Biography

September 6, 1891 · Findlay, Ohio, USA

December 21, 1975 · Palm Desert, California, USA (heart attack)

Rowland Vance Lee

He had his own 214-acre movie ranch, located in the San Fernando Valley in California. He purchased the property in 1935 and called it Farm Lake Ranch, but the film industry always knew it as the Rowland V. Lee Ranch, with its pale brown hills of barley chaff and olive and eucalyptus trees and two scenic lakes, but for some reason it wasn't used much for westerns. For Je vous ai toujours aimé (1946), Republic Pictures built an extensive farmhouse and barn set. It also constructed a stone and wood bridge over one of the lakes, which would usually be photographed as a river. The farmhouse set would be adapted and modified over the years. RKO used it as a period French farmhouse for its modest swashbuckler Les fils des mousquetaires (1952). Its most famous use was as an Indiana Quaker family farm during the Civil War in Allied Artists' La loi du Seigneur (1956). To give it that "Indiana look", director William Wyler had cornfields planted, sycamore trees brought in and huge areas covered with green grass. The wooden farmhouse was also given a fake stone facade. You'll also see the ranch used to great effect in Alfred Hitchcock's L'inconnu du Nord-Express (1951) and in Charles Laughton's La nuit du chasseur (1955). After Lee died in 1975, the ranch was developed into an expensive gated community called Hidden Lake Estates.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 6313 Hollywood Blvd.

Brother of writer Robert N. Lee, Donald W. Lee.

Had a daughter. Linda Eleanor Lee (1931-51).