Colorado Territory (Warner Bros.) (1949)

‘COLORADO TERRITORY’ Personality, Production Stories ¢ Star, Scene Art 10 VIRGINIA MAYO MAKES HEARTS BEAT ON SET Virginia Mayo came into the kiva, an Indian council house built on Stage 4 at Warner Bros. Studios, and said, “I want to talk to you, Mr. McQueen.” “Help yourself,” said Joel McCrea, who in “Colorado Territory” is a notorious outlaw named Wes McQueen. He watched interestedly as the girl walked across the earthen floor and, with a hitch of her swinging skirt, perched provocatively on a table. She began a plea to be allowed to remain in the mountain hideout, where McCrea, John Archer and James Mitchell were staying while a train robbery was being planned. McCrea had ordered her to leave the place, but she obviously didn’t want to leave McCrea. Miss Mayo used considerably more than logic in her argument. She used all the feminine wiles in the power of a beautiful girl who isn’t overburdened with clothes or inhibitions. She was appealing, revealing, soft, pliant, entreating and promising. “Cut!” said Director Raoul Walsh when the scene was finished. “Sorry, it’s no good,” said the man who was monitoring the sound. “I keep picking up a peculiar noise—a sort of throbbing sound, like a heart beat.” “MINE!” came the chorus of wisecracks from at least three workers on the set. It wasn’t a cardiac disturbance, however. It was a mechanical pump at work outside the sound stage. Director Knows His Customers For atmospheric background at a stagecoach station in “Colorado Territory,’ Director Raoul Walsh arranged several Indians and told them to talk together while Joel McCrea, Dorothy Malone and Oliver Blake played a scene before the Warner Bros. camera. In the first rehearsal, the Indians dutifully mumbled, but without any movement. Walsh called the interpreter and asked for more animation. “Tell ’em to forget they’re being photographed,” he said. “Tell ’em to talk about what crazy people the picture makers are.” That did it. The Indians grinned and gestured as they chatted about the white men who paid them so well just for sitting in the sun. Dancer to Outlaw In One Film Step From dancer to outlaw was a new step James Mitchell learned about in Hollywood! The brilliant terpsichorean, who scored such a hit in the Broadway smash play “Brigadoon”, as the brooding highlander in the Sabre Dance number that the movies soon beckoned, is now a two-gun man in “Colorado Territory”. But his ability stands him in good stead. As an outlaw he has to display great agility in his battles with Joel McCrea, six foot six inch star of the film, and Director Raoul Walsh said he looked for “oreat things from Mitchell’. The widely-heralded Warner Bros. western melodrama opens Friday at the Strand. LOVELY VIRGINIA MAYO plays the exciting role of “Colorado Carson,” a halfbreed, in Warner Bros.’ “Colorado Territory’, due at the Strand, Mat 713-2D_ Still 713-A60 Warner Bros. Film Arrives Tomorrow “Colorado Territory”, Warner Bros.’ widely-heralded western melodrama, opens at the Strand Theatre today. Starring Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo, “Colorado Territory” is the story of outlaw Wes McQueen who was hunted down by the law in the wild six-gun days around Durango, Colorado some eighty years ago. The suspenseful melodrama, which combines breathtaking scenic beauty with blazing action, boasts a strong cast in addition to the leads, including Dorothy Malone, who played last in “One Sunday Afternoon”, and Broadway’s Henry Hull. Yells ‘Lunch’, Scene Spoiled In the picture studios, “One hour for lunch!” usually means a rush for the commissary. But in “Colorado Territory,” at Warner Bros., the line happened to be part of the script. Oliver Blake, as a Wells Fargo agent, stepped to the door of his stagecoach station and greeted incoming passengers with, ‘One hour for lunch!” But. the take was spoiled and Director Raoul Walsh yelled for everyone to come back. “It’s a good thing it happened,” he said. “What Mr. Blake should have called was ‘One hour for dinner.’ In those days, dinner was the noontime meal.” JOEL McCREA, right, in a scene from “Colorado Territory”, the thrilling Warner Bros. western melodrama, with Virginia Mayo and Henry Hull. Now at the Strand. Mat 713-2B Still 713-58X JOEL McCREA PUTS IN HARD DAY—IN BED! Joel McCrea worked every day, all day, in “Colorado Territory” for Warner Bros. Under Raoul Walsh’s direction, he scrambled up cliffs, ran through brush and swamps, galloped his horse over dangerous terrain and engaged in hand-to-hand fights. But the hardest day’s work of all, he said, was the one he spent on Stage 7—in bed! And he had only a few words of dialogue. And lovely Virginia Mayo was sitting beside him, too. The tough part was that McCrea lay seriously wounded, and Miss Mayo was grimly probing for a bullet in his left shoulder. It was a long and dramatically tense sequence. McCrea had to lie rigidly, hands clenched, forehead perspiring, as he bore the pain of the crude operation. “It was supposed to hurt,” said McCrea. “And pretty soon, it actually did!” LEARNS INDIANS CALL DOC T00 FOR SNAKEBITE Virginia Mayo learned what the Indians did for snake-bite one day while she was on location for “Colorado Territory”, the Warner Bros. which opens Friday at the Strand. Sandal-shod and bare-legged below her medium-length skirt, she had been wandering around between scenes with Joel McCrea, who pointed out specimens of loco weed and showed her a swarm of ants tugging at a huge beetle, but no snakes—local people had declared it was too late in the year for rattlers to be out. Then a member of the camera crew almost stepped on one. Raoul Walsh, directing the drama, ordered Miss Mayo into a car. Before she was called for a scene, the crew formed a line and combed the area where she would run to meet McCrea. Later, beckoning to a Navajo bystander, the actress asked what the Indians do for snake bite. He haltingly explained that they used to char a piece of dead mesquite wood and bind it hot on the wound to draw out the poison. He said they also used to boil herbs for a brew that helped counteract the venom. “And what do they do now?” asked Miss Mayo. “Damn quick call doctor!” said the Indian. Both Stars in Pic Presented at Court Both of Joel McCrea’s costars in “Colorado Territory” at Warner Bros. are Royal Command Performance actresses. Virginia Mayo, who plays a fiery-spirited partIndian girl in the frontier drama, is one of the group of stars who appeared before the King and Queen of England last year. And Dorothy Malone, who is her romantic rival in the picture, was a member of the first Command Performance group, which went to London in 1946.