International photographer (Jan-Dec 1941)

"how QREEN WAS My VAlUy" Putting Wales on the map of California for one of the biggest movie sets in many a year rivals anything that Aladdin could have done by rubbing his famous lamp. The amount of materials and money which 20th Century-Fox put into building the entire village and coal mine for Darryl F. Zanuck's production of "How Green Was My Valley" may sound somewhat staggering, but a view of the finished product pales figures into insignificance. When Zanuck first commissioned Art Director Richard Day to bring into being the mining village of the Morgan family in the Richard Llewellyn best seller, he first spent many days looking at movie film and thousands of photographs of typical Welsh villages. Then he selected those of the villages of Cerrig Ceinnen and the adjoining Clyddach-cum-Tave in the Rhodda Valley in Wales and started to draw sketches and plans of a composite of these two. Then, in collaboration with Ben Wurtzel, head of the studio construction department, actual work began. First of all, five caterpillar tractors and five carryalls put in four weeks of excavation work on the site selected at Brents Crags in San Fernando Valley, 35 miles from the studio. This spot, with its rolling hills and stretches of valley duplicated in topography, if not in climate, the Rhodda Valley of Wales. The set was to be spread out over an area of 85 acres, including six hills of varying sizes. But in order to shape this natural scenery to picture requirements, hundreds of thousands of tons of earth had to be excavated. After the preparatory four weeks of excavation was finished, the actual building of the set took six weeks, in other words, 36 days of 10 hours per day with 150 workmen on the job. A continuous line of trucks hauled to the location the various materials which went into getting everything ready, including: 300,000 feet of lumber, 20,000 gallons of paint, 300 tons of plaster, 2,000 tons of coal, 10 railroad freight cars of stone, 5,000 panes of glass, 2,000 feet of mine track, 50 coal trams. There was a full railroad car shipment of roofing slate as well as tons of nails, plants and trees of every description. One of the first things that had to be constructed on top of one of the highest hills was a reservoir that would hold 200,000 gallons of water for various uses. Besides the need of water in construction work, the streets of the village had to be wetted down during hot and dusty weather and there had to be a large source of supply for use in rain scenes. Being far from any town, the studio had to figure out its own water problem. Construction of the set was commenced last fall when it was expected at that time that production would start in November. When the picture was put off until this summer, the studio spent $15,000 to put in a complete drainage system to take care of the heavy winter rains. Some 80 buildings altogether comprised this Welsh mining town. These included the homes of the miners, the colliery buildings, stores, tavern, church and other communal buildings. To beautify and dress up the little gardens of the homes and other spots in the village, $10,000 worth of trees, plants, flowers and shrubs were carted out and transplanted on the location. The oddest job of all was the way the problem was solved of making the mountainous slag heap which threatens the village and plays an important part in the story. It was this job which accounts for the enormous item of 20,000 gallons of paint. An immense hill had to be denuded of vegetation and the entire area of the hill sprayed with black paint to make it look like that much slag. Over this painted earth and rocks, several tons of coal was scattered to add to its realistic appearance. The coal mine itself required the most careful work of all. Not only was it to look accurate, but everything about it was FAXON DEAN INC CAMERAS, BLIMPS-DOLLYS FOR RENT No. 22184 4516 Sunset Boulevard Night, SUnset 2-1271 to be workable and practical. Down the 30-foot shaft which had been dug, there had to be a lift to lower and raise the miners, built according to all mine safety specifications because it actually had to raise and lower people. The 2,000 feet of track emerged from tunnels, and on this track ran the fifty steel trams which the studio's own metal working shop had constructed out of iron and steel, copied from the trams used in Welsh mines. Everything about the mine worked. In full operation it gave forth an industrious uproar. The trams clattered over the rails. Winches and hoists groaned, creaked and rattled. Steam vents hissed and sputtered, and the whole mine gave forth from 500 to 1,000 tons of coal a day. Then there was the added work of putting the coal back into the mine at night so that it could be taken out again the next day in further scenes. Lording over all this Welsh territory was the Irish-American director, John Ford whose business it was to combine this background and several hundred people into the finished production of "How Green Was My Valley." At Ford's insistence, there was more to the backs of the sets than the usual timbers which prop up the false fronts. Every building had a one-room interior. Instead of the usual canvas dressing rooms which would have been like sweat boxes for the actors, the cottages themselves were used. Walter Pidgeon was housed for the duration of the picture in the house which he was supposed to occupy in his role as the Rev. Gruffydd. Maureen O'Hara, Anna Lee, Roddy McDowall. John Leder, Sara Allgood and all the other members of the cast, as well as the extras, were quartered in the cottages and other buildings whose oneroom interiors were furnished as restful dressing rooms. Accomplishment of this miracle in creating an entire village and colliery in less than two months time cost the studio about $145,000, figured on the basis of $120,000 for general construction, $15,000 for the drainage system, and $10,000 for the landscaping. It sounds like a lot of money for one set for one motion picture, but one look at the village is enough to convince that the studio got its money's worth. Added to this, of course, will be the $25,000 the studio will have to spend to tear all of this handiwork down, cart it all away and make things look as though the Rhodda Valley of Wales had never come to the San Fernando Valley of California. But that is another story altogether, involving another type of movie ingenuity. 16