Where the West Was Made (Up)
ANNETTE ON THE ROAD Hollywood's HQ for the pretend history of the West
Dear Nonnie Friend,
“Here's a place that's cheaper than a good chain hotel, and it sounds awesome.”
“I was just looking at that,” said Hoosen.
Sold. Following in the footsteps of Hollywood glitterati, we would spend the night in a hotel in New Mexico that once played host to the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Cagney, Henry Fonda, and many more. In the 1940s, this hotel was where directors, cameramen and celebs rested, ate, hung out, planned, and discussed, while making Westerns, movies set in the American West, and in a past that none of the moviemakers knew anything about.
Please understand that I'll be raising more questions in your mind in this post than giving you answers. But it's not as insignificant as it might first appear. Any two-bit blogger can take you on a tour of a kitschy hotel. But while I seek to entertain, I have no interest in wasting your time, not when talking about history in all its varied glory is more important than ever.
See, long before any of us thought about what history is (the interpretation of the past, not the past itself), chances are that the people who stayed in this hotel, and possibly the hotel itself, got their claws into our childish brains. No matter how much we learn, they refuse to get out of our heads. That’s not trivia. That’s essential to understanding how we think about the past. Whoever gets into our heads first when we are children takes up occupancy for life. No matter how hard we work to open our minds.