What was Cudia City?
For about twenty years, the Valley had its own Hollywood back lot, four miles west of Old Town Scottsdale.
Salvatore Pace Bondanza Cudia was an Italian immigrant who had designed sets and coached drama for opera, made silent films in Florida (where the rain kept stopping production) and run studios in California. In 1938 he bought land at 40th Street and Camelback Road from the former governor R.C. Stanford, who needed cash, and built the Valley of the Sun Studio. Everyone called it Cudia City.
It had what a studio needed: an air-conditioned, soundproofed soundstage, a one-block Western street with a hotel, saloon, church and hitching posts, and a showpiece restaurant where diners sat around a pool under a thirty-foot waterfall. Good Housekeeping called it “the most fascinating restaurant in Phoenix.”
What it didn’t get was the big picture. Columbia looked at Cudia City for Arizona, its 1940 Western with William Holden, couldn’t reach a deal, and built a set near Tucson in 1939 instead. That set became Old Tucson Studios. Cudia City made about four films before the war and had its best years in 1957–59, when the TV Western 26 Men filmed there. Then the city closed in around it: car horns and jets from Sky Harbor ruined takes. The lot burned in 1959, came back as a teen dance hall, and was sold for development in the 1960s. Chelsea’s Kitchen stands on the Western street’s site.
The lot in its prime
The studio. Cudia patented a colour process he called “Cudiacolor” and announced plans for a dozen pictures. The record supports about four before World War II. During the war he turned the place to other uses. He made patriotic plaques for the government and opened the soundstage to civic groups and servicemen. Several Valley churches held their first services there, and a Scottsdale theater troupe used the stage for free.
26 Men. The lot’s real moment came with television. 26 Men, a syndicated half-hour Western about the Arizona Rangers produced by Russell Hayden for ABC Films, ran 78 episodes from 1957 to 1959. Wikipedia records that Cudia City’s facilities were expanded to handle it and that it was reportedly the first TV series filmed entirely in Arizona. Arizona Highways says it became the top syndicated TV Western of its day, and credits Cudia City with episodes of Wanted Dead or Alive, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Rifleman and Gunsmoke as well.
Why it ended. A movie lot needs quiet and empty horizons, and by the late 1950s it had neither. Traffic on Camelback, planes into Sky Harbor and new utility poles kept spoiling shots. Victor Panek’s Apacheland, out by the Superstitions, opened about the time filming at Cudia City wound down. A fire in 1959 burned the buildings. The soundstage was rebuilt and became a dance hall and social center for Phoenix teenagers, and then Cudia sold the land.
What’s there now
- Chelsea’s Kitchen, 5040 N. 40th Street, on the west side of 40th just north of the Arizona Canal, was built as the North Bank restaurant on the Western street’s site.
- Capri on Camelback, across 40th Street, began as a singles apartment complex on Cudia’s land.
- Cudia City Estates, the subdivision Cudia laid out north of the set, still carries the name in property records, and the Cudia City Wash runs through the Camelback Canyon Estates neighborhood to the east.
- The 40th Street bridge over the Arizona Canal was built by Cudia and given to the city. A bronze plaque on its northwest pillar remembers Cudia City.
Get there from Old Town by heading north on Scottsdale Road and west on Camelback, about five miles. Or ride the Arizona Canal path west past Arizona Falls.
The sources, and the disagreements
The fullest account is Kathy Montgomery’s “Quiet on the Set” in Arizona Highways (February 2022), written with Cudia’s family historian. Arizona State University holds Cudia’s papers and photographs (the S.P.B. Cudia Collection), with a biographical note. Wikipedia covers 26 Men, Arizona and Old Tucson. The Camelback Canyon Estates homeowners’ association and Phoenix Magazine (2012) add local detail.
Where they disagree:
- Birthplace. ASU says Rome. Arizona Highways says Sicily.
- The founding year. 1938 (ASU, the homeowners’ association) or 1939 (Phoenix Magazine). We use 1938.
- Which corner. The homeowners’ association and a film-locations site say northeast; Phoenix Magazine says northwest; True West says “northeast of 40th St. and Camelback.” Arizona Highways puts the Western street where Chelsea’s Kitchen stands, which is on the west side of 40th, north of the canal, and Cudia’s land on the east side too. With about 160 acres, he likely owned both sides, so both can be right.
- The films. Buzzy Rides the Range (1940) was shot “in studios in Phoenix,” which fits Cudia City but doesn’t name it. Arizona Highways calls Tucson Raiders (1944) the first Red Ryder film made there “after the war,” but the film was released during the war, and Wikipedia places its shooting in California. Other titles circulate without sources.
- The end. ASU says it burned in 1959 and was rebuilt; the homeowners’ association says it was sold in 1960; Arizona Highways says the 1960s. A later fire is mentioned online without a source.
- Our own 1940 page said Cudia City had been “turning out low-budget Westerns since 1938” and that Columbia came in 1940. The output was smaller and the Columbia decision came in 1939, so the 1940 page now says so.
Where the answers are. The S.P.B. Cudia Collection at ASU Library (photographs and papers, 1924–1977); the Arizona Republic for 1938–39 (the studio’s opening and the Columbia negotiations) and 1959 (the fire); Maricopa County plat records for Cudia City Estates; and the City of Phoenix’s “Phoenix Then & Now” segment on Cudia City.
Why it matters to Scottsdale
Scottsdale built its identity on the Western image in the late 1940s, with false fronts, hitching posts and “The West’s Most Western Town.” A few miles west, Cudia had already built a Western town for film crews. Two decades later, Rawhide would build one for tourists on Scottsdale Road. Cudia City didn’t survive the city growing around it, but the business it ran, a Western street as a product, outlasted it.