Colorado is the perfect backdrop for Pueblo filmmaker John Henry Johnson's movies

John Henry Johnson never needed a Hollywood set to make a film.

Between 1979 and 1984, the Pueblo-born director and cinematographer filmed two award-winning documentaries about writer Damon Runyon and explorer Zebulon Pike in southern Colorado — one in Pueblo, where Runyon grew up, and the other near the mountain named after Pike, Pikes Peak.

His third film, “Curse of the Blue Lights,” a 1988 fantasy film about a group of Colorado teenagers and their encounter with several evil creatures, also was filmed in and around Pueblo and includes references to southern Colorado history.

“I primarily made a lot of these films for the schools because everything is supposed to have happened in Denver and it didn’t all happen in Denver,” Johnson said. “As a matter of fact, Pueblo was significant way before Denver was, because of the rivers. Everybody came up the rivers.”

Johnson recently secured the DVD rights for his 1981 film “Damon Runyon’s Pueblo” which follows the nationally recognized New York journalist and playwright’s life in Pueblo from the time he arrived at age six in 1886 to his days working at The Chieftain.

“A lot of the people that Runyon wrote about and who became famous characters of his in New York were actually based on Pueblo people,” Johnson said.

Sky Masterson, a character in Runyon’s “Guys and Dolls” play, is believed to be modeled on U.S. Marshall Bat Masterson, who was in Pueblo during the Colorado Railroad War between the Denver & Rio Grande and Santa Fe railroads.

Much of "Damon Runyon's Pueblo" was filmed in downtown Pueblo.

"At that time, Union was terrible... the buildings were falling apart and most of the windows were gone and so, basically, my crew, headed by Joe Pachak would go and the windows that were totally knocked down, they would put plywood there and they would paint so it would look like there was a shade there," Johnson said.

Both "Damon Runyon's Pueblo" and Johnson's second film, "Zebulon Pike and the Blue Mountain" received Council on International Nontheatrical Events (CINE) Golden Eagle Awards in 1983 and 1985.

Outside of making films, Johnson has taught filmmaking, art and photography courses at Colorado State University Pueblo, the University of Colorado Denver and the Colorado Film school. He also has created a damon-runyon.com for his Damon Runyon film.

While he has not counted out the prospect of making another film, he said it is "backbreaking work."

“My wife, she related making a movie to setting up and holding a wedding every day. It’s that intense," he said. "You got to have all the people. You got to have all the prompts. You have to have all the locations, all the equipment, just all the details.”

Pueblo Chieftain reporter James Bartolo can be reached by email at JBartolo@gannett.com