Gallup group promoting film production

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — A group of Gallup residents are seeking funds to entice Hollywood to consider this area for future movie production.

Lisa Rodriguez, a liaison for a Gallup group that promotes film production here, said the group plans to ask the state Legislature for $30,000 to help with the project.

But the group isn’t going the normal route of using the movie to promote Gallup to movie moguls or directors.

“We wanted to do something different,” Rodriguez said. Instead, they’re going after the ones who really have the power — location scouts.

These are the people, said Rodriguez, whom the movie studios and the directors go to for that perfect location to enhance their movies.

The $30,000 she said, will be used to create a multi-media DVD package that can be sent to location scouts promoting Gallup and the surrounding areas.

People who visit the El Rancho Hotel and look at the photos of movie stars who have been to Gallup in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s can see that Gallup at one time was a magnet for movie production.

That changed, however, after 1964, local historian Martin Link said.

That’s when Burt Lancaster and others came to Gallup to make “Hallelujah Trail,” a comedy-western that was filmed around Gallup with the crew making Gallup their headquarters.

While Gallupians were friendly and receptive to the movie stars and crew, the movie studios discovered that merchants in town had sharply raised their prices, trying to make as much of a profit from the studios as possible.

This gave the town a bad reputation in Hollywood, and for years studios refused to even consider coming back to Gallup, Link said.

Link said that the state tried to turn this around. He and Fred Patton, then head of the state department working with movie studios, put out a booklet promoting Gallup as a possible movie site. Some films began to be made here, but nowhere near the number in the 1930s and ’40s.

Rodriguez thinks times have changed and Gallup can once again be a movie mecca.

“Gallup is very much in the eyes of a lot of producers now,” she said.