January 2022
Western Pulp Fiction with Steve Renzi
Pulp fiction magazines sold for a dime and in the 1920s to 1950s, they filled American newsstands. Nobody admitted that they liked them, but everybody read them. They were American pop culture at its best and worst. Western magazines were the most popular. Western pulp fiction, along with movies, helped to create the myths of the American West. Pulp writing was usually formulaic and cliched, but not always and writers like Elmore Leonard, Jack London and Louise L’Amour wrote for…
Find out more »February 2022
Arizona Goes to the Movies: A Filmmaking History with Jim Turner
From Douglas Fairbanks filming in Nogales in 1917 to “How the West Was Won” statewide in 1963, the state of Arizona has always been a photogenic favorite for movie producers. The program looks from “Real to Reel” to see how Hollywood has affected popular views of Western settlement and continues to impact social interactions. The show runs the gamut from Tom Mix to Val Kilmer with information about the plots, players, and behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Tom Mix, Jean Harlow, John…
Find out more »April 2022
Arizona: A History of the Grand Canyon State with Jim Turner
This brief history starts with Conquistador Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s 1540 expedition and covers Catholic missions, mining, Native American conflicts, Mormon immigration, ranching, farming, health seekers, education, tourism, moviemaking, and biographies ranging from Father Eusebio Kino to Sandra Day O’Connor. You can’t cover Arizona history without Wild West legends like Wyatt Earp, stage robbers, and dance hall girls but this presentation focuses more on Arizona’s diverse cultures, unusual characters, and unsung heroes like Hi Jolly, the Greco-Syrian camel driver, The…
Find out more »May 2022
Desert Rats, River Runners, and Canyon Crawlers: Four Arizona Explorers with Gregory McNamee
Francisco Garcés, a Franciscan friar, arrived in what is now Arizona in 1768. Assigned to the church at San Xavier del Bac south of present-day Tucson, he traveled widely throughout Arizona and California, charting overland routes that later travelers would follow. Near where Garcés would meet his death in 1781, an American soldier named Joseph Christmas Ives embarked on an arduous expedition up the Colorado River, one of the first Americans to see what he called the Big Canyon. A…
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