Old Tucson Studios - Chronology
Year |
The Studio |
| 1939 | Old Tucson Studios came to life in 1939 when Columbia Pictures chose a Pima County-owned site on which to build a replica of 1860's Tucson for the movie Arizona . The $2.5 million film, starring William Holden and Jean Arthur, set a new standard of realism for Hollywood westerns, initiating the move away from studio backdrop movies to outdoor epics. Local technicians and carpenters built the town from scratch, erecting more than 50 buildings in 40 days. Descendants of the Tohono O'odham, Arizona's first inhabitants formerly known as the Papago, assisted in the set production. Without the convenience of running water, they made more than 350,000 adobe bricks from the desert dirt to create authentic structures for the film. Many of those structures still stand today. |
| More coming soon | |
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