Rocky Mountain Emmy® Award Winner for Best Historical Documentary, “Castle Hot Springs: Oasis of Time” is about a landscape that inspires legends. The human history of “taking the waters” of Castle Hot Springs starts with the Yavapai Tribe. The First People gathered cactus flowers and grew mescal at the springs. As settlers came to the Arizona Territory, mining magnate Frank Murphy and his brother, Territorial Governor Nathan Oakes, saw in the springs the perfect mix of water, sunshine, and leisure travel that would drive the region toward statehood.
Arizona soon played host to the Rockefellers, Pews, and Vanderbilts. Some came for their health, others for adventure, but they were all enchanted by the majesty of the Bradshaw Mountains.
American Painter Maxfield Parrish discovered the saturated desert skies that would become the hallmark of his paintings. The ‘Father of American Cinema,’ Cecil B. DeMille staged his cast and crew at the resort during the Depression and filmed an early “talkie.” Over the 20th century “Castle Hot” became a mix of cowpunchers and captains of industry. It is a landscape of myth and memory.
The film features vintage film footage by Cecil B. DeMille and Senator Barry Goldwater; paintings by Maxfield Parrish and Olaf Weighorst; and music by Pearl Django, and singing cowboys Gene Autry and Dolan Ellis.
Now steaming on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV and Google Play.
