03/22/2024
James V. D’Arc, Author of “When Hollywood Came to Utah”
James V. D’Arc, PH.D., was curator of the BYU Motion Picture Archive at the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, for 41 years. He taught film courses at BYU for 30 years, founded the BYU Film Music Archive, and hosted the BYU Motion Picture Archive Film Series for 18 years. He lives in Orem, Utah.
In 1978 he published “When Hollywood Came to Utah”, the quintessential history of film in Utah. For more than 100 years, the magnificent scenery and locales of Utah have played host to hundreds of Hollywood films and TV episodes, including memorable films such as The Searchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Thelma & Louise, and Forrest Gump.
James Vincent D'Arc was born in Los Angeles, California on August 7, 1950. In the early 1970s, D'Arc was accepted into Brigham Young University, where he majored in history. In 1973 he was interested in a film appreciation class taught by Dr. Charles M. Metten, which motivated him to receive a PhD in film history from the University in 1986. During his time as a student, he also was hired in what was then called the "Archives and Manuscripts Division," where he began gathering film-related materials for the Archives starting with items donated to the collection from Dean Jagger, an actor who played Brigham Young in the 1940 film "Brigham Young." From there the collection obtained items including those pertaining to Cecil B. DeMille, classic MGM musicals like "Singin' in the Rain," and many others, a good number of them which are shown in the Motion Picture Archives Film Series today in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections.
Aside from this, in 1990 D'Arc also was employed as a Professor of Film in BYU's Theatre and Media Arts College. Although the college allowed him to split his time working as both a professor and a curator for the Special Collections department, by the end of the school year, he returned to being a full-time employee for Special Collections.
