Rowland V. Lee's importance in Hollywood went beyond his films
Lee also clearly had an eye for great locations!
Just as Rowland V. Lee's Son of Frankenstein is often overlooked as a classic, so too are the director's contributions underrated in terms of quality directorial output. Lee isn't as well-known as many of his peers. His filmography isn't written about with the same devoted fervor that his contemporaries commanded.
Lee's Count of Monte Cristo is truly one of the great adventure films of the '30s. So too is his Captain Kidd one of the most exciting high-seas films of the 1940s. Indeed, while Lee's Son of Frankenstein is assuredly his most renowned work, it's but one of more than fifty films the director made, leaving behind a legacy of multi-genre expertise.
However, Lee's résumé as a filmmaker wasn't his only worth to his Hollywood peers. In addition to directing movies, Lee also laid the literal groundwork for them, as he bought and refurbished a California ranch for use in later movies.
Ehsan Khosbakht of the Notes on Cinematograph blog explains:
One of the legends about him concerns his ranch. He owned a 214-acre movie ranch in the San Fernando Valley in California. He purchased the property in 1935 and called it Farm Lake Ranch, but the film industry knew it as the Rowland V. Lee Ranch. With its pale brown hills of barley chaff, olive and eucalyptus trees, and two scenic lakes, it was strangely seldom used for westerns.
Instead, Rowland V. Lee's property was seen in a wide range of other fare, such as a musical, a historical action film, and a Civil War drama.
For I’ve Always Loved You (1946), Republic Pictures built an extensive farmhouse and barn set. They also constructed a stone-and-wood bridge over one of the lakes, which was often photographed as a river. The farmhouse set would be adapted and modified over the years. RKO used it as a period French farmhouse for its modest swashbuckler At Sword’s Point (1952). Its most famous use was as an Indiana Quaker family farm during the Civil War in Allied Artists’ Friendly Persuasion (1956). To give it an “Indiana look,” director William Wyler had cornfields planted, sycamore trees brought in, and large areas covered with green grass. The wooden farmhouse was also given a fake stone façade."
While it might have been used more in genre pictures, this ranch was also notable for being featured in two bona fide Hollywood classics
You’ll also see the ranch used to great effect in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) and in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955).
When Rowland V. Lee passed away from a heart attack, his ranch was developed into a community called Hidden Lake Estates. Now, presumably, people pay to live on the very spot where Robert Mitchum gave us all the chills!
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