Fury Barn, in "Frontier Doctor" (1959)

The bad guy, who was holed up in the Fury Barn, quickly gives up, enabling the episode to wrap up in under 30 minutes. The TV show was produced under the banner Hollywood Television Service, which was part of Republic Pictures as the company was winding down its movie operation and shifting its focus to TV.



Allen had an accomplished career as a recording artist, including scoring a country hit with "Don't Go Near the Indians" in 1962. (You can hear the song on the video file above.) His biggest hit was "Crying in the Chapel," released in 1953 — about seven years before Elvis Presley recorded his well-known version of the song.

Allen also was the star of a series of comic books, with a number of the covers — including the one seen above — shot on the Iverson Movie Ranch. The cover above includes one of the most important background features when it comes to identifying Iverson — a feature I call the Triangle Brand.

Here's the same comic book cover with the Triangle Brand identified. The "brand" appears on Oat Mountain and is seen in the backgrounds of hundreds of productions shot mainly on the Upper Iverson.

Hills northeast of the Iverson Movie Ranch as they appear today

The darkened triangular area on Oat Mountain is created by vegetation and has held up over decades of filming at Iverson. It can still be seen in the hills above Chatsworth, Calif., today — it's visible at the far left in the above shot.

Oat Mountain, the Triangle Brand and other features of the hills above Chatsworth, Calif.

Here's the same recent shot with some of the key features identified. All of these features appear in the backgrounds of hundreds of B-Westerns, TV Westerns and other productions.

"Frontier Doctor" comic book

Allen's TV show "Frontier Doctor" shot portions of most of its episodes on the Iverson Movie Ranch, with additional outdoor footage shot on the Republic Pictures backlot in Studio City. "Frontier Doctor" also became a comic book.

Rex Allen Memorial, Willcox, Ariz.

Allen is an icon in his hometown of Willcox, in Cochise County, Arizona, where a memorial to the Arizona Cowboy can be found. Rex's faithful horse Koko is said to be buried at the foot of the statue of Rex.

Willcox, Ariz., is also home to the Rex Allen Museum.

The Upper Iverson's Cul de Sac area and the northern slope of Cactus Hill, as seen through the lens of Oscar-nominated cinematographer Ernest Miller in "Little Big Horn"

"Little Big Horn" (1951) — filmed by DP Ernest Miller

At the suggestion of blog reader Steven Dwyer, I recently revisited the astonishingly good Iverson movie "Little Big Horn." The movie is an embarrassment of riches for an Iverson researcher — it's not just that virtually the entire movie was shot on the location ranch, but, more important, that the movie was shot by Ernest Miller, one of the greatest Iverson cinematographers and a man with a keen eye for the drama and the rugged beauty that was the Iverson Movie Ranch. The above shot, using silhouettes of the Garden of the Gods rock towers, at right, as a framing device in combination with an angry sky, is a prime example.

The protagonists of "Little Big Horn" speed past what is now the Cul de Sac area on the Upper Iverson

The movie stars Lloyd Bridges and John Ireland, with Charles Marquis Warren directing for Lippert Pictures. But to my eye the film is above all a showcase for Miller. I've blogged previously about him, talking about how he used Iverson's rocks in ways that almost no one else did, consistently showcasing them as artistic elements. As I mentioned in a post not long ago, Miller was one of two DPs to receive an Academy Award nomination for cinematography for the movie "Army Girl," which he also filmed at Iverson.

This action sequence shot by Ernest Miller not only captures the drama of riders in full flight on one of the Upper Iverson's broad chase roads, but also depicts some key rocks in juxtaposition to each other in a way that is helpful to film location research. Even though the background rocks are located in the heavily filmed Cul de Sac area, this shot pinpoints the position of at least one of them, Shoe Fluffer, with a degree of certainty that is rare in shots of this area.

"Fury" TV series — "Joey and the Wolf Pack" (premiered Nov. 3, 1956)

This shot from the TV show "Fury" is one of surprisingly few other examples I've run across that give a good idea of the location of Shoe Fluffer — seen here filling up the foreground of the shot with Lobsterclaw in the background, at the right.

Shoe Fluffer, so named because its shape is similar to those wooden devices that go inside of shoes to help them hold their shape, did not survive the development of the Upper Iverson, but its neighbor Lobsterclaw remains in place today — albeit on private property as part of someone's landscaping.

Lobsterclaw in modern times

This is what Lobsterclaw looks like in its contemporary setting, in a planter next to a circular driveway. The rock fared better than its neighbor Shoe Fluffer, which would have been out in the middle of the street and therefore had to be removed.

"The Golden Stallion" (1949)

Here's another production where Shoe Fluffer and Lobsterclaw can be seen — in color this time — along with the twisted rock tower that dominates the rock formation I call the Cul de Sac Crew. The shot comes from the Roy Rogers B-Western "The Golden Stallion," from Republic Pictures.

All of the labeled features remain in place today with the exception of Shoe Fluffer. I should point out that while "Oat Mountain" is the formal name for much of the mountain ridge that appears in the background to the north of the Upper Iverson, in many cases the names I use for various Iverson features are either my own creation or adopted from common use among film location researchers. When it comes to rock naming in the Cul de Sac area, most of the terms I use have evolved from my own research and are simply used for convenience.

The Cul de Sac Crew in modern times

In its contemporary setting the Cul de Sac Crew has some modern annoyances in its environment such as a chain-link gate and a property marker, but it also has a cool oak tree up above, and a nice flowerbed below.

The Cul de Sac Crew today is located at the end of a residential cul de sac, which is how it got its name.

Another view of the Cul de Sac area from "Little Big Horn" adds perspective to how the various rocks were positioned. With Eagle Beak Rock towering over the scene at top center, we can again see Shoe Fluffer, to the left of the frame, along with a portion of another relatively frequently seen ground rock at right, which I call Nautilus.

Here's the same shot with the key players identified. While neither Shoe Fluffer nor Nautilus has survived, the rocks in the background, positioned a short distance up Cactus Hill, remain in place today.

Eagle Beak Rock as it appears today

Eagle Beak Rock today is part of the same residential landscape as Lobsterclaw, and is easy to spot at top center in this shot from 2011. Shoe Fluffer and Nautilus are no longer anywhere to be found, but you can see the tip of Lobsterclaw jutting into the frame near the bottom left corner.

A wider shot of the area from a visit later in the day reveals more of Lobsterclaw, near the center of the shot, along with the Cul de Sac Crew at the left, while Eagle Beak Rock oversees the setting from its elevated perch at top right. These heavily filmed movie rocks are all clustered around the same cul de sac on the former Upper Iverson.

Here's the same recent shot of the Cul de Sac area with the key rock features identified.

"Little Big Horn" — Cowbones

Moving to higher ground, this shot from "Little Big Horn" is taken just above the Cul de Sac area, along the northern slope of Cactus Hill. While the familiar and heavily filmed Turtle Rock lurks in the background, a far less commonly photographed, but I think equally interesting, rock can be seen filling much of the left half of the shot. This largely overlooked rock feature hovering above the South Rim reminds me of a bleached set of cow bones, and that's what I have been calling it: "Cowbones."

Here's the same shot with Cowbones identified, along with a couple of the key rock features seen in the background.

Cowbones as it appears today

I found Cowbones on a recent visit to Iverson. It's perched near the northern edge of Cactus Hill, above the South Rim of the Upper Iverson. The rock in the lower right corner can also be seen in the "Little Big Horn" shot. For readers who saw my recent entry about the Snakeskin Mine Shack, Cowbones is in the immediate vicinity of the shack location, just out of the picture in "Gun Belt" but just to the northeast of the shack.

There's plenty more to appreciate in "Little Big Horn," but I'll save the rest for upcoming posts. In the meantime, the links below will take you to DVD versions of "Little Big Horn" on Amazon, in case you're interested in obtaining a copy. The first one links to a two-movie DVD set that includes "Rimfire," which also contains a little Iverson footage.