My aunt worked in the Publicity Department for Monogram Pictures (later Allied Artists) and called one day to inform us that we would be allowed to visit the set of a Johnny Mack Brown Western being filmed at the Iverson's Ranch in the familiar rock-strewn hills above Chatsworth, California. I don't know how we found the ranch, but we did; and after driving over many insert roads, through the famous Iverson's Garden of the Gods, and past several outlaw shacks, we came across the Monogram movie company at the now long-gone Iverson's Western street. The photos that follow were taken that day.
 | My brother Bob and me with Johnny Mack Brown at the old lower Iverson Western Street. |
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| It was 1951, I was all of eight-years-old when I stepped out of our 1946 Packard
Clipper with my little brother, Bobby, at my side--both of us dressed in our
spiffy cowboy outfits. It never occurred to me that I was putting my young
boot-covered feet on what would become hallowed ground for us B-Western
fans--the dust and tumbleweed covered soil of the Iverson Ranch. |
Johnny Mack Brown at the saloon.
A group of actors talking on the set. From left to right: Unidentified, Danny Sands (stuntman), Marshal Reed (playing the lead heavy, with his back to the camera), more unidentified and I. Stanford Jolley sitting on the porch. I was too young to know who these guys were, just lucky they were in costume. I loved all cowboys, good-guys and bad-guys.
For years I thought this was Roy Barcroft. Now I have learned his name is Frank Ellis.
Lee Roberts, another heavy. My mother, brother, and myself were quite surprised at how nice the bad-guys turned out to be.
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