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Movie's 40th anniversary elicits Durango memories
For a teenage waitress, it was an experience not forgotten.
For the actor who played Flat-Nose Curry, Durango "seemed like some enchanted and magical town."
For the owner of a ranch where the famous cliff-jumping scene was filmed, it was a bit of a letdown.
For America, simply, it was a big hit.
Forty years ago last week, the Western "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was released nationwide. Starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Katharine Ross, it reportedly was the largest grossing movie that came out in 1969.
A year before that, the film crew converged on the Durango area, making a big splash. Many stayed at the brand-new Holiday Inn on Camino del Rio, where high school student Rose Ornella worked as a waitress. It was September 1968.
"We were used to famous people" from other movies that had been filmed locally, Ornella says. "I just remember them as being fun, basic people to be around. And all the girls were in love with Robert Redford." All three were big stars, and about to be bigger. And she was nervous waiting on them. Still, Ornella insists, "It was nothing out of the ordinary. ... They were really easygoing, so they didn't make it hard at all." Famous scenes filmed in the Durango area included blowing up a train car (Florida Mesa) and jumping off a cliff. The jumping scene was shot on Sherwood Ranch, which later was sold and now is part of the Celadon development east of U.S. Highway 550 in the Animas Valley.
Callista Davies' sister was the late Pat Sherwood, who owned Sherwood Ranch at the time of filming. Sherwood wasn't exactly gaga over Newman and Redford.
"She wasn't too thrilled with them, I guess," says Davies, reached last week at her Arizona home, where she winters.
Actor Clark Gable, who was in the Durango area to film the 1951 release, "Across the Wide Missouri," had charisma.
"She didn't see that in that pair," Davies says. "She was rather disappointed." Stuntmen who jumped from the cliffs at Bakers Bridge landed in a net just below.
"In September, of course, there wasn't enough water (in the Animas River) to jump in," Davies says. The landing, she says, was filmed in a water tank in California.
California is where actor Charlie Dierkop lives. He fell in love with Durango during filming in 1968, and now returns annually to judge documentaries for the Durango Independent Film Festival. He moved to Durango for a few months in 2000.
"I feel like it's my second hometown," the 73-year-old Dierkop says during a phone conversation last week.
He recalls first coming to this "little town in the mountains," finding many of its streets still unpaved, hearing the train whistle, and feeling "it was like going back in time." That helped put him in character for re-enacting the dramatic version of the real lives of Butch and Sundance, and their exploits around the year 1900.
Dierkop, who played a member of Butch and Sundance's Hole in the Wall Gang, recalls riding the train to Silverton and stopping to film along the way. Sitting alongside the Animas River, watching light snow fall as the train approached Silverton ... "It was magical. The whole experience was magical." It's been written that the special effects man used too many explosives when blowing up the train, but that's not how Dierkop remembers it.
"That was the plan all along," he says of the huge explosion that shattered a train car made of balsa wood.
During filming, Durango Herald reporters and photographers had the at-times-frustrating task of trying to access the director and stars. Charlie Langdon managed to corral actress and co-star Katharine Ross, who also was smitten by her surroundings.
"It's very beautiful here," she told Langdon. "I'd like to live here if I could still go on with my acting." The movie was released nationally Oct. 24, 1969, but made its "Colorado Premiere" at Durango's Kiva Theatre, 813 Main Ave., on Oct. 1, 1969. Townspeople ate it up, as did the rest of the country.
Says Ornella, the waitress, "After the movie came out, it dawned on us how important these people had become." Dierkop returned to Durango to film 1971's made-for-TV "Lock, Stock and Barrel." In the mid-'70s he had a starring role in "Police Woman," and he has appeared in dozens more TV shows and movies. He now teaches at the Group Repertory Theater in Hollywood. But recollections of fall 1968 in Durango remain strong.
"It was one of the most pleasant memories of my life," Dierkop says.
johnp@durangoherald.com John Peel writes a weekly human-interest column.
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