Every year at Christmas, the Center for Collections and Research decorates George Booth’s office in Cranbrook House with a special display. This year, our Christmas display is all about Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a movie produced by Stephen Booth, a grandson of Cranbrook’s cofounders. Brighty was a real donkey who inspired first a children’s novel, then a feature film.

In the late 1800s, there were hundreds of half-wild donkeys in the Grand Canyon, brought there by prospectors and then lost or abandoned. Brighty was one of them. 

Brighty lived in the Grand Canyon from 1892 to 1922. In the winter, he roamed the warm depths of the canyon. A sociable animal, he liked the company of prospectors, hunters, and hikers, but if anyone loaded a heavy pack on his back he would soon make his escape. Every summer, he returned to the North Rim to stay with the McKee family who rented cabins to tourists. He would carry water, give children rides, and visit each cabin in turn for attention and treats—his favorite food was flapjacks and honey.

In 1953, the author Marguerite Henry learned about Brighty, and immediately decided to base her next novel on him. In search of more stories about the adventurous donkey, she travelled to the Grand Canyon herself, where she interviewed locals who had known him, hiked in the canyon, and even sampled the creek water and tasted the plants that Brighty would have eaten! She adopted her own donkey, Jiggs, to learn from him how the real Brighty might have behaved. In Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a free-spirited donkey helps solve a murder mystery and protects his human friends from a dangerous bandit.

Stephen Booth and his wife Betty bought a copy of the book to read to their children, Douglas, Charles, and George. They all loved the story, especially Stephen, who had his own film production company, and decided to make a movie about Brighty. 

Filming began in 1965, with Marguerite Henry’s own pet donkey, Jiggs, starring as Brighty. Filmed on location at the Grand Canyon and in the Dixie National Forest in Utah, the actors and crew spent weeks living in the canyon. A tiny helicopter and an airplane with a camera mounted on the front were used for aerial shots, and for flying special visitors, like Stephen’s parents, Henry and Carolyn Booth, down into the canyon. 

The movie premiered on November 22, 1966, just down the road in Birmingham, doubling as a fundraiser for Kingswood School for Girls. As the star of the movie, Jiggs himself came along to the premiere. Afterward, he participated in the Festival of Gifts at Christ Church Cranbrook, an annual Christmas tradition that began in 1928 and continues today. 

While Brighty was visiting Bloomfield Hills, he also posed for a series of sculptures by Peter Jepsen. They were modelled here at Cranbrook, on the second floor of Thornlea Studio. We still have one of the sixty Brighty figurines that Stephen Booth had made to give as presents to people who had helped in the making of the movie. Our Brighty was given to Stephen’s parents, Henry and Carolyn, to thank them for their support.

Stephen also commissioned Jepsen to make a life-size sculpture of Brighty. In 1968, Stephen gave that version to the Park Rangers at the Grand Canyon as a Christmas present. You can still see Jepsen’s Brighty at the visitor’s lodge on the North Rim of the Canyon, close to where the real Brighty spent his summers, more than a hundred years ago.

— Mariam Hale, Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research