Dennis Hopper, Mabel Dodge Luhan, the house, recognized as “a Southwestern institution”

Mabel Dodge Luhan House, or 'Mud Palace,'  inspired some of the greatest minds of the 20th century  

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

On a recent trip to Taos, one of the things I really wanted to take a look at was the place where Dennis Hopper hung out during the 1960s and into 1970s. At the art cooperative on the square, I asked the artist manning the desk where that was. It turns out that it wasn't very far from our hotel, which was just a few doors down the street from Kit Carson's place, when he lived in Taos.

 Dennis Hopper discovered Taos when filming "Easy Rider," the cult, hippy, biker movie at the end of the '60s and, and felt an immediate affinity for the place. (Photo from wall, in what was Hopper's residence in 1970s.)

 

Hopper said when asked how he thinks he’ll be remembered that, “I’m not sure how my visual art and my movies will be seen, but I think the work I’ve done is… interesting. Hopefully it’ll all come together in an interesting story,”as quoted in the British publication, “The Telegraph.”

"Hopper was one of the bravest, most courageous artists that America (and Taos) has ever produced—unafraid to revisit places inside of himself that had caused him incredible distress to bring authenticity and grit to his art. Dennis Hopper was buried in Ranchos de Taos where he kept a home even after selling the Big House, or Mud Palace as it came to be known during his years there," says Visit Taos, at Taos.org.

"Dennis Hopper’s life in Taos was one he loved, and many of his family members still live here, brought here originally by Hopper when he needed people he trusted to have his back. They still do and so does our sacred mountain, of which Dennis has a view from his gravesite. Every year Taos celebrates Dennis Hopper Day with an Easy Rider Ride, music, movies, and memories of Dennis Hopper’s life in Taos.

He first appeared on the big screen alongside James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and Giant (1956) after having attended the Actors Studio and initially appearing on TV. 

 He later played supporting roles in films like Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Hang 'Em High (1968) and True Grit (1969). Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Debut, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s.

Often typecast as a mentally disturbed outsider and rebel in such films as Mad Dog Morgan (1976), The American Friend (1977), Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983), and Blue Velvet (1986). He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Hoosiers (1986). His later film roles included True Romance (1993), Speed (1994), Waterworld (1995) and Elegy (2009). He appeared posthumously in the long-delayed The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which had previously been filmed in the early 1970s. 

 

Hopper credited John Wayne with saving his career, as Hopper acknowledged that because of his insolent behavior, he could not find work in Hollywood for seven years. Hopper stated that, because of his marriage to Brooke Hayward, he was the son-in-law of actress Margaret Sullavan, a friend of John Wayne, and Wayne hired Hopper for a role in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), also directed by Hathaway, which enabled Hopper to restart his film career. 

 

Hopper debuted in an episode of the Richard Boone television series Medic in 1955, portraying a young epileptic. He appeared in the first episode of the TV series The Rifleman (1958–1963) as the troubled orphan protagonist Vernon Tippet who is exploited by his greedy uncle. The series starred Chuck Connors and the premiere episode "The Sharpshooter" was written by Sam Peckinpah. Hopper subsequently appeared in over 140 episodes of television shows such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Petticoat Junction, The Twilight Zone, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Defenders, The Investigators, The Legend of Jesse James, Entourage, The Big Valley, The Time Tunnel, and Combat!.  

 

Ostracized by the Hollywood film studios due to his reputation for being a "difficult" actor, Hopper turned to photography in 1961 with a camera bought for him by his first wife Brooke Hayward. During this period he created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner album River Deep – Mountain High (released in 1966).He became a prolific photographer, and noted writer Terry Southern profiled Hopper in Better Homes and Gardens as an up-and-coming photographer "to watch" in the mid-1960s.Hopper's early photography is known for portraits from the 1960s, and he began shooting portraits for Vogue and other magazines. His photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 civil-rights march in Selma, Alabama, were published. His intimate and unguarded images of Andy Warhol, Jane Fonda, The Byrds, Paul Newman, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, James Brown, Peter Fonda, Ed Ruscha, the Grateful Dead, Michael McClure, and Timothy Leary. 

"She was Mabel Ganson Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan – salon hostess, art patroness, writer and self-appointed savior of humanity. She was a woman of profound contradictions. She was generous. She was petty. Domineering and endearing," says the Historic Inn and Conference Center's site.

"Today as you approach the house of Mabel Dodge Luhan, it’s easy to see why some of the greatest minds of the 20th century were inspired here. Situated at the end of a quiet road not far from the center of town, the house appears much as it did in the days when Mabel admired her views of the sacred Taos Mountain from the third-story solarium."

"One can only imagine the tantalizing conversations that must have taken place within these walls. After all, Georgia O’Keeffe stayed here. So did D.H. Lawrence, Ansel Adams and Martha Graham, among many other notables," says the hotel's history.

The property on which the Mabel Dodge Luhan House sits contained a four-room adobe in 1918 when it was purchased for $1,500. Antonio Lujan supervised a crew from the Taos Pueblo who renovated and expanded the structure to roughly its present state. Thus began a famous era in the history of the American counterculture which continues to this day.

Visitors to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House quickly learn its history–or else come already knowing–eager to see the place described in the writings of D.H. Lawrence and lately in many of the world’s largest newspapers as interest in the lives of Tony and Mabel has once again become popular.

Los Gallos, as the house was named, represents a conjunction between an elite and progressive world community of well known artists and thinkers and perhaps one of the most enduring native societies in the western hemisphere – Taos Pueblo. The consequences of this union which formed around Tony and Mabel would be difficult to overestimate.

Before arriving in Taos, Mabel Dodge had become a prominent figure in the arts and society of New York City and Europe. Born to a wealthy family in Buffalo, New York, she entertained and supported many of the well-known artists, activists, writers and thinkers of her time. Her Salons were informal gatherings where people joined to dine and to discuss the new ideas of the century, often forming relationships and fomenting ideas which would have far-reaching influences. Guests of Mabel’s included Emma Goldman, Alfred Stieglitz, Margaret Sanger, John Reed and others of the political and artistic avant-garde.

When Mabel left New York to settle in Taos, marrying a full-blooded Taos Pueblo man by the name of Tony Lujan, it seemed as though the whole world was watching. During the 1930s New Yorker Magazine cartoons quipped about Mabel in Taos, while set designs for Shakespeare productions on Broadway were based on adobe architecture. Georgia O’Keeffe, Willa Cather, Ansel Adams and others found inspiration that would shape their lives’ work while visiting Tony and Mabel’s home. Carl Jung’s visits to the Taos Pueblo would influence mainstream conceptions of the “native mind,” while political wheels, set in motion by certain of Mabel’s friends like John Collier, would affect legislation to benefit Native American communities for generations to come. All of these events and many more can be traced at some point to Mabel and Tony’s commitment to one another and to the life they built in Taos.

Author Lois Rudnick in Utopian Vistas recognizes that “many who came to the Luhan House were at a critical point in their lives, physically, psychologically, or vocationally. For them, the house functioned as a kind of life crisis center breaking down and healing, making – and sometimes unmaking – love affairs and marriages. Because several visitors often stayed with the Luhans simultaneously, the opportunities for mentoring, cross fertilization, and feuding were enormously rich….”

"Throughout its history the Mabel Dodge Luhan House has served as a retreat, a center for personal growth, and a location that challenges those who dare to become part of its history. Those who have enjoyed its ambiance and those who are waiting to be introduced to the unique experience of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House can look forward to many more years in celebration of creativity, workshops in the arts, humanities and support of local cultural activities," says Mabel Dodge Luhan House history.

"Dennis Hopper discovered Mabel’s house while shooting the film Easy Rider. In 1970 he purchased Los Gallos from Mabel’s granddaughter Bonnie Evans, and left Los Angeles to live in Taos. He spent the next years editing his latest film The Last Movie. With a vision of establishing Taos as the American center of independent filmmaking, Hopper invited creatives from his sphere to stay at the “Mud Palace.” The Big House with its ten bedrooms provided the perfect venue for the cross-pollination of ideas. Paralleling Mabel’s movers and shakers of the 1920s, his visitors were an equally eclectic mixture. Many embodied the 1960s counterculture that Hopper referenced in Easy Rider. Among the more notable guests were musicians Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Bo Diddley, actors Jack Nicholson, Anthony Quinn and John Wayne, beat poet Alan Watts, and politicians George McGovern (who announced his candidacy for President at Hopper’s dining room table) and New Mexico governor David Cargo. Personages from Mabel’s era like Georgia O’Keeffe also dropped by. Dorothy Brett first visited Hopper to see what he had done to her friend’s house. She regaled him with stories of the good old days with Mabel, D.H. and Frieda Lawrence and other characters."

Hopper began working as a painter and a poet as well as a collector of art in the 1960s as well, particularly Pop Art. Over his lifetime he amassed a formidable array of 20th- and 21st-century art.

One of the first art works Hopper owned was an early print of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans bought for $75. Hopper also once owned Warhol's Mao, which he shot one evening in a fit of paranoia, the two bullet holes possibly adding to the print's value. The print sold at Christie's, New York, for $302,500 in January 2011. 

Hopper died at his home in the coastal Venice district of Los Angeles, on May 29, 2010, at age 74. His funeral took place on June 3, 2010, at San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. His body was buried at the Jesus Nazareno Cemetery in Ranchos de Taos.