‘Alamo,’ other film props are up for sale
Film set liquidating 2,400 pieces used in movies, TV shows
SAN ANTONIO — Wanna buy a cardboard cutout of John Wayne? How about a chuckwagon? They are among about 2,400 props, antiques, artifacts, toys and trinkets on sale this weekend at Alamo Village, the set of John Wayne’s epic 1960 movie “The Alamo” and other films and television shows.
Although the sale appears to signal a further decline in activity at the set for film production and tourism, the person in charge of the sale would not speculate on the site’s future.
The mock-up Old West town is part of a family ranch 120 miles west of San Antonio where raising cattle and hunting are the main activities.
Tourists not allowed
Joanie Sellers Edwards, owner of the Nest Estate Sale Services, cautioned that fans of Wayne’s Academy Best Picture-nominated film on the 1836 siege and battle in San Antonio will not find prop guns, swords and uniforms from the movie. But there are some unsigned set photos, a ladder, table, cart and some books and pottery.
“On movie sets, they would rent wagons and other props and return them. So when John Wayne’s company, Batjac Productions, made ‘The Alamo,’ they rented everything from Hollywood, then sent it all back,” said Edwards, whose Weatherford company is handling the sale for the Dallas-area family that owns the ranch.
All the items will have prices and be sold on a first-come, firstserved basis from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Prospective buyers are asked to register with the company by email or via a “Liquidation of Alamo Village” Facebook page. The set and its buildings are not part of the sale.
“We don’t want tourists coming out,” said Edwards, who expected more than 1,000 artists, collectors and other prospective buyers.
Scripts from the 1989 television miniseries “Lonesome Dove” and other productions filmed on the set near Brackettville will be on sale. Items were priced on their apparent face value. There’s no documentation on their film use.
“There’s no paper trail that says this wagon was used in ‘Lonesome Dove’,” Edwards said.
Some things, including jewelry and 80 pairs of moccasins, will be sold in lots. The sale list includes Alamo Village T-shirts, church pews, toys, display cases, belt buckles, cannon replicas, antique keys, spurs and guns, and the late family matriarch Virginia Shahan’s collection of Native American arrowheads, spear tips and stone tools.
‘It hurts to watch’
Richard Curilla, the site’s historian, creative director and production liaison, said it will be sad to see the props leave, since he helped production companies arrange to have many of them built. The 500-acre set has accommodated about 40 major film and TV productions and hundreds of commercials, documentaries and music videos.
It was open to the public for decades, hosting hayrides, weddings, staged gunfights and other family-oriented activities, but has been closed since 2010.
“I understand the need of the family to liquidate, but it really hurts to watch,” said Curilla, who began working there full-time in 1988.
The last major movie shot there was “The Man who Came Back,” released in 2008. Last year, a crew spent a few days there shooting “Cruzado,” an independent film set in Texas in 1883.
Rancher James T. “Happy” Shahan persuaded Wayne in the 1950s to film his directorial debut on the 18,000-acre ranch. Both chose sturdy materials to create a durable set during a two-year construction, with jails, saloons, a bank and other structures common to a frontier town, along with a replica of the mission-era Alamo church as it appeared in 1836. The IMAX movie, “Alamo … The Price of Freedom,” was shot there in 1987.
Wayne’s movie has been criticized for inaccurately depicting the early morning Alamo battle as a daytime conflict, on a set that looked more like an arid western town than the lush Spanish colonial village of San Antonio. It popularized the 1836 siege and battle, building on a following forged by the 1955 Disney film, “Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier.”
James Shahan died in 1996, passing the site on to his wife, Virginia, who died in 2009, leaving it to her daughter, Jamie Rains. A Corpus Christi businessman had hoped in recent years to raise $8 million to buy the site and upgrade it as an Old West theme park, but was unable to secure financing.