Petaluma’s First Movie: The Farmer’s Daughter

A Romantic Story of Political Opposites

In the spring of 1946, Louis Shapero, a Hollywood location scout, spent three days in a chartered plane scouring Sonoma County for a picturesque setting that would pass as a Minnesota dairy ranch. Then he came upon the Bundesen Ranch. Nestled in the green rolling foothills of Sonoma Mountain, the ranch’s setting struck him as the perfect backdrop for what would become the first Hollywood film shot in Petaluma.

A 150-acre dairy, the Bundesen Ranch sat at 4295 Old Adobe Road, two miles south of the Petaluma Adobe on the road to Sonoma. Originally settled by an Irishman named James Sullivan, it was purchased in the late 1880s by Sophus Bundesen, an immigrant from the Isle of Fohr. After his arrival in America in 1873, he adopted the Anglo-Saxon first name Charles in place of his given name, which along with its feminine variation Sophia, stands for wisdom in Greek.

Charles was joined in Petaluma by his brothers Martin and Henry, who settled on chicken ranches west of town. Charles and his wife Marie, another Isle of Fohr immigrant whom he married in San Francisco in 1884, raised five children on the ranch.

After Marie’s death in 1912, Bundesen retired from ranching and moved into town, leaving his son Martin to operate the ranch. Following Charles’ death in 1919, and Martin’s subsequent move to Eureka, the family leased the ranch in 1930 to an Irishman named William Scott, who immigrated to Petaluma during Ireland’s civil war in the early 1920s.

Scott was on his deathbed at the ranch, being cared for by his son Bob, when Shapero came calling to secure a release for using the ranch as a movie set. Sophie Bundesen, a Petaluma nurse representing the Bundesen family, also signed off on the release. In early May of 1946, a few days after Scott died, a crew of 100 carpenters, painters, landscapers, location directors, and film crew members descended upon the ranch to spruce it up for the shoot.

That included applying a fresh coat of white paint to the two-story farmhouse and painting the barn, chicken coops, and sheds bright red, despite the fact the film would be shot in black and white. A second large barn was erected at the ranch’s entrance with a large mural depicting the rolling countryside, which would play into the movie’s storyline, along with a duck pond and a grain silo to make it look more like a Minnesota farm. The line of eucalyptus trees lining the short lane from Old Adobe Road to the farmhouse were cut down and replaced with pine trees, which were more akin to Minnesota.

Once the stage was set, filming began in mid-May. Each day for ten days, a small fleet of swanky, chauffeured cars delivered the director, producer, and stars Loretta Young and Joseph Cotten, to the ranch from the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, where they were lodged. The rest of the film crew stayed at Hotel Petaluma, which also provided picnic-style meals on the set each day.

The hotel’s owner, Harold Eckart, had undertaken a major renovation of the hotel the year before, including a makeover of the cocktail lounge. He rechristened it the Redwood Room (current site of the Shuckery restaurant). Decorated with a large photo mural of the redwoods, it quickly became a favorite hangout of Petaluma’s postwar café society, known as “the 400.” They were serenaded most evenings by Earle Bond, a locally renowned organ player.

Members of the 400 looking to catch a glimpse of the movie’s stars at the Redwood Room were disappointed however, as the evenings they were in town they chose to dine at the Golden Gate Grill on Main Street near Western Avenue (current site of the Sake 107 sushi restaurant).

A popular stop for celebrities and tourists traveling the Redwood Highway north to the Russian River resorts, the grill was owned and operated by two Yugoslavian immigrants, Pete Goich and chef “Big Tom” Kasovich. It being Petaluma, the house specialty was chicken.

Both the opening and closing scenes of the film were shot at the Bundesen Ranch. A cheerful comedy-drama originally called “Katie Goes to Congress,” it opens with a convertible driving into the Bundesen Ranch to pick up Young, who plays a Swedish-American farmgirl headed to the big city to attend nursing school.

While waiting at a bus stop created for the film on the corner of Stage Gulch and Old Adobe roads, Young’s character warily accepts a ride from an itinerant sign painter who just finished painting a mural on the side of her family’s barn.

Taking advantage of her good nature—along with all her savings for school tuition—he leaves her scandalously stranded that night at a roadside motel.

The motel featured in the film was the Pioneer Auto Court on the southeast corner of Fern Avenue and Redwood Highway, just south of Cotati. Opened in 1938 by John Frankfurter, the Pioneer featured 13 small cabins, a cocktail lounge, and a large swimming pool. In its heyday, it catered to travelers headed north along the Redwood Highway.

During the nighttime shoot at the Pioneer, an inebriated local, drawn by the bright studio lights outside the motel, drove up to the set and stumbled into the bar to order a drink. “Nice opening you’re having,” he said to the bartender, “just like in Hollywood.” Turning to Young, who was waiting inside the lounge to shoot a scene outside, he added, “And, baby, you’re a dead ringer for Loretta Young. What won’t they think of next?”

In the film, Young’s character, broke but determined to stand on her own two feet, hitchhikes from the motel into the big city, where she manages to secure a job as domestic in the home of a prominent congressman played by Cotten.

After Cotten’s right-wing political party decides to back an unscrupulous alderman for Congress, Young, an outspoken progressive just as comfortable discussing politics as she is washing sheets and ironing shirts, stands up at a campaign rally to deride the two-faced alderman, leading to an offer from the opposing party to run against him.

Propelled into the lead in the race thanks to her plainspoken and honest aphorisms, Young is tripped up at the eleventh hour when the sign painter, paid by the opposition, shows up to publicly slander her with false salacious accusations regarding their night together at the Pioneer Auto Club.

Returning to the ranch to console herself with feeding the chickens, Young is encouraged by both her father and Cotten, who’s come to propose to her (in the chicken yard), to fight the smear campaign. With Cotten’s help, she gets the sign painter to confess to his lies and is elected to Congress. She also accepts Cotten’s hand in marriage, despite the fact they are on opposite sides of the political aisle.

Ironically, Young was dealing with one of Hollywood’s biggest cover-ups at the time. It involved her 10-year-old adopted daughter, who accompanied Young to the Bundesen Ranch during filming. Despite rumors swirling around Hollywood, it wouldn’t be until just before Young’s death in 2000 that it was publicly confirmed the girl was actually her biological daughter. Later came the disclosure that she had become pregnant after being date raped by Clark Gable while the two of them were shooting Call of the Wild in Washington state.

Originally shot as Katie Goes to Congress, Petaluma’s first movie was released in 1947 under the title, The Farmer’s Daughter. It opened that summer to packed houses at Petaluma’s California Theater (the current Phoenix Theater). A popular box office hit, the film earned Young her first and only Oscar.

After the 101 Freeway opened in 1957, travelers no longer took the Redwood Highway through Petaluma when heading north to the Russian River. That hurt a lot of local businesses.

Casualties included Hotel Petaluma, which was sold to the Elks Club for use as a clubhouse and a single-room occupancy hotel until 2017, when it was restored as a boutique hotel. The Pioneer Auto Court was also forced to become a short-term SRO, although its swimming pool remained a popular attraction for local kids until the early 1970s, when the motel was torn down and replaced by a horse pasture.

Out on the Bundesen Ranch, the film company tore down the Minnesota silo and barn after the shooting ended. The ranch itself was sold in the 1950s to dairy rancher Frank Flochinni, an Italian immigrant, and later passed down to his descendants. Over the years, the ranch house and original barn were torn down and replaced by a new house and barn.

*****

Thanks to Gregg Fautley for his research assistance on this story, and as always, to Katie Watts for her editing.

Video trailer for The Farmer’s Daughter:

The Farmer’s Daughter is also available for free viewing on youtube:

SOURCES:

Petaluma Argus: “A Mother is Called to Rest,” December 2, 1912; “Barn Dance at Bundesen Home,” September 2, 1922.

Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Leased Dairy Near Town,” December 15, 1930; “William J. Scott Claimed by Death,” April 19, 1946; “RKO Picture Co. Inc. to Shoot Movie, ‘Katie Goes to Congress,’ on Bundesen Place,” May 14, 1946; “Sunny Skies Hoped for by ‘Katie for Congress’ Artists,” May 23, 1946; “Elizabeth Olga Olberg Meets Loretta Young, Poses with Star for Picture on Lot,” May 25, 1946; “Carl Bundesen Succumbs to Illness,” May 31, 1946; “Katie For Congress Picture Completed at ‘Location,’” June 1, 1946; “Motorist Was Slightly Mixed,” June 10, 1946; “The Farmer’s Daughter Filmed Here; At Cal,” July 28, 1947; “So They Tell Me with Bill Soberanes column,” January 27, 1958; “ Ed Mannion’s Rear-View Mirror column,” April 12, 1962, “Frank Flochinni,” May 25, 1977.

Petaluma Courier: “Arrived from Germany to Remain,” December 6, 1912; “Chas. Bundesen Has Passed into Rest,” July 22, 1919;

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Hollywood Location Party Using Ranch Near Petaluma,” May 15, 1946; Bundesens’ Roots in Ranching,” December 17, 1989.

“Yesterday’s Favorite Spot Just a Memory,” Cotati Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 8, No. 2, June, 2015, pp.1-2.

Charles Bundesen, U.S. Census, 1880, 1890.

Herman Martin Theodore Bundesen, U.S. Census, 1910.

Helen Petersen, “Clark Gable Accused of Raping Co-Star,” Buzz Feed News, July 12, 2015. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/loretta-young