Stoneleigh and the Film Industry
As I mentioned in a previous post, Oliver Stone (shown above) used the Stoneleigh as his base of operations for producing his films “Quiz Show”, “Born On the Fourth of July”, and “JFK”. However, how did the Stoneleigh become associated with the film industry? After having spoken with Gary Bruton, the General Manager of the hotel while Mr. Stone was staying at the hotel, I learned more. Here’s a snapshot from our conversation:
D: I’ve come to find out that over the years a wide variety of famous folks have stopped by the Stoneleigh, including Elvis, Margo Jones, and Oliver Stone. Did you have any experience with this sort of clientele while you were there?
G: We actually started going after the motion picture business. I was approached by a Mr. Jaffe from the North Texas Film Commission, who wanted to film a shoot in Dallas and he wanted to use the hotel for his base. The movie was a made for TV production, and afterwards he came into my office and expressed to me that he thought that the hotel’s great location, history, and service would make it an ideal spot for filming productions. So, he said he’d like to come in and make the hotel ready for future film companies at his expense. They agreed to put in the power in the parking lot and set it up so that we could accommodate wardrobe trailers, catering trucks, and such.
It looked like a good opportunity so we basically allowed them to do that. So, Jaffe went through with the actual production, and from that point on, word began to spread back on the West Coast that there was this facility in Dallas that was very user-friendly for motion picture productions.
We would take the second and third floor and convert those to production offices, and as we did a couple more, the big one that came along was Oliver Stone, who was filming Talk Radio at the time. So, his first production at the Stoneleigh was “Talk Radio”, and he said he will probably back this up with a second shot being “Born on the Fourth of July”. They moved in the Spring of that year and were there a long time, with back-to-back productions
When a scout would come in, we would work with the with the DFW Film Commission through Roger Burke’s group. We would bring them in and we would tour the property and in many cases, if we could make it financially feasible, we would book the production company.
That led to more productions at the hotel, including several of Fred Williams’ movies, more television production shoots there, and then Oliver Stone came back again when he filmed “JFK”.
After that, there were even more productions, including Walker Texas Ranger and a made-for-TV movie production of “Dallas”, which were both productions that Michael Preece was involved with while he stayed at the hotel.
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