Jacob's Assay Office barrio Tucson AZ 1969
by David Lee Guss
Title
Jacob's Assay Office barrio Tucson AZ 1969
Artist
David Lee Guss
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
Much of Tucson, Arizona's oldest section, the barrio, which dated back to when the city was part of Mexico, was leveled in the late 1960's under the short sighted Urban Renewal program. The fed's waved big bucks in front of municipalities and they bit.
Tucson's oldest continuously operating business, the Jacob's Assay Office, was also, the last to cease operations in the barrio, or "La Calle,' as it was called by the Mexican Americans.
The 89 year old building is silently waiting for the wrecking ball.
The race to claw gold or silver out of the earth was a common theme in many a Western. Assay offices were featured in several of Duke's 1930 B-Westerns.
{Note- Chris-Pin Martin who was uncredited, fractured English, comic relief in "Stagecoach" was born in Tucson's barrio in 1893, 19 years before Arizona became a state.
The Mary Pickford produced/Rouben Mamoulian directed "The Gay Desperado" (1936) was shot (on 348 South Meyer at the Teatro Carmen, 1914) in the barrio.
Martin was billed in it as Chris King Martin.}
The radio station in this excerpt was supposedly located (with a bogus sign) in the basement of the former Tucson police department where John Dillinger and his gang had been booked two years before.
Another actor who specialized in mangled English was Leo Carrillo (1881-1961) who played Pancho to Duncan Renaldo's (1904-1980) "The Cisco Kid" in both features and TV.
The actor in red face as the mute, stoical Indian is the Russian born Mischa Auer (1905-1967), who spoke 6 languages.
And finally the English born Ida Lupino (1915-1995) briefly appears riding in an auto, as she is eloping to the US/Mexico border. Projected on the rear screen is the Saguaro National Monument where Jean Harlow (1911-1937) made "Bombshell" three years earlier. Lupino later became one of Hollywood's few woman directors during the studio system days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00X8bp1NKqU
@2009 David Lee Guss Film homage, JW, Jacob's Assay Office, 1880-1969, barrio, 'La Calle,' Tucson, AZ, 1969-2013
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April 17th, 2013
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