Janes, co-founder of the Stuntmen's Assn. of Motion Pictures and Television, will moderate a Hollywood stunt panel discussion. Other panel members include Diamond Farnsworth, Polly Burson, Roy Clark and Neil Summers.
The talented, athletic Janes, who comes from a family of ranchers, worked on 15 films in the Alabama Hills during his 48-year career and was a stunt double for many actors including Gregory Peck, Clint Eastwood and James Garner. As Steve McQueen's stunt double for 23 years, Janes' last film in the hills was McQueen's 1966 "Nevada Smith." James said he has compiled more than 500 features and 2,100 TV shows on his filmography as a stuntman, actor, stunt coordinator and second unit director.
Wrangling horses, driving covered wagons, playing good guy, bad guy, shooting and sometimes dying was all in a days work for cowboy extras in the Alabama Hills. In the '30s the bonus was getting paid $5 a day. Leroy Cline started working as an extra in 1930 at the age of 17 and continued for 30 years.
Cline was one of 17 wranglers hired by Russ Spainhower. To save money the Monogram studio used two sets of horses, Cline said. Dressed in black on black horses, they road down the road as the bad guys. At the end of the road they changed into white clothes and jumped onto white horses, turned around and the crew filmed them chasing the bad guys.
Hollywood gave the pubic an early vision of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in Tyrone Power's 1953 film "King of the Khyber Rifles." Bonnefin played a British lady extra sitting on a veranda sipping lemonade. The label inside the dress she wore had Maureen O'Hara's name on it, said Bonnefin.
One of her favorite festival stories is about the two guys who came from Rio de Janeiro about eight years ago. Told that Lone Pine was near L.A., they flew into L.A., jumped into a cab and $300 later arrived in Lone Pine. The townspeople found transportation for them back to the airport.
To preserve the filmmaking history in and around Lone Pine, business leaders and local movie fans have purchased land to build a permanent film history museum, said Bonnefin. "There is a lot to be proud of here, I'm really excited about the museum," said Powell.
"Movie fan translates to movie historian if you're serious about your passion," Holland says in the video version of his book. He conducts tours of the movie settings. "For a long time they called Hollywood the dream factory, the place where dreams are manufactured and if that's so, and it certainly is up here in the Alabama Hills, a lot of those dreams came true when Hollywood came on location in Lone Pine."
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The 12th Lone Pine Film Festival will celebrate more than 80 years of movie-making Oct. 5-7 in Lone Pine, Calif., three hours north of Los Angeles. Guests expected to attend include Loren Janes, Robert Fuller, Connie Stevens, Ben Burtt, Alex Cord, Herb Jeffries, Peggy Stewart, Ruth Terry, William Wellman, Jr. and Paramount producer, A.C. Lyles. The schedule calls for tours of film sites, a stunt panel, showing of eight movies in addition to "How the West Was Won." Ticket information: ( 760) 876-9103.
