| Denver and Rio Grande | |
|---|---|
&sq=Qlik&lang=&file=File:Denver_and_Rio_Grande_VideoCover.jpeg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Byron Haskin |
| Written by | Frank Gruber |
| Produced by | Nat Holt Harry Templeton |
| Starring | Edmond O'Brien Sterling Hayden Kasey Rogers |
| Cinematography | Ray Rennahan |
| Edited by | Stanley E. Johnson |
| Music by | Paul Sawtell |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1.18 million (US rentals)[1] |
Denver and Rio Grande is a 1952 American Technicolor Western film, directed by Byron Haskin and released by Paramount Pictures. The film is a dramatization of the building of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, which was chartered in 1870. It was filmed in the summer of 1951 on location on actual D&RG track (now the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad)[N 1] near Durango, Colorado.[2]
The film's storyline is a fictional account based on two factual right-of-way struggles in 1878-1879 between the D&RG and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (here the Cañon City & San Juan RR [N 2]): across the Raton Pass from Trinidad, Colorado to Raton, New Mexico, where an armed confrontation actually took place, and the "Royal Gorge War" over a route between Cañon City and Leadville, Colorado."[2][N 3]
Filming began shortly after the release of Santa Fe, starring Randolph Scott. which interpreted the railroad war from the point of view of the AT&SF. Santa Fe, however, had been filmed in Prescott, Arizona, without access to the actual locations, and portrayed the D&RG as an honorable competitor. Both films followed an entirely fictional depiction in the 1950 western A Ticket to Tomahawk, which was shot on the same Silverton Line trackage as Denver and Rio Grande.[N 4]
Denver and Rio Grande features a spectacular head-on collision between two Denver and Rio Grande Western locomotives #319 and #345 (painted as the #268) that were slated for retirement and scrapping, filmed July 17, 1951.[2]
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