A brief history of cinema in New Mexico | by John Biscello

Starring Role
With all due respect to the memories of New Mexico’s Grande Dame of Cinema, Greer Garson, and the Silver Screen’s first western mega-star, Tom Mix, the original, unfading star of cinema in New Mexico has to be: the landscape. You never hear much from the landscape, no boasting about its range and versatility, no trumpeting its distinctive complexion and timeless quality that translates so well to film. Yet if someone could ever get the landscape to open up about its film career, we might hear something like this: I’ve done it all. I’ve played the rugged wild west: stubbled, wind-scarred, grittily stoic. I’ve given them the prehistoric look that froze dinosaurs, big and small, in their tracks. When they needed post-nuclear, I stretched myself lean and barren and desolate for endless miles. Another planet, no problem: name the time and intergalactic zip code.
To take the words out of our ol’ buddy Nietzche’s mouth and give them a Southwestern twist: If you stare into New Mexico’s landscape long enough, eventually New Mexico’s landscape stares into you.

Take One
Cinema’s camera-eyed love affair with New Mexico officially began in the fall of 1898. That’s when The Edison Company, spearheaded by Mr. Electric himself, Thomas Alva Edison, went to the Isleta Pueblo (several miles south of Albuquerque), and shot a fifty-second film titled “Indian Day School.” Interestingly, Edison, along with a group of movie pioneers, might have done more for the westward expansion of cinema when they banded together and formed The Motion Picture Patent Company. In the name of controlling the commerce of movie-making, “Big Daddy” Patent would prosecute any film company that produced and distributed films without their consent. To avoid the East-coast-reach of the patent, many film-makers migrated to southern California, where “independent” film-making and Hollywood came to flourish.

Blazing Saddles
In the early twentieth century, Tom Mix was a household name and king of the cowboy flicks. I’m sure a lot of boys at the time felt about Mix the way that the writer, Max Evans, himself a boy at the time, did: “Mix contended with God, my horse, and my three dogs as things worthy of worship, and I went to see him every dime I could get.”
All told, Mix appeared in over 300 westerns, and from 1914-1916, he, and his company, Selig Polyscope, shot 25-30 westerns in Las Vegas, NM. Romaine Fielding, the creative jack-of-all-trades and alleged tyrant, who ran The Lubin Company, also shot his films in Vegas, where he bought the Plaza Hotel, renamed it “The Hotel Romaine,” and based his production company there. What happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas, though, as its reign as King of New Mexico cinema ended after several years.

Stating Their Case
Max Evans might be best known for his classic books—“The Rounders” and “The Hi-Lo Country”—but he’s something of a Western Renaissance man, having put in time, mostly in Taos, as a prospector, cowboy, painter and actor. There was also his key role, along with writer Chuck Mittlestadht and Governor David Cargo, in getting the New Mexico Film Commission off the ground. In 1968, the “big” meeting between Hollywood and New Mexico took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and in the words of Evans: “We screened our short promo film on New Mexico and I could feel the ‘so what’ attitude among many. Then it happened. Magic. The youngest governor in the United States got up and made a pitch. It was believable, full of sincerity and so skillfully presented that I had a good easy breath for the first time in a month. They liked Cargo. They decided they liked New Mexico and the new film commission.They believed that we had the ability to make filming easier for them.”
Forty-one years later, the country’s first state film commission, now known as the New Mexico Film Office, is still going strong.

Braving The Elements
In receiving the scarlet-letter treatment for refusing to testify before the House of Un-American Committee, regarding communist affiliations, director Herbert J. Biberman, producer Paul Jarrico, and screenwriter Michael Wilson were blacklisted from Hollywood. Taking their creative fate into their own hands, the trio went to New Mexico and filmed the controversial Salt of the Earth. The movie revolves around the struggles of Mexican-American zinc mineworkers, striking for fair wages. Because of its pro-labor slant and open attack on racist policies, the production of Salt of the Earth took various hits, including the arson of a union hall and the deportation of Mexican lead actress, Rosaura Revueltasat. The film—released in 1954—didn’t fare well at the box office, though it did receive critical acclaim in Europe, and as time went on, with McCarthyism losing its power as the American Boogeyman, the Library of Congress placed the work on the National Film Registry for movies deemed to have enduring “cultural, historical, or aesthetic significance.”
“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” — Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Riding on and out of this broken wave were cult anti-heroes, Captain America (Peter Fonda), and Billy (Dennis Hopper) in the 1969 film Easy Rider. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, this counter-culture classic brought the spirit of the ‘60s, in both its radical optimism and tragic disillusionment, into the consciousness of many movie-goers, and gave a cinematic glimpse into the hippie element that became, and has remained, a signature of Taos culture.
Keeping our focus on the year 1969, we shift our attention to the Eaves Ranch, located southeast of Santa Fe, off Highway 14. The ranch of J.W. Eaves had served as the location for the television series "Empire" in 1962, and in ’69, Gene “Fancy Feet” Kelly stepped into town, wanting to shoot a western (which became The Cheyenne Social Club, starring Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda), and he and Eaves agreed to split the costs to construct a full-scale, old-west town that would remain part of the Ranch. Over 250 movies and commercials later, this “ghost town,” with movie magic in its soul, has become an historic emblem of Hollywood Southwest.

What’s In A Dame?
If indeed, New Mexico is a land that magnetically pulls people back again and again, then Greer Garson was happy victim to its electric spell. It started with a vacation in the 1940s, then there were return trips to Santa Fe in the ‘50s, and eventually, one of her homes became the “Forked Lightning Ranch” (in Pecos National Park), which she shared with her third husband, Texas millionaire, E.E. “Buddy” Fogelson. A seven-time Academy-Award nominee—and winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942 for the film Mrs. Miniver— the reddish-locked, ivory-skinned Garson was revered for her grace, eloquence, and strong work ethic. Garson’s and “Buddy’s” philanthropic impact on New Mexico, specifically Santa Fe, still resonates within the creative community in the triad of The E.E. Fogelson Library, The Greer Garson Theatre, and the Garsons Communication Center at the College of Santa Fe.

Here and Now
New Mexico’s enduring popularity as a movie location was recently confirmed by an online poll conducted by Variety magazine. In the poll, casting location managers, UPMs, ADs, and cinematographers were asked to name their favorite shooting locations in North America, and New Mexico ranked third, after the heavyweights, New York and L.A.
Stephen Jules Rubin, whose Julesworks Productions, LLC, is based out of Santa Fe, applauds the efforts of the New Mexico Film Office (backed by the cinema-friendly Governor Richardson) which has generated tax breaks and incentive-based programs. Rubin says: “Keep in mind that anyone in this business at any level working in this state or from Hollywood knows that the ONLY reason for this hugely profitable film business are the incentives. There are other factors which make shooting films in New Mexico appealing—including the climate, the land, the now well-trained and experienced crews, the raw talent—but the bottom line is the economics of it.” He also added, “In well over a decade of making independent theater and film in New Mexico, I have always found it very possible to find the equipment, locations and crew necessary to execute any project, and the budgets which I still work on, basically none. Often, we joke that the budget of our films is bagels and creativity, which is often not far from the truth. Thankfully, I am eligible for 25% rebate on the bagels if purchased in our state.”
Arron Shiver, an actor who will appear in the upcoming Book of Eli (starring Denzel Washington and shot in New Mexico) and has also had roles in Men Who Stare at Goats, 3:10 to Yuma, 21 Grams and Sunshine Cleaning, lives in Taos. When I asked for his “actor’s take” on working in the New Mexico film industry, and what its future might hold, he said, “I benefit from being one of twenty actors here that could be classified as my ‘type,’ as opposed to Los Angeles, where you’re one of twenty-thousand. When you add talent and ability to that, you get the chance to be a working actor: a thousand miles away from where the action is. What do I see for the future? Well, first of all, a lot more actors have caught on to the amount of work that’s going on out here, and have either moved here from L.A. or try to pull off the commute. So, the talent pool is getting larger and larger, the more projects that come into the state. That’s fine with me. I say bring ‘em on.”
Upcoming films that were shot, at least partially in New Mexico, include: The Killer Inside Me (adapted from the Jim Thompson novel, starring Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson), The Sunset Limited (starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson), Paul (done mostly in CG, starring Seth Rogen), The Resident (starring Hillary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and the highly-anticipated Hindi Bollywood film, Kites.

Did You Know? (Five facts from NM Cinema)
• Tom Mix appears between Marlon Brando and Oscar Wilde on the album cover of The Beatles’ "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band"
• Stanley Kubrick, director of such classic films as A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and The Shining, wrote, directed and produced the second film of his career, The Flying Padre (1951), in Mosqueno, NM
• Despite being New Mexico’s Grande Dame of Cinema, none of the films that Greer Garson appeared in was shot in New Mexico
• The McMasters (1970) was the first full-length feature shot entirely in New Mexico
• Rankin and Bass’s stop-motion classic, The Little Drummer Boy, was narrated by Greer Garson

— ©2009 John Biscello

This article appeared on pp 26-28 of SkiCountry Magazine 2009-2010.