Fun times at Vasquez Rocks — remember the Village People?(Off the Beaten Path)

"Cruisin'" album cover, 1978 (Village People)

Who can forget (try as we might ...) the Village People album "Cruisin'" — the album that contained the classic "Y.M.C.A." But did you remember the cover shoot at Vasquez Rocks — one of the quintessential filming locations from the heyday of the B-Western?

Macho Men: The original Village People lineup

The connection between the Western movies and the Village People's disco music may not be as big a stretch as it seems at first. The group did have both a cowboy and an Indian in the lineup — along with a construction worker, a cop, a leather dude and a G.I.

Wait till you get a load of this ... Play the video, seriously. It might be the best thing you see all day.



Among the highlights in the above video, art director Chris Whorf explains, sort of, why they shot the cover at Vasquez Rocks — and the cowboy, Indian and other members of the Village People even have a go at it!

(Video viewable in selected regions ... we can only hope your region has been selected!)

Here's the "Y.M.C.A." video — but if you're hoping to see more Vasquez Rocks, don't suffer through it (assuming it might be suffering for some of my blog readers, as it is for me). The rocks are not in this one!

A "Star Trek" shooting location — lost to history for almost half a century — has been found

It may come as a surprise given that "Star Trek: The Original Series" was all about exploring the universe, but the TV show rarely ventured outside the studio.

Only nine of the 79 episodes produced over the course of three seasons were shot on location, while another five episodes made it only as far as the backlot at Desilu Studios. The rest of the series, which aired on NBC from 1966-1969, was all done on soundstages.

The Gorn menaces Capt. Kirk in "Arena," 

shot at Vasquez Rocks

Those few location shoots have been a source of intrigue among "Star Trek" aficionados. Some shoots, such as the one shown above for the "Arena" episode at Vasquez Rocks, have become legendary. The episode featured an infamous fight sequence between Kirk and the rubber-suited Gorn across the distinctively tilted rocks. Vasquez was the remote location of choice for "The Original Series," with four episodes shot there.

Landscape of Planet Neural in "A Private Little War," 

shot at Bell Location Ranch

"Trek" insiders have been working for years to determine the rest of the locations where "The Original Series," or "TOS," was shot, and that work is now pretty much complete. One of the most challenging episodes to figure out was "A Private Little War," which first aired Feb. 2, 1968, during the second season. I'm happy to be able to confirm that the location for this episode has been found: "A Private Little War" was shot on the lower plateau of the Bell Location Ranch, in the Santa Susana Mountains above Box Canyon, just outside of Chatsworth, Calif.

"A Private Little War"

The location shoot for "A Private Little War" has been widely misunderstood. Through a brief online search I found sites attributing the episode separately to Vasquez Rocks and Bronson Canyon, and I've seen a YouTube clip — no longer posted — by a fan who speculated it was shot at the Iverson Movie Ranch. Not one of those theories turns out to be correct. "Star Trek: TOS" did shoot one episode at Bronson Canyon — season two's "Bread and Circuses," which aired March 15, 1968. But the series never shot at Iverson.

A March 2013 expedition by a group of film historians to the site of the former Bell Ranch, spearheaded by "TOS" location expert Larry Herdman, finally unlocked the mysteries of "A Private Little War." One of the first signs the group was on to something was the sight of these rugged cliffs looming over Bell Ranch's lower plateau.

Here's that same rugged cliff area, as seen in early 1968 (but shot in late 1967) in "A Private Little War." The shot leaves no doubt as to where the episode was taped.

In an early scene from "A Private Little War," a small band of Villagers sets up an ambush in the rocks. The scene takes place in a group of rocks near the edge of Bell Ranch's lower plateau.

This is what that same group of rocks looks like today — pretty much the same as when the episode was taped in late 1967, although the lighting conditions give the rocks a darker appearance.

A closer shot of two of the guys in the ambush shows them hiding in a small cluster of rocks.

This is that same cluster, as seen today.

Here's a wider view of the ambush area today, with the San Fernando Valley in the background. The small cluster seen above with the two ambushers is just to the left of center in this shot.

A little to the east, four Hill People walk past a rock with distinctive circular markings — unaware they're walking into an ambush.

Here's that same rock today, with the markings still easy to identify.

Pulling back for a wider view of that area today, the angular rock seen above with the distinctive circular markings appears at the far left of the frame. (For a better look at it, click on the photo to enlarge it.) The area where the Villagers would have been waiting in ambush is at the far right. Here again, the San Fernando Valley is seen in the background.

Another distinctive rock, photographed during the March 2013 expedition to Bell Ranch's lower plateau.

A portion of that same rock can be seen behind McCoy in the "TOS" episode, in the top right corner.

Here's another rock photographed during the recent visit to Bell Ranch.

And here's the same rock in another screen shot of an injured McCoy. The two angles are pretty close, and you should be able to easily spot similarities in the rock's shapes and markings between the two shots.

Spock was a part of at least one landing party during the episode and joined Kirk in romping around Bell Ranch's rocky terrain.

One of the main characters in the episode is Nona, who is being attacked by a Villager in this scene near the end of "A Private Little War." It seems to me that this shot inadvertently exposes some buildings in the background at the right — a blurry glimpse of the western San Fernando Valley circa late 1967.

This photo shows that same general area of the Valley in recent times. I don't think it's possible to match up specific buildings, as the angle is not exactly the same and the place has grown a lot in the past 45 years. But the same cliff face is seen in both shots — at the left in the above shot and at the center in the "TOS" shot, directly above the Villager's head. If you look closely you should be able to make out the same horizontal markings and "pock marks" in both shots, although this match isn't quite as obvious as some of those above.

For additional views of the Bell Ranch shoot for "A Private Little War," please click here to see a blog entry by movie location expert Jerry England.

"A Private Little War"

With the discovery that "A Private Little War" was shot on the Bell Location Ranch, the bulk of the location research for "TOS" is now done. But at least one loose end remains.

"This Side of Paradise" — widely believed to be 

shot at Golden Oak Ranch

A certain amount of mystery still surrounds the 1967 episode "This Side of Paradise" from season one, which is generally thought to be shot at Disney's Golden Oak Ranch in Placerita Canyon near Newhall, Calif. (UPDATE: This isn't really a mystery anymore; see comments below.)

A warning about Bell Ranch: The former movie location site also remains closed to the public, hidden behind locked gates and difficult to access. While the lower plateau is still relatively undeveloped, much of the rest of Bell is now occupied by residential housing. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry about a "Bonanza" shoot on Bell's lower plateau, the area is defended by residents who don't appreciate strangers traipsing around on their turf — and other hikers who have gone into the area have received something less than a warm welcome from the locals.

Off the Beaten Path: A tale of two filming locations

This post is a little off topic, as I usually focus on the Iverson Movie Ranch. But it concerns two filming locations that pop up regularly in many of the old Westerns and other movies that also feature Iverson: Vasquez Rocks and Corriganville.

Vasquez Rocks, Agua Dulce, Calif.

The above photo is a contemporary shot of the stunning Vasquez Rocks, just north of Los Angeles, located more or less between the Santa Clarita Valley and the Antelope Valley. In case you're unfamiliar with the rocks and their scale, it's a massive formation. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you may be able to make out a tiny group of people near the middle of the shot, positioned atop the recessed portion of the rock.

Tiburcio Vasquez

The rocks are named after the bandit Tiburcio Vasquez, who, legend has it, hid out there in the 1870s. A great many movies and TV shows have been shot at the site over the years — not quite approaching the sheer volume of productions shot at Iverson, but still pretty respectable. Even today you can sometimes spot new TV commercials featuring the distinctively angular rocks of Vasquez. Car companies are especially fond of shooting their ads at the location.

Captain Kirk fights the Gorn at Vasquez Rocks in the "Star Trek" episode "Arena" (1967)

Among the hundreds of productions shot there, a few of the more famous ones are "Blazing Saddles," the "Flintstones" live-action films — where the rocks provide the backdrop for the town of Bedrock — and some episodes of the original "Star Trek" TV show.

Melody Ranch — before it was destroyed by fire in 1962

Santa Clarita Valley natives are rightfully proud of their area's movie history, which, like that of Iverson in Chatsworth, goes all the way back to the silent era. Unlike Chatsworth — where development took hold faster than it did in the more remote Santa Clarita area — the SCV still has a few working movie ranches, with Disney's Golden Oak Ranch and the rebuilt Melody Ranch among the main ones.

The Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society does a good job of getting the word out about the area's movie history, and a number of events take place regularly in the area — classes, tours, the Cowboy Poetry Festival, etc. — to help keep the legacy alive. This information is easy to find online, with the Historical Society's website a great place to start.

Promo still for "Death Valley Rangers" (1943): Incorrectly labeled on scvhistory.com

A while back I discovered a mistake on SCVHistory.com, where a 1943 photo of some early Western actors at Corriganville in Simi Valley, seen above, was attributed to Vasquez Rocks — about 35 miles away. Most site visitors would never notice the mistake, even though the rock formations don't look much like Vasquez Rocks. But any film location researcher familiar with Simi Valley and the Santa Susana Mountains — and there are a few of us — would easily recognize the rocky formation toward the left of the shot. The photo is a promotional still from the 1943 Monogram Western "Death Valley Rangers," shot at Corriganville.

Corriganville's Fort Apache, with Fort Apache Rock in background

The formation, which has been known as Fort Apache Rock for decades, is seen in the backgrounds of countless productions filmed at Corriganville. The above screen shot is just one example, from the 1952 Ben Johnson movie "Wild Stallion." Fort Apache Rock was easy to spot behind Corriganville's Fort Apache, as in the above shot, or looming over many of the movie ranch's chase roads. There's no mistaking that it's the same formation seen in the shot of the movie cowboys above it.

Interpretive sign at Corriganville

Underscoring the point that there's no question about this sighting, Fort Apache Rock even appears on one of those "interpretive signs" at the former site of Fort Apache, which is now part of Corriganville Regional Park. A couple of the other hills seen in the SCV Historical Society photo can also be seen here.

I made an attempt at the time to let the SCV Historical Society know about the mistake, but I never heard back. Nothing alarming about any of that — people are busy these days, and who has time for that sort of thing? Unfortunately, I soon realized that, as tends to happen in the digital age, the misinformation had already found its way all over the Internet.

John Boston's Santa Clarita Valley book, with the wrong photo on the cover

Sadly, one place the errant photo appears is right on the cover of what I'm sure is a terrific book, "Santa Clarita Valley," part of the "Images of America" series. Poor John Boston, author of the book. He's a highly respected SCV historian, known as "Mr. Santa Clarita Valley," and from all accounts, a great guy. And it doesn't seem to me that any of this is his fault. He apparently got his photos from the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society, which is co-credited on the book. I'll just say that if I had written a book about, oh, say Chatsworth, and then found out the cover actually had a picture of Moorpark ... well, let's just say it would bug me.

 

Magic Johnson, focus of the "Magic Johnson Effect"

My heart goes out to the people involved in the book and the website. These kinds of mistakes are all too easy to make. The only way to be sure we avoid them would be to not do anything, and that's no good. I often cite as an example what I call the "Magic Johnson Effect." It's well-known that Magic led the Lakers to nine NBA Finals and five NBA championships during his Hall of Fame career, but it's less well-known that he also led the NBA in turnovers. The point is he made things happen, and when you do that, sometimes things go wrong ... and it's OK.

An argument could be made for keeping quiet about all this. After all, it's an unfixable problem, to some extent: The book's already out there, and the photo is all over the place, mislabeled as Vasquez Rocks. But as a historian, we are nothing if we are not accurate. I hope the people at the Historical Society, presumably also being historians at heart, understand this and don't mind finding out that they made a mistake ... and then more to the point, get to work on fixing it. Anyway, below is a link where you can buy the book off Amazon — maybe they'll change the cover for later editions and this one will end up being a collector's item.

Off the Beaten Path is a series of posts that are not specifically focused on the usual subject matter of this blog, the Iverson Movie Ranch. Past subjects have included Bell Ranch, Pioneertown and other old filming locations. You can go directly to the Off the Beaten Path posts by looking up the term "Off the Beaten Path" in the long index of labels at the right of the page, or by clicking here.