Last of Autry’s Melody Ranch Is Sold

Singing cowboy legend Gene Autry on Friday sold the last 10 acres of his Melody Ranch movie set in Santa Clarita--scene of countless shoot-outs in which bad guys lost to Western stars such as John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Roy Rogers and Gary Cooper. The film production company that bought the property has promised to restore and preserve it.

Realtor Steve Weston, who handled the sale, said the ranch sold for $975,000.

Over more than four decades, the ranch appeared in “Gunsmoke” and other Western TV series, as well as Saturday afternoon serials and such classics as “High Noon.”

Autry kept it for some years as a home for his horse Champion. He decided to sell after the horse died this year and was buried at the ranch.

“I wanted to find a buyer who would preserve it,” Weston said. He said the company that bought the property asked not to be identified until escrow closes in 30 days.

Autry, now 83 and owner of the California Angels baseball team and KMPC radio, could not be reached for comment. His secretary said he has been recuperating from eye surgery at his Studio City home.

But Weston said Autry and his wife, Jackie, are pleased that the ranch will be preserved.

Santa Clarita officials said they are happy that the few Western sets and buildings that remain on the ranch in the Placerita Canyon area will not be bulldozed and replaced by houses.

“I would have hated to have seen a housing development called something like Melody Acres or Autry Acres there,” said Jerry Reynolds of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society.

Autry made the first of his 93 feature films on the then 110-acre ranch in the 1930s when it belonged to Monogram Studios. He bought the property in 1952 after Monogram folded.

The cowboy star installed a miniature railroad to crisscross the many Western sets and buildings already on the property and continued to make his movies there. Among them were “Rancho Grande,” “Melody Ranch,” “Apache Country” and “On Top of Old Smokey,” which produced a million-selling record for Autry.

Other cowboy stars also made films at Melody Ranch--Rogers, Cooper, Wayne, William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy, and Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger. Most, like Autry, played modest and virtuous good guys who wore white hats, fought for law and order and almost never kissed the heroine.

“Joel McCrea made pictures out there, and Randolph Scott used it, John Wayne, and I guess just about everybody else sooner or later,” Autry said in a 1988 interview.

He said then that he planned to open the ranch to the public in 1962, when a spectacular fire destroyed $1 million worth of movie sets, including 54 buildings, and countless items from Autry’s collection of Western artifacts--stagecoaches, guns, Indian relics, Autry’s film wardrobe and 17,500 recordings.

The fire ended Autry’s dream of turning the ranch into a tourist attraction and he sold off all but the last 10 acres to developers. Weston said Autry kept that for Champion III, the third of his movie horses.

What remains of the ranch is not in the wide-open spaces of its heyday. It is now surrounded by upscale homes, some in the $1-million range.