The Sedona Heritage Museum will host its third annual Chuck Wagon Dinner and Movie fundraiser on Saturday, April 12. The doors open at 4:30 p.m. with the meal being served at 5 p.m. At 5:30 p.m. there will be a screening of John Wayne’s locally-shot 1947 movie “Angel and the Badman.” The historic Telegraph Office at SHM made its debut in the film.
“Wayne stars as Quirt Evans, a notorious gunfighter who’s wounded and sheltered by a Quaker family,” the film’s Amazon description stated. “Attracted to the family’s angelic daughter, the hardbitten Wayne undergoes a slow and subtle character transformation, but is still obsessed with killing Laredo Stevens [Bruce Cabot], the man who murdered his foster father.”
SHM Executive Director Nate Meyers said that the event is likely to sell out and 60 tickets are available. Meyers will give a short talk on the movie’s local history before the screening.
“It wasn’t the first film shot in Sedona; they started making movies here in 1923,” Meyers said. “But it wasn’t until 1946 that they filmed ‘Angel and the Badman.’ While it wasn’t even the first time a major movie star worked in Sedona, it was the first time John Wayne came to town, which was a big deal. It was also the first film he both starred in and produced, making it a landmark in his career.”
The production of “Angel and the Badman” marked a significant moment for both Wayne’s professional career and Sedona, and helped to further cement Sedona’s reputation as a Western filmmaking hub.
“Wayne reportedly selected ‘Angel and the Badman’ — originally titled ‘The Gun’ — as his first producing venture because he found its offbeat story of an outlaw’s love and redemption an unusual one, yet still in line with the type of cowboy drama that made him famous,” Joe McNeill’s 2010 book ‘Arizona’s Little Hollywood’ stated. “‘The Gun’ was written by James Edward Grant, a former Chicago newspaperman whom Wayne first met in the early 1940s. Grant arrived in Hollywood in 1935 when MGM hired him to adapt his novel ‘Whipsaw’ into a film. Grant developed a steady career as a scriptwriter, known for giving more dialogue than was usual for supporting actors, which was fine with Wayne. ‘I don’t act,’ he said on more than one occasion; ‘I react.’”
The meal will be prepared by award-winning chuck wagon cook Bill Cowan and his fellow “cookies” in cast iron over open flames. The menu will be posted on the SHM website prior to the event.
Fans of the Golden Age of Westerns will also have the opportunity to support SHM during the National Day of the Cowboy with a to-be-announced film screening at the Sedona International Film Festival on Saturday, July 26.
Tickets for the fundraiser are $35 and are available under the “Upcoming Events” link on sedonamuseum.org. For more information, call (928) 282-7038.
