Lone Pine Film Festival

Nowhere in Hollywood's Old West did more Texas Rangers get ambushed, more stagecoaches get robbed and more bloodthirsty outlaws get gunned down by hastily appointed sheriffs than in the Alabama Hills. Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans also rode through this landscape of weathered rock faces that -- with towering Mt. Whitney amid a row of craggy Sierra peaks above -- even doubled for the Khyber Pass.

Nowhere in Hollywood's Old West did more Texas Rangers get ambushed, more stagecoaches get robbed and more bloodthirsty outlaws get gunned down by hastily appointed sheriffs than in the Alabama Hills. Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans also rode through this landscape of weathered rock faces that -- with towering Mt. Whitney amid a row of craggy Sierra peaks above -- even doubled for the Khyber Pass.

"Hi-yo Silver, away!" Those famous words still echo through the canyon where the masked man and his sidekick, Tonto, rode through the nearby Alabama Hills ridding the West of bad guys. The Alabama Hills, in the shadow of lofty Mt. Whitney, have been used since 1920 as a location in hundreds of films--and not just for Westerns. Films requiring a foreign country's rocky, desert landscape--think Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, parts of the Middle East, Mexico and South America--have been shot there.

If you look closely, as Dave Holland remembers doing, you can find uncanny similarities in the scenes of many old Hollywood Westerns and action films. Where Errol Flynn rode in "Charge of the Light Brigade" is also the landscape where John Wayne starred in "Westward Ho." In "Riders of the Purple Sage," Tom Mix stalks the same terrain that James Stewart crosses a quarter-century later in "Broken Arrow."

If you look closely, as Dave Holland remembers doing, you can find uncanny similarities in the scenes of many old Hollywood Westerns and action films. Where Errol Flynn rode in "Charge of the Light Brigade" is also the landscape where John Wayne starred in "Westward Ho." In "Riders of the Purple Sage," Tom Mix stalks the same terrain that James Stewart crosses a quarter-century later in "Broken Arrow."

A mother lode of movie history glimmers in the rocky hills just off the highway that leads hikers to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States. A few minutes drive from the intersection where Whitney Portal Road meets State Highway 395, movie buffs can find the mountain divide where almost everyone from John Wayne to the Lone Ranger used to head 'em off at the pass. Such movie heritage is celebrated at the annual Lone Pine Film Festival, which begins Friday and runs through the weekend in this High Sierra town about 180 miles north of Los Angeles.

Trying to recapture its glory days as a premier shooting venue for Hollywood films, this desolate Owens Valley town is launching a drive to persuade a new generation of filmmakers and location scouts to head its way. With a fledgling film commission and a recent marketing trip to a locations expo in Los Angeles, the community hopes to boost its profile and reap income for the economically depressed area.

Almost at the dawn of Hollywood movie making, this little Eastern Sierra town became a favorite outpost for location filming. It offered scenery ranging from Sierra peaks to sand dunes and was used in hundreds of feature films, serials and B movies, most of them Westerns. Movie cowboys from Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson to Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy chased innumerable bad guys in the hills around Lone Pine.

Ask not what the world can do for you, says the self-sufficient Lone Pine Film Festival, show everyone what you've done for the world. While the standard festival looks outward, offering itself as a place where movies from everywhere can find a home, the folks here turn that formula on its head, inviting visitors to celebrate what this tiny Eastern Sierra town three hours from Los Angeles has contributed to the universe of film.

"Hi-yo Silver, away!" Those famous words still echo through the canyon where the masked man and his sidekick, Tonto, rode through the nearby Alabama Hills ridding the West of bad guys. The Alabama Hills, in the shadow of lofty Mt. Whitney, have been used since 1920 as a location in hundreds of films--and not just for Westerns. Films requiring a foreign country's rocky, desert landscape--think Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, parts of the Middle East, Mexico and South America--have been shot there.

Trying to recapture its glory days as a premier shooting venue for Hollywood films, this desolate Owens Valley town is launching a drive to persuade a new generation of filmmakers and location scouts to head its way. With a fledgling film commission and a recent marketing trip to a locations expo in Los Angeles, the community hopes to boost its profile and reap income for the economically depressed area.

Ask not what the world can do for you, says the self-sufficient Lone Pine Film Festival, show everyone what you've done for the world. While the standard festival looks outward, offering itself as a place where movies from everywhere can find a home, the folks here turn that formula on its head, inviting visitors to celebrate what this tiny Eastern Sierra town three hours from Los Angeles has contributed to the universe of film.

A mother lode of movie history glimmers in the rocky hills just off the highway that leads hikers to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States. A few minutes drive from the intersection where Whitney Portal Road meets State Highway 395, movie buffs can find the mountain divide where almost everyone from John Wayne to the Lone Ranger used to head 'em off at the pass. Such movie heritage is celebrated at the annual Lone Pine Film Festival, which begins Friday and runs through the weekend in this High Sierra town about 180 miles north of Los Angeles.

Almost at the dawn of Hollywood movie making, this little Eastern Sierra town became a favorite outpost for location filming. It offered scenery ranging from Sierra peaks to sand dunes and was used in hundreds of feature films, serials and B movies, most of them Westerns. Movie cowboys from Tom Mix and Hoot Gibson to Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy chased innumerable bad guys in the hills around Lone Pine.

The second annual Lone Pine Sierra Film Festival, probably the most tightly focused in the world, is scheduled this year from Oct. 11-13 in the Sierra foothill city. It will show only films shot amid the scenic Alabama Rocks just outside town and will honor only movie folk who made them there.

Ernest Borgnine seemed born to play the heavy when he burst onto the Hollywood scene as "Fatso" Judson, a sadistic stockade sergeant who viciously beats a private to death in the 1953 movie "From Here to Eternity. " But two years later came the title role in "Marty," where the stocky, gap-toothed Borgnine defied typecasting and earned recognition as a versatile actor by inhabiting the part of a lonely Bronx butcher looking for love. He went on to a prolific seven-decade career in film and television, moving easily from scoundrels and serious portrayals to a comedic role on the 1960s TV sitcom "McHale's Navy" and a spate of grandfatherly parts.

The second annual Lone Pine Sierra Film Festival, probably the most tightly focused in the world, is scheduled this year from Oct. 11-13 in the Sierra foothill city. It will show only films shot amid the scenic Alabama Rocks just outside town and will honor only movie folk who made them there.