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 Ramona movie poster by 20th Century Fox |
 John Wayne displaying his softer side with young fans in a mid-1950s photo. Photos courtesy Warner Springs Historical Society |
Hollywood in the Warner Valley:
A Star-Studded History
By Kathryn Fletcher
January/February 2025
Visitors to the Warner Valley and Warner-Carrillo Ranch House Museum often comment that they look like a Western movie set. In fact, over the years, a number of movies and commercials have been filmed in this scenic, historic locale, and the Warner Hot Springs resort was popular in its heyday with the Hollywood crowd.
Best-known of the movies, Ramona was filmed in 1936 in “newly perfected Technicolor” by 20th Century Fox. Starring Loretta Young, Don Ameche, and “a cast of thousands,” it was based on the popular book of the same name by Helen Hunt Jackson. Jackson is said to have written much of it while staying at Warner Hot Springs and was sympathetic to the plight of the local Cupa Indians, who were removed to the Pala Reservation in 1903. The studio built an adobe home, still in use, next to the present-day post office as a dressing room for Young. Planes took off from a landing strip (now the Warner Springs Gliderport) to rush film canisters to Hollywood for processing.
John Wayne was a frequent visitor to the resort and on weekends he would come to the Warner-Carrillo Ranch House to visit the cowboys living there under the "Sawday Lease," held by cattle baron George Sawday, and Vail ownership. They helped him with his cowboy skills and he and Sawday traded hats in friendship. Wayne wears the hat in six Westerns, including Fort Apache, Rio Bravo, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and when he directed movies, according to the hatmaker. See Wayne wearing the hat in four photos.
My book, Warner Hot Springs, by Kathryn Lee Fletcher and the Warner Springs Historical Society (Arcadia Publishing, 2016), contains more information and photos and is available in SOHO’s museum shops at the Warner-Carrillo Ranch House and the Marston House Museum.
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