St. George • John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Gary Cooper.
The roster of Hollywood actors who starred in movies shot in southwest Utah but who are now deceased grows by the year. But their impact lives on through their movies and the stories recounted by film historians and longtime St. George residents.
According to the Washington County Historical Society, more than 100 movies have been filmed in the area. That much history means plenty of stories to tell, many of which film historian James V. D’Arc wrote about in his landmark book, “When Hollywood Came to Utah.”
D’Arc and others also shared some of those gems with The Tribune in a recent article about the history of filmmaking in Washington County. Here are a few more that didn’t make the cut but are too good for the cutting room floor.
The Duke and shoeless Susan Hayward
(BYU Special Collections) Director John Powell and actor John Wayne film in St. George for the movie, "The Conqueror," from the book "When Hollywood Came to Utah, Centennial Edition."
St. George residents and the movie crowd became fairly chummy when movies were being shot in the area, according to D’Arc. During the filming of “The Conqueror,” the epic adventure film about Genghis Kahn, the studio organized a benefit baseball game that pitted the movie cast and crew against the St. George Elks Lodge team.
Actor John Wayne and Director Dick Powell alternated between refereeing the contest and playing second and third base, D’Arc writes. Shoeless co-star Susan Hayward stole third and forced out a teammate who already occupied the base. Her twin 9-year-old sons, Timothy and Gregory, both scored a run.
“Their mother scored, too, with the scores of fans who requested and received autographs,” D’ Arc recounts in his book. “Paying 50 cents apiece, the 1,500 who swelled the Dixie Sun Bowl retired the debt on the Dixie Sun Bowl.”
Hitching a ride with Gunsmoke great
In “When the Movies Came to Town,” a piece James Kemple penned for the Washington County Historical Society, the writer shared his experiences as a boy when the movie “Stallion Canyon” was being filmed in St. George in 1948.
Kemple recounted that during the lunch hour, he and his sixth-grade classmate Gerald Cox left St. George Elementary School and hitchhiked to the movie set in Santa Clara. The filming was taking place at the Jacob Hamblin home, where the boys spent the afternoon watching the spectacle and “staying out of the way” while the scenes were shot.
Alas, he recalled, the director had other ideas, telling everyone on the sidelines that they would be in the next scene depicting the finale of a horse race. As the cameras rolled and the horses rounded the Hamblin house, Kemple and the rest of the crowd, per the director’s instructions, ran into the street behind the racers, waving their arms and cheering them on.
“Yes, we got in the movie that day,” Kemple wrote. “When we first saw the movie at the old Dixie Theater in St. George, we were able to see ourselves on the screen.”
That may have been a reel highlight, but the real high point came when the schoolmates hitchhiked back to St. George, and were picked up by “Stallion Canyon” actor Ken Curtis, who sang with the Sons of the Pioneers in old Roy Rogers movies and later starred as Festus, Marshall Matt Dillon’s sidekick, in the hit TV series “Gunsmoke.”
“Upon [our] arrival in St. George, Ken Curtis took Gerald and I with him to his hotel room and took his guitar from its case,” Kemple wrote. “We spent about an hour with him playing his guitar and singing some of the old Western songs.”
Goose hunting Gary Cooper’s swan song
(Marvin Adams | BYU Special Collections) Gary Cooper and Rita Hayworth between takes of filming "They Came to Cordura," from the book "When Hollywood Came to Utah, Centennial Edition."
In 1959, actor Gary Cooper joined Rita Hayworth and others in St. George to film “They Came to Cordura,” a picture about American soldiers attacking Pancho Villa’s band in 1916 Mexico.
Lyman Hafen, a St. George writer and history buff, was only four at the time and too young to remember much about the film, but he relishes the story about Cooper he heard long ago from a neighbor, Jack Holt.
Holt and a friend had gone hunting along the Virgin River and bagged several Canadian geese, Hafen related, which they stowed in the trunk of their car and then drove to the Cordura set in Harrisburg. Once they arrived, they talked to crew members about the hunt and decided to show them the birds.
“When they opened the trunk, one of the geese was not dead and honked and squealed so loudly that the sound was heard all across the movie set,” Hafen told The Tribune.
Within a few minutes, Cooper turned up and asked if he could accompany them on their next hunt, which the star did over the next several days.
“Jack told me the director was happy to have him take ‘Coop’ because on the days he was going hunting, he had his lines memorized early, was easier to work with and in a much better mood,” Hafen recalled.
A few years later, Hafen continued, his neighbor received a call from the actor, who asked him to drop by and see him in room 14 at the Twin Oaks Motel in St. George.
“When Jack got there,” Hafen said, “Cooper unbuttoned his shirt and showed him some scars from surgical incisions and said, ‘The doctor opened me up and I am full of cancer and don’t have much time left. I want to go hunting. So Jack took [the actor] hunting on one of the last days of his life.”
Read more here about the history of Hollywood filmmaking in southwestern Utah and Kevin Costner’s $100 billion bet to revive the area’s movie legacy.