Film Stories From The Book:
Hollywood of the Rockies
By: Frederic B. Wildfang
Denver and Rio Grande
1952 — Paramount — produced by Nat Holt, written by Frank Gruber, directed by Byron Haskin — starring Edmond O’Brien, Sterling Hayden, Dean Jagger, Laura Elliot, Zasu Pitts, Lyle Bettger, J. Carrol Naish
In this rail classic — the first pioneer rail epic ever filmed in Technicolor — General Palmer (played by Dean Jagger), founder of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, races with a competing railway, The Canyon City & San Juan, to lay a particularly difficult stretch of track through a key canyon in the Colorado Rockies. When his chief superintendent and old friend Captain Jim Vesser (Edmund O’Brien) becomes involved in the murder of the surveyor for the Canyon City, however, things slow down. Add to that the shenanigans of a certain McCabe, the boss contractor of the Canyon City (played by Sterling Hayden), and all hope seems lost. Threats and intimidations, sabotage, murder — McCabe will try anything to stop General Palmer, even if it means ramming him with his train — full speed — head on. And with the inside information provided by General Palmer’s secretary, Miss Linda Prescott (Laura Elliot) — in reality Linda Nelson, sister of the slain surveyor of the Canyon City — he nearly succeeds. Only when Miss Prescott finds out that it was really McCabe who killed her brother does she change her loyalties — and rush to the aid of General Palmer, Jim Vesser, and the Denver & Rio Grande.
Although various locations were employed along the D&RG railroad line from Durango to Silverton (including the site of a huge tent city erected some twenty miles north), the climactic action takes place on a stretch of track in the Animas canyon — where the Tall Timbers resort is now located. Here — in front of seven technicolor cameras, Producer Nat Holt and 135 members of his Paramount crew (among others) — was staged The Great Train Wreck, the one-and-only live run of the largest head-on train collision ever filmed.
After nearly thirty hours of preparation and waiting two days for the sun to shine, two 70-year-old narrow-gauge engines and a string of boxcars loaded with 150 sticks of dynamite and 50 pounds of black powder exploded on impact. The Durango Herald-Democrat provides this first-hand account:
Director Byron Haskin gave the signal and the two small yellow engines and their three or four cars began to back slowly apart. They halted at their ‘points of no return,’ just outside the north and south boundaries of the 500-yard clearing in which the crash was to take place.
Exactly five minutes later, by synchronized watches, the trains moved forward. The engineer and fireman on each train shoved the throttles wide open and leaped.
The light engines gained speed rapidly. Five technicolor cameras mounted behind sturdy barricades picked them up as they entered the clearing and followed them across to Scrap Iron Junction.
The crash jarred the ground for several hundred yards as the roar of exploding dynamite and steam rebounded from the hiss. Pieces of wood and steel shot high in the air above the smoke, sliced like shrapnel through the tops of the trees and thudded like heavy hail over the entire clearing. One big piece of metal sailed over the heads of the cameramen and splashed in the Animas River. Another dropped within 15 feet of the watching group of railroad officials and their families more than 400 yards away.
After the explosion the roar of escaping steam was deafening. For several minutes the engines were nearly obscured by the steam and smoke. Then the steam died down and the blackened remains of the two little locomotives came into view.
Their boilers almost touching, they still stood proudly on the rails, though at least one of the cars had buckled and splintered in every direction.
Haskins gave the cameramen the signal to ‘cut’ and raised his clasped hands jubilantly in the sign of victory. Holt, a broad grin on his face walked out to inspect the wreckage. Screen stars Sterling Hayden, Dean Jagger, Edmond O’Brien, Laura Elliot and others stood chatting excitingly.
“Only a few men walked slowly away, their faces sad and a little pale,” continued the Herald-Democrat.
They were Judge Wilson McCarthy, president of the D&RG, and others who helped build and were now executives of the railroad. Although the valiant little engines were to be scrapped anyway, and the steel will aid the country’s defense effort, some of the heart of each railroad man present yesterday rode the tiny trains on their last run.
The train collision in The Denver and Rio Grande was not only the first ever filmed in Technicolor, it was also the first filmed in full scale, rather than miniature.
