Lone Pine Film Festival 1990

By Chris Langley

(Seeking approval from the author)

This article originally appeared in the 20th Annual Lone Pine Film Festival (2009) program booklet.

How a shared dream, historic landscape and volunteer sweat combined to create the first-ever celebration of Lone Pine’s movie magic.

The Lone Pine Film Festival had humble beginnings, but with the vision of found­ers Dave Holland and Kerry Powell and the enthusiasm of a few thousand vol­unteers, it just kept growing over the past 20 years.

The Festival has always been much more than a film festival. It has been a town festival, celebrat­ing the spirit and uniqueness of its home: Lone Pine. It has thrived on town spirit and the volunteers who gave so much time and dedication over the years to make it happen. Even more so, it has been about the land around the town that has called to Hollywood since 1920 and nearly 400 feature films later.

It certainly reflected the personal­ity of Dave Holland who had worked here as a location manager for com­mercials, and returned time and again as a fan to seek out locations where many favorite films, mostly Westerns, filmed. He published his book, “On Location in Lone Pine,” just in time for the first festival in 1990. It remains a key guide to film locations in Lone Pine and how to find them, and an inspiration to the staff of the Festival.

While Dave had been visiting Lone Pine for many years, carry­ing film stills under his arm as he climbed, hiked and navigated on foot the dusty byways of the Alabama Hills, Kerry Powell had begun to think seriously about a festival cel­ebrating the film history of the area in 1989. They had not met yet, when the idea of a homegrown celebration began to germinate for Kerry. Kerry says that she and her husband, Ray, were adding on to their motel, the Frontier Best Western, and she had taken on the project of decorating the new rooms with local movie motifs.

“Of course the locals were well aware of the rich film history, but they had gotten so used to movie companies being here, that they didn’t pay much attention to the names of all the pictures and stars who had worked here.” Kerry and Ray began exploring memorabilia shops in Hollywood, buying stills and posters to use in the interior de­sign of the rooms. They realized the possibilities of the festival as their collection grew.

Kerry says she approached the Southern Inyo Artisan Guild about her idea. The Guild has decided for the first time to take on the chal­lenges of managing a full scale Arts and Crafts Fair in the Park with art­ists and dealers from outside of the area. They had scheduled the show for Columbus Day weekend. They liked Kerry’s idea of the Festival the same weekend.

The Die is Cast

Kerry and Dave finally met. Dave was not living in Lone Pine yet, but as they began to plan and dream in Kerry’s living room, they also began to think of local citizens who could help by being chairpersons of certain aspects of the event.

Kerry points to her china cabinet as she explains the simple visioning process that she and Dave under­took. “We had sticky pads and wrote different events we wanted for the weekend, and put them on the glass doors, moving them around to make a coherent schedule.”

She smiled as she remembered back to those heady days in the be­ginning. “Dave wanted to do tours to the locations. We wanted a parade on Sunday, a panel of guest stars and so we began. Mary Sinclair, then Di­rector of the Chamber, was going to help.”

The team began to look around for local financial support. Kerry and Dave went to the Inyo County Supervisors and explained their concepts and asked for funding. They gave $1,000 seed money. “The Sportsman (where Seasons restau­rant is now) had lots of movie post­ers and we realized that the owner was well aware of the film history,” Powell remembers. It also turned out that he had a Hunting Club at Sage Flat where Roy Rogers hunted. He said that, as a special guest for the Festival, he could bring in Roy Rog­ers, the King of the Cowboys. Roy would make a special appearance on Sunday afternoon to dedicate a plaque set in locally mined dolomite at the corner of Whitney Portal and Movie Road. It stands there today. The plaque describes Roy Rogers appearing in his first starring role in “Under Western Stars” in 1938. It also describes some of the many other films that shot in the area.

The King of the Cowboys would need two bodyguards, which ul­timately led to Kerry returning to the Supervisors for another $1,000. The Inyo Council for the Arts, with Executive Director Nancy Talent, joined the partnership, taking care of meal ticket expenses. The ICA likes to give seed money to get these types of events going and then step back. The California Arts Council also gave financial support.

Anticipation Builds

Dave Holland began to bring in other friends from Los Angeles to help. Packy Smith had long been in­volved with the Western film festival circuit, founding the Memphis festi­val in 1972. He was involved in pub­lishing film history books through his Riverwood Publishing label, and other related film projects. He would take care of coordinating the films along with film collector Mike Roy­er. They had been coming to Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills every year to organize and ride horseback in the familiar Alabama Hills movie locations.

Loren Janes, stuntman for Steve McQueen who worked on many film projects in Lone Pine, agreed to present his “Behind the Action” Program. Over the years, Loren had filmed the work he did, but from behind the camera. He was starting what would be a perennial favor­ite for the fans. He also would stay active with the Board and eventu­ally join the Museum Board and give many hours of work to all the Lone Pine projects.

Kerry employed secretarial ser­vices specialist Jeanne Lopez who lived in Keeler to help her with correspondence, writing to possible guest stars and coordinating all the myriad details to make it all come together.

Chris Langley, who signed on to chair the films at the high school and the one celebrity panel there, remembers, “I went to Kerry’s house one day after teaching to learn more about the Festival and see how I could help. Since I was employed by Lone Pine Unified, it seemed logical I would oversee events at the high school auditorium. It was at the meeting that I first met Dave, and my first impression was he wasn’t like people living here and clearly had the knowledge and drive to make this happen. I was pretty excited.”

A Dream Fulfilled

The first annual Lone Pine Film Festival happened on Oct. 6 and 7, 1990. It is remarkable to look at the first festival program and see how many of the elements were estab­lished that first year and recurred each year since, albeit with variations and changes in schedule.

Kerry Powell, Film Festival coor­dinator, Carol Jobin, arts coordina­tor, and Nancy Tallent, Inyo Council for the Arts director signed the wel­come letter. It read, in part, “Thank you coming to help us celebrate 70 years of film making history in the Lone Pine and Alabama Hills area … Together we bring to fruition a long­standing dream of Kerry Powell, the Film Festival Coordinator, who was born and raised here. Indeed it is the dream of many longtime Owens Val­ley citizens and Western fans every­where. So let’s celebrate! LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!”

There were films both days at the Lone Pine High School Audito­rium. There were chapters from two serials: “Daredevils of the West” and “The Lone Ranger.” There was an episode made locally of the Wild Bill Hickcock show starring Guy Madi­son and Andy Devine. Other classic films were “Rawhide,” “Nevada,” “Yellow Sky,” “Gunga Din,” “Song of Texas” and “Under Western Skies.” Gene Autry was represented by “Boots and Saddles”. There was to be a “surprise” movie and a Hopa­long Cassidy to be named later.

The Festival had one tour that year and the program promised that the buses would leave every 20 minutes with a guide and a re­corded narration by Dave Holland. Dave Smirnoff, as longtime Holland friend, ran the tour operation with precision.

Who were members of that first Panel held Sunday morning at 10:30 in the High School Auditorium? They were old friends of Lone Pine: Rand Books, Eddie Dean, Richard Farnsworth, Linda Hayes, Pierce Lyden, Terry Moore, Jack Williams, William Witney and Joe Yrogoyen.

Apparently there was no parade that first year after all. Instead there was the dedication of the Roy Rogers “rock” by Roy and several members of his family at 2 p.m. The closing campfire happened in the park.

Oh, and that first year it was “The Sierra Film Festival.” Next year it morphed into the Lone Pine Sierra Film Festival and then there­after it was simply the Lone Pine Film Festival.

Lasting Legacy

When the dust had cleared and the last visitor had returned home, it was clear that there would be a second annual film festival. In 1980, Chris Langley and Pat Farlander had organized the Southern Inyo Community Foundation, as a 501c3 non-profit, for public benefit Cali­fornia Corporation. The Lone Pine Chamber paid for the incorporation fees, and in the by-laws they had the foresight to list “film festival” as one of the activities, which the Founda­tion was set up to run. Complete lo­cal lo­cal control of the Festival was ceded to this foundation, a five-person Board of Directors was established and 20 years later that is basically how it is run.

Dave Holland was director through the 10th festival when he left to start work on what is now the Beverly and Jim Rogers Museum of Lone Pine Film History. He was succeeded by Dorothy Bonnefin for numbers 11-15 who was followed by Chris Langley for Festivals 16-19.

Powell is still in awe over what has become of her original idea and the collaboration between her and Holland 21 years ago.

“Look what happened?” she says. “This 20th celebration, the movie museum and return of movie companies are results. These were made possible by the support of, first and foremost, Dave Holland, my late husband, Ray Powell, locals Dottie Bonnefin and Chris Langley, Dave’s movie fan friends, local and county businesses and clubs and hundreds of volunteers, then Jim Rogers and his Sunbelt Broadcasting Company for the museum, and fans from ev­erywhere.

“Thanks to you all for this won­derful adventure.”

An expanded history of the entire Festival is being written. The first Festival back in 1990 is when it all began. It created the model for how it was organized up until present day in the 2009 edition.

 

 

 

Lone Pine Film festival C0-Founder Dave Holland commisserates (sic) with a young Chris Langley, later the events’s director for years 16-19.