Speak Your Piece: a podcast about Utah's history

The past is never truly “in the past.” It’s all around us, it informs us. It speaks to our shared and to our separate identities. “Speak Your Piece” is a podcast where contributors share their insights and discoveries about Utah's 12,000 year (plus) human story. Hosted by Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian (Utah Dept. of Culture & Community Engagement), and co produced by Chelsey Zamir, a new episode is released every other week, sometimes more, sometimes less. SYP explores the key arguments with new and worthwhile older publications, articles or websites; or delves into a notable museum, archival collection, archaeological report; or allows a respected writer, curator or historian to speak freely, sometimes about difficult history. SYP seeks to tell a history of Utah in a way you might not heard it before., told by the people who know it best: historians, writers, curators, archaeologists, rare book dealers, archivists, librarians and more. Speak Your Piece is recorded and engineered at the Utah State Library in Salt Lake City. Jason Powers is the sound and post-production engineer. The SYP logo is a photograph entitled "Canyonlands," taken by Utah outdoor photographer Al W. Morton, circa 1955, within the Canyonlands National Park (NPS). The lone man in the image is Kent Frost, looking over a series of needle rock formations located in San Juan County, Utah. The image and rights are owned by the Utah State Historical Society.

All Episodes

Speak Your Piece: a podcast about Utah's history

James D'Arc, Hollywood films made in Utah (Season 1, Ep. 5 - Part 2)

May 03, 2020 • Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian, Utah Dept. of Heritage & Arts

James D’Arc, while in his early 20s as a BYU undergrad in the mid-1970s, convinced Brigham Young University to collect and document America’s film industry. Not just motion picture related to Utah or Mormonism--which they also collected--but nearly everything to document this culture making and reflecting industry. This includes original motion pictures, music scores, film scripts, art work and storyboards, private manuscript collections, photography, you name it, even a couple of Oscars (award statuettes from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science).

Documenting America’s motion picture industry--from its early beginnings in New Jersey and California, to the end of the last century--was D’Arc’s life work. While working as a film archivist at BYU Perry Special Collections, D’Arc worked on advanced degrees, became an adjunct professor in the College of Arts & Communications, founded and directed a film music label, and was the motivation for BYU Lee Library building a two hundred seat theater to screen original 16mm and 30mm films. This series continues today, see: BYU Motion Picture Archive Series. At his retirement, D’Arc left behind arguably the largest, most historically significant collection of its kind, in the interior Western US.

In this episode, D’Arc explains how and why Utah influenced 20th century Hollywood; the Perry Brothers--Chauncey, Whit and Gronway—convincing filmmakers to come to Utah; film that documented landscapes long-since built over or altered beyond recognition (including Cedar Mountain and Duck Creek within the Dixie National Forest, Kanab, St. George, Utah Valley and Salt Lake City); early silent films made in Utah, copies recently found in Czechoslovakia and Russia; over a thousand films (feature film, TV series and documentaries) produced in Utah; first Hollywood “talking picture” made at Grafton, south of Zion National Park; Utah history related films (regarding polygamists, serial murderers and a convicted murderer executed after the 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision); how Utah’s Monument Valley--and other iconic Utah landscapes--became the world’s quintessential “Western” landscape; Irish-American film director John Ford’s love of Utah’s people and landscapes; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), filmed on Utah’s Virgin River; Footloose (1984) filmed in Utah Valley; the film industry impact on Utah’s economy; Utah’s 1947 official centennial film Ramrod (a smoldering western film noir the Utah legislature did not like); the 1956 film The Conqueror, filmed during atomic bomb testing; and finally, how hundreds of Utah Indians (mostly Navajo or Dené ) served as stand-ins for Plains Indians and 12th century Mongolians.