Film based on Kansas song coming home for its premiere

It’s time for some Kansas pride.

And on the night of Jan. 13, Kansans can show it at the premiere of “Home on the Range,” a Kansas-made movie that will be shown at the Orpheum Theatre, 200 N. Broadway.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased through Select-a-Seat.

The movie is about how the Kansas state song – “Home on the Range” – came to be such a well-known piece of music.

It’s a made-for-TV movie – only 48 minutes long – but showcases Buck Taylor, who played Deputy Newly O’Brien on TV’s “Gunsmoke” from 1967 to 1975. In the “Home on the Range” movie, Taylor plays Trube Reese, the man who discovered Brewster Higley’s poem in 1875 and who told the prairie doctor it might make a good song.

Other featured actors include Rance Howard, father of actor-director Ron Howard. Rance Howard has had character roles in a number of television shows, including “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Seinfeld” and “Gentle Ben.” In “Home on the Range,” he portrays an 86-year-old Cal Harlan, a Smith County Kansan who sings the song from memory just as Higley had originally written it. Rance Howard, 88, grew up in Kansas during the 1930s near Dexter.

“I am a cowboy at heart and was raised on a ranch,” Howard said Sunday from his home in California. “I went to a little country school near Dexter called Glendale. I grew up listening to this song. This is a true story and part of our heritage.

“I think anybody with a little country in their veins and who knows a little about the West will be interested in the birth of this song and how a doctor standing on the banks of Beaver Creek wrote the words. I hope people will embrace it and love it as much as I do.”

A Kansas legacy

The movie has been five years in the making.

It’s the story of how “Home on the Range” sprang up on the Kansas prairie and quickly made its way along cattle trails to cowtowns, gaining national popularity with the advent of radio. The story also includes some angst in how it was nearly stolen from Kansas, was prohibited from being played and how it took an NBC attorney from New York City to track down its true history.

It features various recordings of the famous song, from the rock group Kansas to cowboy singer Michael Martin Murphey.

Ken Spurgeon, the movie’s director, said Sunday that the film’s hook is the lawsuit of 1934 and how a couple from Arizona sued 30 entities, including NBC and Bing Crosby. In the movie, each of the characters tells the story. The movie is Spurgeon’s fourth film produced by Lone Chimney Films, a nonprofit organization. The group has also produced “The Road to Vallhalla,” “Touched by Fire: Bleeding Kansas” and “Bloody Dawn: The Lawrence Massacre.”

The “Home on the Range” movie was filmed in and around Wichita. Scenes were shot at Old Cowtown Museum, the old Sedgwick County Courthouse and at some private locations in Sedgwick County, as well as at the historic cabin where Higley wrote the song in 1872 in Smith County.

But the movie also presents the song from Higley’s viewpoint.

“We sing the song, and it is usually a happy, feel-good, joyful song,” Spurgeon said. “But when he wrote it, Higley was at a desperate spot. His life had swirled out of control. He was in severe depression and alcoholic who had been through three marriages. He wrote it out of a hope, prayer and wish for a place to call his own. He is tired of being in places that don’t feel right.”

Creating awareness

The movie’s music director is Orin Friesen, retired operations manager at the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper near Benton and a local country radio personality.

“I don’t think most Kansans are aware the cabin where this song was written still exists in Smith County,” Friesen said. “Where else can you go in the world and play the song and have people recognize it? And go to the spot where it was written? That is unique to me. This little cabin has more significance than I think most Kansans realize. What a gem we have in Smith County.”

In 2011, the Higley cabin was crumbling and in desperate need of repair. As Kansas celebrated its 150th anniversary of statehood, a grassroots effort formed to renovate the cabin, which in 1973 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

More than $113,000 – much of it from the Sedgwick County area – was raised to preserve and restore the cabin to its original integrity. Some of the money was used to build nature walks, footbridges and wheelchair-accessible entry to the cabin.

The movie, which Spurgeon said cost nearly $125,000 to make, was funded largely through donations from the Kansas Humanities Council; the People’s Heartland Foundation, a trust in Smith Center; Emprise Bank; and others.

The “Home on the Range” movie will also be shown at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 14 and 15 at the Center Theater in Smith Center and at Union Station in Kansas City at 7 p.m. on Jan. 19.

This story was originally published January 1, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Film based on Kansas song coming home for its premiere."