Dr. Stephen Armstrong is a professor in the English Department at Dixie State College in St. George, Utah. A movie scholar whose last book, 2007’s Pictures about Extremes, explores the work of John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May), Armstrong recently shifted his interest from thrillers to westerns. He spent the last

year writing, producing and directing a 38-minute documentary, Return to Little Hollywood, on the filmic legacy of neighboring Kanab, where more than 100 Hollywood westerns were shot. If you’re any kind of film or TV buff, you’ve heard of them: The Outlaw Josey Wales, “Gunsmoke,” “Have Gun-Will Travel.” So many westerns were filmed in Kanab, in fact, and the people there were so helpful during these productions, that the town earned the nickname “Little Hollywood.”

Since Kanab is just a few hours’ drive from Las Vegas, local film geek and CityLife contributor Jarret Keene sat down with Armstrong in the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Maryland Parkway to discuss Kanab’s gunslinger history.

CityLife: What led you to create Return to Little Hollywood?
Stephen Armstrong: I had recently finished up a book on the movie director John Frankenheimer and was looking for a new project. Kanab is an hour and a half from St. George, Utah, where I live, and when I heard that hundreds of movies and television shows had been shot there, I thought the town’s history might be good for a magazine article, maybe a book. I asked a friend of mine, a photojournalist named Chris Onstott, if he’d be interested on working on a project about Kanab and the movies, and he said he would. We decided we’d try something neither of us had done before — make a documentary.

CL: How much research did you put into the project?
SA: A lot. I made several trips to Kanab and searched the surrounding region for old sets as well as locals who remembered back to when Kanab played host to stars like Frank Sinatra and James Garner. One of the best sources of information out there is a woman named Jackie Rife. She appeared in 20 films as an extra and a stuntwoman. She’d go out with me in my truck and take me to the canyons and sets where the film crews worked. I talked to several film historians, as well.

CL: How long was production?
SA: We started primary shooting in May 2008 and filmed sporadically until August 2008. Every August, Kanab holds a three-day event called Western Legends Round-Up, which has old stars come up to Kanab to meet fans and talk about the pictures and shows they worked on. During last year’s round-up, we shot 15 or 16 interviews, talking to people like Clint Walker, Ty Hardin and Ed Faulkner, who were regulars in the TV westerns produced in the 1950s and 1960s. I also flew out to Santa Barbara last summer to talk to Harry Carey Jr., who starred in John Ford’s The Searchers and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

CL: Director William Wellman’s Buffalo Bill got the proverbial tumbleweed rolling for Kanab, it seems.
SA: Buffalo Bill is a beautiful film to watch, filled with shots of the white bluffs that rise around Kanab, the green meadows, the topaz skies. Wellman wanted to make a gritty, realistic picture about Buffalo Bill, but he was forced by the film’s producers to inject his narrative with sentimental stuff that hasn’t dated well. A much stronger picture Wellman made in Kane County is Westward the Women, with Robert Taylor in the lead. Taylor plays a wagon master who leads a group of 150 women from Chicago to California — a precursor to the “Wagon Train” TV show, by the way. It’s filmed in black and white, and the movie makes frequent use of the weird, dreamy Paria canyon section of Kane County, where several other movies were also shot, including Western Union, MacKenna’s Gold and The Outlaw Josey Wales.

CL: How many westerns were shot in and around Kanab?
SA: No exact record exists, but 150 is a realistic number. Plus dozens of television shows, the best known of which are “Gunsmoke,” “The Lone Ranger” and “Death Valley Days.” The stars and production crews would stay in

downtown Kanab at a motor inn called the Parry Lodge. There are many people in Kanab who remember seeing stars walking the streets — James Arness, John Wayne, Sammy Davis Jr., James Garner, Clint Eastwood. The Parry Lodge is still open, by the way.

CL: What’s your personal favorite of all the westerns shot in or around Kanab?
SA: Westward the Women is a strong picture. Robert Taylor, the film’s star, had a knack for being sinister and suave at the same time. There’s a particularly spectacular sequence in which Taylor races through the canyons outside Kanab on a horse. By the way, the film’s director William Wellman is credited with giving Kanab its nickname, “Little Hollywood.” He called it that because the locals could supply him with everything he needed to make his pictures: horses, cattle, wranglers, lumber, food, lodging, extras, doubles, stuntmen.

CL: Planet of the Apes was shot near Kanab, too, right?
SA: As far as I know, the interiors for PofA were done in Los Angeles. Many of the exteriors, on the other hand, where shot in northern Arizona and southern Utah, around the Glen Canyon Recreational Area, the Lake Powell reservoir and the Grand Canyon. Whenever you see red rocks and boulders in a shot, you’re looking at either Utah or Arizona. Charlton Heston would make the 70-mile drive from Lake Powell to Kanab, by the way, to eat at a Mexican restaurant called Nedra’s, which remains in business.

CL: Any westerns shot in Nevada (other than The Misfits) that you know of?
SA: Richard Brooks shot parts of The Professionals and Bite the Bullet in Valley of Fire, about an hour’s drive from downtown Vegas. Sam Peckinpah also filmed in Valley of Fire when he was making The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Several pictures have been shot in northern Nevada, too. One of the best is William Wellman’s Track of the Cat, with Robert Mitchum, which was filmed in the snow around Truckee.

CL:  Did you know anything about westerns before starting work on Return to Little Hollywood?
SA: The first movie I ever watched with interest was Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, which I saw when I was about 8 or 9 years old. That was 30 years ago. Ever since, I’ve watched hundreds of these things. Most of them are bad, unfortunately, because they’re simplistic and often embarrassing in their treatment of Native Americans. And horses. Horses get it pretty bad in early cowboy movies, but fortunately the SPCA forced Hollywood to treat its animal actors better. Anyway, like film noir, the western flourished in the years following World War II. The westerns produced during the ’50s were especially good: Wagonmaster, The Searchers, Broken Arrow. It was during this period, as well, that directors like Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and Nicholas Ray complicated the genre, moving away from the traditional good guy-bad guy split, filling the screen with anguished neurotics rather than sterling heroes. Nihilism is always good for movies. During the ’50s, as well, CBS Television produced several wonderful TV westerns: “Gunsmoke,” “Hotel de Paree,” “Have Gun-Will Travel.”

CL: Is there a strong Mormon presence in Kanab?
SA: Kanab was initially settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1870s. These people were sent to the region by Brigham Young, who thought the land would be ideal for raising cattle. The early settlers quickly ran afoul with the Paiute Indians who were already living there over water. But a missionary named Jacob Hamblin, one of the most important figures in LDS history, was sent by Brigham Young to make peace. Hamblin’s efforts worked. The settlers prospered as ranchers and farmers. I would venture to say that the majority of people living in Kanab today are members of the Latter-Day Saints.

CL: Your doc succeeds in making me want to plan a trip to Kanab. But it also makes me want to plan a western movie marathon. Kanab aside, what’s your Top 5 list of westerns, new and old?
SA: Bandolero!, Andrew V. McLaglen (1968): a violent comic-western with Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin as a pair of outlaw brothers who escape the hangman and set out for Mexico; The Lusty Men, Nicholas Ray (1952): Robert Mitchum plays a has-been rodeo rider who falls in love with his best friend’s wife; I Shot Jesse James, Sam Fuller (1949): oddball study of a gunslinger’s efforts to expiate guilt after he murders his friend; My Darling Clementine, John Ford (1946): the best of the Ford westerns filmed in Monument Valley; The Naked Spur, Anthony Mann (1953): Jimmy Stewart hunts down a killer with some help from a voluptuous Janet Leigh.

Return to Little Hollywood premiered June 17 at the Crescent Moon Theatre in downtown Kanab. Armstrong hopes to screen the picture at various locations throughout the West. For more info, visit www.myspace.com/returntolittlehollywood.

Directions: To get to Kanab from Las Vegas, take I-15 North into Utah. Pass through St. George, then take Exit 16 and head east onto UT-9, toward Zion National Park. UT-9 will take you through a city called Hurricane. Follow signs for Utah State Route 59. Drive 30 miles into Hildale, then cross the Arizona line into Colorado City. Utah State Route 59 changes its name to Arizona State Route 389. Drive another 30 miles into Fredonia. At the crossroads in downtown Fredonia, turn north onto US-89 and drive 7 miles. The entire trip is just about 200 miles.