Plans for the 2009 Lone Pine Film Festival happening over Columbus Day weekend October 9-11 are revving up. While the Festival is much more than films, people always want to know “So who is coming this year?” Festival planners have invited back some stars who have been here before. They reflect not only the diverse history of filmmaking in the Owens Valley, but also are closely related to the twenty year history of the Festival.

Other guests are new and have not been here before. The list ranges from a Playboy Playmate to a nerd; from a stuntman to Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, from Wyatt Earp to Tarzan, from Deadwood to Melrose Place. The guests are truly diverse, familiar to different generations and ready to meet their fans.

Stella Stevens filmography lists more than 150 projects in which she has appeared. She broke into movies in Li’l Abner playing Appassionata Von Climax. She co-starred with such big names as Bobby Darin in Too Late Blues; Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls!; Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor; Glenn Ford in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and Dean Martin in The Silencers.

As to westerns, she starred as Hildy in The Ballad of Cable Hogue where she received critical notice. The film explored the Old West of stagecoaches giving way to motorcars, among other themes. In the western The Long Ride Home, a traditional western with strong moral character, she was part of a cast that included Ernest Borgnine and Randy Travis.

Miss Stevens had many non-western roles, focusing on made for television roles later in her life. Her early career was shaped when she appeared as a Playboy Centerfold, in one of the most popular issues of all time.

One of Andrew Prine’s early performance was in Advance to the Rear in which Stella Stevens starred. He worked in the episode of Have Gun Will Travel called “The Marshal’s Boy,” which has a wonderfully dramatic climax up at Whitney Portal near the waterfall. Many other western films fill his credits including Texas Across the River, The Devil’s Brigade, and Bandolero! and Chisum. As the western genre faded from the big screen, his appearances were more diverse although he starred in several episodes of classic television westerns. These included Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Virginian, and Wagon Train.

Mr. Prine’s abilities have been on display more recently guest-starring in C.S.I, Six Feet Under and Jag, among many others.

Hugh O’Brian achieved television western immortality with his seven years as Wyatt Earp. Appearing in over 150 episodes of the classic. He did star in Rocketship XM, a science fiction film made in Death Valley and in Beyond the Purple Hills, Gene Autry film that shot scenes in our area. He worked in many feature length westerns including Vengeance Valley, The Lawless Breed, and Broken Lance, “paying his dues before Wyatt Earp earned him stardom. He has the distinction of being the last man John Wayne “killed” on screen in The Shootist.

As with most action stars in feature films during the 1950 and 1960’s, Ben Cooper had many non-western roles as the western genre subsided in popularity. Thunderbirds(1952) earned him the attention from Herbert J. Yates that was his big break through. Born in Connecticut and educated at Columbia, Mr. Cooper was given a contract at Republic Studios and appeared in several very popular westerns. These included Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford, Jubilee Trail with Forrest Tucker and The Last Command about the battle of the Alamo. Other films include The Woman They Almost Lunched, Duel at Apache Wells and Support Your Local Gunfighter. His many television western guest appearances include those on Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train, Bonanza, Laramie and Rawhide.

From UCLA to star as the first blond Tarzan in 1959’s Tarzan the Ape Man, Denny Miller soon had a recurring role on Wagon Train as Duke Shannon, from 1961 to 1964. The series shot episode in Lone Pine during this period. He also worked on other television western series including Have Gun, Will Travel, Gunsmoke and The Virginian. Sadly, western roles became fewer and fewer but Denny’s roles switched to detective and even comedy series. Harking back to his Tarzan role, he played Tonga on Gilligan’s Island, and then Tank Gates on The Brady Bunch. Other guest appearances were on The Rockford Files, Knight Rider and Matt Houston.

If the Festival celebrates a long film history in Lone Pine going back to 1920, and in Inyo County going back to 1909, it also looks forward to westerns being produced today. Geri Jewell, a star of the televisions series Deadwood will be joining us. She played the memorable role of Jewel in multiple episodes on that controversial western that also seemed to breathe new life, if at times a quite vulgar life, into the television western.

Geri is proud to be working on actors-with-disabilities issues and she made history as the first actor with cerebral palsy to have a recurring role, on The Facts of Life.

A new guest added to the celebrity group visiting Lone Pine is Perry King. A different actor’s career, King’s work is decidedly non-western except in one exception. When Hollywood is not making many westerns, an actor must go where the work is. While he might have been a familiar western star in the 1960 in television westerns, Perry King had a recurring role on Rip Tide (1984-1986) and also on the series Melrose Place in 1995, Titans in 2000 and Spin City in 2002. He found steady work starring in Made-for-TV movies during these periods as well. In 2004 he played the U.S. President in the global warming catastrophe film, The Day after Tomorrow. Many found him to be very reassuring in a time of crisis.

Most recently Perry has worked on episodes of Brothers and Sisters, Cold Case and Without a Trace. We can only hope that westerns come back soon enough that he will get a shot at being a cowboy like Randolph Scott did in the second half of his career.

Another new guest this year is Robert Carradine. A second-generation member of a famous show business family, Mr. Carradine sprang to film fan fame as Lewis Skolnick in the Revenge of the Nerds film series. He has achieved notice as an actor, a producer and a director. In westerns he played Sunfish Perkins in the television version of Monte Walsh. Early in his career he appeared in other television westerns including Bonanza and The Cowboys. Besides comedy, Robert Carradine has also done several horror/ science fiction films including The Tommyknockers, Ghosts of Mars and Timecop. He has no less than four future films in pre-production that are from several different genres.

For the 20th Film Festival, we look back at the history of the Golden Age of westerns as well as the television age of westerns. Dick Jones began as a child actor in the early B westerns with the likes of John Wayne and much later appeared as a western hero in two television western series.

He began by doing stunts and then appeared in the first Republic Studios made B western Westward Ho as John Wayne’s character in his youth. This film remains a classic Lone Pine B western. He appeared in The Lone Ranger serial in 1938 and thus in the feature version in 1940 called Hi Yo Silver. Soon after he was back in Lone Pine appearing in the western epic Brigham Young with Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell. He has nearly one hundred credits in feature films, but when Gene Autry cast him in his film The Strawberry Roan, his career became attached to Autry’s Flying A productions and he had guest roles in several series including the Gene Autry Show, and Annie Oakley with Gail Davis. He starred with Jock Mahoney in The Range Rider as Dick West followed by his own show as Buffalo Bill Jr. Both these series shot episodes in Lone Pine.

The history of action pictures and westerns could not exist without the work of the stunt people. Three famed stuntmen, on still working now as a stunt coordinator, are great storytellers. Two of them have been friends of Lone Pine for many years, often returning to support the celebration of westerns and film work done locally. The third is a first time guest.

Loren Janes has not missed an appearance in Lone Pine in twenty years. He has served selflessly on the Museum Board and has been a major factor in the Festival’s long and successful run and the building of the Film Museum. It is impossible to cite all of his credits, on and off the screen, but anyone who has attended his screening of his “behind the Action” home movies or his location tours know what a knowledgeable and generous person he is.

He is known to us as Steve McQueen’s stand-in and stunt double for most of the star’s career. He worked in Lone Pine over and over, in both Nevada Smith, but also in many other films made here including Thunder in the Sun and How the West Was Won. He also worked in North To Alaska starring John Wayne and From Hell to Texas. His filmography however is a varied as the following credits: King Kong, Back to the Future, Repo Man, David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. True Lies, Silence of the Hams and Spiderman. Loren has been active in the profession stunt organization as a founding member and as worked tirelessly for various patriotic causes.

A buddy of Loren’s and an active stunt coordinator, Diamond Farnsworth did a wonderful panel on the stunt profession to standing room only at the 2008 Film Festival. Diamond is an accomplished stuntman, serving as stunt coordinator on the show Jag, and before that working on NCIS and Quantum Leap. Diamond is the son of famous stuntman and actor Richard Farnsworth and began his stunt career in 1968. He has been serving as a stunt coordinator since 1980.

He began with Paint Your Wagon and was stunt double for Sylvester Stallone in First Blood, Rambo and Rhinestone. He has also doubled Kevin Costner, Dennis Quid and Jeff Bridges. He has loaned to the museum his father’s “Ken Maynard chaps,” given to Richard by the famous western star.

Joining these Lone Pine stunt veterans is Dean Smith, coming to the Festival for the first time. He is not, however, new to the Alabama Hills having worked frequently in these classic western locations. He was on location here for Maverick and served as James Garner’s stunt double for that film in 1994. Other Lone Pine shows in which Dean Smith worked include How the West Was Won, The Great Race, Mrs. Sundance and Cimarron Strip. Other westerns in which he provided action stunts include Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jeremiah Johnson and True Grit.

Dean Smith was born in Texas and resides there today. Besides his prolific film career he has been actively involved in fundraising for various cancer crusades and organizations, creating rodeo fundraising events for the Cowboy Cancer Crusade and the John Wayne Cancer Institute.

William Wellman Jr. has had a long, distinguished and varied acting career and now has taken on the mantel of published author and film historian. He has published a critical well received book about his father, Director William Wellman and his classic film Wings, and is now finishing up on a comprehensive study of his father’s entire career. He remembers vividly being an eleven-year boy and spending the summer on the set of Yellow Sky in Lone Pine, which his father was directing. He was befriended by Richard Widmark and had a crush on Anne Baxter he remembers.

He would return to Lone Pine to work in two Have Gun, Will Travel episodes “The Gold Toad” and “The Posse.” Among other high points was his recurring role on a Star Trek series, and roles in several Christian films as well as role on a recent C.S.I. He reports playing “dead” is not as easy as it might seem on that program, especially when they are starting an autopsy.

Peggy Stewart is a stalwart of the Festival, the Museum, on which she serves as a Board Member and during the heyday of filming westerns a star in Lone Pine. She made two films here: Utah with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and Trail to San Antone with Gene Autry. Another interesting role was in the lead on a Have Gun, Will Travel episode called “the Outlaw.”

Peggy Stewart has not really slowed down. having a recurring role on The Riches with Minnie Driver recently and this year an appearance on Weeds.

All told, these actors bring many reflections and memories on film and television careers and the western genre, past and maybe future. At least we know the rocks of Alabama Hills seen so much in the past are patiently waiting for the cowboy and cowgirl heroes of the future.