James D'Arc, Hollywood films made in Utah (Season 1, Ep. 5 - Part 1)

**Brad Westwood** (0:04)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This podcast is about Utah's history. My name is Brad Westwood. I'm Senior Public Historian at the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts. The past is never truly in the past. It's all around us. It informs us. It speaks to both our shared and to our separate identities. Speak the Piece is a podcast where writers, historians, curators, archivists, anyone who contributes to Utah's history shares their insights and their new discoveries.
When you're looking forward, planning for the future, first examine carefully the past. This is what this podcast strives to do for Utah for its many diverse, geographically and varied communities across Utah. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, this is the place.
Today, my guest is Dr. James V. D'Arc, film historian and now retired senior librarian and curator of the Brigham Young Motion Picture Archive and the BYU Film Music Archive, also at BYU.
Jim was born in Glendale, California, where his fascination for classical films and other such matters related to movie making began. He earned his degrees in history and motion picture history at Brigham Young University. He taught film courses there for 30 years and for 41 years, he was curator of the aforementioned archives at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections. Welcome, Jim.

**James D'Arc** (1:36)
It's a pleasure to be here, Brad.

**Brad Westwood** (1:37)
It's been many, many wonderful years of association with you and I so much appreciate all that I've learned from you.
I'm also fascinated by just how much film, how much influence Utah has had on the film, on the industry in general. Why do you think that's the case?

**James D'Arc** (1:58)
Because it's been dealt with in such a tangential manner over the years. The entertainment industry, I think for most people, is considered ephemeral, a sort of, you know, whipped cream on the dessert of life. And who would even dignify it with an historical study? I mean, what difference does movies make? Well, I found in Utah, it makes a tremendous difference.
Particularly during the 1920s and 30s, when the business got started in Utah. What kind of difference? Well, first of all, a major economic difference. Because during the 1920s and early 30s, Utah was in a more serious state of the Great Depression than probably any other state in the Union. There was a serious agricultural depression. And this led the three Perry brothers from Salt Lake City, who then moved to Cedar City as men on the make, businessmen, to look for other sources of revenue for this depressed area in Iron County. And so they took pictures of Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon, all over the area down there. And during the winter months, would go to Hollywood to share their photographs with the Motion Picture Studios.
And they snagged a big one in 1924 with Tom Mix, the greatest Western movie star during the 1920s, who made films through the Fox Film Company.
And he brought his Wonder Horse Tony to Utah and made a big scale Western called The Deadwood Coach in 1924

**Brad Westwood** (3:41)
A film that's no longer survived.

**James D'Arc** (3:44)
As with about 80% of the movies from the silent film period, they're gone. But we have a selection of photographs, which I've included in the book, when Hollywood came to Utah to document this, because that was the first big splash that Hollywood made in Utah with the movie industry.

**Brad Westwood** (4:06)
Jim, I want to just say that you have just recently published the third edition of this book about Utah and America's film industry. With the title slightly changed when Hollywood came to Utah, published by the national publisher and Utah's own Gibb Smith Publishers.
Really interesting that it's been in its third edition. I want you to tell me more stories, but tell me the back story, how this has been, how you've come to a third edition.

**James D'Arc** (4:37)
Well, I began this project in 1975, growing up in Southern California, and having the love of old movies in my DNA, I'm sure. And I did my first interview for what later became when Hollywood came to Utah in 1975 with the widow of Whit Perry, who founded Perry Lodge in Kanab.

**Brad Westwood** (5:00)
So this story involves interviews and interaction and collecting really for a career.

**James D'Arc** (5:06)
Exactly. Stealing time when I could, interviewing people when I could, visiting the actual movie locations.
Why did it take over 30 years? Because no one had ever done this before. So I started from scratch, going page by page through local newspapers to look at notices when a movie company came to town, then tracking down the individuals or their descendants mentioned in the stories.