Alamo History, Visitor Info, Pictures, & Much More
Alamo Village at Bracketville, Texas
By Richard Curilla
The following year, world famous director John Ford chose Alamo Village as the location for his Columbia picture "Two Rode Together." Designer Robert Peterson chose to follow Ybarra's lead of "wide, bright and friendly." He added a more Anglo-looking two-story hotel across from John Wayne's Cantina (by this time, Alamo Village's restaurant) and re-dubbed the town Tascosa.
In 1967, Alfred Sweeney, Jr., a 20th. Century-Fox art director, made an about-face with his very somber and claustrophobic "look" for "Bandolero!" In this Panavision production, the main street of Alamo Village which had looked so spacious in the first two movies suddenly felt cramped. Its buildings were compressed from foreground to background by longer (more telephoto) lenses. Dark earth-tones were chosen for all the walls. Plaster was removed from several buildings to reveal bare adobe brick to achieve a textured look. The glaring, white caliche streets were dug up and rutted and kept wet during filming to bring them into a photographic balance with the buildings.
This is where I entered the picture. This is where I learned to appreciate production design – and Alamo Village . One of the many tasks I was assigned as a member of Al Sweeney's art department was to go around the streets and cut foot paths through the grass to all the doorways. This gave the uninhabited sets of Alamo Village a lived-in look. Another job (slightly less desirable) was to take a crew of five men and a dump truck around the 22,000 acre Shahan Ranch and scrape every horse corral and cattle pen clean. They needed the manure to make more adobe bricks for the Mexican village of Sabinas which was being built in John Wayne's Alamo courtyard. I even helped tear down the flagpole mound where Duke overturned the Mexican lancer's horse (" Alamo " buffs forgive me). Trivia point: the caliche from the mound went into the adobe bricks to build the sheriff's office and jail down at the village.
Like so many reading this article I had gotten hooked on the story of the Alamo thanks to Walt Disney and John Wayne. After my rebound from the Davy Crockett craze of the fifties, I saw an item in TV Guide saying, "John Wayne finishes Alamo movie on location in Brackettville , Texas ." I was 13 and wrote a letter "to whom it may concern" at Brackettville, asking for photos of the set. A cool dude named Happy Shahan responded with a contact sheet of twelve photos and a colorful jumbo postcard. I learned that Happy was the rancher who had brought John Wayne to Texas and that the sets on Happy's ranch would remain standing for people to see. I kept up a constant correspondence with him, and – after I had seen "The Alamo" thirteen times in six months in Pennsylvania theaters – my dad and mom said, "Let's take the kid down there and get it out of his system." We visited in June of 1961, and I "endeared" myself to Happy Shahan by asking why his Alamo faced east instead of west like the real one.
Starting in 1965, doing gunfight skits at Alamo Village became my annual college summer job. Acting in these melodramas, and later directing them, dovetailed perfectly with my theater and film production major at Penn State . And the unbelievable opportunity in 1967 to stay and work on "Bandolero!" even dazzled my professors.
After graduating and spending another eleven years teaching production and running the department's film studio, I moved to Texas . In Dallas , I established G.T.T. Films (Gone To Texas) and, in 1988, moved my operation permanently to Alamo Village . Happy and I co-produced (and I wrote and directed) our first western "Travis Smith" in 1992, but our plan to make more films ended with his untimely illness and death. Since that time, I have continued to write screenplays, and together with Virginia Shahan (Happy's widow), produce videos. These include " Alamo ... The New Defenders," my 90-minute docudrama about the siege and battle of the Alamo . It centers around " Alamo 162," the incredible living history weekend re-enacted at Alamo Village , celebrating the 162nd Anniversary of the battle. (Note: This video is available through the Alamo Village Trading Post at 830-563-9768)
People often grumble about their day jobs, wishing they could do something more enjoyable. You won't hear that from me. Besides my own video production work and serious research on the Alamo , my "day job" is being set representative to motion pictures that film at the village. Over the years, this responsibility has allowed me to work directly with many of the folks I've admired, like Jimmy Stewart, James Garner, Sissy Spacek, Mary Stuart Masterson, Robert Duval, James Arness and Stacy Keach. In addition, my job has put me in position to visit with thousands of tourists from all over the world. What do we talk about? Westerns, movie-making, the Alamo , "The Alamo" – and now the 2004 version of The Alamo. What could be better?
Thanks to Virginia Shahan for the assistance in this article. To find out more information about the " Alamo Village " as well as rare photos and a full list of all productions shot there, please visit the "Alamo Village" website here!
Anybody who has seen John Wayne's "The Alamo" has already paid their first visit to Alamo Village , north of Brackettville, Texas. That should cover just about everybody viewing this site. Wayne filmed "The Alamo" in Todd-AO, which spread the sets constructed for the movie (now Alamo Village) over a giant, curved screen (40 feet by 100 feet) – wide, bright and airy. The production design concept of Wayne's art director Alfred Ybarra was to create clean, white-washed adobe buildings with a friendly powder blue trim around the doors and windows.
• View a 360° virtual tour of the Alamo Village!
(created by Bill Beckwith)
Wayne (L) stading behind fake horses. Photo submitted by Rich Curilla.
In 1967, Alfred Sweeney, Jr., a 20th. Century-Fox art director, made an about-face with his very somber and claustrophobic "look" for "Bandolero!" In this Panavision production, the main street of Alamo Village which had looked so spacious in the first two movies suddenly felt cramped. Its buildings were compressed from foreground to background by longer (more telephoto) lenses. Dark earth-tones were chosen for all the walls. Plaster was removed from several buildings to reveal bare adobe brick to achieve a textured look. The glaring, white caliche streets were dug up and rutted and kept wet during filming to bring them into a photographic balance with the buildings.
This is where I entered the picture. This is where I learned to appreciate production design – and Alamo Village . One of the many tasks I was assigned as a member of Al Sweeney's art department was to go around the streets and cut foot paths through the grass to all the doorways. This gave the uninhabited sets of Alamo Village a lived-in look. Another job (slightly less desirable) was to take a crew of five men and a dump truck around the 22,000 acre Shahan Ranch and scrape every horse corral and cattle pen clean. They needed the manure to make more adobe bricks for the Mexican village of Sabinas which was being built in John Wayne's Alamo courtyard. I even helped tear down the flagpole mound where Duke overturned the Mexican lancer's horse (" Alamo " buffs forgive me). Trivia point: the caliche from the mound went into the adobe bricks to build the sheriff's office and jail down at the village.
J.T. "Happy" Shahan in front of the Alamo.
Starting in 1965, doing gunfight skits at Alamo Village became my annual college summer job. Acting in these melodramas, and later directing them, dovetailed perfectly with my theater and film production major at Penn State . And the unbelievable opportunity in 1967 to stay and work on "Bandolero!" even dazzled my professors.
After graduating and spending another eleven years teaching production and running the department's film studio, I moved to Texas . In Dallas , I established G.T.T. Films (Gone To Texas) and, in 1988, moved my operation permanently to Alamo Village . Happy and I co-produced (and I wrote and directed) our first western "Travis Smith" in 1992, but our plan to make more films ended with his untimely illness and death. Since that time, I have continued to write screenplays, and together with Virginia Shahan (Happy's widow), produce videos. These include " Alamo ... The New Defenders," my 90-minute docudrama about the siege and battle of the Alamo . It centers around " Alamo 162," the incredible living history weekend re-enacted at Alamo Village , celebrating the 162nd Anniversary of the battle. (Note: This video is available through the Alamo Village Trading Post at 830-563-9768)
People often grumble about their day jobs, wishing they could do something more enjoyable. You won't hear that from me. Besides my own video production work and serious research on the Alamo , my "day job" is being set representative to motion pictures that film at the village. Over the years, this responsibility has allowed me to work directly with many of the folks I've admired, like Jimmy Stewart, James Garner, Sissy Spacek, Mary Stuart Masterson, Robert Duval, James Arness and Stacy Keach. In addition, my job has put me in position to visit with thousands of tourists from all over the world. What do we talk about? Westerns, movie-making, the Alamo , "The Alamo" – and now the 2004 version of The Alamo. What could be better?
Thanks to Virginia Shahan for the assistance in this article. To find out more information about the " Alamo Village " as well as rare photos and a full list of all productions shot there, please visit the "Alamo Village" website here!
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