Lone Pine Movie Locations: King of the Khyber Rifles (1953) and Ride Lonesome (1959)

In my last Lone Pine locations post, on HELL BENT FOR LEATHER (1960), I shared photos of Gary Cooper Rock, an overhanging rock which is well known to Lone Pine regulars.

It's seen in the center of this photo:

Just up the hiking trail as one moves to the right, looking at the above photo, are two more significant movie sites. The first is for Tyrone Power's KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES (1953).

A few years ago I shared a view of the movie's opening battle site which was filmed along Whitney Portal Road, high over the Alabama Hills. Above we have the spot where the closing battle scene was filmed.

This movie has oddly not been released in the U.S. on DVD or Blu-ray, so we'll have to make do with a couple poor quality screen caps of the soldiers led by Tyrone Power jumping off rocks onto tents at the villains' encampment:

To this day one can still see where the tents were bolted to the rocks seven decades ago.

Further up the path, only steps away, is the campsite where Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) captures Billy John (James Best) in the opening sequence of Budd Boetticher's RIDE LONESOME (1959).

Scott walks up through here to approach the campsite, which is just to the right of this view.

Here's a panoramic shot with the path where Scott approaches at the left and Billy John's campsite in the elevated area to the right:

And a closeup of the campsite...

...and a shot of how it looks when Brigade approaches Billy John in the film:

We also took long-range shots of the station location in RIDE LONESOME, which is in view of Richard Boone's camp in Boetticher and Scott's THE TALL T (1957). Those spots are also not far from the station where Tyrone Power worked in RAWHIDE (1951). I'll be sharing those photos in a future post.

Lots more Lone Pine location photos to come!

Tweet