Madrilanea
By Óscar Rus
April 1, 2019
The province of Madrid hosted during the sixties and
seventies the town of the West “Golden City”, where Clint Eastwood and Sergio
Leone filmed the legendary film “For a Fitful of Dollars”.
125 pesetas. That was the salary of Victorina Rosado
Chantal (93 years old) as a helper in western films recorded during the sixties
in Hoyo de Manzanares (Madrid). “For a Fistful of Dollars” and “Welcome, Father
Murray” which were filmed on the western set of Golden City, located in the
Cuenca Alta del Manzanares Regional Park; now they can be viewed in augmented
reality through the Vive Hoyo mobile application.
You could play "Where's Wally?" With Victorina
Rosado, because she did everything in front of and behind the cameras: from a
Mexican in “Gringo” to a singer in “Three Good Men”, she shot with stars like
Fernando Sancho, René Muñoz, Miguel del Castillo and Eduardo Fajardo. As head
chef, she remembers, she managed well with the Italians: "I did not go to
school and they said "Let Vitorina be used in this one!".
Her excellent appearance with almost 40 years, of
Filipino and French descent, took her even to Las Rozas, where she participated
in the recording of “55 days in Beijing”. "They took me every day and [the
girls] would go in black dresses because they asked for young people, and what
would I do?" She still remembers how the later stunt rider Manuel Vidrié
was a double on Clint Eastwood's horse.
Madrilánea
visited on Saturday, March 23, 2019 Victorina at her home in Hoyo de
Manzanares, where she showed photographs of herself as a helper on the western
films.
An Excel spreadsheet It is where Julián Iglesias (60
years old), of the HoyoCine Association, catalogs, for now, 89 titles of
westerns that were recorded in Hoyo de Manzanares during mainly the 1960s and 1970s.
Some that are missing need to be verified because sometimes there is confusion
with Manzanares el Real. Although Hoyo only appears three minutes in the
credits, it is enough to incorporate it into this list.
There are even erotic films like “The Girls in the Golden
Saloon” (1975), in which scenes of “The Sign of the Coyote” (1963) appear.
"Formerly the producers used scenes from other films," he clarifies.
Iglesias resembles the protagonist of the novel El hombre duplicado, by José Saramago:
he has been watching films over and over again for years, not to find himself,
but to locate the exact spot where they were filmed. Now he has the internet,
but before that he went to El Rastro in Madrid to buy films from the West.
Both Rosado and Iglesias came to Hoyo de Manzanares for
work. She, barely 4 years old and born in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, because
of her father's job. He, was 27 years old and of Cáceres, came to work in the
Academy of the Weapons of Engineers.
Julian Iglesias in the old location of “Golden City”
Iglesias, on Saturday, March 23, in the extinct sets of
“Golden City”. "I arrive at ten in the morning and they gave me till three
o'clock in the afternoon", he tells about his usual escapades. He not only
searches for the exact location of the scenes, but also objects such as beer
bottles or metal cleaners; sometimes he preserves the little that remains of
the fort, the tombs or a well.
“For a Fistful of Dollars” (Sergio Leone, 1964) is the
most famous production that was made in Hoyo de Manzanares; 90% of the footage
- Iglesias shows - was filmed there and in the vicinity of the Community of
Madrid as Aldea del Fresno. He explains that his shooting in "Almería is
four images ... but the theme is based on the town [Golden City]."
Other productions such as “The Pride and the Passion”
(1957), with Sophia Loren, Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra, are more difficult to
locate; although the newspaper library of ABC and the NO-DO confirm that it was
partially recorded in Hoyo and the neighboring Colmenar Viejo, "it is not
determined in what loaction it is".
The golden city
Golden City owes its name to the main stage of “The Terrible
Sheriff” (1962), the first film produced in Hoyo. Why there? “We have never
known the exact reason. The first shootings were intended to resemble a little
bit to the US-Mexico border; "For a Fistful of Dollars" is set there
with brick buildings and white houses, not purely Texas or Arizona."
This town of the West was born in 1962 as an idea of
the film producer Eduardo Manzanos; José Luis Galicia and Jaime Pérez Cubero
were in charge of its design. Although westerns had previously been shot in Madrid
and Spain, in Hoyo they boast of having housed "the first settlement of
the stable West" of the country. "There were simple facades, but a
high percentage of the buildings were complete, where you could shoot inside
and outside," says Julián Iglesias.
The cacereño divides the zone of the locations into three
parts: the town as such, the ranches and cabins, and a street that emulated the
city of Chicago plus a fort. The latter "was 30 × 30 meters with a 6-meter
palisade with complete interiors," he recalls. He has only located three
films in which it was used; the main one was “The Seventh Cavalry” (1965).
It is supposed that the "Chicago Street", of
100 meters and with buildings on both sides, served as the stage for seven or
eight feature films, but they have only managed to confirm two or three:
"They are gangster films and very bad." “In Times of Chicago” (1969),
about gangsters, Jesus Lopez appears, now known by his bus company. The deck of
a ship was built for films such as “The Corsair” (1970).
In 1962, the magazine Black
and White published a six-page graphic report on Golden City entitled “The
Far West in Madrid”. Its authors were Guillermo Bolín and Teodoro Naranjo. The
film producer Eduardo Manzanos is mentioned. At that time, the movie "The
Terrible Sheriff" had already finished shooting; "Riding to Death (El
Zorro)" was being recorded and they had two titles in preparation:
"The Implacable Three" and "Welcome, Father Murray," both
premiered in 1963.
For the remains
There are hardly any remains of Golden City: two watering
holes and a block of bricks hidden under the vegetation. Although out of view
you can find with a sharp eye, or by foot, spending hours and hours like
churches, more treasures will be discovered. “We have a "Sad Hill" in
Hoyo; I have discovered eight cemeteries and some with graves”, he states proudly.
Calculate 13 movies in which these cemeteries appear, including “A Fistful of Dollars”.
The main obstacle in finding the locations is the passage
of time: "In all the images, the land was totally desert. Any stone serves
as a reference, but now the junipers and the bush hide them”. At this moment he
is on the trail of a bottle of Mahou beer "superantigua" that he saw
days ago; also after a Roman film and “The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw” (1958). “I
still have much to discover”.
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