People are searching for Wonder Valley.
The 73-minute film -- believed to be the first motion picture shot entirely in Arkansas -- is lost. No viewable copies are known to exist.
Wonder Valley was filmed in color over a six-week period in late 1951 in Cave Springs and Springdale. It starred Gloria Jean, Lance Devro, John Fontaine and Walter Kingsford. It also included a cameo by Arkansas Gov. Sid McMath, playing himself.
When cans of the last known reels of 35mm film of Wonder Valley were opened in 2005, it was as if the images had faded off the film.
"When we opened the cans, the film was badly decomposed," said Jan MacGillivray, a biographer of Gloria Jean. "The images on the emulsion were totally illegible. It was heartbreaking, but we never say never, because films turn up in the oddest places."
Wonder Valley was a cinematic climax in the history of Cave Springs, a Benton County town with 267 residents when the film was made and about 1,729 now. But without the actual movie to show subsequent generations, memories are fading.
Eddie Shores of Cave Springs was about 10 when he was an extra in Wonder Valley. He was among half a dozen kids playing in a Ford convertible when the shifter slipped into neutral and the car rolled down a hill into a shed.
"They filmed the car rolling down the hill and us getting out of the wreck," Shores said. "As I remember, the door came open, and I was laying across the door."
Shores remembers watching the movie when it played at the Plaza Theater in Bentonville after its release in December 1953.
Wonder Valley was made by Viva Ruth Liles of Russellville through Liles Wonder State Motion Pictures Inc.
Liles told people she was in the oil business before becoming a movie producer. She died in Russellville in 2003.
Liles went to Northwest Arkansas to make her movie after deciding against Russellville. Before and during the filming, she tried to get the local business community to invest in the film, but the response was tepid.
At about the time filming wrapped, actors left Arkansas saying they hadn't been paid, and Liles' company soon filed for bankruptcy. The film had been basically shot by then, but scenes planned for Fayetteville, Hot Springs and Little Rock were scrapped.
Liles produced the movie two years later, but just how broadly it was distributed is difficult to ascertain, said Marie Demeroukas, a photo archivist and research librarian with the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale.
Newspaper articles document the filming of Wonder Valley, and there's anecdotal evidence that it played in theaters in Arkansas and California. Liles' sister told a trade magazine that it had a "national distribution."
"There's just not a lot of information out there," Demeroukas said.
The museum began showing an exhibit last week about movies that have been filmed in Northwest Arkansas. Wonder Valley was represented by three black-and-white photographs and the sheet music to a song called "Beautiful Arkansas," which was used in the film. The photos will remain up until December.
Demeroukas said she found the movie poster online. And there are 10 photographs of McMath filming his lines with Devro sitting next to him in a fish-fry scene. The pictures are among McMath's papers in the special collections department of the University of Arkansas Libraries in Fayetteville.
Arkansas and Benton County preservationists have searched the Internet for years, trying to find a copy of the film. It's a part of Arkansas history that seems lost to its era.
Jan MacGillivray said Wonder Valley was special to her because it was the only color movie starring Gloria Jean.
On their website, gloriajeansings.com, Jan and Scott MacGillivray, the authors of Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven, describe Wonder Valley as an "independently produced valentine to Arkansas."
Gloria Jean said she remembers Arkansas fondly from 1951.
"I certainly do remember Wonder Valley," the 89-year-old actress said via email from her home in Hawaii. "I loved Arkansas.
"I was impressed how very friendly and wonderful the people were that was a part of Wonder Valley."
Gloria Jean, whose real name was Gloria Jean Schoonover, had been a child star since 1939's The Under-Pup.
Wonder Valley was a bit of a family affair for Liles. Her two children had roles in the film. A few years later, she sued their aunt for custody, claiming the kids were "uranium heirs."
Their father, Harry C. Liles, who died in a plane crash in Colorado, reportedly "left fabulous uranium claims," according to a July 21, 1956, article in the San Bernardino County Sun of California.
Shores said Liles was using the film as a vehicle to try to make movie stars out of her children, Mirna Ruth and Gary Kent Liles.
"I think she spent every penny she had trying to make this film," Shores said.
At one point, Viva Ruth Liles, who was living in Russellville, had a viewable copy of the film and loaned it to Cave Springs for a homecoming event.
The movie was projected at the Plaza Theater in Bentonville, just as it was after its release in 1953. Shores said he doesn't remember what year the film was shown for the second time in Bentonville, but it was at least 25 years ago.
That was apparently the same copy of the film that the MacGillivrays opened in 2005. They said it came from the producer's estate. But by then, the images were gone.
Demeroukas described Wonder Valley, based on her research, in the museum's May newsletter: "Initially titled Seven Wonders, the film told the story of the widow Wonder, her seven children, and their 'fight to modernize the valley farm' through electricity."
The screenplay was overly complicated, featuring young love, rivalry, stolen money and tragedy, wrote Demeroukas.
Glenn Jones of Lowell remembers watching the filming of the fish-fry scene when he was 11 years old. Jones said his grandparents -- Orville R. and Minnie McDaniel Jones -- took him to Cave Springs that day.
Most of the filming took place on a farm on Arkansas 264, also known as Healing Springs Road.
"When they announced the filming of this, my grandmother got really excited," said Jones, who is chairman of the Benton County Historical Preservation Commission. "For somebody born in 1892, she couldn't imagine a film being done here."
Jones said he quickly got bored with the filming and began wandering around. Then, during a break, Fontaine, Devro and Gloria Jean walked up to him and started talking. They signed a postcard for him that day in 1951.
Jones said he kept that postcard all these years. He decided to retrieve it from the attic so he could loan it to the Shiloh Museum for the exhibit. But, like so many things connected to Wonder Valley, when Jones went to get the postcard, it was nowhere to be found.
Metro on 05/26/2015