A lighthearted musical. Two human skulls. How can these be connected? Thereby hangs a true tale, just right for telling on Halloween at midnight. Listen, my dear visitor, and you shall hear . . .
In 1952, MGM was producing the musical "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," a song-and-dance romp starring Jane Powell, Howard Keel, and Russ Tamblyn. Here's the plot of the movie: Seven brothers are living 'way at the back of beyond, up a narrow canyon. The oldest brother marries. In a nearby town live six unmarried young women, but bachelors are few. The six younger brothers get six other women up their canyon and then, SMASH! An avalanche thunders tons of snow across the mouth of the canyon, sealing them all in until spring snowmelt. There are protests and dust-ups, of course, but by spring, there are seven couples, eager for lives of domestic bliss. How wholesome!
In the 1950s, my father was (among other things) the "movie contact man" for Sun Valley ski resort. If a director needed a grove of tall trees at the bottom of a hill, Fath found it for him ("The Tall Men"). If the director needed an isolated non-franchise gas station surrounded by mountains, Fath found it ("Bus Stop"). If a woman had to fall from high rocks into the snow ("Storm Fear"), Fath knew just the right place. Fath knew the canyons and streams and towns and forests better than anyone I have ever known. He was a good contact man.
MGM needed an avalanche.
By the time the film crew came to Sun Valley, much of the indoor shooting on " Seven Brides" had been completed. The only outdoor scene that troubled was the avalanche, and it became Fath's task to find a place that would work, and get the Forest Service to agree to allowing MGM to set dynamite charges for the tumbling fall of snow. Fortunately, that year was a VERY snowy year at Sun Valley.
Fath found a place. North of Sun Valley, a dirt road twists steeply up the side of Trail Creek Canyon, topping out at 7,800 feet and continuing north toward Big Lost River. This road was not (and still is not) plowed in winter. From Sun Valley, the road is plowed only a mile north of the resort, to Trail Creek Cabin, a cozy place where catered parties and sleighrides are arranged. But several miles farther up Trail Creek Road, Fath knew, lay a steep and narrow side canyon, Corral Creek Canyon. He took a snow cat to investigate. (Of course, there were no snowmobiles in those days.) Yes, Corral Creek Canyon would be perfect, the film crew agreed when he returned with them. The Forest Service agreed.
Fath sent his snowgos and plows to Trail Creek Cabin to begin plowing. In two days, the plows had opened the snow-closed Trail Creek road seven more miles north, to the mouth of Corral Creek Canyon, where Fath had the plows turn off the main route (now invisible under feet of snow), and continue a mile or two up Corral Creek Canyon. Fath had them plow out a large "parking lot" area for all the movie vehicles and equipment. A narrow road had been plowed from the "parking lot" farther up the canyon so that men could get up there to set the dynamite charge and do the actual filming. At the end of this short stretch of road, the plows made small clearing so they could turn around to head back home. Fath surveyed the scene with the film crew the afternoon the plowing was finished. Yes. Corral Creek would be just fine.
The next day, there was traffic on the seven-mile stretch of snow-floored road from Trail Creek Cabin to Corral Creek for the first time in months: trucks and cars bore cameras, people, lights, wooden platforms, and enough tables, chairs, and food for all the participants. There was a great bustle in the cleared lot as equipment was set up, lights were plugged into generators, chairs were unfolded, and the director and his assistants walked slowly here and there, planning the shoot. Urns of coffee were set on the tables, and people cheerfully held the steaming mugs to warm their hands. It was cold. Every night for a week had been colder than 20 degrees below zero, and the days were freezing. The setup and dry run went well. I was a little girl then, and have a clear, sunny memory of Russ Tamblyn striding across a parking lot back at Sun Valley that week, his parka bright against the white and piled snow, his teeth gleaming in a big smile. Everything was going to be perfect.
Everything was perfect. The day dawned clear and bright, the sun flooding down the smooth, white slopes into the bottom of Trail Creek Canyon. The trucks and cars rolled on the white road to Corral Creek base. Finally, everything was ready. The dynamite was placed, people took their places, the cameras rolled, the director called, "Action," and BOOM! The canyonside seemed to jump with shock, then broke and swept down to the bottom of the canyon. Snow forty feet deep smothered the end of the road extension where Fath's snowplows had turned around. Captured forever on film was the avalanche. Everyone went home satisfied and full of strong coffee.
The MGM film crew left Sun Valley. The seven-mile road from Trail Creek Cabin to Corral Creek snowed and drifted shut. In spring, the piled snow of the avalanche melted and flowed into Corral Creek, into Trail Creek, and was gone.
"Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" came out, and was a hit. We watched it at the Sun Valley Opera House, and Fath whispered, "Look, there it is! There's the avalanche I set up. Gee, it looks small on film, doesn't it?"
"Seven Brides" passed from the theatres, and years passed Corral Creek Canyon. Summers came and went. Aspens greened up, turned gold, and dropped their leaves. Winters snowed and melted. I was now a teenager. There had been no more avalanches up Corral Creek Canyon.
At school, one of my friends was Thelma, and Thelma had two older brothers, Billy and Russell. Billy and Russell went deer hunting that fall. They walked up Corral Creek Canyon. What they found was not a deer, but a skull. A human skull.
Billy and Russell took the skull to the Sheriff. At school, we all thought Billy and Russell were extremely cool that fall, because the Sheriff and his deputies went back up Corral Creek Canyon and found another skull, and the widely scattered and fragmented bones of two men, and various remnants of clothing -- zippers, bits of cloth, buttons. Oddly, the clothing fragments were as scattered as the bones.
The Sheriff had dental records checked, and he found that the skulls belonged to two convicts who had escaped from the Utah State Penitentiary one freezing winter night. "Probably on their way to Canada," townspeople speculated. " The road over Trail Creek summit would look open on a map. Poor guys. How could they have known that the road is never plowed in the winter? Tried to get through and froze to death. Wild animals must have scattered the bones."
Do you understand yet what happened? That winter, the road over Trail Creek Summit was open, for seven miles, at least. For several days, there were crisp new tire marks on that road.
It was Fath who put it together years later. The Utah convicts escaped only days before the shooting of the avalanche. Fath figured that the two men were headed for Canada. Their most direct route would be north from Utah to Sun Valley, and continuing on the closest route to Canada would appear to be Trail Creek road, if all you had to guide you was a map. Fath thinks that the men hitchhiked to Sun Valley and continued north from Trail Creek Cabin on foot, hoping to catch a ride or even to stop someone and take a car, walking up the seven miles of plowed road and expecting it to continue on to the Big Lost country. The fresh car and truck tracks would show even in the moonlight.
But no cars and trucks came, and eventually the escapees reached the end of the road and wondered what to do for the night. Perhaps they spent a very chilly night huddled near the equipment left in the movie "parking lot." Or perhaps they reached the end of the road in the early morning.
With the morning sunlight came a convoy of moviemakers. Fath thinks the convicts may have retreated up the road to hide behind piled snow in the place where the snowplows turned around, planning to come out and walk back to Sun Valley and the main highway after dark. And then "Boom!" the avalanche buried them forty feet deep in snow, rending them limb from limb, and scattering their clothing and their bones. No one would find them until years later, when Billy and Russell decided to go deer hunting.
No one has ever called "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" a Halloween movie, but it is, and now you know why, gentle visitor. If spirits can transcend dimensions, perhaps the ghosts of the two convicts can be found on film, rising into the frosty air with the snowdust of the avalanche. This Halloween, why not rent "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," and see for yourself?
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