Not much happened in the telegraphy office of the St. Louis-San Francisco railroad, especially not on the late shift. To pass the time, the young clerk brought his guitar and played to amuse himself. On one of those lonely nights, he received a visitor. That visitor was legendary humorist Will Rogers, and Rogers liked what he heard from a young man called Orvon Gene Autry.
The chance meeting launched a career spanning six decades that included 640 records with over 100 million copies sold. And that’s just the start of it. Gene Autry starred in 95 movies, had a long running radio program, and produced and starred in his own television show. When he retired from Hollywood, he went on to own the California Angels and KTLA, a Los Angeles television station. He’s also the only entertainer to have five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for every category established by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. No wonder he’s on a postage stamp honoring Hollywood cowboys!
His success was quite a leap for the young man born Sept. 29, 1907 in Tioga, Texas. At the age of five, Gene’s preacher-grandfather taught him to sing. His mother encouraged her son’s interest in music with hymns and folks songs. Gene was 12 when he bought his first guitar for $8 out of the Sears Catalog. After graduating from high school, he took the telegraphy job that led to his chance meeting with Will Rogers.
Rogers advised him to purse a career in show business, and a year later Gene went to New York to audition for RCA Victor. He didn’t win immediate favor. An executive told him to come back when he’d gotten more experience, and Gene did just that. He returned in six months and made his first recording, “My Dreaming of You” with a flipside of “My Alabama Home.”
In 1929 he signed with Columbia Records and went on to star in “National Barn Dance,” a popular show on a Chicago radio station. By the 1930s, he was one of the most beloved country singers in America, and his sales proved it. Gene Autry earned the first Gold Record ever awarded. No wonder he’s known as “America’s Favorite Singing Cowboy.”
Movies came next for Gene. He first appeared on the screen in 1934, but the film that made him a star was “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” in 1935. It led to several more “singing cowboy” movies, produced by Republic Pictures at a rate of a movie every six weeks. By 1937, Gene was rated a top box office attraction in the class of Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy.
In addition to the movies, Gene had a radio presence. His “Melody Ranch” show aired from 1940 to 1956. Just about everyone knew the words to Back in the Saddle Again. When television became the main source of family entertainment, Gene was the first major movie star to make the shift. He produced and starred in the Gene Autry Show for six years.
The stats for Gene Autry go on and on, but there are two things he’s known for that don’t have a number attached. One of those things is “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Gene recorded this Christmas song in 1949, and it’s a true American Classic.
The second is even more fitting for Petticoats & Pistols, a blog dedicated to western romance. Gene Autry is credited with “The Cowboy Code.” Here is it:
1. A cowboy never takes unfair advantage – even of an enemy.
2. A cowboy never betrays a trust. He never goes back on his word.
3. A cowboy always tells the truth.
4. A cowboy is kind and gentle to small children, old folks, and animals.
5. A cowboy is free from racial and religious intolerances.
6. A cowboy is always helpful when someone is in trouble.
7. A cowboy is always a good worker.
8. A cowboy respects womanhood, his parents and his nation’s laws.
9. A cowboy is clean about his person in thought, word, and deed.
10.A cowboy is a Patriot.
If that doesn’t sum up what it means to be a western hero, I don’t know what does.
The Singing Cowboy stamps go on sale Saturday, April 17th. It’s fitting the official unveiling will be at the Autry National Center in the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles.
Published at April 14th, 2010 in category Western Movies
William S. Hart was one of the first great stars of the silent screen motion picture western. (read oh, so carefully to find a chance to win my May 1st release Wildflower Bride-I just got my author’s copies and I’M SUPER EXCITED AND IN THE MOOD TO SHARE!)
Westerns with their classic situations – the fight in the saloon, the faithful horse, the dude who goes west, the sheriff who cleans up the town, the showdown, the trip west in a covered wagon — what are now considered film clichés were first introduced to film audiences in 1914 with the arrival of William Surrey Hart.
Hart was a stage actor until the age of 49. At that age, after a long career of playing Shakespearean theater in the United States and England, he headed for Hollywood and silent films. And—get this—he made 65 films in the next eleven years. How’s that for productive, huh?
When he got to Hollywood, Hart was disgusted by the “pretty boy” Westerns that were currently being produced. He began directing and acting in his own productions. His films reflected his rugged vision of the West. Hart often used real Indians, gamblers, prostitutes, and saloon entertainers in films.
The themes of his films generally relied upon a “transformation,” where the love of a good woman, a “Sunbonnet Sue” tamed the wild man and transformed him into the man of virtue we knew him to be all along. And now, aren’t we all still in love with that formula in romance novels, huh?
Sometimes the roles were switched: Hart as the noble cowboy who tames the bad girl. Often the bad-woman-turned-good redeemed herself by dying for her man, stepping in front of him to take the bullet. How come the man gets to be transformed but the woman has to die? Huh? Ask yourself that?
But by the late ‘teens, Hart, now sixty saw his career wane in popularity. Hart’s age and unwillingness to tamper with the formula was supplanted by Tom Mix, with his “action and excitement spiced with a boyish sense of fun.” Westerns began catering to an increasingly younger audience, and Hart faded from view.
Disheartened, Hart retired from the screen, only to try one last comeback in 1925 with, Tumbleweeds. The film was only a minor success. Hart retired from films, making one last public appearance in 1940 with a sound prologue to a re-issued Tumbleweeds. Just listen for a few minutes to William S. Hart in the clip below. He has a fantastic voice. You can easily believe he was trained in Shakespearean theater.
William S. Hart, the Western matinee idol of the silent screen died June 23, 1946 in Los Angeles. On April 17, 2010, the United States Postal Service will release a series of four stamps, Cowboys of the Silver Screen. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Tom Mix, and William S. Hart
And now here’s your chance to get your name in the drawing for a signed copy of Book #3 in the Montana Marriages series, Wildflower Bride. Have you ever seen a silent movie? I’ve seen clips. Usually a charging train, belching smoke, scary piano music in the background. Simple question, yes or no. If it’s yes, tell me about it.
Published at April 13th, 2010 in category Western Movies
”I was born a cowboy, have lived as a cowboy and will die a cowboy,” Tom Mix liked to say and he was as good as his word–or was he? I’ll let you be the judge. Born in Texas, Tom grew up on a ranch near El Paso. In his teens, he ran away and joined the circus and later fought in the Mexican Revolution, joining Pacho Villa’s army. He was saved within an inch of his life from being shot by a firing squad. Undaunted, he fought in Cuba, China and both sides of the Boer War—and had the medals to prove it. As a sheriff and Texas Ranger he was shot by horse thieves and Indians, and single-handedly captured…
Hold Your Horses This is beginning to read like fiction—which of course, it was. Some was made up by his publicists, some by Tom, himself. The stories of his life are so convoluted that even his biographers have trouble separating fact from fiction. The ironic part is that his real life was even more interesting that his made-up life, but this was Hollywood and, back in the early days, they wanted their cowboys to be real and their heroes to be, well, heroes.
Will the Real Tom Mix Please Stand up?
www.b-westerns.com
Thomas Hezikiah Mix was born in Pennsylvania in 1880, the son of a lumberman. He reportedly never liked his middle name and always signed his name Tom E. Mix, E for Edwin. When Tom was nine, his family moved to Dubois, where his father worked as handyman and stable man. Tom loved hanging around the stables and, after seeing Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, decided he wanted to be a cowboy.
www.b-westerns.com
At 18 he joined the army to fight in the Spanish American war but saw no action. He reenlisted but went AWOL after marrying his first wife and was listed as a deserter, though the Army never pursued him or, for that matter, discharged him.
As far as anyone knew, he was never more than an honorary Texas Ranger. Richard D. Jensen writes in The Amazing Tom Mix: The Most Famous Cowboy of the Movies that Tom worked as a night marshal in Oklahoma territory rounding up bootleggers. This appears to be the extent of his lawman days except on screen.
He eventually joined the Miller Brothers 101 Wild West Show. His big break came when he landed a job as a bronc buster in the movie Ranch Life in the Great Southwest. His action based sequence started him on the road to box office success.
What About All those Gun Wounds?
Though he was never shot by Indians or desperados except on screen, he was in actuality shot twice—once when he was 12 and once by his fourth wife. The first time occurred while he and a friend were playing with a pistol. Since his family couldn’t afford a surgeon the bullet remained in his leg for years before it was removed. This episode may have had something to do with his dropping out of school and having only a fourth grade education.
www.b-westerns.com
As for being shot by his fourth wife: According to a 1933 Berkeley Daily newspaper, his wife shot him through the shoulder, claiming self-defense. Tom Mix testified that he was shot after “I came home and threw a gigolo out of our place.” Apparently Tom didn’t learn his lesson as went on to marry a fifth time.
King of Cowboys
The first to be called King of Cowboys, Tom Mix made an estimated 300 movies including nine talkies and eventually wrote and directed his own films. He was the highest paid western actor of the times, making in excess of $17,000 a week. Known for his fancy high hats, he reportedly owned over 600 pairs of custom-made boots. Tom’s horse Tony was almost as famous as his owner. Tony died following a hip injury and was replaced by Tony II.
Though Tom’s heroic real life claims were mostly fabricated, on screen he was the real McCoy His movies were full of action and no one could match his daredevil stunts, which he did himself. Not only did he jump off horses, fall off trains and face real bullets, he suffered as many as 80 injuries during his career, including knife wounds, broken ribs, and a near fatal brush with dynamite.
Tom’s death in 1940 was almost as strange as his life. During an Arizona traffic accident a metal suitcase in his car hit him on the head causing fatal injuries. He was 60 years old. His popularity continued for most of the ‘40s through his radio show and comic books.
Two years to the date of his death, his faithful horse Tony II died. We can only imagine what kind of tall tale Tom would have spun from that.
Almost two years ago my husband and I adopted a dog from an organization that rescues abandoned animals. His name is Hartley and he’s a Jack Russell / Beagle mix. He’s a tad bit . . . odd. He licks furniture (gross), and he’s terrified of little girls. Little boys don’t bother him at all. The poor dog doesn’t know how to chase a ball or play “Fetch,” but he plays catch by pushing the ball with his nose for a distance of about a foot. We roll it back and he’s happy.
More than once, my husband has looked at our beloved mutt and said, “Hartley, you’re no Rin Tin Tin.”
That got me thinking about the famed German Shepherd who starred in the 1950’s TV show, “The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.” In the show, Rin Tin Tin belongs to a boy named Rusty who’s been orphaned in an Indian raid. The boy and dog are adopted by the soldiers at Fort Apache and the adventure begins.
The series was only one of Rin Tin Tin’s Hollywood credits. His fame goes back to films from the 1920s when he stared in several movies, many of them with western settings. His continued to star in movies up through the 1940s, then moved to television.
The first Rin Tin Tin has quite a story. He was born in Lorraine, France in September 1918 in the thick of World War I. He was just five days old when Lee Duncan, an American serviceman, rescued him from a bombed out war dog kennel along with the pup’s sister. Duncan named the dogs Rin Tin Tin and Nenette after French puppets given to WWI soldiers for luck.
Duncan was fascinated with the abilities of the new breed known as a German Shepherd, and he became acquainted with the man who’d trained the dogs. He worked regularly with the dogs to teach them to perform on command. When the war ended, Duncan took the two dogs to Los Angeles. Sadly, Nenette didn’t make it. She died en route from distemper.
Duncan returned to his job as a clerk in a hardware store, but his interest in dogs continued and he took Rin Tin Tin to dog shows. In February 1922, Rin Tin Tin amazed the audience at the Shepherd Dog Club by jumping a phenomenal 11 feet 9 inches. Quite by chance, a man named Charlie Jones asked if he could try out his new camera that made moving pictures by filming Rin Tin Tin. Duncan said yes, and a film company later offered Duncan $350 to film the dog in action.
It took a while for Rin Tin Tin’s career to take off. Duncan tried to a sell movie script starring his dog, but he found no takers. It wasn’t until he happened on a film company struggling to shoot a scene about a wolf that Rin Tin Tin got his big break. Duncan said his dog could do the scene in a single take, and that’s what Rin Tin Tin did. The producer hired him for the rest of “The Man From Hell’s River.” The success of that film saved the studio making it from financial ruin. The name of that littlle studio on the brink? Warner Brothers Pictures.
The first Rin Tin Tin made 26 movies before he died in 1932. Warner Brothers didn’t want to lose their star, so the mantle was passed to the Rin Tin Tin’s son, known as Junior. The two dogs weren’t identical in appearance, so a publicity campaign began. Junior was the first dog to fly in a commerical airplane. Duncan and Rin Tin Tin No. 3 later particiated WWII by training 5,000 soldiers and dogs for the war effort.
Thanks to protected breeding, the legacy of Rin Tin Tin continues today. Every dog that has ever played Rin Tin Tin is related to the original one. The most recent is Rin Tin Tin #11, born July 8, 2009. May the legacy of Man’s Best Friend continue!
I heard a song on the radio the other day that took me way back to the days when westerns dominated the movie screen and the television airwaves.The song was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.Hearing the song immediately put me back in front of the screen reliving scenes from that great movie.
Got me to thinking about other Cowboy/Western ballads I love – not all of them movie related – and I thought I’d do a list of my top ten favorites for this post.And for those of you who want to hear them again (or for the first time), I’ll post links to videos that feature them as well.
As the old cowboy saying goes, ‘It’s the last thing you take off and the first thing that is noticed.’
Top hats, derbys, tams, fedoras, berets, bowlers – hats do more than cover a man’s head. They make a statement about the wearer.
If I say Bogart, can you see him, fedora pulled down low, collar turned up?
Or Charlie Chaplin in his bowler?
How about President Abraham Lincoln?
Or Sean Connery in his Panama?
Hats say a lot about the personality of the man – and some, like President Lincoln’s black stovepipe hat, will be forever linked with the man who wore it.
I believe the most recognizable type of hat, hands down, is the cowboy hat.
Did you see John Wayne in The Quiet Man and wonder where the heck his Stetson was?
There, that’s better.
How about the hat Clint Eastwood wore in Pale Rider?
John Stetson was the creator of what we think of today as the cowboy hat. The son of a master hatter, John made his first cowboy hat as a demonstration to his buddies about making felt from fur. The wide-brimmed hat was so useful in keeping off the sun and rain, his companions wanted one of their own. And an empire was born.
Stetson started his company in 1865. By 1866, the “Hat of the West” or “Boss of the Plains” set the John B. Stetson Company on the path to becoming the most famous hat in the world. Originally sold in one grade (2 ounce felt) and one color (natural), that original Stetson hat sold for five dollars. The equivalent hat today would cost close to $1,000.
Check out these two Montana dudes (1885) in their brand new Stetson ‘Boss of the Plains.’ The guy on the left is wearing Levi’s.
Made of a blend of rabbit, wild hare and beaver fur, today’s Stetson sets the mark for cowboy hats. You can get your Stetson in felt or straw, black, white, grey, tan; choose your style, for casual or dress, for outside wear or for going to church.
If you want to see how these famous hats are made, visit StetsonHats.com and click on the “The Making of a Stetson Hat” from the list on the left.
Stetson isn’t the only hat maker in the U.S. In Dallas in 1927, the Byer-Rolnick company began making the Resistol hats, so named because they were made to “resist all weather.”
But Stetson is the name most associated with the west.
Here’s some eye-candy, just because.
“Even after the wild aspect of the West was somewhat tamed, the cowboy hat never really lost its ability to lend that reckless and rugged aura to its wearer.”
Please start by telling us a little about yourself.
I jokingly call myself the World’s Greatest Literary Janitor, when it comes to the career of Louis L’Amour my job has basically been to organize what he left behind in order to extend his career twenty years or so.That meant going through virtually every piece of paper that he left behind searching for clues with which I could recreate various aspects of his life for Bantam Books, our web sites and, occasionally, the movie industry.
On the personal side I’m just guy who lives in a little house in Los Angeles, creates fun projects to do with his friends, likes traveling, reading, and messing around with old cars.This is beginning to sound like one of those dating site profiles …I’ll move on.
Your father is famous for living a lot of the life he wrote about, was this true by the time you were able to remember him or did he live a more sedate desk bound life after his books started coming out.
Louis never lived the life of a cowboy, though he was a miner and worker on a number of farms.Much of this was done in a period, the 1920s, that had a greater resemblance to the frontier west than our world of today and some of the people who had lived in that earlier time were still alive.However, it was a time that had it’s own fascinating aspects … I always wished Louis had written more about his own time.
Once he settled down in Los Angeles right after World War Two most of that lifestyle was in the past.By the time I came along Louis was fairly tied to his desk by the responsibility of supporting a family.Writing, in those days, didn’t pay particularly well.To live a relatively middle class lifestyle and prepare for problems that the future … protracted unemployment was always a risk … Dad had to write three to four books a year.It was quite a load of work.
I have to ask, as a writer myself, how did your dad manage all these books without a computer? I am profoundly impressed. I do so much editing and revising and it would be so much harder with a typewriter. I feel like a pure wimp, but I find writers who produced as much work as your dad did especially impressive because they didn’t have computers. . .don’t even ask about James Fenimore Cooper and Jane Austen without even a typewriter. Did he tear out pages and throw them away and start over and scribble on the pages a lot? Did he write his books longhand first then transcribe it to a typewriter? Did he talk his books and have a secretary?
Louis learned to write by trying to sell to the pulp magazines.The pay was usually between $25 to $250 a story … and many, many, stories didn’t sell.He set a goal of writing a story a week in those days so there wasn’t much time for rewriting or even over thinking them.I’m sure that in the early days, long before I was born, he threw out a great many pages.Later, however, he perfected a manner of “stream of consciousness” writing that allowed him to produce an incredible number of stories but at the cost of losing some of his ability to rewrite.Perhaps a more accurate way of saying that would be that ‘he lost some of his will to rewrite’ … he was not so inclined to think about what he was writing, he made it more of a reaction than an intellectual process.That delivered a boiling energy to his work but left some of it sort of rough around the edges.Take a look at some of the writing in Yondering, stories that were highly polished in order to be sold in literary magazines, then compare them to many of the pulp westerns, where speed of production was of the essence.There is a difference.
Dad wrote a minimum of five pages a day, using two fingers, on a typewriter.He wrote six to ten hours a day, six to seven days a week for most of his adult life.At his best he could do sixty words a minute for a pretty extended amount of time.Most of the trick though, was just sticking to it and never doubting that what he was doing was right, the right scene, the right dialogue, whatever.
Did your dad travel to research his books? I’m wondering if you had adventures as a child that stemmed from having Louis L’Amour as a father.
Sometimes.Mostly he was already aware of the locations he wanted to use from his own, earlier, travels,But we did research on many of our trips and, later on, I did research for him on my own.My sister and I saw a lot of dirt roads when we were kids.
Have you met the actors and actresses who have performed in movie’s based on his books, like Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot?
I have had the privilege of working with both of those guys but meeting people or working with them and knowing them are two different things.I’ve tended to leave the celebrity types to themselves as much as possible.Some are really nice people. Some are absolute jerks.In my opinion, nothing about being a movie star is wonderful or interesting.Quite a few live difficult lives and are often not really the kind of people that you’d want to hang around with once the novelty of their being famous wore off.
That said there is a great difference between stars, who tend to exist in a bubble of fear and alienation, and a great number of actors, some of whom are my closest friends.It’s amazing how many actors, who often get a bad rap based upon a few of the worst examples, are alert, intelligent, people who are amazingly hard workers and able to both do so many different things and to train themselves in new disciplines at the drop of a hat.I really count myself lucky.
And how involved are you with current work on the books.
I had been involved with production of our dramatized audios from the start.For years we have done a series of audio books in a style similar to old time radio dramas … I use that term loosely because most of our productions do not try to be nostalgic or the least bit “old timey.”Anyway, I was in charge of the scripting and casting of the vast majority of those shows, each needing a script that was an adaptation of the original story rather than a dogmatically faithful transcription.Prose does not automatically make the best drama, just like including back and forth, script style dialogue in a novel or short story could be a mistake.Prose is a visual art, more like painting than good drama … and drama is usually more auditory, even in the movies.I also wrote and directed several of our audio dramas … in fact I’m at work editing the most recent, number seventy, I believe, even as I answer these questions.
For awhile I was doing six a year but now production has slowed considerably and we do only one every several years, however, the stories are much longer and the productions vastly more involved.This production is an audio of one of my dad’s movies that I produced several years ago, The Diamond of Jeru.It has been a wonderful opportunity to revisit that script and evolve it into something new and different.In a way it is as much of an adaptation of that film as the film was of the novella.I don’t know when it will be released, we only get about a week a month to work on these and we have to take the end of the year off as Christmas is our big sales time at louislamour.com.We are two years in and only about half done.
Back to the books.Starting with Haunted Mesa I began to be involved with doing some of Louis’s research and then occasionally doing some minor editing.After his death the work expanded to planning how to re-present the entire catalogue of his works, to art directing a new set of covers, rewriting all the jacket copy, and editing or rewriting many of the unpublished or unfinished short stories.My friend for many years, Paul O’Dell and I run the louislamour.com website and have created hundreds of pages of material on Louis and his stories.Our latest creation is Louis L’Amour’s Great Adventures, a website featuring all of Louis’s writing in the adventure genre and an examination of the world that the stories were written in.It’s full of Paul’s amazing art and maps and photos from the time period … many straight from Louis’s own archives.Also of note is louislamourslosttreasures.com, and ongoing project to catalogue many of Louis’s partially completed projects, false starts, and alternative versions of many of his published works.
I see that you’re a writer and involved in many ways in the film industry. How has being Louis L’Amour’s son helped? How as it hurt?
Being Louis’s son has helped because I inherited a catalogue of material that was already famous … it would seem that might make it easier to sell than my original material.Certainly studios and networks would rather talk about material written by my dad … at the same time they don’t really want to make westerns, so the whole situation is sort of self limiting.That said, I only occasionally work in film and don’t need to go there to earn a living so it’s not really a problem.When I want to do drama, work with actors and script and such I can do an audio.I love film but the business is very dysfunctional and time consuming … I’m glad I have publishing.Really glad.
I am a huge fan of all the L’Amour books and I don’t think I’ve missed a single one.
My personal favorite is The Sackett Brand. Here’s a bit about it (for the Petticoats & Pistols readers) I found on http://www.louislamour.com/ .
Forty gunslingers from the Lazy A have got Tell Sackett cornered under the Mogollon Rim. They’re fixing to hang him if they can capture him alive, fill him extra full of lead if they can’t.
It’s just about the best of the best in my opinion. I consider however, Jubal Sackett to be, again in my opinion, his epic story. I just loved that book. I have a question about it.
In Jubal Sackett. . .when Jubal went into that cave and saw those dead bodies and heard the words, “Find them. . .” I have ALWAYS been crazed to know what that meant. Find WHO?????
Any ideas? Even guesses would be appreciated. Was it something Louis was going to go into in a later book? Is it in Jubal Sackett and I somehow missed it?
It was a set up for the future but I don’t know where he was going with it.If that drove you crazy you really love Louis L’Amour Treasures.It’s hundreds of mysteries wrapped in riddles.Take a look …
I don’t know about you, but it’s HOT in Nebraska! How hot is it?
It’s so hot, I went to the store for flour, sugar and eggs yesterday, and came home with a cake.
Bada boom, bada bing.
Seriously, it’s summer, and we have three birthdays to celebrate just this month. Our family has grown so much that it’s a rare month that doesn’t find us gathering for cake at least a couple of times. I love to get creative and serve brunch, with breakfast casseroles, etc. My daughter LeighAnn and I occasionally cook up Mexican Day or Soup Day. But of course, with such a large gathering, we often have the old standbys, grilled burgers and dogs, Tastees, chili, and on the holidays, good old ham and turkey.
I don’t know how I always get the same jobs at these events—but I’m trying to shake off the stereotype. My son-in-law Brad claims he’s going to have me buried with an ice cream scoop in my folded hands, so I’ll look normal. I bought him one for Christmas one year—a dandy specimen just like mine—a heavy-duty industrial strength flat scooper—but of course I am the one who wields it at their house. Last birthday there I tried to hide until the scooping was underway, but they found me.
My goodness, but those birthdays pile up, don’t they? When we moved last time, I organized photos into albums until my brain went numb. I finally stashed the rest back into boxes where they will await the next millennium. It was amazing how many of those photos were pictures of cakes. If you’re a young mom, take this as a gentle suggestion: Take ONE photo of the baby’s cake. One, got it?
I remember how exciting those first birthday cakes were. If you’re a mom of many or a grandma, you remember, too. You couldn’t get enough pictures of your baby with frosting up his nose. Wasn’t that darling? Then there were second, third, and fourth birthdays. And then the second third and fourth kids arrived and had birthdays, too—yes I have four children and I lived to tell. And then the grandchildren start arriving—or so they say.
Here is my pledge: I will never, as long as I draw breath, take another picture of a birthday cake. I mean how many cake pictures does a person need? Get them out of order, and you don’t even know whose cake it was or which year. And you know, one shot is never enough. Admit it, you take two pictures in case the first one blurs or something. Heaven forbid we wouldn’t be able to see Strawberry Shortcake or Spiderman clearly once he was only a sweet memory.
You know what I’m talking about. Just you try sorting 20 or 30 years of photos and try to get sentimental about a cake that was only so so in 1983.
And while I’m on the subject of parties, darned if I’m not the one who inevitably gets stuck opening all those toys that have been hermetically sealed and wired and clamped. Sometimes I need a screwdriver and a wire cutter to extricate them. I’m telling you, Santa could catapult those boxes out of his sleigh onto our concrete driveway and Barbie wouldn’t have a hair out of place. Her hair is sewn onto the cardboard, people. Sewn.
The packaging is three times the size of the toy inside. It takes half a roll of wrapping paper to go around a box, but once you get the twisties unwrapped and the taped peeled off and the plastic removed, you have a tiny little pile of Power Rangers and half a dozen bags of trash. And—
Have you ever lost a minuscule part and had to search through all those bags because you might have accidentally thrown it away? Or heaven forbid go out to the trashcan—I don’t know which is worse, searching through trash for Woody’s six-shooter in the summer or during the winter. Hint: the piece is never there. It’s always with Colonel Mustard in the sofa cushion.
How about you? Do most of your family traditions involve food?
This blog had nothing to do with reading, writing or watching westerns, but I do have a fun drawing this month to bring the focus back on everybody’s favorite subject (besides cake) and that would be cowboys.
Leave a comment today and I’ll drop your name into the fish bowl. I’m holding a drawing for this DVD set: COWBOYS OF THE SILVER SCREEN. Five full-length feature films:
Over the Hill Gang – Walter Brennan and Ricky Nelson
The Shooting – jack Nicholson, Warren Oates
Vengeance Valley – Burt Lancaster, Joanna Dru
Rage at Dawn – Forrest Tucker, Randolph Scott
One-eyed Jacks, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden
I’m adding a cowboy boot charm to the prize, too. Now, wouldn’t winning this set just take the cake?
How did I first become interested in Western romance?I could answer that question in two words—but first let me give you some background.In my growing up years, my dad subscribed to some great men’s magazines, like TRUE and SPORTS AFIELD. They were filled with action and adventure, and I read them from cover to cover.I even enjoyed the ads, especially the ad that showed a long line of books with titles like RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE and LIGHT OF THE WESTERN STARS and a banner that read: “GET THE ENTIRE THE ZANE GREY COLLECTION!”
By the time I fell under Zane Grey’s spell, that author had long since ridden into life’s sunset.But his books were still bestsellers, and our local library had an entire shelf of them.I was in sixth grade when I started reading them.Not sure how many I got through, but I do remember how they fired my young imagination with vistas of raw beauty and rugged characters who were bigger than life.
Pearl Zane Grey was born in 1872 in Zanesville, Ohio,where he grew up reading adventure stories and dime novels.He wanted to be a writer, but his father, a dentist with a violent temper, had other ideas.When Zane wrote his first story at fifteen, his father tore it up and beat him. Eventually the young man bowed to his father’s wishes, became a dentist and married a girl from a wealthy family.At night, to relieve the tedium of his day job, he wrote stories.His first efforts were awkward, but with the help of his wife Dolly, who edited his work and most likely financed the publication of his first novel, he slowly began to find success.
Grey had inherited his father’s turbulent nature.He was given to spells of anger and sank into despair when his work was rejected.Restless to a fault, he was a deplorable husband and father, often staying away for months, traveling, hunting and fishing, and spending time with mistresses, while Dolly managed the household and raised their three children.Dolly tolerated her husband’s lifestyle as she proofed his work and handled the business end of his growing literary career.Their letters indicate that there was genuine love and respect between them.
Grey’s early books were about the American Revolution.After a hunting trip to Arizona he began to write the Westerns that would make him famous.On his wilderness trips he took photographs and wrote copious notes.Treacherous river crossings, unpredictable beasts, bone-chilling cold, searing heat, parching thirst, bad water, irascible tempers, and heroic cooperation all became real to him. From the beginning, vivid description was the strongest aspect of his writing.Grey’s first Western, THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT, became a bestseller.Two years later he produced his best known book, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, his all-time best seller and one of the most successful Western novels ever.After that he became a household name.In 1918 he moved his family from Pennsylvania to California, where he started his own movie production company.He lived there on and off until his death in 1939 at the age of 67.
Grey became one of the first millionaire authors. He connected with millions of readers worldwide and inspired many Western writers who followed him. Zane Grey was a major force in shaping the myths of the Old West and he helped transition the written Western into other media. He was the author of over 90 books, some published posthumously and/or based on serials originally published in magazines. His total book sales exceed 40 millionFrom 1917–1926, Grey was in the top ten best-seller list nine times, which required sales of over 100,000 copies each time.Even after his death, his publisher had a stockpile of manuscripts and continued to publish a new title each year until 1963.
Another great writer, Erle Stanley Gardner, would say that Grey “had the knack of tying his characters into the land, and the land into the story…Somehow you got the impression that the bigness of the country generated a bigness of character.”
What sparked your early interest in the West?Do you have a favorite author?A favorite story or film?
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Yes, I admit, my heroes have always been cowboys. My love of cowboys came from old western movies. Here were men who were larger than life, who stood up for what they believed in, who’s word was their bond, who were willing to do what had to be done. And when they fell in love, it was deep and forever — even if they fought it at first.
Nothing surprised me more when I started to write, that I chose set my stories in the American frontier. Now, it wasn’t a surprise that I chose to write historicals –after all, I have a BA and MA and a second BA in History and taught US History and Western Civilization at the college level. However, I liked teaching Western Civ more than US History and my MA had specialization in Tudor and Stuart England, and the second BA in European Studies. But when it came time to write it was the frontier and the cowboy who caught my imagination. Big surprise.
Guess Fredrick Jackson Turner was right. Turner, a historian, presented his ‘frontier thesis’ in 1893 at the American Historical Association, stating that it was the westward expansion that formed the American character, making us as Ben Franklin said a new race that was rougher, simpler, more enterprising, less refined.
I think now it was the frontier aspect that drew me, as on the edge of civilization, it took a man and a woman working together to make a home. This was the basis for my first novel, Kentucky Green, when the frontier was ‘the land beyond the mountains’, the Kentucky and Ohio territory in 1794. My hero, although he’s not a cowboy, has all those cowboy characteristics.
But for most people Turner’s westward expansion brings to mind the cowboy. Which leads me right back to my old western movies.
When I was teaching, I used to have the student watch Stagecoach (1939) and discuss how the character portrayed the values of the time. If you haven’t seen the movie (shame on you!) a group of disparate individual undertake a dangerous stagecoach trip through Indian Territory. Our hero, the Ringo Kid (John Wayne, where director John Ford gave Wayne’s character the greatest screen introduction ever) is out to get the man who killed his father and brother. There is the ‘good woman’, a military wife on the way to join her husband, and the ‘bad woman’, the dancehall girl run out of town. The Confederate and the Union veteran. And of course, our hero helps save the day when the Indian attack. Here are our cowboy values of putting the good of the group before personal advantage, care and protection for those who need it. Courage in the fact of danger (the Indian attack).
Ringo also show determination to get revenge on the man who killed his family. This is often part of the ‘man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’ philosophy of the frontier. The average man, our hero, is forced to act as the law as either the law is absent (part of the definition of frontier) or unable or unwilling to do the job that needs to be done to protect society. And, of course, after the final shoot out, our hero and his girl ride off to start a new life together. The ‘new start’ part of the frontier standing for redemption
Stagecoach is #9 on the American Film Institute’s Top Ten Westerns.
I also used to show part of Red River (1948) to my classes also. This movie is #5 on the American Film Institute’s Top Ten Westerns. In the first part (a prologue actually), our hero, Tom Dunstan (John Wayne) leaves the wagon train heading to California and the girl he’s fallen in love with to go to Texas to start his ranch, saying he’ll send for her. She fails to convince him to let her go with him, and says she’ll come.
I liked to use this to point out to my classes, who were used to instant communication, how you have to understand the times the people lived in to understand the history of what they said and did. I used to ask the men in my class, how are you going to send for her? A letter? Who would carry the letter? How would you address it? Would you go yourself? How would you find her? Then I’d ask the women in my class – how long do you wait for this guy to send for you? A year? Two years? Forever?
Perhaps part of the pull of the western is the lack of technology that sometimes seems to overwhelm and swamp the personal and individual in today’s society. People seemed more important than things in the west. Relationship were personal. Today we can spend more time with our computer that with our family.
The main part of Red River deals with the dangerous cattle drive north many years later. Here again we see the cowboy hero in several guises. Dunston (Wayne), who willing to do what no man has done, the cattle drive to try and save not only his ranch but all the surrounding ranches. Dunston willing to step up and take responsibility. He’s helped by his surrogate son, Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) and a cast of great secondary characters. As the cattle drive is beset with disasters, Dunston becomes more autocratic and driven to the point that Matthew rebels and takes over the herd. Matthew standing up to and against the man he loves like a father, necessary to do what right in his mind. Matt says ‘know he (Dunstan) was wrong. Sure hope I’m right.’ The story is not only one of man against nature (taming the frontier), but of Matthew (Clift) and his conflict with Dunstan (Wayne) each man doing what he thinks is right as the central theme of the film.
And, of course, there is a romance between Matt and the girl he meets, falls in love with, but must leave to complete the cattle drive. This romance between Matt and Tess (Joanne Dru) is what help lead to the final reconciliation between the men. This is a great movie with a young and beautiful Montgomery Clift and John Wayne allowed to act before all the directors wanted him to do was be John Wayne.
The Forties and Fifties were a great time for western movies, really too many to mention. But you might recall a few with Jimmy Stewart such as Winchester ’73, or The Far Country.
Randolph Scott working with directory Bud Boetticher made several good western such as The Tall T, and don’t miss Seven Men From Now if only for the final gun fight between Scott and Lee Marin as the ‘good’ bad guy.
For lots of good cowboy heroes, there is always what’s know as director John Ford’s Cavalry trilogy, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and Rio Grande.
These three, along with Stagecoach were shot in Monument Valley and the scenery is as much a character as the actors. Especially the storm She Wore a Yellow Ribbon which blew up as they were filming, and Ford kept right on filming. No special effect, just the real thing.
I think part of the allure of the cowboy is the wide open spaces and scenery that surrounds him. It was the remember clean, clear and bright mountain scenery around Durango, Colorado that made me set Colorado Silver, Colorado Gold there. My cowboy hero is an undercover officer for Wells Fargo who, of course, is determined, brave and does the best he can. And, of course, as all western heroines, the woman he falls in love with is strong, capable and makes him realize he’s a better man than he thinks he is.
Modern westerns in the old tradition are starting to turn up on television, such as Broken Trail (2007) with Robert Duvall as the older mentor and Thomas Haden Church as his nephew. And the traditional cowboy values are showcased in Open Range (2003) with Kevin Costner teaming with Robert Duvall, as two itinerate cowboy who end up taking on a corrupt sheriff and town boss – doing what needs to be done to make the community safer and revenge their friend. Also a nice little romance between Charlie (Kevin Costner) and Sue (Annette Bening).
Even the contemporary cowboy has those values. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (1991) where an estranged son and father re-connect as he finds love with an old flame.
How much better would things be today, if those cowboy values – honest, true to their word, willing to sacrifice to help those who can’t help themselves, putting the good of the community before their personal needs when necessary.
Yep, my heroes have always been cowboys. I watch the old movies any chance I get, and keep a lookout to see if they are out in DVD to replace the VHS tapes I have. My current favorite is Tall In The Saddle. Did I miss mentioning one of your favorite westerns? I know I missed some of mine. Do you watch the old movies, or do you have a favorite ‘modern’ western?
Terry Irene Blain
Escape to the past with a romantic adventure
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One lucky winner will be drawn to win their choice of COLORADO SILVER, COLORADO GOLD or KENTUCKY GREEN.
Leave a comment to get your name thrown in the hat.
Not much happened in the telegraphy office of the St. Louis-San Francisco railroad, especially not on the late shift. To pass the time, the young clerk brought his guitar and played to amuse himself. On one of those lonely nights, he received a visitor. That visitor was legendary humorist Will Rogers, and Rogers liked what he heard from a young man called Orvon Gene Autry.
records with over 100 million copies sold. And that’s just the start of it. Gene Autry starred in 95 movies, had a long running radio program, and produced and starred in his own television show. When he retired from Hollywood, he went on to own the California Angels and KTLA, a Los Angeles television station. He’s also the only entertainer to have five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for every category established by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. No wonder he’s on a postage stamp honoring Hollywood cowboys!
In 1929 he signed with Columbia Records and went on to star in “National Barn Dance,” a popular show on a Chicago radio station. By the 1930s, he was one of the most beloved country singers in America, and his sales proved it. Gene Autry earned the first Gold Record ever awarded. No wonder he’s known as “America’s Favorite Singing Cowboy.”
entertainment, Gene was the first major movie star to make the shift. He produced and starred in the Gene Autry Show for six years.
Westerns with their classic situations – the fight in the saloon, the faithful horse, the dude who goes west, the sheriff who cleans up the town, the showdown, the trip west in a covered wagon — what are now considered film clichés were first introduced to film audiences in 1914 with the arrival of William Surrey Hart.
love with that formula in romance novels, huh?
Almost two years ago my husband and I adopted a dog from an organization that rescues abandoned animals. His name is Hartley and he’s a Jack Russell / Beagle mix. He’s a tad bit . . . odd. He licks furniture (gross), and he’s terrified of little girls. Little boys don’t bother him at all. The poor dog doesn’t know how to chase a ball or play “Fetch,” but he plays catch by pushing the ball with his nose for a distance of about a foot. We roll it back an
d he’s happy.
The series was only one of Rin Tin Tin’s Hollywood credits. His fame goes back to films from the 1920s when he stared in several movies, many of them with western settings. His continued to star in movies up through the 1940s, then moved to television.
t. She died en route from distemper.
The first Rin Tin Tin made 26 movies before he died in 1932. Warner Brothers didn’t want to lose their star, so the mantle was passed to the Rin Tin Tin’s son, known as Junior. The two dogs weren’t identical in appearance, so a publicity campaign began. Junior was the first dog to fly in a commerical airplane. Duncan and Rin Tin Tin No. 3 later particiated WWII by training 5,000 soldiers and dogs for the war effort.
Or Charlie Chaplin in his bowler?
There, that’s better.
Please start by telling us a little about yourself.
I don’t know about you, but it’s HOT in Nebraska! How hot is it?
I remember how exciting those first birthday cakes were. If you’re a mom of many or a grandma, you remember, too. You couldn’t get enough pictures of your baby with frosting up his nose. Wasn’t that darling? Then there were second, third, and fourth birthdays. And then the second third and fourth kids arrived and had birthdays, too—yes I have four children and I lived to tell. And then the grandchildren start arriving—or so they say.
How did I first become interested in Western romance?
books were still bestsellers, and our local library had an entire shelf of them.
Grey’s early books were about the American Revolution.
