GENE AUTRY
The Singing Cowboy
Gene Autry,
Hollywood�s first singing cowboy
of movies, television and radio,
died Friday, October 2 1998 at 91.
Often playing himself,
Gene starred in over 95 films
from the 1930s to the early 1950s,
riding the range
and serenading movie audiences
while riding his faithful horse, Champion.
In all of his movies
and in all of his TV series,
Gene Autry played
the same unchangeable character
~ a true blue son of the West ~
who always fought fair and square
and loved his horse, Champion.
He considered himself the baby sitter
of three generations of children
while they watched his movies
on Saturday afternoons.
They weren�t just bang-bang
shoot �em up Westerns
because he wanted to put
a moral in every story.
Though his movie career
ended in the early 1950s,
Gene will be remembered
for his quintessential versions of
"You Are My Sunshine"
"Back In the Saddle Again"
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds"
"Here Comes Santa Claus"
and the ever popular
"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".
Gene, who popularized
the musical Western
and made a multi-million dollar fortune
in broadcasting, music, radio, TV, movies
and as CEO of Gene Autry Entertainment,
died at his Studio City home
after a lengthy illness.
Gene was Hollywood�s
first singing cowboy with songs like
"Don�t Fence Me In"
and
"At Mail Call Today".
While he will best
be remembered for his singing,
Gene succeeded at just
about anything he undertook in
radio, records, songwriting, movies,
television, real estate and business.
Gene was born September 29 1907
in Tioga, Texas, and grew up in the small
Oklahoma town of Ravia.
As a boy, Gene occasionally
earned spending money
singing at local nightspots.
With the extra cash,
he invested in a mail order guitar
and taught himself to play.
By the time he was 18,
Gene was working as telegrapher
on a St. Louis to San Francisco railroad line.
It was here that he met
comedian Will Rogers who heard
Gene strumming on his guitar
and singing at the depot.
"You�re good," Will Rogers told Gene.
"Stick to it, young fellow,
and you�ll make something of yourself."
Gene first sang on the radio in 1928
and then went on to make 95 films
and star in a TV show from 1950-1956.
Gene recorded 653 records,
including his characteristic signature piece
"Back in the Saddle Again"
which made a return
to the popular music charts in 1993
as part of the soundtrack for
Meg Ryan�s hit movie
"Sleepless in Seattle".
Gene, who had homes
in Studio City and Palm Springs, California
hung up his performing spurs in 1956,
but continued to own four radio stations
and The Gene Autry Hotel in Palm Springs.
In 1982, he sold
The Los Angeles TV Station KTLA
for $245 million.
Gene enjoyed high status
for many years
on the Forbes magazine list
of the 400 richest Americans,
before he fell in 1995
to the magazine�s near miss category
with an estimated net worth of $320 million.
Gene, who once turned down a chance
to play in the minor leagues,
was owner of the Anaheim Angels since
the team was formed as
an American League
expansion franchise in 1961.
In the spring 1995,
Gene announced that
the Walt Disney Company
was buying a part interest in the team,
and the following year
Disney took operating control.
Baseball season after season ended
with Gene always waiting for the team�s
first World Series appearance.
The Angels never won the pennant,
a major disappointment for Gene,
one of baseball�s greatest fans.
Disney had an agreement
to acquire Gene�s remaining
share of the team at his death.
Throughout his business dealings,
Gene collected Western memorabilia
and Western art.
In December of 1988,
The Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum,
built largely with funds from Gene�s foundations,
opened in Los Angeles at Griffith Park.
Gene was considered top Western star
at the box office from 1937 to 1943.
Among the items in the $54 million museum
are an 1870 era steam fire engine from Nevada,
guns owned by Annie Oakley and Wyatt Earp,
and costumes of TV�s Lone Ranger and Tonto.
He first came to Los Angeles in 1934
to appear with Ken Maynard
in a movie called "Old Santa Fe".
"I was the first singing cowboy
in that picture," Gene said.
"John Wayne had made an earlier movie
in which he played a singing cowboy,
but he didn�t do his own singing."
"It occurs to me," wrote Gene
in his autobiography
Back In The Saddle Again
"that music, with the possible exception
of riding a bull, is the most uncertain way
to make a living I know.
In either case, you can get bucked off,
thrown, stepped on, trampled,
if you get on at all.
At best, it is a short and bumpy ride.
It isn�t easy to explain
why you keep coming back,
but you do."
A Box Office Star at the time
when the Western was at its pinnacle,
Gene ranked top Western star
at the box office from 1937 to 1943,
and in 1940 to 1942
he was in the Top 10
of all movie box office favorites.
George "Gabby" Hayes
and Smiley Burnett were popular
as Gene�s comic sidekicks,
and Gene�s horse, Champion,
also was an audience favorite.
Roy Rogers replaced Gene
as top cowboy for Republic Studios
when Gene took time out
to serve as a pilot
in the Army Air Corps
during the Second World War.
After the war,
he went to Columbia Pictures
where he got a new partner, Pat Buttram.
Among his postwar pictures were
"The Last Roundup" in 1947,
and
"Riders in the Sky" in 1949.
When Rogers died at 86 on July 6 1998
after struggling with congestive heart failure,
Gene said, "Roy Rogers and I worked
at Republic for many years.
We have been close friends
for half a century.
This is a terrible loss for me.
I had tremendous respect for Roy
and considered him
a great humanitarian
and an outstanding American.
He was, and will always be,
a true Western hero."
Gene�s broadcasting career
included appearances on
The Melody Ranch CBS radio show,
beginning in 1939.
Gene was host of The Gene Autry Show
on CBS-TV from 1950 to 1956,
one of the first television series
made by a motion picture star.
Gene�s records sold
more than 100 million copies.
His first gold record was
"That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine".
"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"
has sold 10 million copies
and is a Christmas perennial.
Gene wrote many of the songs
he performed and he always
wrote songs about America
and the people of America.
The death of Gene Autry
is like losing a precious piece
of America.
ROY ROGERS
The King Of The Cowboys
Roy Rogers was born
Leonard Franklin Slye
on November 5, 1911
in Portsmouth, Ohio.
He grew up with his parents
and three sisters
in the last house in the holler
in Duck Run, Ohio.
Roy always said,
"I was so far back in the sticks
I didn�t know anybody
but my horse Babe
and my mule Barney
and they were my heroes."
After raising pigs and chickens
on the family farm,
Roy took a job at
The U. S. Shoe Company
in Cincinnati.
The early trails weren't always
happy ones for Rogers.
''I saw winter coming on,'' Rogers said,
''and I didn't like those cold Ohio winters.
I hitchhiked to California
and I've been out here ever since.''
In 1930, he left Ohio
with a pleasant singing voice,
the ability to strum a guitar
and $90 dollars in savings.
Arriving in Hollywood
during the depths of the Depression,
he made ends meet
picking peaches and driving a truck,
until a recital on a radio amateur show
earned him an invitation
to sing with the Rocky Mountaineers.
During his early years
as a singer of cowboy ballads,
Roy recalls a time
when he and his band
arrived in Roswell, New Mexico
without a dime to their name.
While performing
on Roswell�s small radio station
Roy mentioned that
his favorite food was
lemon pie.
He got a phone call saying
if he sang
"The Swiss Yodel",
the caller�s sister
would bring a lemon pie
to their motor court
later that night.
Roy sang
"The Swiss Yodel",
better than he ever had before,
and sure enough,
that night a car pulled up
with not one but two lemon pies!
Roy fell in love
with the young woman
who baked those delicious lemon pies,
Miss Arlene Wilkins,
and later they were married.
He helped organize a singing group
called The Sons of the Pioneers, and
in 1935 singing cowboys
were suddenly hot stuff
and his band appeared in
Gene Autry�s first big picture
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds",
and later in
''Rhythm on the Range'' in 1936,
''The Big Show'' in 1936
and in other B movies starring
Gene Autry and Charles Starrett.
Republic Pictures
were looking
for yet another headliner.
Leonard Franklin Slye
learned about the audition,
outperformed 17 others
and landed the job complete with
a brand new name
Roy Rogers!
Republic was a notoriously cheap studio
with a notoriously thrifty boss.
"I was making $75 a week,"
as Roy recollected.
''when I made my first picture.
I can't get anybody
to mow the lawn for that today.
If you're with a thrifty studio
like Republic was,
you learn the value
of a dollar real quick,
because you're not
getting many of them.''
Roy started out in life
as a Buckeye from Ohio,
but he used a silvery yodel
and a silver six-shooter
to become a silver-screen hero
to generations of fans.
Roy was always a straight-talking,
straight-shooting, hard-riding,
clean-living singing cowboy,
and he became the king
by always stressing
fair play and decency.
''I think we had a very healthy era for kids
because it helped to build responsibility,''
Roy said. "The bad guys always lost
and the good guys always won in the end.''
Rules in a Roy Rogers movie
were surprisingly uncomplicated.
The good guys always won.
The hero never cussed or fought dirty.
The songs always celebrated
the simple pleasures of clean living.
The formula was amazingly durable,
especially when audiences assumed
that the Roy Rogers off screen
was every bit as even-tempered
and fair-minded as his movie character
and they followed him for decades
down lots of happy trails.
Right from the first
the fans adored Roy
and he went on to make
87 cowboy movies
until he moved to television in 1951.
Armed with a guitar,
a pistol and an unshakable belief
in the power of goodness,
Roy made 101 television episodes
and countless personal appearances.
Roy always responded
to praise and celebrity
with an endearing humility
born of early struggles,
and the fans loved him
all the more for it.
Roy never liked the party circuit
the studio insisted he frequent,
but he began taking a friend
or two as guests, and he enjoyed
just sitting around with them
chatting about hunting and fishing.
Always a family man,
Roy and Arlene adopted
Cheryl Darlene.
Arlene gave birth
to Linda Lou in 1943
and Dusty was born in 1946.
Tragically, a few days after giving birth
Arlene died of a brain embolism.
Roy and Dale Evans
met years earlier
when they co-starred in
"The Cowboy And The Senorita".
Her beautiful composition
"Happy Trails To You"
eventually became their
TV show theme song.
After marrying in 1947,
they adopted
a little Scottish child.
A couple of years later
their daughter Robin Elizabeth
was born with Down syndrome.
Refusing to institutionalize the child,
Robin enjoyed their loving home life
until her death a few days
before her second birthday.
Dale and Roy
adopted several children
to create the big family
they always wanted.
They had a loyal German Shepherd
called Bullet,
Dale had a buckskin horse
she called Buttermilk
and Roy was attached to Trigger,
his splendid palomino stallion.
Roy said Trigger
was the greatest horse of all,
gentle, smart and responsive.
There wasn�t anything
Roy asked him to do
that he refused to do.
Roy insisted that Trigger
get star billing in all of his pictures
because a cowboy was nothing
without his horse.
Trigger was 33
when he died in 1965.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans
have been married 51 years,
have six living children
(Robin, Deborah and John deceased)
16 grandchildren,
27 great-grandchildren,
and shared over 50 years
together in show business.
As box office stars
they were billed as
The King of the Cowboys
and
The Queen of the West.
At the peak of popularity
they had more than 2000 fan clubs
around the world,
and stood for fair play, adventure,
romance and the American ideal
of grassroots goodness.
Despite their enormous fame
they were two normal folks
who just happened to have
some good luck in their careers.
Dale always did
most of the shopping,
cooking and laundry.
They have always been accessible
and easy to approach
with their sincere friendliness
and genuine warmth.
Roy and Dale drew
their comfort from the home
and preferred watching old movies
on their large screen TV
to going out to current pictures,
which were filled with violence,
sex and foul language.
"All that blood and cussing," said Roy.
"are poor excuses for entertainment."
''He came from nothing,''
Movie and Film historian Leonard Maltin
told the Associated Press.
''He earned everything he had
and remained a modest, simple man.
He portrayed himself
as a good, honest man
and that's precisely who he was.''
Roy died July 6, 1998
after struggling with
congestive heart failure.
He was 86 years young,
but in significant ways
he had never aged.
His eternal boyish smile
that caused his eyes to crinkle
made him the very best
King of the Cowboys
over 50 years ago.
He remains a fitting symbol
of an America in which
all things good are possible.