After Hollywood filmmaker John Ford completed his first two Westerns in Moab – Wagon Master and Rio Grande, in 1949 and 1950, he returned to make the 1955 movies Smoke Signal and Canyon Crossroads. In Smoke Signal Dana Andrews played a renegade cavalry officer who escapes a Ute Indian attack along with Piper Laurie, a lieutenant (Rex Reason) to whom Laurie is engaged, and an army captain played by William Talman. One scene entailed rafting the San Juan and Colorado rivers.

Local resident Clea Johnson doubled for Laurie during the river running sequences, and spent seven days with the film’s cast and crew camping out on the riverbanks at night. According to Johnson’s 2023 obituary, she lived in Blanding and was married to Lyle Johnson, who also acted as a double during the making of Smoke Signals. Universal spent a little over a month producing the film, including time spent on exploratory river trips prior to production.

Meanwhile, by 1954 the uranium boom had reached Moab and film companies found themselves competing with prospectors for movie extras, wranglers, and laborers – and for hotel rooms.

The Moab Film Commission coordinated accommodations for the crew and cast of the 1955 low-budget film, Canyon Crossroads, by finding them lodging in private homes. This film was about a down-on-his-luck prospector who was suspicious of a powerful mine owner, who resented the prospector for not working for him. The movie features a local watering hole, Professor Valley, the Colorado River, and surrounding cliffs.

Moab pursued the film industry less during the uranium mining period, but after the uranium boom began to subside, the Moab Film Commission began courting the film industry again.

In 1958, Twentieth Century-Fox made the movie Warlock, a major studio film that was photographed in CinemaScope and color. The film was considered a “superb Western,” and starred such actors as Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Richard Widmark and Dorothy Malone. It’s a “veiled Wyatt Earp-Doc Holliday story” according to When Hollywood Came to Utah by author James V. D’Arc. The film includes footage of Dead Horse Point and Professor Valley in a wide-screen format.

Sources: When Hollywood Came to Utah by James V. D.’Arc. San Juan Record, 2/21/2023