Zane Grey and Mormonism

by Charley Carle

In “RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE” Zane Grey wrote graphically about Utah and the old west. Through fiction, he keenly alludes to the deviant beliefs and practices associated with Mormonism. The information below quotes from his 1912 book, making comparisons to the 1996 movie.

Mormon topics addressed by Zane Grey include :

1) Stealing women! Zane Grey had a grasp of the despair, broken lives and the resulting frantic searches to find loved ones. The stealthy practices of Joseph Smith, the LDS cult founder, were similar from its very inception; such as, “Nancy Marinda Johnson married Joseph Smith while her husband, Orson Hyde, was on a mission to Jerusalem.” (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, George D. Smith, Spring 1994, pp. 10-11)

2) Stealing children! Zane Grey describes the disappearance of two, Beth and Fay. (Fay not in the movie) He portrays the way that parents were held hostage and the kind of intimidation that was used against them. No crime or horror in society is so gripping as child abuse, kidnapping, and then indoctrination into false religion!

3) Anger! Zane Grey included the loss of patience, violence and vengeance, that followed when family members were swept away.

4) Mormon women! Zane Grey describes the unhappiness in the low role of the Mormon women. Today, “Utahns.lead the nation in the use of prescription drugs…,” (Salt Lake Tribune April 1, 1989 p. E3). The area south of Salt Lake City is known as Happy Valley since “Mormon women abuse prescription drugs more often than other women….” (Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 25, 1989 p. 6B)

5) Manmade religion! Zane Grey depicts the betrayal, harassment and humiliation resulting from religious corruption. The bondage produced from lies leads to terror and a fanatical loyalty driven through one’s> efforts to avoid the threat of damnation.

6) Leaving a cult! Zane Grey describes the trauma associated with leaving false religion. The pressure flows from the church leadership, community pressure and disappointed family members. As in the book, the disillusioned often begin to drift into missing religious services. Departing members are commonly confronted with rumor, lies and slander. Therefore, many remain as members because there is no way out while maintaining any form of dignity! The immediate families of anyone leaving are often shattered by the fears of association. The eventual shunning, divorce or isolation is commonplace. Cults generally warn of some kind of damnation or loss of soul as the expected price to pay!

7) Clannishness and favoritism! Zane Grey describes a Mormon community that is cliquish, cold and unfair, to the “gentile” non-Mormons.

8) Proselytizing! Zane Grey depicts the untruthfulness and sleight-of-hand in the proselytizing efforts sent out by the Mormon Church. The LDS have 50,000 missionaries sent across the world today.

9) LDS Gods! In the movie, Riders of the Purple Sage, Hester calls to Lassiter: “And they have ‘gods’ waiting for you!” In Mormon theology God has a grandfather, who has a grandfather, who has a grandfather and so on, similar to a diagram of multi-level marketing. The LDS gods are under gods, who are under gods, under gods and under gods, ad infinitum! But the top of the LDS diagram fades into infinity, as you could never arrive at a top god.

10) Destiny! Zane Grey depicts, through the words of an ungodly gunman, that while false preachers feign to speak for God, they will never dwell in His heaven.

11) History revisionism! Zane Grey wrote in chapter 2, “and you know how Mormons hide the truth.” The revisionism of history can be documented throughout, from Palmyra, to Nauvoo, to the long LDS position on the Mountain Meadows Massacre and so on. Regarding this movie, hearsay is that the permission to film in the choice location included a requirement, that the terminology be changed; so Bishop Dyer became Pastor Dyer and Elder Tull became Deacon Tull! What an affront, as Christianity is made out to appear as bearing the sins of Mormonism in place of the LDS!

(*A sampling of web articles addressing these problems are offered at the bottom of the page.)

“RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE”

Chapter One

The scene is of Elder Tull and a group of riders about to whip Bern Venters: The churchmen who were coming to resent and attack her right to befriend a Gentile. They were seven in number, and Tull, the leader, a tall, dark man, was an elder of Jane’s church.

Jane Withersteen demands: BOOK: “Elder Tull, what do you mean by this?”
MOVIE: “Deacon Tull, what do you mean by this?”

Venters says: “You want her all yourself. You’re a wiving Mormon. You have use for her–and Withersteen House and Amber Spring and seven thousand head of cattle!”

Elder Tull pressures Jane and reminds her: “You haven’t yet come to see the place of Mormon women.” “Elder, I–I repent my words,” Jane faltered. The religion in her, the long habit of obedience, of humility, as well as agony of fear, spoke in her voice. “Spare the boy!” she whispered, who would hold up a restraining hand in the faces of her ruthless people.

Tull to Lassiter:
“Here stranger, this’s none of your mix,” began Tull. “Don’t try any interference. You’ve been asked to drink and eat. That’s more than you’d have got in any other village of the Utah border.”

BOOK: “Meddler, we have a law here something different from woman’s whim– Mormon law!…Take care you don’t transgress it.”
MOVIE: “Meddler, we have a law here something different from a woman’s whim! Take care that you don’t transgress it.”

BOOK: “To hell with your Mormon law!”
MOVIE: “To hell with your law!”

Chapter Two

“To take revenge on a horse! Lassiter, the men of my creed are unnaturally cruel.”

“I believe Mormon women are the best and noblest, the most long-sufferin’, and the blindest, unhappiest women on earth.”

BOOK: “Jane, I must be off soon,” said Venters. “Give me my guns. If I’d had my guns–” “Either my friend or the Elder of my church would be lying dead,” she interposed.
MOVIE: “Will you give me my rifle? If I’d had it. Either you or a deacon of my church would be lying dead.”

BOOK: Silently she went into the house, to return with a heavy cartridge-belt and gun-filled sheath and a long ride; these she handed to him, and as he buckled on the belt she stood before him in silent eloquence.
MOVIE: (Note carefully, a key to the true identification of this religious group! Jane opens a drawer to get a key for the gunrack.
Recognize the picture of the Mormon temple of Salt Lake City at the bottom of her drawer!)

“I mean your Bishop.” Venters said it deliberately and would not release her as she started back. “He’s the law. The edict went forth to ruin me. Well, look at me! It’ll now go forth to compel you to the will of the Church.”

“Oh, your faith and your excuses! You can’t see what I know–and if you did see it you’d not admit it to save your life. That’s the Mormon of you. These elders and bishops will do absolutely any deed to go on building up the power and wealth of their church, their empire. Think of what they’ve done to the Gentiles here, to me–think of Milly Erne’s fate! I know enough–all, perhaps, except the name of the Mormon who brought her here.”

Chapter Three

“It’s a hard country for any one, but hardest for Gentiles. Did you ever know or hear of a Gentile prospering in a Mormon community?”

BOOK: “I know Mormons. I’ve seen their women’s strange love en’ patience en’ sacrifice an’ silence en’ whet I call madness for their idea of God. An’ over against that I’ve seen the tricks of men. They work hand in hand, all together, an’ in the dark. No man can hold out against them, unless he takes to packin’ guns. For Mormons are slow to kill. That’s the only good I ever seen in their religion. Venters, take this from me, these Mormons ain’t just right in their minds. Else could a Mormon marry
one woman when he already has a wife, an’ call it duty?”
MOVIE: “These people are slow to kill. That’s the only good I ever seen in their religion.”

“Milly Erne’s story”. I thought she was at heart more Gentile than Mormon. But she passed as a Mormon, and certainly she had the Mormon woman’s locked lips. You know, in every Mormon village there are women who seem mysterious to us, but about Milly there was more than the ordinary mystery. When she came to Cottonwoods she had a beautiful little
girl whom she loved passionately. Milly was not known openly in Cottonwoods as a Mormon wife. That she really was a Mormon wife I have no doubt. Perhaps the Mormon’s other wife or wives would not acknowledge Milly. Such things happen in these villages. Mormon wives wear yokes, but they get jealous. Well, whatever had brought Milly to this country– love or madness of religion–she repented of it. She gave up teaching the village school. She quit the church. And she began to fight Mormon upbringing for her baby girl. Then the Mormons put on the screws– slowly, as is their way. At last the child disappeared. ‘Lost’ was the report. The child was stolen, I know that. So do you. That wrecked Milly Erne. But she lived on in hope. She became a slave. She worked her heart and soul and life out to get back her child. She never heard of it again. Then she sank.I can see her now, a frail thing, so transparent you could almost look through her–white like ashes–and her eyes! Her eyes have always haunted me. She had one real friend–Jane Withersteen. But Jane couldn’t mend a broken heart, and Milly died.”

Chapter Four

Remembering Jane’s accusation of bitterness, he tried hard to put aside his rancor in judging Tull. But it was bitter knowledge that made him see the truth. He had felt the shadow of an unseen hand; he had watched till he saw its dim outline, and then he had traced it to a man’s hate, to the rivalry of a Mormon Elder, to the power of a Bishop, to the long, far-reaching arm of a terrible creed.

“But Tull and his churchmen wouldn’t ruin Jane Withersteen unless the Church was to profit by that ruin.”

Chapter Six

“You know who handles the reins of your Mormon riders.” “Do you dare insinuate that my churchmen have ordered in my riders?” “I ain’t insinuatin’ nothin’, Miss Withersteen,” answered Judkins, with spirit. “I know what I’m talking about. I didn’t want to tell you.”

Hate headed a flaming pathway straight to hell. All in a flash, beyond her control there had been in her a birth of fiery hate. And the man who had dragged her peaceful and loving spirit to this degradation was a minister of God’s word, an Elder of her church, the counselor of her beloved Bishop.

First of all, Tull, as he was a man, wanted her for himself; and secondly, he hoped to save her and her riches for his church. She did not believe that Tull had been actuated solely by his minister’s zeal to save her soul. She doubted her interpretation of one of his dark sayings–that if she were lost to him she might as well be lost to heaven. Jane Withersteen’s common sense took arms against the binding limits of her religion; and she doubted that her Bishop, whom she had been taught had direct communication with God–would damn her soul for refusing to marry a Mormon. As for Tull and his churchmen, when they had harassed her, perhaps made her poor, they would find her unchangeable, and then she would get back most of what she had lost. So she reasoned, true at last to her faith in all men, and in their ultimate goodness.

“The man who dragged Milly Erne to hell–put it that way! Jane Withersteen, yes, that’s why I came here.”

“My righteous brethren are at work again,” she said, in scorn.”

“That’s a Mormon’s godly way of bringin’ a woman to her knees.”

“It’s a new one on me, an’ I’ve seen some ridin’ an’ rustlin’. It jest takes one of them God-fearin’ Mormons to think of devilish tricks.”

Chapter Seven

MOVIE scene is approximately here: There are church bells, a rider and a wagon. The man driving has several women and older girls in the back. Another man pulls up to the church in a buggy with a woman beside him and another in the back. He says, “Never see you, Jane. Tull keeps you all to himself!” “No. He’s not courting me, Brother ____.” “What? The laggert! If he does not make haste, I’ll go a courten myself up to the Withersteen house!” Inside the church the so-called “pastor” says, “Jane Withersteen! I now come to a subject that is sad for me to speak on. I often wonder what your father would’ve said had he’d known that at your age you remain unmarried. Jane Withersteen, the cross must be fully taken up. It is time for you to reach deeper into yourself and your new family as is God’s will for you to do. Come to your senses woman! You risk the fires of hell! Eternal damnation of your soul to perdition!” Dyer then warns about Lassiter and concludes, “An enemy of our people! A killer of innocent men! There is no place amongst the righteous for a godless man like him! Let us pray.”

Dyer’s prayer concludes as: “Smite them, Lord! Consume them in wrath! Consume them that they may not be! Amen!” The congregation repeats his merciless amen.

Dyer leads the congregation in a hymn: “Let us rise and sing now hymn number 232, ‘There is a Fountain willed with blood.'” Jane sings in tears.

(My comment) – What a blasphemy! The preacher is fierce in his humiliation of Jane and selfish in his prayer! Then he leads directly to that which is most precious to CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, the washing away of all sins through the blood of Jesus Christ!

BOOK: And like these fresh green things were the dozens of babies, tots, toddlers, noisy urchins, laughing girls, a whole multitude of children of one family. For Collier Brandt, the father of all this numerous progeny, was a Mormon with four wives. As this house had four mistresses, it likewise had four separate sections, not one of which communicated with another, and all had to be entered from the outside.

“Oh, why don’t you marry Tull and be one of us? “But, Mary, I don’t love Tull,” said Jane, stubbornly.

“I don’t blame you for that. But, Jane Withersteen, you’ve got to choose between the love of man and love of God. Often we Mormon women have to do that. It’s not easy. The kind of happiness you want I wanted once. I never got it, nor will you, unless you throw away your soul. We’ve all watched your affair with Venters in fear and trembling. Some dreadful thing will come of it. You don’t want him hanged or shot–or treated worse, as that Gentile boy was treated in Glaze for fooling round a Mormon woman. Marry Tull. It’s your duty as a Mormon. You’ll feel no rapture as his wife–but think of Heaven! Mormon women don’t marry for what they expect on earth. Take up the cross, Jane. Remember your father found Amber Spring, built these old houses, brought Mormons here, and fathered them. You are the daughter of Withersteen!”

They received her with the same glad welcome as had Mary, lavished upon her the pent-up affection of Mormon women, and let her go with her ears ringing of Tull, Venters, Lassiter, of duty to God and glory in Heaven.

This was at the extreme southern end, and here some thirty Gentile families lived in huts and shacks and log-cabins and several dilapidated cottages. Some of the men and boys had a few stray cattle, others obtained such intermittent employment as the Mormons reluctantly tendered them. But none of the families was prosperous, many were very poor, and some lived only by Jane Withersteen’s beneficence.

“Can we risk having our homes burned in our absence?”

Chapter Ten

“I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Venters, thoughtfully. Verification of his suspicions in regard to Tull’s underhand work–for the deal with Oldring made by Jerry Card assuredly had its inception in the Mormon Elder’s brain, and had been accomplished through his orders–revived in Venters a memory of hatred that had been smothered by press of other emotions.

Chapter Eleven

The appearance of Bishop Dyer startled Jane. He dismounted with his rapid, jerky motion flung the bridle, and, as he turned toward the inner court and stalked up on the stone flags, his boots rang. In his authoritative front, and in the red anger unmistakably flaming in his face, he reminded Jane of her father.

“Of course you mean to give her Mormon bringing-up?”

Jane Withersteen loved this man. From earliest childhood she had been taught to revere and love bishops of her church. And for ten years Bishop Dyer had been the closest friend and counselor of her father, and for the greater part of that period her own friend and Scriptural teacher. Her interpretation of her creed and her religious activity in fidelity to it, her acceptance of mysterious and holy Mormon truths, were all invested in this Bishop. Bishop Dyer as an entity was next to God. He was God’s mouthpiece to the little Mormon community at Cottonwoods. God revealed himself in secret to this mortal.

“Brother Tull has talked to me,” he began. “It was your father’s wish that you marry Tull, and my order. You refused him?”

“But you’ll do as I order!” he thundered. “Why, Jane Withersteen, you are in danger of becoming a heretic! You can thank your Gentile friends for that. You face the damning of your soul to perdition.” .”That first day,” whispered Jane, “Lassiter said he came here to find– Milly Erne’s grave!” “For what–else?” When Bishop Dyer’s voice did cleave the silence it was high, curiously shrill, and on the point of breaking. It released Jane’s tongue, but she could not lift her eyes. “To kill the man who persuaded Milly Erne to abandon her home and her husband–and her God!”

“But you’re not free. Not free of Mormonism. .”You’re faithful to your Bishop an’ unfaithful to yourself. You’re false to your womanhood an’ true to your religion. But for a savin’ innocence you’d have made yourself low an’ vile– betrayin’ yourself, betrayin’ me–all to bind my hands an’ keep me from snuffin’ out Mormon life. It’s your damned Mormon blindness.” “The blindness I mean is blindness that keeps you from seein’ the truth. I’ve known many good Mormons. But some are blacker than hell.”

Chapter Twelve

Jane received a letter from Bishop Dyer. The letter went on to say, and ended with a request which was virtually a command, that she call upon him at once.The reading of the letter acquainted Jane Withersteen with the fact that something within her had all but changed. She sent no reply to Bishop Dyer nor did she go to see him. On Sunday she remained absent from the service–for the second time in years-and though she did not actually suffer there was a dead-lock of feelings deep within her, and the waiting for a balance to fall on either side was almost as bad as suffering. She had a gloomy expectancy of untoward circumstances, and with it a keen-edged curiosity to watch developments. She had a half-formed conviction that her future conduct–as related to her churchmen–was beyond her control and would be governed by their attitude toward her. Something was changing in her, forming, waiting for decision to make it a real and fixed thing. She had told Lassiter that she felt helpless and lost in the fateful tangle of their lives; and now she feared that she was approaching the same chaotic condition of mind in regard to her religion. It appalled her to find that she questioned phases of that religion. Absolute faith had been her serenity. Though leaving her faith unshaken, her serenity had been disturbed, and now it was broken by open war between her and her ministers.

“I reckon it’d be a good idea for us to talk low. You’re spied on here by your women.” “Lassiter!” she whispered in turn. “That’s hard to believe. My women love me.” “What of that?” he asked. “Of course they love you. But they’re Mormon women.”

The women who owed much to Jane Withersteen changed not in love for her, nor in devotion to their household work, but they poisoned both by a thousand acts of stealth and cunning and duplicity. Jane broke out once and caught them in strange, stone-faced, unhesitating falsehood. Thereafter she broke out no more. She forgave them because they were driven. Poor, fettered, and sealed Hagars, how she pitied them! What terrible thing bound them and locked their lips, when they showed neither consciousness of guilt toward their benefactress nor distress at the slow wearing apart of long-established and dear ties? “The blindness again!” cried Jane Withersteen. “In my sisters as in me!…O God!” They spied and listened; they received and sent secret messengers; and they stole Jane’s books and records, and finally the papers that were deeds of her possessions.

“Why, son,” was Lassiter’s reply, “this breakin’ of Miss Withersteen may seem bad to you, but it ain’t bad–yet. Some of these wall-eyed fellers who look jest as if they was walkin’ in the shadow of Christ himself, right down the sunny road, now they can think of things en’ do things that are really hell-bent.”

Among many thousands of women you’re one who has bucked against your churchmen. They tried you out, an’ failed of persuasion, an’ finally of threats. You meet now the cold steel of a will as far from Christlike as the universe is wide. You’re to be broken. Your body’s to be held, given to some man, made, if possible, to bring children into the world. But your soul?…What do they care for your soul?”

Chapter Fifteen

But here the damnable verdict blistered her that the more she sacrificed herself the blacker grew the souls of her churchmen. There was something terribly wrong with her soul, something terribly wrong with her churchmen and her religion.

“He laughed in scorn at the idea of Tull bein’ a minister. He said Tull an’ a few more dogs of hell builded their empire out of the hearts of such innocent an’ God-fearin’ women as Jane Withersteen. He called Tull a binder of women, a callous beast who hid behind a mock mantle of righteousness–an’ the last an’ lowest coward on the face of the earth. To prey on weak women through their religion–that was the last unspeakable crime!

Chapter Nineteen

“It ‘pears that soon after I left home another preacher come to the little town. He went after people, women specially. Then, presently, along comes a man from somewheres in Illinois, en’ he up an’ spots this preacher as a famous Mormon proselyter.

“But after bein’ patient I got the contents of that drawer an’ found two letters from Milly. One was a long letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been bound an’ gagged an’ dragged away from her home by three men, an’ she named them–Hurd, Metzger, Slack. The second letter was written more than two years after the first. It was from Salt Lake City. An’ she ended that letter by sayin’ she would soon leave Salt Lake City with the man she had come to love, en’ would never be heard of again.

“This time I left him some incapacitated for any more skunk work short of hell. Then I hit the trail for Utah. That was fourteen years ago. I saw the incomin’ of most of the Mormons. It was a wild country an’ a wild time. I rode from town to town, village to village, ranch to ranch, camp to camp. I never stayed long in one place. I never had but one idea. I never rested. Four years went by, an’ I knowed every trail in northern Utah. Eighteen years I’ve been on the trail. An’ it led me to the last lonely villages of the Utah border. A Gentile said Jane Withersteen could tell me about Milly Erne an’ show me her grave!”

BOOK: “I seen in your face that Dyer, now a bishop, was the proselyter who ruined Milly Erne.”
MOVIE: “When that old party throwed a gun on me, I saw it in his face that it was Dyer, now a pastor, who was the proselyter that ruined Milly Erne.”

“Where’s Fay?” asked Jane, hurriedly glancing round the shady knoll. The bright-haired child, who had appeared to be close all the time, was not in sight.

Chapter Twenty

“It’s all over,” she heard her voice whisper. “It’s ended. I’m going–I’m going–” “Where?” demanded Lassiter, suddenly looming darkly over her. “To–to those cruel men–” “Speak names!” thundered Lassiter.

BOOK: “To Bishop Dyer–to Tull,” went on Jane, shocked into obedience.
MOVIE: “To Pastor Dyer and Deacon Tull.” (or is it “-to Tull”?)

“Well–what for?” “I want little Fay. I can’t live without her. They’ve stolen her as they stole Milly Erne’s child. I must have little Fay. I want only her. I give up. I’ll go and tell Bishop Dyer–I’m broken. I’ll tell him I’m ready for the yoke–only give me back Fay–and–and I’ll marry Tull!”

“Lassiter, in pleading for Dyer I’ve been pleading more for my father. My father was a Mormon master, close to the leaders of the church. It was my father who sent Dyer out to proselyte. If Milly Erne was ever wife of a Mormon that Mormon was my father! I never knew–never will know whether or not she was a wife. Blind I may be, Lassiter–fanatically faithful to a false religion I may have been but I know justice, and my father is beyond human justice. Surely he is meeting just punishment–somewhere. Always it has appalled me–the thought of your killing Dyer for my father’s sins.”

“I was at the meetin’-house where Dyer was holdin’ court. You know he allus acts as magistrate an’ judge when Tull’s away. An’ the trial was fer tryin’ what’s left of my boy riders–thet helped me hold your cattle–fer a lot of hatched-up things the boys never did.

“The court had about adjourned fer thet judge. He was on his knees, en’ he wasn’t prayin’.

MOVIE observation: Instead of the wrangler boys it is Bern in court. Jane and Lassiter are at the graveyard burying Judkins (Gentile in book; Mormon in movie), when a lady comes running up and calling: “They’ve arrested Bern Venters for murder and for stealing your horses. And I’m afraid they mean to hang him!” Jane: “Who accuses him, Hester?”
Hester: “They’re at the church.”
Jane: “Bern didn’t steal my horses!”
Hester: “I must go now.”
Jane: “Will you be safe?”
Hester to Lassiter: “And they have gods waiting for you!”

BOOK & MOVIE – same words: “‘Proselyter, I reckon you’d better call quick on thet God who reveals Hisself to you on earth, because He won’t be visitin’ the place you’re goin’ to!”

BOOK: “Whatever he seen, it was with the look of a man who discovers somethin’ too late. Thet’s a terrible look!…An’ with a horrible understandin’ cry he slid forward on his face.”

Chapter Twenty-one

“Well, Elizabeth, listen,” said Lassiter. “Before you was born your father made a mortal enemy of a Mormon named Dyer. They as both ministers an’ come to be rivals. Dyer stole your mother away from her home. She gave birth to you in Texas eighteen years ago. Then she was taken to Utah, from place to place, an’ finally to the last border settlement–Cottonwoods. You was about three years old when you was taken away from Milly. She never knew what had become of you. But she lived a good while hopin’ nd prayin’ to have you again. Then she gave up an’ died. An’ I may as well put in here your father died ten years ago. Well, I spent my time tracin’ Milly, an’ some months back I landed in Cottonwoods. An’ jest lately I learned all about you. I had a talk with Oldrin’ an’ told him you was dead, an’ he told me what I had so long been wantin’ to know. It was Dyer, of course, who stole you from Milly. Part reason he was sore because Milly refused to give you Mormon teachin’, but mostly he still hated Frank Erne so infernally that he made a deal with Oldrin’ to take you an’ bring you up as an infamous rustler an’ rustler’s girl. The idea was to break Frank Erne’s heart if he ever came to Utah–to show him his daughter with a band of low rustlers. Dyer had wanted you brought up the vilest of the vile!

“I reckon where Dyer’s gone there won’t be any kidnappin’ of girls.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“Only, I’ll say that mercy an’ goodness, such as is in you, though they’re the grand things in human nature, can’t be lived up to on this Utah border. Life’s hell out here. You think–or you used to think–that your religion made this life heaven. Mebbe them scales on your eyes has dropped now. Jane, I wouldn’t have you no different, an’ that’s why I’m going to try to hide you somewhere in this Pass. I’d like to hide many more women, for I’ve come to see there are more like you among your people. An’ I’d like you to see jest how hard an’ cruel this border life is. It’s bloody. You’d think churches an’ churchmen would make it better. They make it worse. You give names to things–bishops, elders, ministers, Mormonism, duty, faith, glory. You dream–or you’re driven mad. I’m a man, an’ I know. I name fanatics, followers, blind women, oppressors, thieves, ranchers, rustlers, riders.

**Movie Acknowledgements & Credits**

(perhaps you will have the opportunity of meeting or contacting some of these people):

The disclaimer read: This film has been modified from its original version.
Rosemont Productions International
In association with Amer Productions and Zeke Productions
Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, Henry Thomas, Robin Tunney, Norbert Weisser and
G.D. Spradlin as Pastor Dyer
Casting Susan Bluestein
Editor David Holden
Production Manager Michael Baugh
Produced by Thomas Kane
Executive Producers Ed Harris Amy Madigan
Executive Producer David A. Rosemont
Teleplay by Gill Dennis
Based on the Novel by Zane Grey
Directed by Charles Haid
Associate Producer – Stella Theodoulou
Co-stars: Lyn Warlass – Hester Brandt, Bob L. Harris – Collier Brandt,
Jerry Wills – Oldring, Rusty Musselman – Matthew Blake
Unit Production Manager – Thomas Kane
First Assistant Director – Craig West
Second Assistant Director – Dirk Craft
Construction Coordinator – Dean Kennedy
Set Director – Brett Shirley
Boom Operators – Flash Deros, Scott Sandstrom
Gaffer – McCulloch
Best Boy Electric – Dan Cornwall
Key Grip – Richarad Fezzey
Best Boy Grip – Steve Alessi
Dolly Grip – Jim Kelly
Grips – Gary Kelso, Richard Thomas, Bill Jeffs
Electricians – Dale Flower, David Parks, Dave Blundell
Head Wrangler – Rusty Hendrickson
Horse Wrangler – Jesse Shepard
Wranglers – Don Holyoak, Joe Taylor
Property Master – Kelly Farrah
Assitant Property Master – Dr. Roy Giron
Casting Associate – Stackey Pianko
Extra Casting – Rick Fullam
Craft Service – Susan McDaniel
Location Manager – David Foster
Script Supervisor – Brenda Weisman
2nd 2nd Assitant Director – Peggy Stuber
Catering – Frederick Perrin Cuisine Express, Inc.
With special thanks to Brenda Smith, Heidi Redd and the Dugout Ranch
Partnership
Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission
The Bureau of Land Management – Dale Whitmore
Photographed in Moab, Utah with the assistance of the Utah Film
Commission
Rosemont Productions International Limited
Turner Pictures Worldwide Inc
Turner Home Entertainment

*A Sampling of Web Articles Addressing the ABove Problems in Mormonism (much current today):

The Role of Women in Mormonism
http://www.exmormon.org/mormwomn.htm

Covering Up Mormon Polygamy
http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no94.htm#COVERING UPMORMON POLYGAMY

Keep ‘Em Barefoot and (The “P” Word)
http://www.watchman.org/lds/tnpoly.htm

Mormonism’s Problem with Child Sexual Abuse
http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no91.htm#MORMONI

Update on Sexual Abuse Cases
http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no92.htm#SEXUAL ABUSE UPDATE

Teddy bears, pigtails, 13-year-old girls…and Marriage!
http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/women/teenbrides.htm

Just what is wrong in Utah, anyway?
http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/newsletters_articles/oct98/oct98.htm

Mormonism And The Question Of Truth
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/crj0110a.txt

Scams and the Latter-day Saints
http://www.watchman.org/lds/scamlds.htm

The Mountain Meadows Massacre
The Greatest Massacre of Americans by Americans Prior to the Oklahoma
City Bombing
http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/mmmassacre/mmm.htm

When the Saints Went Marching Out
http://www.answeringlds.org/

Philosophical Problems with the Mormon Concept of God
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0100a.html