The cost of imitating nature on a man-made high, as Rawhide producer learned when he gave order a man-made geyser for the episode to be seen Friday (Nov. 6) on CBS-TV.
The geyser cost $15,000 to construct, $6,000 a minute to operate. To film one scene cost $24,000.
During the two weeks before filming, the show’s art director, engineers and laborers designed and built supply lines from a lake to the location site at Conejo Ranch in Southern California. The distance involved was eight miles.
The water was piped into huge boilers, heated to build up pressure and steam, then directed back into the ground so that it could spray out of concrete molds camouflaged to look like geyser spouts.
The Rawhide scene depicts an Indian torture in which a tribal traitor is spreadeagled over a geyser to be cleansed of his evil.
John Barrymore Jr., playing the traitor, nearly put too much realism into his role. He was burned slightly because he didn’t move fast enough when the geyser began erupting.
A further complication during the filming was the near-stampede of the show’s horses, unaccustomed to spouting geysers.
Said producer Charles Marquis Warren of the home-made geyser: “Well, we said Rawhide would be a ‘different’ Western.”
Caption
Below: Actors behold the finished product in action. Photo at left shows water-supply lines being prepared and concrete molds fashioned to resemble geyser spouts.
