DESERT VILLAGE NOW MOVIETOWN Company Makes Permanent Location

PIONEERTOWN, Calif., Dec. 2–(U.P.)–The Wild West, not being so wild anymore, a Western movie company is turning this desert village into a permanent cowtown.

This Hollywood version of the good old days started out to be a resort for Western movie stars with millyuns. Even the stores of the tiny one-street town were built in oldfashioned Western style to make oatburner heroes feel right at home.

Pioneertown’s great white father is Producer Philip Krasne, who moved his company here for keeps to make “Cisco Kid” thrillers. Now you can’t tell where real life ends and reel life begins.

Entrance Has Sign

The entrance to the village has a sign, “Pioneertown is this-a-way.” Next sign: “Horseless carriages ain’t aloud on Mane St.” even Producer Krasne discreetly parks his Cadillac off the dirt street.

Krasne & Co., get chow at the Golden Stallion, which serves such unwestern dishes as Eastern oysters at prices that would shock Mike Romanoff. This eatery also has 50–cent slot machines and “Wild West” tunes like Dorothy Lamour’s One Rose on the Jook box.

Down the street are “Trigger Bill’s shooting gallery,” “Pioneertown Gazette,” “Likker Barn,” etc. The “Red Dog Saloon” has swinging doors, supplemented by the ordinary variety, and a beat-up unplayable piano for atmosphere.

Used As Sets

These places will be used as movie sets, and in between are propped real false-front sets imported from Hollywood. The town’s 300 pre-Hollywood residents will get in the act, too. The barber who runs the “Klip ‘N Kurl” place will play barber for “Cisco Kid.” The town electrician will work the Klieg lights: the Red Dog bartender will act movie bartender.

“I’ll import just starts like Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carillo,” explains Producer Krasne, who rules his Wild West domain here, so I won’t have to pay their expenses of commuting 125 miles from Hollywood.”

He’s making a home himself, he added, out of a building marked”Nell’s Ice Cream Parlor.”