Hey, Pardner: Cowboys of the Palisades

On a warm summer night in August, the Pacific Palisades Historical Society’s president Eric Dugdale gave a talk entitled “Cowboys of the Palisades.”
Surely it’s no surprise to many Palisadians, especially those who have lived here for a while, that cowboys, both real and of the celluloid variety, are an integral part of our town’s history, going back 180 years when the Mexican vaqueros roamed the area. Some of the first Cowboy-and-Indian movies were filmed here, and no cowboy is more famous than Will Rogers, whose ranch and namesake beach has been enjoyed by generations of people.
Dugdale, whose family moved here in the early 1950s, is an expert in most things relating to Pacific Palisades. His criteria for including people in his slideshow talk were that the person had to have lived in the Palisades at some time and was an authentic cowboy or portrayed one in film or television. His list now numbers over 70.
Certain well-known actors appeared in Westerns at one point, such as Dom DeLuise (“Blazing Saddles”), Walter Matthau (“Ride a Crooked Trail”), Billy Crystal (“City Slickers”), Frank Sinatra (“Johnny Concho”), Steve McQueen (“Nevada Smith”), and Carroll O’Connor (“Death of a Gunfighter”), forever linked as Archie Bunker in “All In the Family.”
Other Palisadians who acted in Westerns during their careers include Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck, Mel Blanc (the voice of Yosemite Sam), Eddie Albert, Dale Robertson, Joseph Cotten, John Forsythe, James Caan, William Schallert, Bert Convy, Jerry Lewis, Fernando Lamas, Martin Short, Chevy Chase, Kirk Russell, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks (Woody in “Toy Story”), Ray Liotta, John Forsythe, Bo Svenson, Peter Fonda, Brad Pitt, Dennis Quaid, Paul Fix (who starred in 77 Westerns), Adam West and a certain actor-turned-governor-turned two-term president.
Well before Pacific Palisades was incorporated in 1922, Thomas Ince began directing 10-minute films at his Inceville Studio, built where Vons now stands, at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset. Inceville encompassed a post office and an elementary school, “and went essentially seven miles up the canyon. Four thousand people lived in and out of there,” Dugdale says. Stables housed horses and a year-round creek provided water.
Hundreds of real cowboys and real Indians, most of whom lived at Inceville, were cast in Ince’s short, and eventually full-length, films, and cowboys were also hired as security guards. “Ince became blood brothers with a chief,” Dugdale says, and one Indian student at the school eventually continued his education at Harvard. Directors D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett also made films there, and were partners with Ince in the Triangle Film Corporation.
Actor William S. Hart, Ince’s good friend, appeared in dozens of Ince’s films and lived in pre-Palisades. He bought the studio in 1916 and renamed it Hartville.
The SRF Lake Shrine on Sunset also has roots in the movies. “A Fox movie executive was searching for locations” in the 1940s, Dugdale says, “and dredged the land and turned it into a real lake. He even brought his own houseboat all the way from Lake Mead, and that houseboat is still there. SRF founder Paramahansa Yogananda stayed there while they were developing the area. The same executive built the windmill.”

Dugdale’s father, Eric W., was an early member of the SRF church, and this brought the family to Pacific Palisades.
“My dad was from England and was a builder,” Dugdale says. “He came to the Palisades, opened an office” and built and remodeled homes throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
“The place that is now [CVS] used to be Joe Cleary’s Lumber Yard and Joe was a friend of my dad’s.” This is where Eric W. met Ronald Reagan and James Arness, eventually working for both men.
“He did a remodel for Reagan,” Dugdale says. “In real life, Reagan was quite a gentle spirit. He was always very detailed with my dad on the contract, but he was kind and friendly, and a nice guy. My dad built a drop-down TV that came out of the ceiling” at Reagan’s San Onofre Drive home. Reagan appeared in many Westerns, including “Cowboy from Brooklyn,” and had a working ranch in Santa Barbara.
James Arness was best known as Sheriff Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke,” but earlier he was John Wayne’s double, and Eric W. remodeled his Riviera house.
“When I was about 10 or 11, I used to go over there and work with my dad,” Dugdale recalls. “I got to be friends with Arness’s son, Rolfe. We were the same age. He ended up being a surf champion.
“James Arness was a nice man, kind of shy and unassuming. One day my dad,  Rolfe and I were at a market out of the area and Arness was just wearing normal clothes, not dressed up like Matt Dillon. People were walking up to him and saying, ‘Matt Dillon, where’s Kitty?’ I looked at him and I said, ‘Don’t these people know that you aren’t Matt Dillon?’ and he kind of got this sad look. ‘No, they really don’t. They think I am, and I really have to be.’”
Arness’s brother, Peter Graves, another actor known for his work in Westerns (including “The Virginian”), lived in Santa Monica Canyon, where his widow, Joan, still resides.
“Francis X. Bushman’s house was two doors down from our house on Hartzell,” Dugdale says. “He was a real heartthrob, a little bit of a bodybuilder and had this incredible physique. He did several Westerns, but he was more of a romantic, powerful leading man.” His grandson, Pat Conway, grew up on a 125-acre ranch in the Palisades and was best known for playing Sheriff Clay Hollister on television’s “Tombstone Territory.”
During his slideshow, Dugdale noted that he “wanted to include some women cowboys, some Mexican cowboys and some black cowboys,” and he does, though the list is small: Bill Cosby, Mae West, Caesar Romero and a smattering of others.
“Westerns come in and out of vogue,” he says. “They were so important at the beginning. There was still a lot of nostalgia that we didn’t have a Wild West. A lot of our myths about America are ‘Go West.’ Once we had reached the end of the continent, we kind of yearned for that idea of a frontier. That’s what Westerns did, they revived that.”
James Garner (“Maverick”) elicits a warm reaction when his picture comes up in the slideshow. “There are quite a few people who think that this guy is quite the heartthrob,” Dugdale says. “You can hear the little sighs in the audience.”
Clint Eastwood (“Rawhide”) spent time in the Palisades as a teenager, when his dad managed the Standard gas station, which occupied the spot on Sunset and PCH where the Chevron station now stands.
Leo Carrillo, whose father was Santa Monica’s first mayor, made his mark playing the sidekick Pancho in the television series “The Cisco Kid.” Will Rogers, Jr. portrayed his dad in “The Story of Will Rogers.”
Richard Boone and Lee Marvin (who were both in “Have Gun Will Travel”) were two hard-living actors who liked their alcohol. Dugdale says they both frequented the Wing Ding Room at the House of Lee on Sunset, where they ate, drank, became quite merry and at times got into heated arguments.
“No tree was safe along Sunset” after Boone and Marvin were ready to drive home after a night of drinking.
Dugdale even tracked down a vintage video of John Wayne urging people to watch the first episode of “Gunsmoke.” “It’s honest, it’s adult, it’s realistic,” Wayne said.
As president of the Historical Society, Dugdale strives to get youngsters interested in the history of their town, and even gives a yearly scholarship to a Palisades High School student who plans on studying history in college. He enjoys showing Canyon School kids old pictures, and he especially likes seeing their excited, enthusiastic reactions when they recognize one of their school’s buildings—the library, which served as the original schoolhouse and was built around 1894.
The Historical Society has some young members, but is always looking for more youth. The yearly membership dues are $20. Visit: pacificpalisadeshistory.org.
Though Dugdale went to Taft High School because his family lived in Topanga at the time, his sister Annette Alexakis attended Pali Elementary, Paul Revere and PaliHi, and her two sons, Chris and James, also grew up here. Chris was voted Mr. Palisades several years ago. Dugdale studied anthropology and philosophy at UC Santa Barbara and his mother, Charlotte, ran a medical lab in Santa Monica for many years.