Utah celebrating century of movie-making

Southern Utah’s iconic “red rock” country provides the backdrop for director John Ford and actor John Wayne’s 1956 western “The Searchers.” The year 2024 marks the 100th year of movies being shot in Utah, and the celebration will include an exhibit at the Utah Capitol.

'IT'S SUCH A COOL HISTORY' 

Brice Wallace 

Next year, Utah is going to party like it’s, well, 2024.

That’s because the year marks a full century since film cameras began rolling in Utah, bringing the Beehive State to the world and making the state synonymous with “The Searchers,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Thelma & Louise” and other famous movies.

“It’s such a cool history,” Virginia Pearce, director of the Utah Film Commission, told the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity board during the board’s December meeting. “A hundred years is a long time, and all of the state has been involved in this industry. And interestingly, it really has its start in tourism and economic development, which continues today.”

That tourism connection is based on movie-goers seeing the reel thing then coming to Utah to see the real thing. One study pegged film tourism’s economic impact as $6 billion over the past decade, with productions prompting 2.2 million trips to Utah.

The whole “lights, camera, Utah” thing began in Cedar City in 1924. Brothers Chauncey, Whitney and Gronway Parry had created a transportation company to get visitors to the relatively new Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks. They secured for the Cedar City area the filming of silent film “The Deadwood Coach,” starring Tom Mix and Tony The Wonder Horse.

At about the same time, Ogden native James Cruze shot “The Covered Wagon” in Northern Utah with the help of 750 members of the Bannock Tribe from Idaho.

“The scope of this, in 1924, is kind of mind-blowing,” Pearce said, adding that “The Covered Wagon” became the second-highest-grossing film that year.

The Gouldings built a trading post and lodge in Monument Valley and showed images of the area to John Ford. The director brought the production of “Stagecoach” to Utah in 1939, with the hit film and young star John Wayne becoming the first of 11 films Ford would shoot in the state and spurring other productions to stampede to Utah.

“This opened up Utah to this industry, where there were hundreds of films being made in Utah,” Pearce said. “The economic impact was pretty significant because this was a time when there wasn’t a lot else happening in Southern Utah as far as when the Depression hit, this was a big, new industry to bring. Westerns were a huge part of the industry at that time, and they really filmed all through Southern Utah.”

By the 1950s, the Parry Lodge in Kanab served as a film production hub that would become known as “Little Hollywood.”

“This created this amazing legacy that we have today, of so many wonderful films that have been shot throughout Utah, still inviting people to come view the landscapes,” Pearce said. “Thirty-seven percent of tourists to Utah come because they have seen Utah on-screen in some way, so it’s a big part of our industry, not only in the production of films but also the celebration of the films that come.”

That celebratory atmosphere will continue in 2024 as the state recognizes the impact of Utah as “America’s Film Set.” Starting Jan. 12 and running throughout the year, an exhibit featuring items from Utah’s film and television history will be at the fourth floor of the Utah Capitol. Among the items, Pearce said, is John Wayne’s saddle, on loan from Warner Bros. The exhibit is inspired by the book When Hollywood Came to Utah, by James V. D’Arc.

Among the festivities announced this fall are an exhibition to travel throughout Utah, a Utah Historical Film Trail for visitors to discover film-famous landscapes, and screenings of some of Utah’s iconic films. Pearce told the GOEO board that “The Covered Wagon” will be shown in Ogden this spring, with music supplied by a Wurlitzer pipe organ, “the way that you would have seen it in 1924.”

No list of Utah-shot movies and TV shows is complete but productions include “My Darling Clementine,” “Rio Grande,” the original “Planet of the Apes,” “Forrest Gump,” “Dumb and Dumber,” “The Sandlot,” “The World’s Fastest Indian,” “High School Musical,” “Independence Day,” “Con Air,” “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Hulk,” “Jeremiah Johnson,” the 2009 “Star Trek,” “Galaxy Quest,” “Indiana Jones and the Lasr Crusade,” “The Lone Ranger,” “Back to the Future 3,” “Footloose” and “Yellowstone.”