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Harvey in HOLLYWOOD

Hi Neighbors! At long last, here is the location story that we have been talking about. Hope you enjoy it as much as we have enjoyed our trip to the desert. So pack your grip . . we are leaving!

6:00 am Sunday morning we take off from Lockheed Airport with GENE AUTRY handling the controls of his twin engine Beech. Gene, with over 3000 air hours in his log book, handles the plane with the same ease and sureness that sends CHAMPION thundering over the plains. We cut thru the now famous Los Angeles smog blanket and keep a date with the rising sun high over the mountains. Forty minutes later Gene puts us down with a perfect landing on a little air strip at the outskirts of Yucca Valley. We have to wake up PAT BUTTRAM, the boy with the permanent wave voice and load him into the Flying A stand-by car. With WILD TEX BUTLER at the wheel, it’s up and away over the high mountain pass that leads to the Movie Set Where People Live… PIONEERTOWN! This is to be our base of operations for the pictures, “Black Rider” and “Poisoned Waterhole.”

Our day starts perfectly as CAROL, one of the beautiful reasons for the Golden Stallion’s popularity, serves us a real frontier breakfast of bacon, eggs and hot-cakes. REX BAILY and STAN NEUFELD (Our 1st and 2nd Assistant Directors) make sure we all get well stuffed, the assign us to our Town-House rooms and we report to DICK BATCHELOR for them thar western clothes.

In no time at all we’re up on the skyline of rugged mountains that surround this desert wonderland reporting to Director FRANK McDONALD for active duty in the saddle. And we do mean active, because a cowboy picture is built on action.

Here’s a quick rundown on the cast, and each one has a story that would make a full column, so we’ll have to be brief. Of course, GENE AUTRY heads the list as star with PAT EUTTRAM, a very funny guy, as his faithful sidekick. Lovely SHEILA RYAN is our leading lady and someday we hope to make a picture where we get the girl… it must be SHEILA! No western is complete without a Sheriff and we have Hollywood’s most famous… TOM LONDON. This is Tom’s 1643rd motion picture . . an all time record.) Our “Redskin” department is taken care o in the best possible manner by the one and only CHIEF THUNDERCLOUD, the finest Indian actor in the industry and perhaps better known to you as the original TONTO of the Lone Ranger pictures. Handsome BILL HENRY is on to add fem-fan interest, and by the way, this BILL’S lastpic- before he reports for active duty with the Navy. Bon Voyage, Bill and hurry back . . Hollywood needs guys like you. the deep dyed villain is LEONARD PENN and a more charming schemer we don’t know. (leonard just finished a great season as Judas in Hollywood’s “Pilgrimage Play” and you might ask Governor Warren how good he was. Pioneertown’s Desert Rat, WES HUDMAN is the Sheriff’s Deputy and you know he’ll catch Yours Truly who, as usual, does a real sneaky heavy.

SPACE NEEDED: Look, neighbors, we can see there isn’t going to be room enough here to tell this story. We want to talk about the wonderful thrills furnished by ace stuntmen BOYD STOCKMAN and BOB WOODWARD; the true story of the tornado that hit us and a hundred and one other things… so with your permission we’ll continue this next week and give you the full story of a location trip . . IN THE MOVIES!

Harvey in Hollywood Sept. 4, 1950