South Central New Mexico

“King Solomon’s Mines” (1950), starring Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger and Richard Carlson, filming locations include Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands and Sitting Bull Falls in the Lincoln National Forest. Oscar winner for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing and third most popular film in Britain in 1951, this adventure movie, based on the H. Rider Haggard, is a study of how far film-making has come. It has plenty of goofs: A charging African elephant suddenly is an Indian elephant, Deborah Kerr…

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“A Gunfight” (1971) starring Johnny Cash and Kirk Douglas. Filming locations in New Mexico include Santa Fe and Eaves Movie Ranch. Financed by the Jicarilla Apache Tribe as a possible source of income, “A Gunfight” includes many other “firsts” (it was the acting debut of Johnny Cash and Keith Carradine) and a poignant “last” (the line “You stay the hell away from me, you hear” can be heard in Cash’s final music video). Its ending has been roundly criticized, but…

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“Ace in the Hole” (1951) Starring Kirk Douglas. Co-written and directed by Billy Wilder. Filmed in Gallup, New Mexico. After a string of box office and critical successes for Billy Wilder including “Ninotchka” (1939), “Double Indemnity” (1994), “The Lost Weekend” (1946) and “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), “Ace in the Hole” was a colossal flop when it first opened. Paramount re-released it as “The Big Carnival” and it flopped so badly again that the film company made the decision to garnish the…

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