American Film Institute’s Greatest American Screen Legends list contains actors selected by more than 1,800 AFI members.

Here are the stars on that list who appeared in Oregon films.

Listed in order of their rank (on that particular list):

#3. Jimmy Stewart, in Bend In the River and Shenandoah.

#7 Clark Gable, who apprenticed on the Portland stage before hitting Hollywood.

#12 Gregory Peck, in MacKenna’s Gold.

#13 John Wayne, in The Big Trail, Stagecoach, and Rooster Cogburn.

#17 Kirk Douglas, in Indian Fighter and The Way West.

#21 Buster Keaton, in The General.

#22 Sidney Poitier, in All The Young Men.

#23 Robert Mitchum in Rachel and the Stranger, The Lusty Men and The Way West.

#25 William Holden, in Rachel and the Stranger.

#9. Marlene Dietrich (on AFI’s separate list for top female stars) , in Golden Earrings.

The most recent film on the above list, Rooster Cogburn, was made in 1975.

Three years after that, Penny Allen shot Property, using CETA funds to pay her crew. She may or may not have sensed she was launching a renaissance of Portland based independent filmmaking.

Seven years later, her sound man, Gus Van Sant, made Mala Noche, and Oregon film history no longer was confined to showcasing our strengths as the world’s largest and most scenic sound stage.

Not one of the cowboys in these Oregon Westerns came from Oregon. The closest thing Oregon has to a homegrown movie cowboy is Ringo Kid, Ernest Haycox’ fictional creation, played by John Wayne on the big screen.

Oregonians did lots of things in Hollywood. But not ride horses.

So who did?

J. Warren Kerrigan in The Covered Wagon (1923)

Hoot Gibson in The Flaming Frontier (1926)

John Wayne in The Big Trail (1930)

Eddie Cantor in Whoopee! (1930)

John Wayne in Stagecoach (1939)

Dana Andrews in Canyon Passage (1946)

Jimmy Stewart in Bend of the River (1952)

Robert Mitchum in The Lusty Men (1952)

Kirk Douglas in Indian Fighter (1955)

Jeff Chandler in Pillars of the Sky (1956)

Robert Mitchum in The Way West (1967)

Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon (1969)

Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif in MacKenna’s Gold (1969)

Photo credit: Anne Richardson. If you know where to look, you can make out the only traffic light in all of Wallowa County.

Most of The Way West was shot near Bend, but some of it was shot on the Mackenzie River, outside Eugene.

One morning in the woods outside Eugene…it was about seven o’clock in the morning and Bob (Mitchum) stumbles over to the set. It’s a real cold morning and he’s got an army fatigue jacket pulled up around his ears. His hair’s mess. He’s got on dark glasses and he’s not even sure where he is yet. And this guy runs up in his face yelling “Bob, I want you to meet the only lady sheriff in the state of Oregon!” And he pushes forth this fat little lady in her uniform.

And Bob takes a long pause to look at this woman, and he says “Glad to know you, Sheriff. Tell me something. Do you know anyplace around here a guy can go to get laid?” And oh God, they were shocked. The woman couldn’t believe her ears. “

from Baby I Don’t Care, a biography of Robert Mitchum, by Lee Server

Kirk Douglas heads across the plains to build a Utopia, but all he has to work with are marginal farmers, bankrupt businessmen, religious zealots, parolees, visionaries and con men, who are more prone to listen to Richard Widmark. Robert Mitchum attempts to guide them.

Not the right Western to start with, if you’re dubious about the genre. Start with the model they worked from, The Covered Wagon (1923) or my personal favorite, The Big Trail (1930).

Things To Know About The Way West

1. Sally Field’s first film role

2. Andrew McLaglen’s second Oregon film (after Shenandoah)

3. Kirk Douglas’ second Oregon film (after Indian Fighter)

4. Robert Mitchum’s third Oregon film (after Rachel and the Stranger and The Lusty Men)

5. Made the same year as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate.

The Way West was shot entirely in Oregon, an impeccable credential for qualifying as an Oregon film.

Number of 1950’s Oregon films casting Native American Oregonians as hostile Indians: 3

Bend Of The River (1952), Indian Fighter (1955), Tonka (1958)

Number of 1950’s Oregon films starring actors who are part Native American: 2

Robert Mitchum, Johnnie Ray

Number of 1950’s Oregon films directed by a Portland born non-Native American director who grew up surrounded by, and deeply influenced by, Native Americans: 1

Heaven and Earth Magic (1957), directed by Harry Smith

Sometimes, I think I ought to go back and do at least one thing really well. But again, indolence will probably cause me to hesitate about finding a place to start. Part of that indolence perhaps is due to shyness because I’m a natural hermit. I’ve been in constant motion of escape all my life. I never really found the right corner to hide in.

Robert Mitchum, overlooking his industrious side

Mitchum entered show business through the side door, via a job as a stagehand. This was during the “settling down” chapter of Mitchum’s life. Previous to that he was the drifter he later played on the big screen. At age 14, he was working on a chain gang in Georgia (great preparation for life in the studios). At age 29 he was nominated for an Oscar.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview where he discusses his creative involvement in The Lusty Men:

“(Producers) Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna — one or the other –would call me at the office and ask for ideas. So I gave them one — a modern Western. They reached into a drawer and came up with a title. They had titles to fit just about any type of movie. They were quite a team. One would walk up and down and cry while the other sat down to talk to you. Then they’d reverse. I always thought that the producer was The Producer. I didn’t know I was makin’ more money than they were and that if I sneak-talked to the boss (Howard Hughes), they’d be out. I didn’t know that, no shit. So Howard called me one day and said, ‘Bob, for God’s sake tell me you don’t want to do this picture so I can get this son-of-a-bitch Wald off my back.’ But I told him I wanted to do the picture. He asked, ‘Is the script that good?’ I told him we didn’t even have a script, but we’d whip one up. And I wanted Nick Ray to direct it.

“The next day Wald called me to tell me in hushed tones that ‘Howard’s OK’d the story and guess who we have as director? Nick Ray.’ Then he hired Niven Busch and the guy who wrote ‘They Shoot Horses,’ Horace McCoy, to do the writing. They were at opposite ends of the lot and they kept passing each other by. Finally they passed each other and went right out the gate. Nick and I , both stoned, worked out the script.

“So we get the picture finished and Wald had insisted on this ending that was impossible. We snuck into the editing room, made off with the end sequence and burned it. The production number was still active, so we went out and shot another ending, bang-bang-bang, like that. And Jerry Wald traveled to colleges around the county lecturing on the art of filmmaking.”

Which is by way of saying I was equally astonished to read in this Bright Lights essay about Robert Mitchum that Nicholas Ray credits Mitchum with writing scenes in The Lusty Men.

I don’t understand actors. What little I do understand about them tells me that maybe for both River Phoenix and Robert Mitchum these stories of wounded, transient men looking for a home may have been parables of the inner life of an actor, waiting by the phone, not really alive until he/she is in company with other players.

I am amazed to learn that Mitchum’s contribution to The Lusty Men included writing scenes.

Both My Own Private Idaho and The Lusty Men contain scenes shot in Eastern Oregon: Wasco County and Umatilla County, respectively.

I hereby  claim The Lusty Men as an Oregon film on the basis of its location shooting.

Rachel and the Stranger is about a woman purchased as a bondservant during Colonial times by a widower who wants his son to have a mother. An extremely peculiar picture! William Holden plays a man so distracted by grief he fails to notice his new wife is Loretta Young. Then Robert Mitchum comes along.

Rachel and the Stranger is a Western which takes place in the East. Its original title was Tall Dark Stranger.

I claim it as an Oregon film because it was shot here.

Loretta Young initiated this project, which was shot in Eugene.  Written by Waldo Salt, who later won an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, Rachel and the Stranger was a RKO box office hit.