University of Nevada Press | Reno, Nevada 89557 USA
www.unpress.nevada.edu
Copyright 2017 by University of Nevada Press
All rights reserved
Photographs by Robin Holabird
Cover illustration by Jeff Rogers
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Holabird, Robin, 1954 author.
Title: Elvis, Marilyn, and the space aliens : icons on screen in Nevada / Robin Holabird.
Description: Reno : University of Nevada Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041580 (print) | LCCN 2016058633 (e-book) | ISBN 978-1-943859-24-5 (paperback) | ISBN 978-0-87417-465-6 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture industryNevada. | Motion picturesProduction and directionNevada. | TelevisionProduction and directionNevada. | NevadaIn motion pictures. | BISAC: PERFORMING ARTS / Film & Video / History & Criticism. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture.
Classification: LCC PN1993.5.U758 (print) | LCC PN1993.5.U758 H65 2017 (e-book) | DDC 384/.809793dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016058633
Manufactured in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
Like movies, books take the collaborative input of people. Elvis, Marilyn, and the Space Aliens benefitted with help from numerous quarters:
The Nevada Film Officedirectors Charlie Geocaris, Bob Hirsch, and Eric Preiss, along with an assortment of staff members, including Kristin Anderson, Tina Baldassare, David Cadwalleder, Jeanne Corcoran, Ed Harran, Eric Joseph, Carrie Keiser, Veronica Quarles, Mikki Reissman, Larry Rossi, and Julie Wilcox. Thanks for your help during the process of working with, interviewing, and photographing the people and places in this book.
The government officials who used their influence to help during my tenure at the Nevada Film OfficeGov. Richard Bryan (who created the office), Gov. Kenny Guinn, Gov. Bob Miller, Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren, Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, Reno Mayors Bob Cashell and Jeff Griffin, plus Reno city council member Sharon Zadra among them.
The Association of Film Commissioners, InternationalBill Lindstrom, Joe OKane, Leigh Von Der Esch, Barbara Shore, and my Lake Tahoe compatriots Kathleen Dodge and Beverly Lewis. Thanks for sharing ideas about bringing location filming to the community and for the opportunity to learn even more by writing for and editing Locations magazine.
The Nevada writing communitySteve Blust, Terri Farley, Forrest Hartman, Christine Kelly, Eric Moody, David Sundstrand, and, oh yes, my husband, Nevada Bottle Book author Fred Holabird. Thanks for advice, support, faith, and cheerleading.
The television program producers and filmmakers who bring their projects to Nevadathanks for your wisdom in recognizing Nevadas fabulous locations. And keep on working here!
Introduction
What do Elvis, Marilyn, and space aliens have in common? Theyre all pop culture icons with great scenes in Nevada movies. They make an odd combination, a fun connection I experienced during my twenty-one years as a government film commissioner. Despite the authoritarian-sounding commissioner title, my job involved creativity when I helped movie and television producers find Nevada locations for their projects. These projects brought jobs to the state and gave it lasting attention if icons joined the picturefamiliar names like James Bond, Rocky, Indiana Jones, and the Showgirls. Famous places work, tooArea 51, Bonanzas Ponderosa Ranch, the Mustang Ranch, Las Vegas, and Reno. They share Nevada links and fit the definition of icons as enduring symbols and objects of great attention and devotion. People love them.
The Nevada connection occurs in surprising ways, as I found just after the 9/11 attacks while sitting in a speeding subway train whooshing through Manhattan tunnels. Two teenagers squinted as they questioned the passenger to my right, a woman with short, cropped reddish hair.
Were you one of my teachers? a girl asked, focusing carefully on the womans friendly face. You look familiar.
Dressed elegantly in a dark pantsuit with an oriental motif, actress Rue McClanahan resembled the southern belle Blanche Devereaux she portrayed on The Golden Girls for seven years. Since Rue and Blanche spent time in my living roomat least on televisionI felt comfortable enough to join the conversation.
You werent my teacher, but thanks for your great work, I said, and Rue smiled. I continued, I really didnt expect to see someone like you on a subway.
Government workers from Nevada like me, sure, we travel cheaply on mass transit. But a classy actress carried the clout to demand limo service and special treatment.
Rue laughed and explained the subway got her out of the theater district faster than other options.
Im just so glad to be here, she continued, referring to the recent attacks that took down the Twin Towers.
Aboveground, smoke smoldered and puffed light gray against the night sky where the air took on a slightly sweet, rotting scent. But here in the subway tunnels, things felt close to normal. As always, dim lighting gave a surreal sense as tunnel walls rushed by in kaleidoscope forms. The air touched extra coolness on skin, possibly because fewer tourists traveled as passengers. People stayed away from Manhattan those first few weeks after the attacks, and Rue wondered if I was a local.
No, Im from Reno, I answered.
I figured Rue knew the small Sierra Nevada communitys name, and she might even remember its iconic arch proclaiming Reno the Biggest Little City in the World.
Reno, she cried excitedly. Thats in my play!
My eyes widened with hope. Reno, in a new play? This might impact me, because plays often turn into movies.
Whats the play? I asked.
Its The Women, she said proudly.
Of course! I said enthusiastically, but with a disappointed twinge. Experts already turned The Women into a 1939 movie, with a musical remake in 1956 (a non-Reno version followed later in 2008). The play and original movie made my hometown a divorce-linked icon with lines like Lets get Reno-vated.
So tell me, Rue asked conspiratorially. Do people still go to Reno to get divorced?
I stifled surprisedivorce happens everywhere these days.
Yet Reno and its iconic role as Divorce Capital of the World still lived on in this Manhattan subway train, influenced by both a play and a movie that audiences first saw more than fifty years ago.
This way that movies and television affect attitudes about Nevada hits me repeatedly. Projects shooting in the state provide immediate impact when producers spend millions of dollars by hiring crewmembers and paying for accommodations, locations, and other services. But these projects lingering effect comes from the images they portray, the way famous people and places connect in a wild, wonderful, and wacky world vastly different from Middle America.
Nevada blends beautifully with extreme and intense pop culture icons. Try Elvis Presley. Does he wear a white jumpsuit with sequins? That came in Las Vegas when he revitalized his career for concerts shown in Elvis: Thats the Way It Is. Or maybe you conjured the hot, skinny Elvis singing Viva Las Vegas, his deep voice throbbing harmoniously with neon lights in the movies title city. The iconic Marilyn Monroe hugs a tree in a classic poster made from a scene shot in the Nevada movie
