Lake Drive as a movie set? It was a recurring theme in Russ Keller’s presentation at the Crestline library for his monthly look at local history—this time featuring movies made in Crestline. As he put his presentation together, he was actually surprised at the number of movies that qualified.
W. Lee Cozad compiled a large collection of “Those Magnificent Mountain Movies” and “More Magnificent Mountain Movies” in book form. He wanted to donate his movie collection to USC Film School—but the catch for “donating” was off-putting. To “endow” films, the person making the donation commits to pay storage for them—forever. Russ bought Cozad’s collection.
“The Devil’s Double” was filmed in 1916. “Eyes of the World” (1917) shows two people poised to attack each other on a rock at Hortensia’s at the Cliffhanger. It broke all box office records. (There was a net to catch the loser of the fight.)
“Actor, Director, Producer Leo D. Maloney, a B Western actor, documented 16 movies made in Crestline. He appeared in 102 films, beginning in 1914. During the 1920’s he owned the Leo Maloney Studio, a self-contained “city” in the San Bernadino Mountains that housed 35 employees who lived there year-round. Scores of westerns were shot there, including 40 Maloney directed himself.” He may have started the trend of using Lake Drive as a movie set.
Russ arranged his presentation by decade after he discovered an overview of movies filmed in Crestline. He started out thinking it would be a very short presentation but then realized there were quite a few movies at least partially filmed in Crestline—some rather well known and some quite forgettable.
Russ said he is in possession of a big box of movies, many of them VHS, some DVDs, and he has to dig through them to see if I can find “Park Avenue Logger,” starring George O’Brien, which was filmed in Crestline in 1937. It has a very interesting plot. “The summary of the plot is that George O’Brien’s dad was a lumberman, and his dad thought his son was kind of a wimp. He didn’t realize his son was a wrestler, so he sent him to Oregon to work for a competing lumber company. And then the son finds out that, wait a minute, somebody is sabotaging all of our products, all of our milled lumber. And he finds out that it’s his dad’s company that sabotaging him. So he has a number of encounters with the logging man from his dad’s company, and somehow he’s able to whip them all, even though his dad thought he was a kind of a wimp. So it’s an interesting plot. I’m going to see if I can watch it.”
William Holden debuted in a film called “Prison Farm” in 1938. When Lee Cozad saw the movie, he could tell it was filmed in and around Crestline, and he thought it was possibly Camp Seely. “During the 30s, there were a lot of movies made on prison reform, and this was the plot,” Keller said. “Some innocent person was sent to prison, and somehow they have to prove they’re innocent.
“The Law of the Wild” is a 1934 American western serial film starring Rex, a wild stallion, and Rinty, a police dog, who are pals. According to IMDB, “Their master, John Sheldon, is framed for murder, and Alice Ingram plans to race Rex for money to pay for John’s legal defense. Meantime, Frank Nolan, who has falsely accused John, sets out to steal Rex for himself.” It had scenes of a full Lake Gregory, Russ reported, which in 1941 would have been full, because it filled in three days in 1938. He pointed out that the original Rin Tin Tin was a male German Shepherd born in France who became an international star in motion pictures after he was rescued from a World War I battlefield by an American soldier. The soldier, named Lee Duncan, nicknamed him “Rinty” and trained him. The dog obtained silent film work in 27 movies. The Rin Tin Tin from 1950s television series was a son of the original rescue pup.
Skipping over the 1950s, Russ said he had not been able to find any movies filmed in Crestline in that decade and challenged his audience to research the matter.
“In 1978,” he said, “there was a trailer shot at the A&W, and it was called ‘Skateboarders From Hell.’” It was never made into a movie. “The owner of A&W was Ted Liebman,” Russ said. He was murdered around 1980, but shortly before he was murdered, he gave up the franchise with A&W, so he took down the W and it became the A.” (It recently reopened as A Burger.)
Russ showed some photos he had obtained from Gary Jacobs. “He was kind of an amateur photographer in Crestline, and he had a towing company where, if there was a wreck on 18 or anywhere, he would take his tow truck and took a lot of photos of car wrecks. “Walk Like a Man,” 1987, starring Howie Mandel, Cloris Leachman, Christopher Lloyd, and Colleen Camp featured a boy, lost in the mountains, who is raised by wolves and is reunited as an adult with his real family. “He’s in line to inherit $30 million if he can prove he’s not a wolf,” Russ said. He showed a photo of Gary Jacobs filming “Walk Like a Man at the 7-11” in Crestline.
“The Hand” was a Michael Caine movie filmed in Lake Arrowhead and Crestline. It was Michael Caine’s first movie, “not very good” Russ commented. “You can find it, but if you enjoy it, more power to you.” A comic book artist gets in an accident, loses his hand and his hand now “the hand” takes on a murderous life of its own. “There’s a bar scene in ‘The Hand,’” Russ explained, and that bar is now the Top Town Café. When it was filmed, it was the Last Chance Saloon, and so that scene is what today is the bar in the Top Town Café.
In “City of Angels” Russ said, “Nicholas Cage is an angel, and he comes down to earth and he falls in love with Meg Ryan, and he says, ‘I want to give up my angel status. I want to just be a human and live with Meg Ryan.’ That goes well for a very short period of time, until Meg Ryan is killed in a logging accident on Old Mill Road.”
Nicholas Cage came back and filmed another movie up here, starring preteen Lindsey Lohan. “So this is before she went off the rails,” Russ said. This was a Disney movie, a remake of the original “Parent Trap” from 1961, starring Hayley Mills. This was filmed at Camp Seely, where the girls’ camp was, and at Lake Gregory. When the movie premiered, Disney wanted to premiere it at the theater in Blue Jay, and the Crestline Chamber of Commerce got upset, because the movie was filmed in Crestline. They had everybody write to Disney to say “You can’t premiere this movie in Blue Jay!” Disney acquiesced and the premier was at the Crestline Village Theater on a Tuesday in July, 1998. He pointed to a girl named Amber in the front row in the picture taken at the premier. “She owns the Crestline Café—she and her sister were extras in the movie ‘The Parent Trap.’”
The next slide showed a grizzly bear in Top Town. In the movie plot, an enormous grizzly bear makes a mysterious escape. “Some little kid let him out, and the kid goes on a quest to get him back in a mountain community that would be Crestline,” Russ explained. “A wild grizzly.” He said he had tried to find a DVD of the movie, but DVDs are around $50, although a VHS goes for around $10. He bought a VHS but hadn’t watched it yet.
Next he referenced the movie made about the Bowles Murder, which he had covered in his last talk about murders in Crestline. Davy Porter, editor of the Crestline Courier, solved the murder, but the case will remain in cold case, because Floyd Bryce, who had murdered his sister’s entire family and their dog, died in 1986, so he can never be arrested and tried. The movie is shown at the Mountain History Museum every summer at least two or three times.
Next he showed the filming of a movie at The Cliffhanger. “They turned The Cliffhanger into a motel,” he noted. After they filmed the movie, they tore all the additions down. “It’s kind of a sci fi movie in which Nicholas Cage is kind of able to predict the future, and they save California in the process.”
A 2016 movie titled “Blue Jay” features two high school sweethearts who meet after an absence of 20 years at Goodwin’s Market, and they kind of rekindle an old friendship.
Other things filmed in Crestline include one episode of “Quincy”, an episode for “I Spy” and “Queen for a Day.” The episode of “Queen for a Day” was filmed at the Crestline Village Theater. Reggie Banister, who filmed some horror films on the mountain, and his wife were Grand Marshals in the Crestline Jamboree Days parade about 10 years ago.
