Movies Made in & around Stockton

7 Brides for 7 Brothers

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was executive produced by David Gerber for MGM Television and filmed on location In Stockton and at Murphys, California. The series' theme, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", was written by Jimmy Webb and performed by Phil Silas. The musical numbers were choreographed by Carl Jablonski. Michael J. Fox auditioned for this show, before auditioning successfully for Family Ties.

All The King's Men

Buy All the King's Men - 1949
MERCEDES MCCAMBRIDGE, JOHN IRELAND, JOANNE DRU, JOHN DEREK, ANN SEYMOUR

- Oscars all round – for Best Picture, for Broderick Crawford as politician Willie Stark, and for the magnificent Mercedes McCambridge, making her screen debut. The initially idealistic, working-class Stark follows the dangerous road of real politik as he rises to become governor of an un-named Southern state, and is ultimately assassinated. R film à clef based on the career of Louisiana Governor Huey P Long.

Filmed entirely in Stockton, using the Hotel Stockton, the old county courthouse (amassing hundreds of Stocktonians for a nighttime political rally scene), the old city jail, Atherton Island, the McLeod Lake lawn across from City Hall, the Stockton waterfront, Lower Sacramento Road near the old Henderson School in Lodi, on the north steps of Stockton City Hall (where a floodlit assassination scene ends the movie) and at other area locations, including two in Rio Vista; Fred Babitzke of Stockton played a waiter in a restaurant scene; young Derek was fresh off his breakthrough film earlier that year,

Although seemingly set in the South, it was filmed largely on location around Stockton, east of San Francisco in northern California. After being elected governor, Willie Stark makes his victory speech from the balcony of the Hotel Stockton, 133 East Weber Avenue between North El Dorado Street and North Hunter Street.

It closed as a hotel in 1960 and, now on the register of historic places, has been renovated as private apartments. North on El Dorado is City Hall, Civic Court at North El Dorado Street, on the steps of which Stark is finally gunned down.

Always

Considered by many to represent a low point in Steven Spielberg's career, 1990's Always did suggest something of a temporary drift in the director's sensibility. A remake of the classic Spencer Tracy film A Guy Named Joe, Always stars Richard Dreyfuss as a Forest Service pilot who takes great risks with his own life to douse wildfires from a plane. After promising his frightened fiancée (Holly Hunter) to keep his feet on the ground and go into teaching, Dreyfuss's character is killed during one last flight. But his spirit wanders restlessly, hopelessly attached to and possessive of Hunter, who can't see or hear him. Then the real conflict begins: a trainee pilot (Brad Johnson), a likable doofus, begins wooing a not-unappreciative Hunter--and it becomes Dreyfuss's heavenly mandate to accept, and even assist in, their budding romance. The trouble with the film is a certain airlessness, a hyper-inventiveness in every scene and sequence that screams of Spielberg's self-education in Hollywood classicism. Unlike the masters he is constantly quoting and emulating in Always, he forgets to back off and let the movie breathe on its own sometimes, which would better serve his clockwork orchestration of suspense and comedy elsewhere. Still, there are lovely passages in this film, such as the unforgettable look on Dreyfuss's face a half-second before fate claims him. John Goodman contributes good supporting work, and Audrey Hepburn makes her final screen appearance as an angel.

BILLY CRUDUP, FRANCES MCDORMAND, KATE HUDSON, JASON LEE, FAIRUZA BALK, ANNA PAQUIN, PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, PATRICK FUGIT, BIJOU PHILLIPS

Written, produced and directed by Cameron Crowe (“Jerry Maguire”), a semi-autobiographical account of his teenage years as a rock music reporter for Rolling Stone; nominee and winner of numerous national and international awards, including three Academy Award nominations, (Crowe won for Best Original Screenplay and Goldie Hawn’s daughter, Kate Hudson, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress); with Oscar-winners McDormand (“Fargo”) and Paquin (“The Piano”) and featuring former Stocktonian Balk, granddaughter of Stockton dance teacher LaVern Balk; Crudup was in “Inventing the Abbotts,” shot in Stockton in 1997; scenes filmed in Rio Vista and on a rural road near Lincoln in Placer County, substituting for the midwest, in which the Stillwater Band is traveling by bus and passes a barn built just for the shot.

More American Grafitti

Returning from the original American Graffiti are Debbie Dunham, Steve Bolander, John Milner, Carol/Rainbow, Terry the Toad and Laurie Bolander (Candy Clark, Ron Howard, Paul LeMat, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin Smith and Cindy Williams), but Richard Dreyfuss is missing and Harrison Ford shows up in a gag cameo. The sequel brings its principles into the more radical end of the 1960s, with Steve and Laurie, now married, on the fringes of the protest movement. Debbie and Carol have been lured into the flower-power milieu by rocker Newt (Scott Glenn). And John has parlayed his love of hot rods into a drag-racing career. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Atlanta Child Murders

Between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1981, 29 African American children, adolescents and adults were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia. The killings gained nationwide attention, with many suspecting that they were the work of the Ku Klux Klan or a similar white supremacist group. However, in June 1981, a 23-year-old African American named Wayne Williams (Levels) was arrested for first-degree murder in the deaths of 27-year-old Nathaniel Carter and 29-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne. Eight months later, Williams was convicted of both killings and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment. Some parties speculate that Williams was not the real killer, and that local law enforcement officials used him as a scapegoat to bring a seemingly unsolvable case to a close. However, it is generally presumed that Williams was the culprit in most of the murders, if not all of them. No one was ever tried in connection with the other killings.

MICHAEL J FOX, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD, MARY STEENBURGEN, LEA THOMPSON, ELISABETH SHUE, RICHARD DYSART, DUB TAYLOR, HARRY CAREY JR, PAT BUTTRAM

Third and final family comedy about the time-traveling teenager whose fooling around in the past threatens his future, directed by Steven Spielberg acolyte Robert Zemeckis before he won the Academy Award for “Forrest Gump” in 1994 and directed “Contact” in 1997; a key location near Sonora in Tuolumne County, the 1885 version of the town of Hill Valley, was constructed west of Chinese Camp, the entrance to it about a mile off Highway 108 down the hill from O’Byrne’s Ferry Road; “Unforgiven” and “Bad Girls,” also shot in the Sierra foothills, used some of the same town sets (a 1996 grass fire caused by lightning burned several acres and the Hill Valley set); John Himle of Stockton was in the cast; Carey also made “The Moonshine War” in 1970 and “Nickelodeon” in 1976 on location in Stockton.

Bad Girls 1994

MADELEINE STOWE, MARY STUART MASTERSON, ANDIE MACDOWELL, DREW BARRYMORE, ROBERT LOGGIA, DERMOT MULRONEY

Four prostitutes join together as the “Honky-Tonk Harlots” to travel the Old West, recover their stolen money and put the pursuing Pinkertons in their place, directed by Jonathan Kaplan and filmed in the Sierra foothills, at the Red Hills Ranch near Sonora and in a town set originally built for “Back to the Future, Part III” and later used in the Clint Eastwood western “Unforgiven”; Loggia was in “Raid on Entebbe,” shot in Stockton in 1977; in the cast were Stocktonians Robert Gossett, John Himle and the Stockton-born actress and University of the Pacific graduate Beulah Quo, playing a Chinese herbalist, whom Kaplan also would cast in “Brokedown Palace” in 1999; among many other films, Quo has appeared in “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing,” “The Sand Pebbles,” “MacArthur” and the award-winning “Chinatown”;’ her considerable career on stage, screen and television was honored by the City of Stockton when the Stockton Arts Commission (assisted by Quo’s Stockton cousin Gladys Mar) presented its Career Achievement Award to her in 1986.

The Big Country

A Grandly high-styled psychological western about two feuding families, an epic melodrama adapted for the screen by novelist Jessamyn West, who wrote “Friendly Persuasion” and directed by the multi Oscar-winning William Wyler, who also directed the film version of “Friendly Persuasion” and a 1930 film shot in Tuolumne County, “The Storm,” written by John Huston, who would film “Fat City” here in 1972; the cast and crew almost entirely occupied the Hotel Stockton, which became a magnet for autograph-seekers and the press.

Heston jokingly signed his signature as Charlton “Moses” Heston, and to a fan’s “Hey, Chuck!” as he and two others left the hotel bar, Heston shouted back “Which Chuck? There’s three of us here!” (he, Bickford and Connors); first of three films Connors made in Stockton (“The Name of the Game,” “The Vals”).

Some scenes shot in the Sierra foothills and many in the Farmington area, where a hotel, livery stable and house (Simmon’s home in the movie) were built and later purchased by Pollardville as attractions at its Tule Flats Ghost Town in Stockton (the hotel building bears a plaque stating its movie origin); Ives, who won Academy and Golden Globe awards for Best Supporting Actor for ”The Big Country,” was the balladeer, storyteller and folksinger who became a vivid character actor in two films, including the coarse Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on stage and screen; Bedoya, in a rare sympathetic turn, is remembered for his braggadocio as the Mexican bandit in John Huston’s “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”: “Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!”

Buy The Big Valley - 1965-1969

BARBARA STANWYCK, RICHARD LONG, PETER BRECK, LEE MAJORS, LINDA EVANS, DOUGLAS KENNEDY

The Big Valley is an American western television series which ran on ABC from September 15, 1965, to May 19, 1969. The show stars Barbara Stanwyck, as the widow of a wealthy nineteenth century California rancher. It was created by A.I. Bezzerides and Louis F. Edelman, and produced by Levy-Gardner-Laven for Four Star Television.

Set on a Stockton ranch and about fictional Stocktonians, with a title that spawned the names of local insurance, automobile and other business enterprises, including Big Valley Cablevision, this television series that ran through 1969 was never made in Stockton.

The TV series was based loosely on the Hill Ranch, which was located at the western edge of Calaveras County, not far from Stockton. One episode placed the Barkley Ranch a few hours' ride from town, while another has Jarrod riding past a Calaveras County sign on his way to the TV series' ranch. The Hill Ranch existed from 1855 until 1931, including almost 30,000 acres; and the Mokelumne River ran through it. The source is from an episode in which Heath is on trial in a ghost town with another man (played by Leslie Nielsen) and tells the judge how much land they have. Lawson Hill ran the ranch until he was murdered in 1861. His wife Euphemia (aka "Auntie Hill") then became the matriarch. During their marriage they had four children, one daughter and three sons. Today, the location of the ranch is covered by the waters of Lake Camanche. A California state historical marker standing at Camanche South Shore Park mentions the historic ranch. The set used to film the exterior of the Barkley Mansion stood on the backlot of Republic Studios from 1947 until 1975.

Buy Birdy - 1984

Birdy is a 1984 American drama film directed by Alan Parker and starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage. It is based on the novel of the same name by William Wharton, although the film is set in the Vietnam era and not during the Second World War.

Buy Blood Alley - 1955 

JOHN WAYNE, LAUREN BA CALL, ANITA EKBERG, MIKE MAZURKI

Action—adventure about refugees fleeing the Communist takeover of China; produced and directed by Wayne (uncredited) and his hard-drinking old friend William A. Wellman

Filmed in the San Joaquin Delta and on its rivers, one serving as the Yangtze; different kinds of epics, “War and Peace” and “La Dolce Vita,” were just ahead for Swedish import Ekberg; Mazurki, a former Russian wrestler who had bit parts in dozens of Hollywood films, would later appear in three directed by John Ford, who made Will Rogers’ next-to-last film in Stockton in 1934; cast and crew stayed at the Hotel Stockton, where Bacall kept to herself, her room and her new husband, Humphrey Bogart, who stayed with her during most of the shoot; Wayne, Wellman and the brawny Mazurki, however, spent time eating, drinking and playing poker at Chet’s on Wilson Way, site of a minor dustup that drew police after the “Duke” decked a bartender for making rude remarks about him meant for all to hear; when Wayne returned to it, after shooting all day on the Delta, he would still sign autographs for fans, once up to 400 kids, waiting for him there; he made the Virginia S, an 86-foot Geodetic Survey boat owned by Tom Case, his social and production headquarters while in Stockton.

Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Being There) directed this lyrical and affecting 1976 biography of legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie. David Carradine gives a powerful performance as the traveling Depression-era vagabond whose music affected generations. Guthrie is portrayed as an earnest soul whose passion and empathy for the working class spurs him to inspirational heights. Ronny Cox (Deliverance, Beverly Hills Cop) plays a union organizer who sees the value in Guthrie's words and music and persuades him to put his music to good use for the people struggling to earn a living wage. Featuring Melinda Dillon as Guthrie's wife, this easygoing travelogue conveys an authentic sense of period Americana and won Academy Awards for Haskell Wexler's cinematography as well as for the score based on Guthrie's own music. Bound for Glory is an important film to see for anyone in love with the origins of folk music and interested in its place in the 20th century.

San Joaquin Film Society featured four short movies produced by Delta’s RTV students during the organization’s 4th San Joaquin International Film Festival on March 20. The movies – “Blur,” “Lockdown,” “Illusia,” and a 30-minute preview of “Broadcasting Sunshine” – were part of the festival’s “Delta Day” program held in the Tillie Lewis Theatre

ROBERT REDFORD, PETER BOYLE, MEL WN DOUGLAS, ALLEN GARFIELD, DON PORTER, KENNETH TOBEY

Redford, as the son of Ca|ifornia’s governor, tweaks the establishment, gets himself elected senator and, looking into the camera, has the film’s provacotive closing line: “Well, what do we do now?”; an often overlooked satire directed by Michael Ritchie from an original Oscar-winning screenplay by Jeremy Larner; Douglas had won his Academy Award (“Hud”) and Redford was later to win for directing Best Picture “Ordinary People,” which produced an Oscar nomination for Timothy Hutton, who in 1979 made “Friendly Fire” in Stockton just before winning it; first of two films (“The Candidate” in 1974) made here by Tobey, the hero of the Howard Hughes’ original scifi classic “The Thing”; featuring the voices of Broderick Crawford and Barry Sullivan and, playing themselves, actress Natalie Wood (who made “Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! near Twain Harte in 1948 and “The Great Race” near Jamestown in 1965), media mavens Van Amberg, Mike Wallace and Howard K Smith, and such state and national political figures of the day as senators Alan Cranston, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern and John Tunney, Terence McGovern, Sam Yorty and Jesse Unruh, some of them appearing in a major political rally and parade sequence shot along 11th Street in Tracy using the actual Tracy High School Homecoming Parade, the school’s marching band and hundreds of Tracyites as extras.

The outdoor scenes were filmed on location in Savannah, Georgia, Stockton, California and in the Universal Studios Backlot at Universal City, California. The indoor scenes were done at Universal Studios Soundstage. Mitchum had a real-life aversion to Savannah, where as a teenager, he had been charged with vagrancy and put on a chain gang. This resulted in a number of the outdoor scenes being shot at Ladd's Marina in Stockton, California, including the culminating conflict on the houseboat at the end of the movie.

Coast to Coast is a 1980 comedy film starring Dyan Cannon and Robert Blake, directed by Joseph Sargent. The screenplay was written by Stanley Weiser. The original score was composed by Charles Bernstein. The film was shot in Stockton, California. The film's tagline is: "Either way, love will win in the end."

Buy Come Next Spring COME NEXT SPRING - 1956

ANN SHERIDAN, STEVE COCHCRAN, WALTER BRENNAN, EDGAR BUCHANAN, SONNY TUFTS, RICHARD EYER, SHERRY JACKSON Domestic drama about an ex-alcoholic husband who tries to win the respect of the family he abandoned, produced by Cochran, whose daughter now lives in Stockton, and directed by R.G. Springsteen in the Amador County town of lone, north of Lodi; third of three films (“The Storm” in 1930, “Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!” in 1948) Brennan would make in the Stockton area after already having won three Best Supporting Actor Oscars; also in the cast was Mae Clarke, who began her career playing major roles in “The Front Page,” “The Public Enemy,” “Waterloo Bridge” and as the heroine in James Whale’s classic “Frankenstein.”  

Cool Hand Luke

Buy Cool Hand Luke 1967. Starring:  PAUL NEWMAN, JO VAN FLEET, GEORGE KENNEDY, STROTHER MARTIN, RICHARD DA VALOS, DENNIS HOPPER, WAYNE ROGERS, HARRY DEAN STANTON, ANTHONY ZERBE, RALPH WAITE, JOE DON BAKER - Paul Newman brought his dazzling good looks to Stockton in 1967 for the filming of Cool Hand Luke, which also starred George Kennedy.

A Prison drama about a southern chain gang rebel, one of Newman’s great signature roles; directed by Stuart Rosenberg and photographed by Conrad Hall, here two years earlier to shoot “The Wild Seed”; with music by Lalo Schifrin, who won his fifth Academy Award for his score; Larry Luttrell of Stockton was the location manager for the film, shot on Davis Road in and around what is now Dentoni Park (its oak trees draped with fake moss), on rural Stockton roads, in the San Joaquin Delta on the Roberts Island side of the San Joaquin River, where a chapel and some other structures were built near the old Brandt Bridge, and at an unidentified Lodi site.

Martin has the fi|m’s most remembered line, the oft-quoted “What we have here is a failure to communicate”; Kennedy won the Golden Globe and Academy awards for Best Supporting Actor; Oscar nominations also went to Newman, who has a memorable egg-eating scene, and Jo Van Fleet, already a 1955 winner for playing the mother of Davalos and James Dean in “East of Eden”; Fleet, a University of the Pacific graduate, stayed in the Stockton home of her former drama professor, DeMarcus Brown, while on location; Coraleta (Franks) Rogers of Stockton was cast as a sexpot in a railroad crossing scene that was not used because Southern Pacific refused reshoots using its train — but she was hired as assistant script secretary, typed rewrites dictated by the writers and Newman’s producer brother Art, and watched the daily rushes with cast and crew at the Stockton Royal Theatre (she declined the company’s offer of a job in Hollywood).

MARK-PAUL GOSSELAAR, TODD EVERETT SCOTT, POPPY MONTGOMERY

College roommates comedy, directed by Alex Cohn and filmed mostly at University of the Pacific; Gosselaar, who had made the “Highway to Heaven” television series in the Sierra foothills in 1984, had grown out of his teen dream role in the long-running “Saved by the Bell” television series; the next year, Scott acted opposite Meryl Streep and William Hurt as his parents in “One True Thing”; in 2001 Montgomery played Marilyn Monroe in the “Blonde” television mini-series based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel; Tracy Reiner, the daughter of Penny Marshall, is in the cast; with Tiffany Helland of Stockton as an extra and stand-in for the leading lady; some scenes shot at Cornell University and University of California at Los Angeles, but mostly shot on the UOP campus in a Sears Hall classroom, South/West Hall dormitories, Grace Covell Hall, the Anderson Hall quad and Khoury Hall (swimming pool exterior), using students as extras; one scene shot at the Fourth Street Bridge in Modesto. 

Just wind 'em up and watch them chop, kick, maim and murder. They're the human death machines, masters of deadly martial arts, and they must be stopped...at all costs! Kung fu cacophony stars Michael Chong, Ron Marchini. 93 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital stereo; theatrical trailer.

Buy Dirty Mary Crazy Larry - 1974

PETER FONDA, SUSAN GEORGE, VIC MORROVI/, KENNETH TOBEY

Counterculture kidnap and car chase comedy, directed by James Hough from a script adapted from the short story “The Chase”; oddly, Jane Fonda, Peter's sister, appeared in a 1966 film also called “The Chase” and, in her politically active days while making “The China Syndrome,” drew a packed house in 1979 when she spoke in Stockton at University of the Pacific; second of two films (“The Candidate” in 1974) Tobey made in San Joaquin County; with an uncredited cameo appearance by Roddy McDowa|| and roles played by Stocktonians Tom Lewis, who had a scene in a careening car on a San Joaquin Delta bridge, George Westcott, Larry Luttrell and Stockton Record agriculture editor Bob Minor; scenes filmed at The White House on Charter Way, a French Camp fruit stand and on rural Stockton and Delta roads; for the concluding fiery crash of a yellow car and a yellow train, shot on Archdale Road, Linden Fire Chief Pete Mohl and crew were there on stand-by in case of real catastrophe.

Buy Dodge City - 1939
ERROL FLYNN, OLIVIA DE HAVILAND, ANN SHERIDAN, BRUCE CABO7', FRANK MCHUGH, ALAN HALE, GUINN ‘BIG BOY’ WILLIAMS, WARD BOND, JOHN LITEL, WILLIAM LUNDIGAN, THURSTON HALL, JIM FARLEY, MONTE BLUE

Classic western about the wide-open cattle town tamed by a dashing lawman, a vehicle for Flynn at the height of his popularity, directed by Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca,” “Yankee Doodle \Dandy”) who made “Mandalay” in the San Joaquin Delta in 1934 and would remake “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” here in 1960; Blue was in one of the silent films shot In the San Joaquin Delta area, “Jim B|udso” in 1917; first of two films (“Come Next Spring” in 1956) Ann Sheridan would shoot in the Stockton area; cast and crew stayed in Stockton while shooting scenes in the Modesto area and on Warnerville Road in Stanislaus County.  

The 'research institute' was represented by a number of different actual locations. The University of The Pacific was the main exterior with the entrance to 'Knoles Hall' being the most recognizable (see link). It can be found in Northern California, 80 miles east of San Francisco at 3601 Pacific Ave

An in-depth documentary about women in the sport of motor car racing, consisting of interviews and racing footage, written and directed by Laurie Agard-Campbell and the first of two back-to-back television documentaries she made that year following “Broads Abroad”; a sequence was shot at the Altamont raceway just west of Tracy, site of the award-winning “Gimme Shelter” documentary about the Rolling Stones’ infamous concert there; the director, who has a gift for catchy titles, also made “Frog and Wombat,” a 1999 murder mystery shot in Santa Cruz with Lindsay Wagner and Ronny Cox, who acted in “Bound for Glory,” shot in Stockton in 1976.

STEACY KEACH, JEFF BRIDGES, SUSAN TYRELL, CANDY CLARK

Directed by John Huston from the set-in-Stockton novel about down-at-heels boxers by Stockton author Leonard Gardner, who wrote the screenplay and whom the City of Stockton honored with the Stockton Arts Commission's 1989 Career Achievement Award

Photographed by Conrad Hall in the bars and flophouses of Stockton’s long-gone skid row, Zuckerman Farms and other rural Stockton areas, at the El Dorado Hotel and Red Men's Hall (both since demolished), Stockton Civic Auditorium, an old macaroni factory near Gleason Park used as a boxing ring, and other downtown sites.

Huston’s daughter, Angelica, would appear in the “This Is Spinal Tap” sequence shot in Stockton in 1984; Huston himself played a small part in “The Storm,” which he wrote and William Wyler directed in Tuolumne County in 1930; Tyrell was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Stocktonians Carl Parker played a paymaster and Jeri Worth a bar waitress; Emmett and Miriam Littleton of Stockton were extras in several scenes; first of two (“More American Graffiti”) movies Clark made here; Lloyd Bridges, Jeff’s father, would appear in a 1993 comedy shot in Stockton; Marvin Hamlisch supervised the music, which introduced “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” written and sung by Kris Kristopherson on the soundtrack and during the credits; Hall, who had just finished shooting “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” was “keeping company” with its leading lady, Katherine Ross, who kept him company in Stockton; Huston almost fired him because he was late every morning to the set; Hall’s cinematography for the film, one of three he shot in Stockton, was highly praised by critics.

ROBIN WILLIAMS, MARCIA GAY HARDEN, TED LEVINE, DAKIN MATHEWS, WIL WHEATON

 Absent-minded professor Williams discovers a super-bouncy substance in this wacky comedy

The film took place in and around the historic university. (Rumor has it, at Halloween residents give out green bouncy balls.) Although the film renamed the university Medfield College, the beautiful exterior shots reveal that the school’s grounds and architecture were left exactly as they were. When you’re on campus, see if any staff or alumni are there who were in the movie. They’d surely be glad to point out all the scenes where students and staff were used as extras!

For Whom The Bell Tolls

GARY COOPER, INGRID BERGMAN, AKIM TAMIROFF, KATINA PAXINOU, ARTURO DE CORDOVA, JOSEPH CALLEIA, FEODOR CHALIAPIN, GEORGE COULOURIS

Ernest Hemingway’s best-selling account of passion and patriotism during the Spanish Civil War, scripted by Dudley Nichols and directed by Sam Wood in the Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills around Sonora, with a scene-stealing production design by William Cameron Menzies; first of two films (“Then Came Bronson” in 1969) that Tamiroff would make in the Stockton area; although it has not held up, it did earn nine Academy Award nominations and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Paxinou; Cooper was never more subdued than here, but the “earth moved” for the miscast Bergman, whose short-cropped hair created a sensation; Yvonne De Carlo, debuting in an uncredited bit as a café girl, would later do humdrum movies, “The Addams Family” television series and, years later, hit an unexpected career high singing Stephen Sondheim’s tribute to showbiz longevity, “|’m Still Here,” in his perfect Broadway musical, “Follies.”

CHARLIE CHAPLIN, MACK SWAIN, TOM MURRAY, GEORGIA HALE, HENRY BERGMAN

The classic silent comedy set in the Yukon Gold Rush, written, produced, edited, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, who also wrote the music. One of The Little Tramp’s signature roles, that of a lonely prospector who gets the gold and the girl. Scenes shot in the Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills, along the San Joaquin Delta, and in the Mother Lode towns of Norden and Truckee, where cast and crew stayed at the Swedish House, an 11-room inn built in 1885; 500 people took eight weeks to build the fake Alaskan and Canadian locations using 239,577 feet of lumber, 22,750 feet of chicken wire and 22,000 feet of burlap which they covered with ice and snow made from plaster and 285 tons of salt; 100 barrels of flowers were planted and four cartloads of confetti became falling snow; in one famous scene, Chaplin eats a boiled boot made of licorice by a confectioner in San Francisco.

ROBERT RYAN, ALDO RAY, BUDDY HACKET7', FAY SPAIN, TINA LOUISE, JACK LORD, VIC MORROVI/, REX INGRAM, MICHAEL LANDON, RUSSELL COLLINS

Directed by Anthony Mann, who received a Venice Film Festival nomination, from a script by the blacklisted Philip Yordan, based on Erskine CaldwelI's novel about lust for gold and sex on a family farm; shot in downtown Stockton on Washington Street, site of the old On Lock Sam restaurant, and in rural Stockton; one of two movies made here by Morrow, father of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh; first of two films (“The Love Bug” in 1982) that Hackett shot in the Stockton area; when his daughter Lisa visited Stockton in 2001 (with cowboy poet Waddle Mitchell), she recalled her father’s location times here; between takes the cast and crew frequented the Fremont Street grocery store owned by Paul and Wauded Jacobs, where Hackett was seen refilling soft drink containers with liquor; a clapper board crewman was fired after the camera ran out of film halfway through a big night fight scene staged near the store. 

The Great Race

Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Peter Faulk, Keenan Wynn, ARTHUR O’CONNELL, ROSS MARTIN, DENVER PYLE, GEORGE MACREADY, MARVIN KAPLAN, LARRY STORCH

Blake Edwards, who shot “High Time” at University of the Pacific here in 1960, directed this breakneck comedy about an early 20th century motor car race across three continents; it features the largest and longest pie fight ever staged and won five Academy Awards, including one for Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini’s musical score and song “The Sweetheart Tree”; major sequences, on the Sierra Railroad and a rocket sled scene, were shot near Jamestown in Tuolumne County; first of two films (“Alex and the Gypsy” in 1976) Lemmon made in this same area, second of three (‘‘Mail Order Bride” in 1964, “Delta Fever” in 1987) made by Pyle and first of three (“Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!” in 1948, “The Candidate” in 1972) made by Wood in the Stockton area; Charlton Heston, who made “The Big Country” here in 1958. was first sent this “funny script” and was offered the Curtis role, but he declined to meet the production schedule for “The Agony and the Ecstasy.”

KIM DARBY, SCOTT WILSON, CONNIE STEVENS, RALPH WAITE

Director Robert A|drich’s remake of “No Orchids for Miss Blandish,” a sexually exploitive noir novel attacked as pornographic; Aldrich had earlier made such hits as “The Dirty Dozen,” “The Longest Yard” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, which featured Bert Freed, here to make “Then Came Bronson” in 1969; Darby, who the previous year made “The Strawberry Statement” in Stockton, was coming off her 1969 debut in”True Grit” opposite John Wayne (who made “Blood Alley” here in 1955) and cast against type as a kidnapped heiress who is sexually tormented by her captors, with Wilson giving an accomplished performance as one of them; Waite also made “Cool Hand Luke” here in 1967; cast and crew stayed in Stockton but shot scenes in Modesto and Sutter Creek.

GARY COOPER, THOMAS MITCHELL, LLOYD BRIDGES, KATY JURADO, GRACE KELLY, OTTO KRUGER, LON CHANEY JR, HARRY MORGAN, LEE VAN CLEEF, JACK ELAM

Gary Cooper’s Academy Award-winning turn as a lawman, about to leave town with his bride, who seeks allies among fearful friends when an outlaw he imprisoned returns seeking revenge; produced by Stanley Kramer, who later directed “RPM” and “Oklahoma Crude” in Stockton, written by the blacklisted Carl Foreman and directed by Fred Zinneman; Dimitri Tiomkin won Oscars for his musical score and song, ”Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Dar|in’,” sung in the movie by Tex Ritter, whose son John later made “Nickelodeon” in the Stockton area; this classic Western won many national and international awards; two of its actors were to make less distinguished films in Stockton, Bridges (“Hot Shots, Part Deux” in 1993) and Morgan (“Maneaters Are Loose!” in 1978).

The company stayed in Stockton while the San Joaquin Film Commission found locations in Columbia State Park and Railtown State Historic Park in Tuolumne County, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Tuolumne City and in Warnerville in Stanislaus County.

BING CROSBY, FABIAN, TUESDAY WELD, NICOLE MAUREY, RICHARD BEYMER, JIMMY BOYD, GA VIN MACLEOD Musical about a widowed restaurateur who goes to college, directed by Blake Edwards, who in 1965 would film scenes from “The Great Race” in the Stockton area; from a story by playwright Garson Kanin (“Born Yesterday”), whose daughter Fay would later produce and write the 1979 television film shot in Stockton, “Friendly Fire”; Edwards’ later breakthrough hit “10” starred Bo Derek, whose future husband John was on location here for “All the King’s Men” in 1949; filmed mostly at the College (now University) of the Pacific, featuring students as extras; a big graduation scene at the old Stockton Junior High School auditorium was held up while Crosby attended the Winter Olympics at Lake Tahoe; Boyd climbed atop a ladder to sing and entertain waiting actors and extras until Crosby sauntered onto the set at 3 p.m.; first of two films (“Who’ll Stop the Rain” in 1978) that brought Tuesday Weld to Stockton.

CHARLIE SHEEN, MARTIN SHEEN, LLOYD BRIDGES, RICHARD CRENNA, ROWAN ATKINSON

Uninspired sequel to the uninspired military comedy “Hot Shots” that demanded not to be made but nevertheless was on the San Joaquin Delta and along its rivers; Jeff Bridges, Lloyd’s son, co-starred earlier in the acclaimed John Huston film “Fat City” shot in 1972 in Stockton; Atkinson is the popular British comic actor later seen memorably in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” a series of popular “Mr. Bean” and “Blackadder” television and film comedies, and in the title role of the 2002 spy spoof “Johnny English” with John Malkovich and Tim Pigott-Smith.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Buy The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  - 1960

Starring: TONY RANDALL, EDDIE HODGES, ARCHIE MOORE, NEVILLE BRAND, MICKEY SHAUGHNESSY, JUDY CANOVA, ANDY DEVINE, FINLAY CURRIE, JOHN CARRADINE, STERLING HOLLOWAY, HARRY DEAN STANTON

Mark Twain’s classic satire about a runaway boy on the Mississippi River, the second adaptation (after a 1939 version with Mickey Rooney) of Twain’s novel shot in Stockton, filmed again by director Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy”), who remembered San Joaquin County after directing “Mandalay” in 1934 and “Dodge City” in 1939 in the Stockton area; with an eclectic cast that included the legendary silent film comedian Buster Keaton; red- haired Billy Hathorne, son of Bill Hathorne of Stockton and the same age as Hodges, was the star's double and stand-in during shooting; first of two Stockton films made by Stanton (“Cool Hand Luke”) and Carradine (“The Va|s”), whose son David would later play Woody Guthrie in “Bound for Glory” on location in Stockton; that same year Carradine made “Sex Kittens Go to College” with Tuesday Weld (who made two movies in Stockton) and Mamie van Doren, who stayed in Stockton and Lodi when she was married to a ballplayer for the Lodi Crushers.

Filmed on San Joaquin Delta islands, San Joaquin River and the Stockton Deep Water Channel by the Windmill Cove Marina. The derelict Delta King sternwheeler was used in the film by using fake smokestacks, a tugboat for power and clever shooting angles. (1960) - Included much filming on the Delta. Its stars included Tony Randall, Eddie Hodges, Jr. and boxing great Archie Moore. The once-grand sternwheeler Delta King was a derelict by the time this movie was filmed in 1960. But they tacked a couple of fake stacks on the old girl, side-tied a tugboat to her for power, and filmed her from angles that did not reveal her wheel-less stern. She looked quite proud in the movie, parts of which were filmed in the Stockton Deepwater Channel by Windmill Cove Marina

Relive the fun and excitement of keeping up with the Joneses in Indian Jones and the Last Crusade on DVD, now digitally restored and remastered frame-by-frame fro the ultimate picture and featuring sweeping 5.1 digital surround sound. In a prologue that reveals a young Indiana Jones (River Phoenix) in one of his first adventures, this thrilling screen epic continues as an adult Indy (Harrison Ford) embarks on a perilous quest for his cantankerous father, Professor Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery). The Nazis are on the trail of the Holy Grail, and have kidnapped Indy's father, the foremost authority on the cup of Christ. Follow Indy as he inches through the rat-filled catacombs of Venice, battles Nazi flying aces in a thrilling biplane dogfight, and braves the thunderous firepower of an unstoppable tank. And behold the Holy Grail's power to give and take life, as Indy and his father race against time in this timeless classic on DVD.

ABBOTTS LIV TYLER, JOAQUIN PHOENIX, BILLY CRUDUP, JENNIFER CONNELLY

Lighthearted romantic drama about two brothers courting three sisters, directed by Pat O’Connor, with future Academy Award nominee Phoenix (“Gladiator”) and winner Connelly (“A Beautiful Mind”), its campus scenes shot at University of the Pacific, with the relatively unknown Phoenix, Crudup and Connelly wandering about campus unrecognized; Phoenix’s young brother River made his career debut in the television series “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” shot in the Mother Lode in 1982; narrated by Michael Keaton, who starred opposite Jack Nicholson as “Batman” and was to make “Jack Frost” in the Sierra foothills the next year; Tyler is one of the few actresses in the current “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; Crudup played the leader of a touring rock band in “Almost Famous” in 2000 (with scenes shot in Rio Vista and the Sierra foothills) and was a 2002 Tony Award nominee for “The Elephant Man” on Broadway.

MICHAEL KEATON, KELLY PRESTON, JOSEPH CROSS, MARK ADDY, ANDY LAWRENCE

Sentimental box office flop about a dead father who returns as a snowman to bond with his son before melting away, directed by Troy Miller in and around the Sierra foothills town of Truckee, where Charlie Chaplin shot “The Gold Rush” and Erich von Stroheim his classic “Greed”; Keaton, “Batman” opposite villain Jack Nicholson in the original film, narrated “Inventing the Abbots,” shot in Stockton the year before; Addy was the chubby stripper in “The Full Monty,” also released the year before; Preston was visited on the set by her bigger star husband, John Travolta; Lawrence was in the 1995-97 television series “Brotherly Love” with his acting brothers, Joey and Matthew, and former Stockton actor Michael McShane; McShane acted at San Joaquin Delta College and won two awards at Stockton Civic Theatre before joining the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco for several seasons and launching his professional career; he played Friar Tuck to Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” in 1991 and voiced the animated character Tuck in “A Bug’s Life” in 1998; McShane returned here to help raise funds for Stockton Civic Theatre at its 50th Anniversary Gala.

WILFRED LUCAS, OLGA GREY, MONTE BLUE, GEORGE STONE

A silent film notable for its director, Tod Browning, who would later become famous for his cult classic “Freaks”; its co-director and star, Lucas, who would make 347 feature films from “Greaser’s Gauntlet” in 1908 to Warren Beatty’s 1990 production of “Dick Tracy”; and one of its supporting players, character actor Blue, who with Grey made their debuts in W. G. Griffiths’ {sf controversial classic “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915, played cowboys and Indians in dozens of silent and sound westerns, and appeared in small parts in dozens of big studio productions, including “Dodge City,” shot in the Stockton area in 1939; leading lady Grey also was in Griffiths’ “|ntolerance” in 1916; partly shot in the San Joaquin Delta area near Rio Vista, where a fake movie fire aboard the 1890 sternwheeler Grace Baron accidentally became a real fire, destroying the boat but adding realism to the footage of actors fleeing the boat; the scene was shot near Wood Island, which since has been dredged away

RON MARCHINI, DAVID CARRADINE

Latest in a series of B-movie martial arts actionfests, this one full of post-apocolyptic mayhem, made in Stockton for distribution to Asian markets (it aired once on TNT) where one of its actors, D.W. Landingham of Stockton, has become a popular cult figure; produced by Stockton martial artist Marchini, who co-stars with Carradine, who made “Bound for Glory” here in 1976 and was now well into career decline, paid $10,000 to play the leader of a gang of cannibals, neither knowing his lines (after 16 takes) for his only scene nor what the movie was about; one line ? “My, what beautiful toys you have here!” ? was said by Jack Nicholson’s villain in the first “Batman” film and repeated here by Landingham, over his objections, as the silver and leather-clad villain, a mutant with white hair; production designed by Steven Orr as if “The Road Warrior” had never been made, photographed by Hugh Litfin and costumed by Rebecca Hatton, all of Stockton; the local extras casting director was Stocktonian Thomas Amo, who quit over an actors pay dispute and was replaced by the villainous Snaker in the film, Michael Bristow.

BILL MURRAY, HARVE PRESNELL, ROY BLOUNT JR, JANEANE GAROFALO, PAT HINGLE, KEITH DAVID, LOIS SMITH, LINDA FLORENTINO, MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY

It took five producers and one director, Howard Franklin, to tell this tale of a motivational speaker who has five days to go from coast to coast, saddled with an elephant; Franklin earlier had written the screenplays for “The Name of the Rose” and “Romancing the Stone”; all of the hitchhiking, truck and elephant swimming scenes were shot at various locations in Amador and El Dorado counties; Murray would go on to win an Oscar nomination for his support work in “Rushmore” five years later; Clint Eastwood directed David in “Bird,” shot in the Stockton area in 1988; Blount, the noted author and humorist, wrote the screenplay and plays a heckler, his second screen appearance after “Married to the Mob” in 1988 in which rock musician Chris Isaak of Stockton had a small part as a clown; beginning her career in “East of Eden” in 1955, Smith played a barmaid in the brothel run by the mother of James Dean, Oscar-winner Jo Van Fleet, a University of the Pacific graduate who also appeared in “Cool Hand Luke,” shot entirely in Stockton.

JON VOIGHT, GRAHAM GREENE, DAVID OGDEN STIERS, ANN ARCHER Ishi, the last of his tribe, emerges from the forest wilderness in this made-for-television movie directed by Harry Hook from a script by Stephen Harrigan based on the non-fiction best-seller “Ishi”; featuring Stocktonian Carl Parker as the sheriff of the small town in a scene shot in the Sierra foothills town of Oroville, from which the real life Native American actually emerged.

PATRICK SWAYZE

Swayze far from his starry heartthrob days of “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost,” heads a cast of unknown actors in a male soap opera that nobody saw about a man falsely imprisoned twice; Tammy DeLong of Stockton worked on the production crew; with prison scenes shot in Ione, north of Lodi.

MICHAEL LANDON, KAREN GRASSLE, MELISSA GILBERT, MELISSA SUE ANDERSON, JASON BA TEMAN, DEAN BUTLER, SHANNEN DOHERTY

Landon, after his hit 1959 “Bonanza” television series headed for the corral, helped produce, write and direct as well as starred in this 1974-1982 series based on the lives of the lngalls family (adapted from Laura lngalls’ books) in the 19th century American West, shot at various locations in Tuolumne County; full of family values and Landon’s family, including daughter Leslie; Landon, far from his wholesome “House” image, played a lusty youth when he made “God’s Little Acre” in Stockton in 1958; he was later to play an angel in the 1984 television series “Highway to Heaven,” also shot in Tuolumne County at Railtown State Park; Butler, who later would surf into the “Gidget” television series, acted in productions at Stockton Civic Theatre, San Joaquin Delta College and University of the Pacific during the four years he was a UOP student.

DEAN JONES, MICHELE LEE, BUDDY HACKETT, DAVID TOMLINSON, JOE FLYNN, BENSON FONG, IRIS ADRIAN

A racing car driver drives a Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie, with a mind of its own, to a championship in this innocuous Disney comedy, directed by Robert Stevenson, one of several sequels to “Herbie”; a major sequence was shot in and around a gas station on Highway 120 near Chinese Camp in Tuolumne County; Jones starred in a “Love Bug” television series that same year; Lee’s first film following her debut the previous year in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”; first of two films (“God’s Little Acre” in 1959) that Hackett made in the Stockton area, both recalled by his daughter Lisa when she visited Stockton in 2001 on tour with cowboy poet Waddle Mitchell, invited to speak here by the Stockton Arts Commission.

BUDDY EBSEN, KEIR DULLEA, LOIS NETTLETON, WARREN OA TES, MARIE WINDSOR, DENVER PYLE, KATHLEEN FREEMAN, DOODLES WEAVER A comedy western whose title tells the comedy cliché, written and directed by Burt Kennedy, filmed on rural Stockton locations; first of three films (“The Great Race” in 1965, “Delta Fever” in 1987) Pyle would film here while continuing on the |ong—running “Mayberry” television series; ex- screen hoofer Ebsen had just had a hit televison series, “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and would have another after this film, “Barnaby Jones”; four years later, Dullea and Gary Lockwood (who in 1970 would make “RPM” in Stockton), were cast by director Stanley Kubrick as the two astronauts in “A Space Odyssey”; Windsor, queen of Hollywood’s B movies in the 1940s, also was cast by Kubrick in his breakthrough film about a race track heist, “The Killing,” and she had an uncredited part in “The Romance of Rosy Ridge,” the debut film of Janet Leigh, who was raised and educated in Stockton as Jeannette Morrison, graduated from University of the Pacific, directed by Orson Welles in “Touch of Evil” and John Frankenheimer in “The Manchurian Candidate,” Oscar-nominated for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (about which she wrote a book) and was honored by the City of Stockton in 1983 when the Stockton Arts Commission presented its Career Achievement Award to her.

RICHARD DIX, JOAN FONTAINE, VICTORY JORY, JASON ROBARDS SR, GEORGE MONTGOMERY. GAIL PA TRICK, ROBERT ARMSTRONG, GEORGE ‘GABBY’ HA YES, WILLIAM ‘BILLY’ BENEDICT, IRON EYES CODY, CHIEF THUNDERCLOUD

Biographical western about Sam Houston, the Texas revolutionary who later became a statesman and the state’s first governor, directed by George Nichols Jr and winner of Academy Awards for sound, art direction and Victor Young’s musical score; matinee idol Dix was hospitalized during the wrestling scene after fracturing two bones, delaying the shooting for a week; five years earlier he made “Shanghai Bound” in the Stockton area; two other supporting roles that year for Fontaine (“Gunga Din,” “The Women”) interested Alfred Hitchcock, who directed her in “Rebecca” in 1940 and to a Best Actress Oscar in 1941 in “Suspicion”; shot entirely in and around the old Salt Springs Reservoir in Stockton and the Sierra foothills, including the town of Sonora; Fontaine (Olivia de Haviland’s sister) was years later a guest speaker at a weekend theatre symposium in Stockton at San Joaquin Delta College; ex-dancer Benedect was a featured actor in more than 200 films, including The Bowery Boys films and two television series shot in the Mother Lode, “Petticoat Junction” in 1963 and “Highway to Heaven” in 1984; Armstrong led the movie expeditions to find “King Kong” and “Mighty Joe Young.”

KAY FRANCIS, RICARDO CORTEZ, LYLE TALBOT, REGINALD OWEN

A nightclub hostess, in gowns by Orry-Kelly and singing songs by Sammy Fain, flees her past on a steamer on which she falls for an alcoholic doctor; the Sam Joaquin Delta doubled for sites along the Irrawaddy River in Burma; soap operatics directed by Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca,” “Yankee Doodle Dandy”), who would return here in 1939 to film “Dodge City” and in1960 to film “The Adventures of Huckleberry FInn”; notable for the last small uncredited appearance by an unknown Shirley Temple, whose next two films that year (“Stand Up and Cheerl” and “Little Miss Marker”) catapulted her into legend; two years later in 1936 she would star in “Dimp|es” with John Carradine, who with his son David would each make two movies in Stockton; years later Temple returned to Stockton to help old friend Julio Bortolazzo, Stockton College’s president, campaign for the bond election that built San Joaquin Delta College

RICHARD WIDMARK, ALAN ALDA, TOM SKERRITT, HANK WILLIAMS JR, PA TRICK MCGOOHAN, WILL GEER, HARRY CAREY JR, BO HOPKINS, TERI GARR, JOHN SCHUCK

Richard Quine directed this comedy about feuding hillbillies and their illegal brew, adapted by Elmore Leonard, later to become a best-selling detective novelist, from his picaresque novel; Williams sang “Ballad of the Moonshine” on the soundtrack.

Many outdoor scenes filmed in the Farmington area and the Sierra foothills, which had turned brown while cast and crew procrastinated and had to be spray—painted green; Schuck, an American Conservatory Theatre actor in San Francisco and a veteran of three Robert Altman films (he had just finished “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”), that same year would play with Skerritt in Altman's “M*A*S*H”; first of two movies made here by Skerritt (“Maneaters Are Loose!” in 1978) and three by Carey (“Nicke|odeon” in 1976 and “Back to the Future, Part III’’ in 1990); Schuck and Skerritt would later appear in A|tman’s comedy classic “M*A*S*H”; Hopkins, who would make “More American Graffiti” in Stockton 1979, had appeared the previous year with Randy Quaid (here in 1976 for “Bound for Glory”) in “Midnight Express,” directed by Alan Parker, who would shoot a scene for “Birdy” in Stockton in 1984; with Stocktonians Bill Humphreys and Carl Parker playing townsmen (the first of nine roles Parker would play in Hollywood films shot in the Stockton area); and 19-year-old D.W. Landingham, cast as a gangster in shoulder holster and gun, riding around in a 1921 Lincoln, holding the actual Thompson sub-machine gun used in “The Untouchables” television series, playing a scene opposite Widmark along a river under a bridge near Jenny Lind in the Mother Lode; Geer came to a rehearsal of “The Bat” at Stockton Civic Theatre (he didn't like it) and agreed to return to be master of ceremonies at SCT’s annual Willie Awards, at which he read from the classics and posed for pictures with the winners on stage.

GENE BARRY, JULIET MILLS, CHUCK CONNORS, SUSAN SAINT JAMES

Episode for a television series, featuring weekly dramas with rotating cast members, that ended later that year; shot on various locations, including the downtown Holiday Inn pool and the San Joaquin County Hospital in French Camp, where actress Jill St. John, who would appear in later episodes, visited Barry and charmed everyone, including D.W. Landingham of Stockton, an extra in two scenes; Mills’ (and sister Hayley’s) father, John, would make “Oklahoma Crude” in Stockton in 1973; second of three movies made in Stockton by Connors, who in this one played a crooked governor; Saint James won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress for a later episode.

Oklahoma Crude

FAYE DUNAWAY, GEORGE C. SCOTT, JACK PALANCE, JOHN MILLS, STACY KEA CH, RAFAEL CAMPOS, CLIFF OSMOND

Writer Marc Norman’s drama about a feminist, her father and his employee who together defend their oil rights; the third area film produced or directed by Stanley Kramer after “High Noon” in 1952 and “RPM” in 1973; shot in the Sierra foothills and at the Ospital Ranch, where volunteers Bob Wood and Bob Ziegler assisted the company; John Wickham, Giles Colahan, Lee Cargile, Doug Grotemeyer, Emmett Littleton and Robert Gossett, all of Stockton, were seen as extras in several scenes, mostly as oil rig workers; to avoid recognition, Scott made reservations at Albert’s and other area restaurants as George Patton (he won but refused the Academy Award for playing General Patton the previous year); Mills’ daughter Juliet made a “Name of the Game” television episode two years earlier in Stockton, and Keach himself also acted in “Fat City” the previous year in Stockton; Kramer took the directing prize at the Moscow International Film Festival.  Filmed on the Ospital Ranch

RON MARCHINI, TROY DONOHUE, ADAM WEST, STUART WHITMAN B-movie martial arts actionfest made in Stockton for distribution to Asian markets, directed by Paul Kyriazi and produced by Jo Anne Marchini, photographed by Hugh Liftin of Stockton, starring Stockton martial artist Marchini and former teen heartthrob Donohue (“A Summer Place”), West (the “Batman” television series) and the rugged Whitman, all clearly in full career decline; featuring a large cast of mostly Stockton actors, among them Chuck Katzakian as the main bad guy and D.W. Landingham as his ruthless sidekick, Scott and Elaine Slater-Cherney, Rick Slater, Shirley Stockstill, John Himle, Chris Yost, Layne Randolph, Tim Koenig, Steven Orr and Thomas Amo, who gets shot to death in a heated gun battle, also was the local casting director; Amo is now a published author, playwright, actor, director and owner of Smiler’s Comedy Playhouse at The Alder Market.

EVE ARDEN, GALE GORDON, DON PORTER, RICHARD CRENNA, NICK ADAMS

 Comedy based on the popular radio and television series about the goings on at Madison High School, directed by A! Lewis, with most of the casts of both series; crew cars and trucks gassed up regularly at the service station at Miner and California streets; shot in and around Stockton high schools and neighborhoods; one scene shot on the San Joaquin Delta required Arden to fall in the water stepping from a boat to the pier; Crenna, not working that day, fished and watched the takes and retakes of Arden falling in the water, chuckling to himself; it was the first of two films (“Hot Shots, Part Deux!” in 1993) that he made in Stockton.

BEA BENADERET, EDGAR BUCHANAN, EDDIE ALBERT, EVA GABOR, SMILEY BURNETTE, FRANK DE VOL, ROSEMARY DECAMP, JUNE LOCKHAR7', MEREDITH MACRAE, WILLIAM “BILLY” BENEDICT

Donald O'Connor, the dancing star of MGM mujsicals, directed an episode of this |ong—running (to 1970) television series about the misadventures of the family staff of a rest hotel and their neighbors, shot in and around Railtown State Park in Tuolumne County; Albert, who would make “Dreamscape” in Stockton in 1984, and Gabor spun their characters off into a new series, “Green Acres,” taking Buchanan and Benaderet along with them; Benaderet had a double career voicing short Warner Bros. cartoon features; Benedict made “Steamboat ‘Round the Bend” in 1935 and “Man of Conquest” in 1939 in Stockton and would later make the “Highway to Heaven” televison series here in 1984.

Director Ron Mann has put together readings by 24 different poets (after filming a total of 60 writers reciting their works), and then has poet and author Charles Bukowski verbalize "everyman's" criticisms of poetry: it is boring, irrelevant, self-indulgent, and does not make much sense. Then he counterpoints these statements with dynamic, entertaining, and inspiring works by poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones, Anne Waldeman, Helen Adams and 20 others. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Porgy & Bess

SIDNEY POITIER, DOROTHY DANDRIDGE, DIAHANN CARROLL, SAMMY DAVIS JR, PEARL BAILEY, BROCK PETERS, CLAUDE AKINS

 George Gershwin’s classic opera of love and redemption, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Otto Preminger (replacing a fired Rouben Mammoulian), adapted by playwright N. Richard Nash; second of two films (“BJ and the Bear” in 1978) Akins made in Stockton, and one of the few Caucasion parts in the picture; with an uncredited appearance by unknown dancer Maya Angelou, later the poet and autobiographer whose mother lived in Stockton and after whom a local library branch is named; later in their careers, four would return to Stockton: Carroll (with Bob Hope and other entertainers) to help open the renovated Faye Spanos Concert Hall at University of the Pacific, Davis to raise funds for the Child Abuse Prevention Council, Bailey to appear with The Stockton Symphony, and Angelou on three occasions, including one weekend for the Stockton Arts Commission, to speak and sign copies of her best- selling books; received four Academy Award nominations, winning for best musical scoring by Andre Previn; the big picnic sequence was filmed on a San Joaquin Delta island and other scenes on the surrounding rivers.

The Gothic exterior of ‘Marshall College’, where Indy teaches, is the 1927 Conservatory of Music building of the University of the Pacific, 3601 Pacific Circle, Stockton, California – seen again in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

Rampage

Filmed in Stockton, California in 1986 and received nationwide American release in 1992.

JACK WARDEN, ROBBY BENSON, TIM MA THESON, ROBERT MIDDLETON, CHARLES HAID

A serio-comic family homefront story about small-towners toughing it out during World War II, a television pilot that never made it to series status; directed by Buzz Kulik, Emmy Award-winner for “Brian’s Song” and other popular or acclaimed TV shows and series; first of two films (“Raid on Entebbe” in 1977) made here by Warden, for some reason unpopular with many on the set; the kindly Middleton and Paul Newman made their movie debuts together in 1954 in “The Silver Chalice,” after which William Wyler directed Middleton in “The Desperate Hours” (Newman made ‘‘Cool Hand Luke” and Wyler directed “The Big Country” in Stockton); Matheson, who with John Belushi became movie stars in “Animal House,” now plays the U.S. Vice President on television's “The WestWing”; ?rst of two films Haid made in Stockton (“Who’ll Stop the Rain” in 1978); shot in various Stockton neighborhoods and at a vanished North California Street butcher shop where, in the movie, the teenage Benson worked for butcher Middleton and where folks with ration books lined up, including Stockton actresses Frankie Parker, Rose Silvani and a turban-clad Coraleta (Franks) Rogers, who uttered the fi|m’s choicest line: “That chicken is mine!”

ANTHONY QUINN, ANN-MARGRE7', GARY LOCKWOOD, PAUL WINFIELD, DONALD MOFFA TT, DAVID LADD, RAMON BIERI

Writer Erich Segal’s (“Love Story”) version of the 1960s campus protest movement (RPM: revolutions per minute), all exteriors and some interiors filmed at University of the Pacific, the first of two films shot in the Stockton area by producer-director-writer Stanley Kramer and one of his rare box office flops (he produced “High Noon” here in 1952)

The first of four films made in Stockton about campus demonstrations against the Vietnam war; Lockwood and Keir Dullea, here in 1964 for “Mail Order Bride,” played Stanley Kubrick’s two astronauts in “A Space Odyessey” in 1968; Alan Ladd’s son was in the cast and among the large entourage that followed Quinn into Lyon’s restaurant (Pacific and Yokuts avenues) for several post-shoot dinners. 

Sam Whiskey

Buy Sam Whiskey - 1969

A comedy-western set in a small town about salvaging gold bars from a sunken ship, directed by Arnold Laven, written by William Norton, first of two films that Burt Reynolds made in Stockton; filmed in the Sierra foothills, with the backwaters of Camanche Lake a stand-in for the river seen in the film; the company stayed in Stockton and rented the Stockton Royal Theatre to watch the daily rushes at 11 p.m. each night

RICHARD DIX, MARY BRIAN, CHARLES BYER, GEORGE IRVING

Not much is known about this b|ack—and-white silent film directed by Luther Reed except that its riverboat scenes were shot in the San Joaquin Delta; Brian debuted as Wendy in the first film of “Peter Pan” a year earlier in 1926 and went on to appear that same year with Ronald Colman in “Beau Geste,” two classics of the silent screen; Dix was RKO Studio’s biggest star in the 1920s, appearing in dozens of box office hits, including the critically acclaimed film in which Joan Fontaine debuted, “Man of Conquest,” filmed in the Stockton area In 1939; but even Dix’s star was outshone by the two men who appeared on screen to “present” the picture before the opening credits, early movie moguls Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor.

LUPE VELEZ, PAUL CA VANAUGH, WILLIAM “STAGE” BOYD, JOHN HUSTON

Standard love triangle, a woman comes between two old friends in a log cabin during a raging blizzard, but this one was written by John Huston and directed by William Wyler, young legends- in-the-making who later directed major movies in Stockton (Huston “Fat City” in 1972, Wyler “The Big Country” in 1958); Huston and Wyler the next year would write and direct “A House Divided” starring Huston’s father, Walter (who Huston would later direct to Oscar glory in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”), and featuring the unknown Marjorie Main and Walter Brennan in small parts; Brennan would make three movies in the Stockton area; Velez, one of only four Mexican actors to succeed in early Hollywood films, was the original “Mexican Spitfire” of a string of hit comedies that came to an end when her romance with Gary Cooper and her marriage to Johnny Weissmuller (the “Tarzan” movies) also ended and in 1944, pregnant by another actor, she was a sleeping pills suicide in Hollywood at the age of 36; shot entirely in and around Twain Harte in Tuolumne County; produced and “presented” in an on—screen introduction by Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Studios.

Strawberry Statement

KIM DARBY, BRUCE DA VISON, BUD CORT, BOB BALABAN, JEANNIE BERLIN, JAMES COCO, DAVID DUKES, BERT REMSEN, ISRAEL HOROVITZ

Directed by Stuart Hagmann from a script by playwright Israel Horovitz about student protesters in the 1960s; attacked as subversive by the John Birch Society, acclaimed as imaginative by most film critics; it bitterly divided Cannes Film Festival jurors, who gave it the Jury Prize (half thought it deserved the Golden Palm); notable also for its soundtrack of original songs introduced and performed by Crosby, Stills and Nash, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell; many scenes shot in front of Stockton City Hall and at Stockton Civic Auditorium, using Stocktonians as extras; the company almost was closed down after crew members were caught smoking pot in the City Manager's office.

Steamboat Round The Bend

WILL ROGERS, ANNE SHIRLEY, STEPIN FETCHIT, EUGENE PAULETTE

Americana with a dash of Dixie, made by Rogers just before he made ‘‘In Old Kentucky” that same year and died in an airplane crash a month later; three years later, Shirley would play Barbara Stanwyck’s mother in “Stella Dallas” for which both would win Academy Awards; directed by the pre-legendary John Ford, who was to win seven Oscars, two lifetime achievement awards and numerous international festival accolades before he died in 1973; in 1953 Ford would again direct Fetchit in “The Sun Shines Bright,” continuing the ugly stereotyping of black people in Hollywood films; in 1934, Fetchit appeared in “Stand Up and Cheer!” with Shirley Temple, who was unknown and uncredited in her earlier Stockton-made film that year, “Mandalay”; shot in the San Joaquin Delta and on its rivers, with the 144-foot sternwheeler Leader transformed into the Claremore Queen.

MICHAEL PARKS, BONNIE BEDELIA, AKIM TAMIROFF, MARTIN SHEEN, GARY MERRILL, SHEREE NORTH, BERT FREED

Pilot for a short-lived television series about a disillusioned truth-seeker who quits his newspaperjob and motorcycles across America; Merrill made “Winged Victory” in Stockton in 1947, Parks made his film debut here in “The Wild Seed” in 1965, and Sheen played opposite his son Charlie in “Hot Shots, Part Deux” in 1993; Tamiroff appeared in “For Whom the Bells To||,” shot in the Sierra foothills in 1943; excellent character actors like Tamiroff and Freed always work (Freed was in some of Hollywood’s best movies, among them “Boomerang!” “No Way Out,” “Detective Story,” “The Desperate Hours,” “Paths of Glory,” “The Goddess,” “Shane” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”) before working on “Bronson” in Stockton; Bedelia later played Harrison Ford's deceived wife in “Presumed |nnocent.”

CLINT EASTWOOD, GENE HACKMAN, MORGAN FREEMAN, RICHARD HARRIS

A widower gunslinger who has settled down hires on a final risky job and lives to regret it; Producer-Director Eastwood scored nine Academy Award nominations and nailed four Oscars, including two for himself as Best Director and for Best Picture (Hackman won for Best Supporting Actor and the film for Best Editing); Eastwood also composed “Claudia’s Theme” heard throughout the score; the film, which won many other awards, was made in Alberta, Canada, except for a scene in Atlanta and one crucial scene shot around the water tower, in a town set originally built west of Chinese Camp for “Back to the Future, Part III” and used later in “Bad Girls” at the Keystone Ranch off Highway 108 down the hill from O’Byrne’s Ferry Road in Tuolumne County; when Eastwood directed “Bird” in the Chinese community of Locke in 1988 on the San Joaquin Delta, he and his company stayed at The Stockton Hilton’; in 1982 he had directed himself and his son in “Honktytonk Man” in the Sierra foothills..

MICHAEL PARKS, CELIA KAYE, ROSS ELLIOTT

Routine melodrama about a girl’s romance with a drifter, directed by Brian Hutton; debut film of Parks and, more importantly, the debut of the innovative cinematographer Conrad Hall, whose later work (“American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition”) achieved career heights with two other films shot in Stockton, “Cool Hand Luke” and “Fat City,” the latter directed by John Huston, who later cast Parks as a fig—leafed Adam in his film of stories from “The Bible”; after “The Wild Seed” the Golden Globes named Kaye the “Most Promising Newcomer” (along with Mia Farrow) of that year, but she made only five more movies, “Vampire at Midnight” the last in 1988; Elliott, who later was in “The Towering Inferno,” began his career with Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre and its startling radio production of “The War of the Worlds”; with Carl Parker of Stockton in a supporting role.

LON MCALLISTER, PETER LIND HA YES, DON TAYLOR, GARY MERRILL, BARRY NELSON, GEORGE ("Superman") REEVES, KEVIN MCCARTHY, tenor MARIO LANZA, future Academy Award winners JUDY HOLLIDAY, EDMOND O’BRIEN, LEE J COBB, JEANNE CRAIN, RED BUTTONS, KARL MALDEN, MARTIN RITT

Wartime drama about training army air force crews, directed by George Cukor from a script by Moss Hart, who later would produce “My Fair Lady” on Broadway (Cukor would direct it on film); astonishing for its large cast of unknown actors, most making their film debuts or beginning major stage and screen careers; filmed entirely at the Stockton Field Training Base of the United States Army Air Corps; first of two films (“Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!” in 1948) that McCallister would make in the Stockton area; Merrill would make “Twelve O’CIock High” in 1949, ‘‘All About Eve” in 1950, marry its star, Bette Davis, and soon began a slow career decline that returned him to Stockton in a minor role in a 1969 pilot for a television series, “Then Came Bronson”; blacklisted in the 1950s, Ritt would later win an Oscar and a Venice Film Festival prize for directing “Hud” in 1964 and a Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize for directing “Norma Rae” in 1979

JAN MICHAEL VINCENT, TIM CONWAY, ROSCOE LEE BROWNE, BILLY DEWOLFE, NANCY WALKER, HOWARD COSELL, FRANK GIFFORD, JIM MCKAY, BUD PALMER, JOE KAPP

A live-action Walt Disney comedy directed by Robert Scheerer about a coach who finds a white Tarzan-type athlete in Africa; scenes filmed at University of the Pacific and the old San Joaquin Delta College track field, with real athletes and sports personalities playing themselves; original music written by Marvin Hamlisch, who the previous year scored “Fat City,” also shot in Stockton.

SEAN PATRICK HARRIS, COREY CARRIER, GEORGE HALL, RONNY COUTTEURE

Scenes for two episodes of the critically acclaimed and thus short-lived television series, both set in 1917, produced by George Lucas and based on the youthful Indiana Jones character of the later film trilogy directed by Steven Spielberg: “Barcelona,” directed by Terry Ross and written by Gavin Scott, used part of the Stockton Deep Water Channel near Happy Harbor northwest of Stockton as the harbor of the Spanish city; and “Congo,” directed by Simon Wincer and written by Frank Darabont (writer of the fourth Indiana Jones film that Lucas will produce and Spielberg direct for release in 2005), used part of the nearby Venice Cut as the Congo River for a scene in which rebels run along the shore firing rifles at a Delta boat; one of five films that Harris made in 2002 was “Borderline” with Michael Biehn, who starred in “Rampage” in Stockton in 1988; Lucas and Spielberg previously had used Stockton locations for the older Indiana Jones chronicles, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in 1982 and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” in 1984.