Starring Tucson

For decades movies were an integral part of the SoAz vibe, and when the cameras rolled, anything was possible.

Downtown Tucson department store clerks encountered Paul Newman on their lunch hour. Area ranch hands played bridge with John Wayne. Tucson High School and University of Arizona students had to decide whether to attend class or strive for stardom at films shooting on campus.

That was the normal part.

Dom DeLuise swooped in and rescued a dazed pedestrian out of the street. A landscaper built a portable cornfield that allowed the Sonoran Desert to double for Oklahoma. A monster truck steamrolled a Porsche while Burt Reynolds looked on. Hollywood built a lake on a Tubac golf course and rented an East Side ranch house for a month.

Sidney Poitier, Benicio Del Toro and Ellen Burstyn all won acting Oscars for projects they filmed in Southern Arizona, and "Wings" (1927), winner of the first best-picture Oscar, was shot partially in Tucson.

Tucson's movie scene began in earnest when Old Tucson opened up in 1939 for the shoot of "Arizona." Filming was steady, if slow, until 1959, when a polo-playing Kansas City, Mo., transplant named Bob Shelton came to town. Shelton, who forged a relationship with John Wayne and banged on producers' doors in Los Angeles to get them to film in Tucson, refurbished and reopened Old Tucson in 1960, attracting some of the greatest Westerns of the era. Films of all genres followed the stardust trail.

Even as Westerns fell out of favor in the late 1970s, Tucson's movie momentum stayed strong well into 1990s, when Kevin Costner stopped by for "Tin Cup" and "The Postman."

Our research found that nearly 100 recognizable, high-profile movies were shot at least partially in Southern Arizona. The list is online at azstarnet.com.

From that list, we chose the 20 most significant films, based on historical impact, spectacle and the extent of our recognizable locations.

Although major motion picture production has waned here due mostly to aggressive tax breaks offered by Canada and New Mexico, our movie heritage remains strong.

Tucson Film Office director Shelli Hall, who is attempting to revitalize the sleepy local movie industry, says the area's cinematic history helps her pitch locations to Hollywood producers.

"The first thing that comes to mind in the practical sense is the proximity of Tucson to Los Angeles. Secondly, it was the Western that was primarily filmed here, in the beginning, and Westerns were really popular at that time and we were the perfect location for that, apparently."

"Because of all the films and TV movies in the 1980s and '90s, we have the crew to support big productions in Southern Arizona. We have crews here that are second- and third-generation because of the legacy and history of film and how far back it goes. We know how to handle big films."

This adds up to the possibility that the industry could be revived. In the meantime, we've got our DVD players and a memorable past.

Without further ado, it's on to our list. Lights, camera, action!

1. Arizona (1940)

Director: Wesley Ruggles.

Stars: Jean Arthur, William Holden.

Local location: Old Tucson.

Without "Arizona," we wouldn't have Old Tucson or any significant movie heritage.

"When I took over Old Tucson in 1959, I realized that 'Arizona' was a cornerstone of the beginning for films here, really," Bob Shelton said. "There were other movies shot in Southern Arizona in the early days, going back to the one-reel silents, but 'Arizona' was really the big renaissance for films here."

Columbia Motion Pictures erected the studio in 1939 for what it conceived as a grand, Technicolor epic. Using pictures and maps of what Tucson looked like in the mid-19th century, the studio engaged 650 construction workers on the project and spent $150,000 for the backdrop of the story of plucky pioneer lass Phoebe Titus (Arthur). She operates a freighting business despite opposition from sneering villains, and falls hard for California-bound Peter Muncie, who was played by a then-unknown Holden.

A week after Hitler's invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Columbia halted production, then restarted it in April 1940 as a scaled-back, black-and-white version. The film premiered in Tucson on Nov. 14 and 15, at the Temple of Music and Art and four other theaters. Radio personality Kate Smith broadcast her national show from Tucson.

The Pioneer Hotel hosted Arthur, Holden, Fay Wray, Rita Hayworth and Hedda Hopper, who were involved in the festivities, which included a horse-drawn parade and a midnight menudo feast with 3,000 revelers.

Holden, for one, was impressed. He wrote a letter to the Seattle Times that was quoted in the Aug. 16, 1940, Star.

"Tucson proved to be the finest host to movie people in these United States," Holden wrote. "Movie people were never mobbed on the street, an autograph was never asked for, and where, by golly, you can really feel and live like a normal human being."

2. Cannonball Run II (1984)

Director: Hal Needham.

Stars: Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise.

Local locations: Old Tucson, desert west of town and the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind campus.

"Cannonball Run II" smacked Tucson like, well, a cannonball, leveling the city with a confluence of starpower never before seen in town, and bringing with it a production riddled with controversy and mishaps. Had Needham made his movie a making-of documentary on the summer 1983 shoot, he would have undoubtedly emerged with a more entertaining result than the weak racing comedy. The events surrounding the filming were certainly more movie-worthy than the script.

Gov. Bruce Babbitt cajoled Needham to bring the $15 million-$17 million film to Tucson instead of Nevada, Florida or Georgia, which also had Needham's ear. Over martinis at the tony, private Old Pueblo Club, Babbitt said he'd give Needham support from city and state police and let them block off roads in town.

Reynolds, DeLuise, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Sammy Davis Jr., Marilu Henner, Frank Sinatra, Joe Theismann and Jackie Chan all filed into town.

One of the first stops was the ASDB campus, which masqueraded as the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, Calif. On campus, a monster truck smashed a Porsche.

Retiring ASDB executive staff assistant for administration Lauren Peirce was working during the shoot. She remembers going out with other staffers to watch the filming during lunch breaks, but she found the film itself a disappointment.

Crime and intrigue dogged the filming. Most heinous was a shootout the night of July 20, 1983, that left two dead. Pima County sheriff's Deputy Ernest Calvillo died from wounds suffered while working off-duty guarding movie equipment at Wagon Wheel Post Bar. Calvillo was attempting to break up an argument between two brothers: Curtis L. Rierson — who shot Calvillo and was shot dead by another off-duty lawman guarding the equipment — and John Rierson.

Other tidbits from the filming:

● In July 1983, someone stole the emergency light bar from one of the fake police cars used in the film.

● DeLuise raced to roadside heroics. While he was driving in late June 1983, he saw pedestrian John Kendall standing "dazed and disoriented" after being hit by an unidentified motorist on East Speedway just east of North Norris Avenue. DeLuise pulled him from the center lane to the side of the road until the police arrived.

● State officials threw a $10,000 thank-you party for the cast and crew, using state and local funds. Babbitt, Mayor Lew Murphy and other state and local officials attended. Babbitt called filmmakers "demanding, eccentric, egocentric, difficult, demanding, wonderful, lovable people" in a January 1984 Star story.

● While actor Jamie Farr ("M*A*S*H") was playing at El Rio Golf Course, a burglar smashed the window of the 1979 Cadillac he was using with a rock, swiping $1,500 in traveler's checks, his Screen Actors Guild card and a holy medallion given to him by his grandmother. In a Star story at the time, Farr said police told him, "Welcome to Tucson."

3. Lilies of the Field (1963)

Director: Ralph Nelson.

Star: Sidney Poitier.

Local locations: Northeast Tucson.

"Lilies" is a drama about a jovial handyman (Poitier) who's forced to stop at a desert farm run by German refugee nuns when his car overheats. He stays to build the ladies a chapel. Poitier became the first black actor to win the best-actor Oscar.

Director Nelson filmed the movie with a loan he got by putting up his house for collateral, then shot it in 15 days. Crews built the chapel in the film on rented land near the intersection of Sabino Canyon and Tanque Verde roads. Construction went on during filming, and Nelson filled the chapel with borrowed items, including a front door, from a Sasabe church.

Tucsonan Francesca Jarvis, now 74, played feisty Sister Albertine in the film. Even though she'd just given birth to a son a month earlier, Jarvis was determined to get her movie career started. She nursed her baby in between scenes, and hardly slept at all throughout the shoot.

"I was going through postpartum depression a little bit, but this was just not something that you turned down. At least I couldn't. So the arrangements worked out pretty well. I would take catnaps on set — just flop over and sleep."

4. Oklahoma! (1955)

Director: Fred Zinnemann.

Stars: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Rod Steiger.

Local locations: Elgin, San Raphael Valley, Nogales, Patagonia.

Zinnemann chose Southern Arizona to stand in for Oklahoma in his landmark musical because the genuine article was too developed to resemble the land at the turn of the century.

Landscaper Lou Gerlach spent a year creating a square-mile portable cornfield in Tubac. The crew moved the field, as well as two dozen peach trees, to wherever they were needed, and had to individually dig up the corn stalks, plant them in square wooden boxes and feed the corn ammonium nitrate and water. The $6 million film spent $65,000 per day locally.

Future Tucson Mayor Lew Murphy popped up onscreen as an extra for four seconds.

5. McLintock! (1963)

Director: Andrew V. McLaglen.

Stars: John Wayne (at left), Maureen O'Hara.

Local locations: Nogales, Old Tucson, Patagonia.

Wayne plays a cattle baron who whips his wife, daughter and politicians into shape in this comic sendup of many of the Westerns in which he starred.

" 'McLintock!' was a great experience — probably the best film in my opinion I ever worked with," Shelton said. "It was a wonderful and happy film starring John Wayne and his favorite co-star, Irish actress Maureen O'Hara."

Shelton said Wayne was also dynamic during the production.

"He came to the set and was there all the time. When it came time for him to do what he was supposed to do, he was there and he knew his lines. Unfortunately, he knew everybody else's lines, too, and he was very intimidating in that way. He was very professional. He ate and slept movies, which is what he dearly loved."

6. Can't Buy Me Love (1987)

Director: Steve Rash.

Stars: Patrick Dempsey, Seth Green.

Local locations: Tucson High School, Tucson Mall, Pima Air & Space Museum.

Few films scream "Tucson!" as much as this seminal 1980s teen flick. The tale of a nerd (Patrick Dempsey) who pays a popular girl (Amanda Peterson) to be his girlfriend for a month was shot at Tucson High. Teachers let students out of class to try out for scenes.

Isabelle Productions paid the teens cheaply, up to $5 an hour. In return, the company donated a $5,000 dance floor to the high school. Then-unknown Paula Abdul choreographed the dance scenes.

Robert Miranda, a Tucson police officer who's now 37, was a senior center on the THS football team and earned $50 as an extra.

"You can barely see me in two scenes," Miranda said. "One is very far away, with some football players in letterman's jackets walking toward a school bus, while one of the nerd guys looks down in a window."

Miranda's former teammate, running back Ray Betton, was the guy in the dance scene who looks surprised when Dempsey starts to cut a rug.

"I love seeing the movie. There are a lot of guys I've known for a while, and I haven't seen them in years since I've been in Minnesota," said Betton, who is now a 38-year-old high school football coach in Minnesota. "It's kind of cool to look back, see your friends and see the campus."

7. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Screens at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 27 at Cinema La Placita.

Director: Martin Scorsese (at left).

Stars: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster.

Local locations: Wilmot Road and Speedway — the Monterey Village sign shows up — and the Chicago Music Store (Downtown), Pima County Juvenile Court Center, Amado (he shot a steer head outside a restaurant).

"Tucson's the weird capital of the world," Foster's character, a scamp named Audrey, says in the film.

Scorsese portrayed our burg as a quirky venue for redemption in his tale of a woman (Burstyn) and her son who move to Tucson, where she waits tables. Foster's character shoplifts at the Chicago Music Store.

Mark Levkowitz, the 51-year-old owner of the Chicago Music Store, was a teen at the time, working as a manager in the family business, and remembers that Scorsese's crew fixed his shop's broken lighting fixtures for free.

Burstyn served and sassed her way to a best-actress Oscar in a diner Scorsese had built on the east side of Main Avenue between Speedway and Drachman Street. Foster's character is booked into the intake area of the Pima County Juvenile Court Center, which was razed for parking in 2000 when the new building opened on East Ajo Way.

8. Rio Bravo (1959)

Director: Howard Hawks.

Stars: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan.

Local location: Old Tucson

In one of eight films he made in town and the first of four at Old Tucson, Wayne plays a lawman who takes a murderer into custody, then has to fend off gunmen who try to release the prisoner. Wayne recruits a crippled old man (Brennan), a drunk (Martin) and a trigger-happy youth (Nelson) to secure the jail. Bob Shelton restored Old Tucson shortly after the production wrapped.

"It was really the beginning of a trilogy Howard Hawks made here (including "El Dorado" in 1966 and "Rio Lobo" in 1970)," said Shelton.

"It was the opportunity, I think, to introduce Dean Martin to Tucson, where he developed a lot of friendships that ultimately led to hosting the golf tournament for the Conquistadores."

9. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

Director: John Huston.

Stars: Paul Newman, Roddy McDowell, Stacy Keach.

Local locations: Tucson, Old Tucson, Mescal.

"Bean" featured Newman in this farcical Western about an outlaw who establishes a town.

Tucsonan Francesca Jarvis, whose acting career spanned 21 film and TV roles over 39 years, played a prostitute, and remembers working with Newman.

"Paul was really good with actors," Jarvis said. Many actors need to study lines in between scenes, she added, but Newman had his memorized.

Jarvis treasures her memories from the set, especially tense moments watching co-star McDowell share a scene with a bear in a cage.

"The trainer put chewy little bits of candy on his collar and different places. Lawyer Gass is, of course, screaming, 'Let me out of here!' Scrambling out of the cage. The bear got frustrated that Roddy kept moving and he couldn't get to his goodies, so he put his paw in the middle of Roddy's back and was pushing down so he could eat his candy."

10. Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

Director: Jeff Kanew.

Stars: Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards.

Local locations: Bear Down Gym, Arizona Stadium and University of Arizona campus frat houses, as well as the Scottish Rite Temple, were used in the film.

To nerd or not to nerd? This was the question that plagued UA officials in late 1983. The administrators first approved of filming, then revoked permission before public outcries made them reconsider.

"We were concerned that the movie does not portray campus life in a representative way," Dudley B. Woodard Jr., vice president for administrative services and member of the university's executive staff, said in a 1983 Star story.

Later, after a meeting with senior UA officials, movie producers and members of the city and state film commissions, the UA made an about-face.

The UA agreed to let "Nerds" film in Tucson if the director reduced the shooting schedule to avoid disrupting campus activities, shot the lurid scenes elsewhere, took advice from fraternities, and did not mention the UA anywhere in the film. UA students skipped class to appear as extras.

11. Boys on the Side (1995)

Screens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Cinema La Placita.

Director: Herbert Ross.

Stars: Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg and Mary-Louise Parker.

Local locations: Exteriors of Tucson General Hospital and Teatro Carmen were used, with the Elks Club also nabbing screentime. Frank and Jill Hinman's Santa Fe-style home on the far East Side on Redington Road was another spot.

Fast Fact: The Hinmans rented their house to the production for a month. The couple lived with their three children in a trailer on their property during filming.

"Everybody was depressed when they left, including me," said Frank Hinman, a retired real estate investor.

12. Tombstone (1993)

Director: George P. Cosmatos.

Stars: Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer.

Local locations: Old Tucson Studios' Mescal location near Benson.

Fast Fact: "The actors loved hanging out at (Hotel) Congress," said Laurie Ross, who served as a locations manager for "Tombstone" and "Boys on the Side" and who is now a fund coordinator at Diamond Family Ventures.

13. Traffic (2000)

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Michael Douglas.

Local locations: Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora.

Fast Fact: Del Toro, the best-supporting-actor Oscar winner, thanked the people of the two border towns when he accepted his Oscar.

14. ¡Three Amigos! (1986)

Director: John Landis.

Stars: Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, Martin Short.

Local location: Old Tucson.

Fast Fact: Production designers added facades and storefronts to Old Tucson, as well as a Mexican mission.

15. Tin Cup (1996)

Director: Ron Shelton.

Stars: Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin.

Local locations: Hotel Congress, the shop now called Beacon's Value Village Thrift Store on North Fourth Avenue, what is now the Tubac Golf Resort & Spa, an area near Patagonia.

Fast Fact: The film called for a pond to be put in on what was then the Tubac Country Club's 16th hole. Eleven years and a name change later, golfers are still making like Costner and shanking balls into Tin Cup Lake on the fourth hole of the Tubac Golf Resort & Spa's Rancho Nine course.

16. A Star Is Born (1976)

Director: Frank Pierson.

Stars: Barbra Streisand (at left), Kris Kristofferson, Gary Busey.

Local locations: The Empire Ranch in Sonoita, what is now called the Tucson Arena and other Downtown locations, as well as Tempe.

Fast Fact: The Streisand and Kristofferson characters are married in front of the tile-domed Pima County Courthouse.

17. Major League (1989)

Director: David S. Ward.

Stars: Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Rene Russo, Wesley Snipes.

Local location: Hi Corbett Field.

Fast Fact: On July 14, 1988, Paramount paid the 6,000-strong Hi Corbett Field crowd with $5,400 in hot dogs.

18. Stir Crazy (1980)

Director: Sidney Poitier.

Stars: Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor.

Local locations: Florence, the Tucson Rodeo Grounds, Pima Community College West Campus and Downtown Tucson.

Fast Fact: Poitier shut down Stone Avenue to film a bank robbery with the stars dressed in bird costumes at what is now the Chase building.  

19. Wings (1927)

Director: William A. Wellman.

Stars: Gary Cooper, Clara Bow (at left).

Local locations: Unspecified areas around Tucson.

Fast Fact: "Wings" was the initial best-picture Oscar winner. The award was then known as "outstanding production."

20. The Gay Desperado (1936)

Director: Rouben Mamoulian.

Stars: Ida Lupino, Leo Carrillo.

Local locations: San Xavier del Bac, Barrio Historico, Meyer Street (Downtown) and what's now Saguaro National Park.

Fast Fact: Many believe some interiors were filmed at the Rialto Theatre.

Phil Villarreal leads an audio slide show tour through the films that left their marks on the Old Pueblo.