09/02/2026
The "East Oregonian" 1967 "Flaming Frontier" interview with Ralph Shaw included photos that he had taken on the 1925 set. I used an A I program to render the half tones back into black and white photographs. At left, is Hoot Gibson and yes, he is wearing sun glasses in the original image--the cameras were not rolling in these informal snapshots. Upper right is actor Dustin Farnum as General Custer on the white horse and next to him on the dark mount is Tommy Grimes, also a Round Up steer roping champion who followed Hoot to Hollywood. At lower right in the center is Laura Kelly as a dance hall girl and at right is the local Ralph Shaw as a gambler and bad guy.
Ralph stated that Jim Sturgis gave him a job as a set carpenter knowing full well that he knew nothing about carpentry but needed a job. And the end of the set, in Ralph's words:
"The plot of the picture was that the gambler and renegades were selling guns and liquor to the Indians, and the U.S. Calvary told the bad guys to either quit, or they would burn the town and clean up all the renegades. That was the burning down of the town, and what a fire! The straw [in the set structures] was saturated with coal oil and it was lighted all at once. In a few minutes it was gone, complete; all that labor gone up in flames."
