Annual attendance at the festival ranges between 4,000 and 5,000 people, said Dorothy Bonnefin, the film festival director.
Most of the films shot in and around Lone Pine were westerns, but commercials and music videos have been shot there as well. Townsfolk were frequently used as some of the hundreds of extras in the films.
The founder of the Lone Pine Film Festival, Kerry Powell, remembers at the age of 6 seeing a temple among the tent city in the Alabama Hills used to portray India, but she was especially captivated by the elephants when they were filming the 1938 production of "Gunga Din."
Children never expected to see elephants except in the circus, explained Powell, 67, and to see them lumbering across the Alabama Hills was astounding.
Watching westerns being made across the highway from her house at the Anchor Ranch was practically an everyday occurrence for Powell, as was seeing film crews and stars in the town.
"We didn't pay much attention in the '40s, '50s and '60s, so we took them for granted," said Powell. "Then we finally realized the history we have here with the film industry."
Wanting to redecorate their Frontier Motel in a Western motif, she and her husband went to Sunset Boulevard to shop for art work, and while looking at movie posters she realized that the some of the backgrounds had the distinct look of the Alabama Hills. "I got so excited that there were pictures available with our scenery and movie stars in them," said Powell, "I got the idea for the film festival."
With Roy Rogers agreeing to dedicate a plaque commemorating the movies made in the Alabama Hills, cooperation from the California Arts Council and the Southern Inyo Artisan Guild, the Lone Pine Film Festival was born in 1990.
Stunt man Janes remembers wearing a dress and tripping on it when he doubled for Debbie Reynolds in "How the West Was Won." In the movie, Janes said, Reynolds stands up to see what happened to Gregory Peck as he went off the side of a cliff in an Indian chase scene. The wagon hits a bump and Janes, as Reynolds, falls out.
"I did the fall out from the wagon at a dead run with the horses, hit the ground, rolled, got up, tripped on the skirt. I'm not used to skirts like women, so I tripped on it a couple of times when I tried to get up and run. Then they stampeded 1,100 head of wild horses, mules and horses and I had to let them run all around me, and I'm in the middle of this," said Janes.
