Kanab, Utah (1946) - We are all familiar with the Cinderella story of the glamour girl who gained Hollywood fame overnight. But, have you ever heard of a whole town - it’s inhabitants and buildings, trees and fields, and even the chickens that cross its roads - enjoying a successful movie career? Kanab Utah is such a place!

Zane Grey had written his first successful novels in Kanab. These books inspired Tom Mix and Buck Jones (among other western stars) to ask the Parry brothers, of Kanab, to arrange a few location trips for them. When Tom Mix brought his wonder horse Tony to Utah for the filming of Deadwood Coach in 1922, the Parry brothers took a hand in the film.

The Parry brothers asked themselves why not make this a regular business? Local citizens were eager to assist. A blight had struck the grasslands so the cattle ranges, never very profitable anyhow, didn’t pay off at all. And cattle raising was the sole industry of Kanab. The citizens clubbed together and subsidized the Parry brothers as scenery salesmen and ambassadors extraordinary to Hollywood. Soon after, the Parry brothers were equipped with photo albums of everything available for filming in and around Kanab, and on their way to Hollywood. The major motion picture industry really discovered Kanab in 1938, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer sent a company to make The Badman of Brimstone. A few years later another MGM outfit arrived to film Billy the Kid with Robert Taylor. The scenic effects in the film were so magnificent that the gold rush for Kanab country started in real earnest.

Directors liked to select their personnel from Kanab’s big photo albums where the whole town is pictured. One director commented "Any place else, we’d have to start from scratch. Here we don’t. The people, the stock, everything we need - all are trained and ready." "It’s a Little Hollywood all on it’s own," says William Wellman, director of Buffalo Bill. "Every beard and blonde is catalogued in a casting directory for the convenience of visiting movie makers."

Everybody in town enjoys the benefits the movies bring with them. Daniel Frost and Joseph Johnson, both Bishops of the Mormon church in Kanab, work as cowboys, stunt riders, or Indians. Della Pugh stands in for Maureen O’Hara, and Sheriff George Swapp doubles as camp cook. Mayor Verne Lindquist chauffeurs the station wagon assigned to movie directors, the City Councilmen work as horse wranglers. Lou Applegate, the town barber, doubles in brass as an actor. At such times he closes his shop and hangs up a sign notifying his customers that he’s "working in picture, back at 6:30."

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