Elaborate Outdoor Set Burned In Use

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21819, 23 November 1940, Page 10

Elaborate Outdoor Set Burned In Use

The most elaborate outdoor set ever built for a motion picture will never be pointed out as an interesting landmark because it was built to be burned to the ground and completely destroyed. It is the Indian village of St. Francis, erected for use in “Northwest Passage,” the technicolour adventure picture starring Spencer Tracy, with Robert Young and Walter Brennan. Comprising 125 buildings, complete inside and out without a false wall anywhere, it covered 10 acres cut out of virgin forest. In completeness and size, it exceeded even the sets built for “Intolerance” and “Ben Hur.” The centre of the village was occupied by a stockaded log fortress. Log cabins, tepees, hogans, birchbark huts, granaries, and huts of brush, wattle, mud and stone comprised the remainder of the buildings. The felled timber was used to build the fort and log cabins and every detail was accurate to the smallest peg. Because the charred interiors of every building had to be visible after Roger’s Rangers had set fire to them, it was necessary that every wall be finished from ground to roof. Forty thousand feet of copper tubing was laid underground and petrol driven through it by two compressors. Thus every unit was certain of igniting. From a 70ft. tower built like an oil rig behind the village, field telephones instructed men in dugouts below what sections to fire and what to control. The scene shows the Rangers tossing flaming torches on to the roofs and against the walls. But the petrol was necessary to insure a rapid conflagration. The firing of the petrol was done electrically from a keyboard on the tower. The day before the scene was shot in which Major Robert Rogers and his band of 200 Rangers wipe out the Abenaki warriors who have been raiding the New England villages, 2362 Indians had arrived. It was particularly impressed upon them that the scene could probably be shot only once due to the burning of the set, that everything therefore had to be exactly right the first time, that they must

not laugh no matter how much fun it seemed to be running around in warpaint and with tomahawks and rifles. The Rangers, led by Spencer Tracy as Major Rogers, with Robert Young. Walter Brennan, Donald Mcßride and Addison Richards in the van, swooped down at dawn upon the sleeping village. Torches flew and roofs blazed. Indians stumbled bewildered out of their doors, ran back to get their guns and possessions. The war drum’s beat began. A flash and a roar from the citadel showed that its brass cannon had been swivelled around and turned upon its sleeping inmates. Tomahawks met tomahawks and bayonets in hand-to-hand encounter. Rifles crackled as the blaze from the village grew higher. Now, with every Indian fighting and the huts emptied, gasoline was pouring through the brass pipes and roofs and walls were collapsing with a vicious roar. What had been the most elaborate set ever built was now a charred ruin. Not an Indian or Ranger had bungled his part. Better still, except for bruises, scratches and superficial cuts, not an actor was hurt, thanks to the perfect control of the fire.