Journal Notes

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The Cowboy & the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Dale Evans dreamed of starring as the lead in a film version of Oklahoma, but Republic president Herbert Yates had other plans for the actress. He wanted her to play opposite the studio’s star cowboy in the film The Cowboy and the Senorita.

Dale’s only experience in westerns had been a small role as a saloon singer in a John Wayne picture, and she was not a skilled rider. She committed herself to doing her very best, however, in the role of the “Senorita,” Ysobel Martinez.

The picture was released in 1944 and was a huge success. Theatre managers and audiences alike encouraged studio executives at Republic to quickly re-team Dale and Roy in another western.

In between her film jobs, Dale toured military bases in the United States and the USO. She sang to troops on bivouac, from Louisiana to Texas.  She was proud to think she was bringing a little sunshine into the hearts of the soldiers.

Dale also brought sunshine into the hearts of moviegoers, and ticket sales were evidence of that. Republic had happened onto the perfect western team.  Dale was a sassy, sophisticated leading lady and the perfect foil for Roy, the patient, singing cowboy.

To learn more about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans read

The Cowboy and the Senorita.

Under Western Stars

An Essay for the National Film Registry

By

Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss

King of the Cowboys Roy Rogers made his starring motion picture debut in Republic Studio’s engaging western musical Under Western Stars.  Released in 1938, the charming, affable Rogers portrayed the most colorful Congressman ever to walk up the steps of the nation’s capital.  Rogers’ character, a fearless, two-gun cowboy and ranger from the western town of Sageville, is elected to office to try to win legislation favorable to dust bowl residents.

Rogers represents a group of ranchers whose land has dried up when a water company controlling the only dam decides to keep the coveted liquid from the hard working cattlemen. Spurred on by his secretary and publicity manager, Frog Millhouse, played by Smiley Burnette, Rogers campaigns for office.  The portly Burnette provides much of the film’s comic relief and goes to extremes to get his friend elected.  His tactics include pasting stickers on the backs of unsuspecting citizens he engages in conversation and helping to organize a square dance to highlight Rogers’ skill and dedication to solving the constituent’s crisis.  Using his knowledge of land and livestock and his talent for singing and yodeling, Rogers wins a seat in Congress.

The sweep of this picture, which moves rapidly from physical action on the western plains to diplomatic action in Washington and back again, is distinctively thrilling. The surging climax in the dust-stricken cattle country makes for one of the most refreshing films of its kind.  The politicians Rogers appeals to about the drought are not convinced the situation is as serious as they are led to believe and decide to inspect the scene for themselves.  The investigation committee is eventually trapped in a real dust storm.  The shots of the storm and the devastation left in its wake are spectacular.

Roy Rogers came to Hollywood from Duck Run, Ohio. He made a name for himself as a member of the successful singing group the Sons of the Pioneers.  Reigning box office cowboy Gene Autry’s difficulties with Herbert Yates, head of Republic Studios, paved the way for Rogers to ride into the leading role in Under Western Stars.  Yates felt he alone was responsible for creating Autry’s success in films and wanted a portion of the revenue he made from the image he helped create.  Yates demanded a percentage of any commercial, product endorsement, merchandising, and personal appearance Autry made.  Autry did not believe Yates was entitled to the money he earned outside of the movies made for Republic Studios.  He refused to include Yates in the profits and threatened to leave the studio if Yates did not reconsider.  Autry was also demanding a raise in pay.

Yates decided it was time to begin grooming another talent to take Autry’s place should the need arise. Rogers was a contract player with the studio making $75 a week.  Billed as Leonard Slye he appeared in a handful of films with Gene Autry singing along with the Sons of the Pioneers.  Rogers even had a part as a bad guy in one of Autry’s films.  When Autry caught up with Rogers in the picture, instead of taking him to jail he demanded the wily character yodel his way out of his troubles.

Yates had been looking for a musical actor to go boot-to-boot with Autry and Rogers was to be the heir apparent. His sweet, pure voice and wholesome image made him a natural for the hero in Under the Western Stars.  Whether regaling the audience with a song about fighting the law entitled Send Our Mail to the County Jail or delivering a stump speech via a tune called Listen to Rhythm of the Range, Rogers makes the most of his leading role.

The Maple City Four, the well-known quartet who made the number Git Along Little Dogies popular, added their talents with Rogers harmonizing on the film’s most important song entitled Dust.  Written by Johnny Marvin, a recording artist from Oklahoma, Dust was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.  It was the first song from a B-western to be Oscar nominated.

According to the February 24, 1938, edition of the Hollywood Reporter, Dust was purchased by Republic Studios from the composers, Gene Autry and Johnny Marvin, for use in Under Western Stars.  A subsequent news item in Hollywood Reporter on April 13, 1938, just prior to the film’s release, noted that Autry was suing the studio for $25,000 for unauthorized use and dramatization of the lyrics with Dust.  According to contemporary sources, the suit over Dust was settled out of court and Johnny Marvin is listed as sole writer of the song.

Audiences made Under Western Stars a box office success and critics called its star “the new Playboy of the Western World.”

Director Joseph Kane, Republic’s top director of westerns delivered a film with a slight new slanting to make it different from all other B-westerns before it.   In addition to the political intrigue in Under Western Stars there is a fair amount of gunfights, fast horses, and unforgettable stunts.  What makes Kane’s film unique is that the fight is not over horse thieves, but the rights of man.  Critics at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper sited Kane’s “sensitive directing eye with giving the horse opera a social consciousness.”

Actors Carol Hughes, Guy Usher, Tex Cooper, Kenneth Harlan, Curley Dresden, Bill Wolfe, Jack Ingram, Jack Kirk, Fred Burns, and Tom Chatterton round out the exciting cast of players and no happy ending would be possible at all if not for Roy’s magnificent Palomino horse Trigger. Brothers and veteran western writers Dorrell and Stuart McGowan penned the screenplay for Under Western Stars along with actress and screenwriter Betty Burbridge.

The film was shot in the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California. The scenic location has been used for the backdrop in hundreds of motion pictures and television programs.  The high desert surroundings are integral to the story line of Under Western Stars and could be billed as a supporting role in the film.

Roy Rogers’ first starring vehicle solidified his place as a rising star in B westerns. Film writer and critic Louella Parsons likened Rogers to “Gary Cooper in personal appeal.”  According to her report with the International News Service on November 29, 1938, she called Rogers an “upstanding young American who made the picture Under Western Stars a delight.”

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The Cowboy & the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

In August 1943, two weeks after signing a one-year contract with Republic Studios, Dale began rehearsals for the film Swing Your Partner. Although her role in the picture was small, studio executives considered it a promising start. Over the next year Dale filmed nine other movies for Republic, and in between she continued to record music.

When she wasn’t working, Dale spent time with her son, Tom, and her second husband, orchestra director Robert Butts. Her marriage was struggling under the weight of their demanding work schedules, but neither spouse was willing to compromise.

“I was torn between my desire to be a good housekeeper, wife, and mother and my consuming ambition as an entertainer,” Dale told the Los Angeles Daily News in 1970. “It was like trying to ride two horses at once, and I couldn’t seem to control either one of them.”

Dale’s marriage might have been suffering, but her career was taking off. Republic Studios’ president Herbert Yates summoned Dale to a meeting to discuss the next musical the studio would be doing. She took this as a hopeful sign. It was common knowledge around the studio lot that Yates had recently seen a New York stage production of the musical Oklahoma and had fallen in love with the story. Dale imagined that the studio president wanted to talk with her about starring in a film version of the play. It was the opportunity she had always envisioned for herself. For a brief moment she was one step closer to Broadway.

To learn more about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans read

The Cowboy and the Senorita.

Enter now to win

The Cowboy & the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Before he got his big break, Leonard Slye toured the country with various bands he helped form. One such band, the Sons of the Pioneers, became a popular western group on Los Angeles radio station KFWB. By 1935 the five-minute combo was playing a variety of dates and doing background music for motion pictures.

After hearing about a Republic casting call to find a new singing cowboy, Leonard decided to venture away from troupe to audition. He snuck onto the studio lot and wound up in the office of the producer who had initiated the search for a singing cowboy. Leonard was just what the producer was looking for, and on October 13, 1937, a newly named Roy Rogers signed a contract with the studio.

To learn more about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans read

The Cowboy and the Senorita.

Enter now to win

The Cowboy & the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Dale Evans was born Frances Octavia Smith on October 31, 1912, in Uvalde, Texas. In her words, her upbringing was “idyllic.”  As the only daughter of Walter and Betty Sue Smith, she was showered with attention and her musical talents were encouraged with piano and dance lessons.

While still in high school, she married Thomas Fox and had a son, Thomas Jr. The marriage, however, was short-lived.  After securing a divorce, she attended a business school in Memphis and worked as a secretary before making her singing debut at a local radio station.  In 1931 she changed her name to Dale Evans.

By the mid-1930s, Dale was a highly sought-after big-band singer performing with orchestras throughout the Midwest. Her stage persona and singing voice earned her a screen test for the 1942 movie Holiday Inn.  She didn’t get the part, but she ended up signing with the nationally broadcast program the Chase and Sanborn Hour and soon after signed a contract with Republic Studios.  She hoped her work in motion pictures would lead to a run on Broadway doing musicals.

To learn more about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans read

The Cowboy and the Senorita.

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The Cowboy & the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Roy Rogers was born Leonard Franklin Slye on November 5, 1911, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His parents owned a farm near the small town of Duck Run, and it was there that he developed his love for music. By the age of ten he was playing the guitar and calling square dances.

In 1929 Leonard left the Midwest and headed for Hollywood. In between occasional singing engagements with the various bands he helped form (including Sons of the Pioneers) he worked as a truck driver and a fruit picker.

His big break came in 1937, when he snuck onto the lot of Republic Pictures and landed a contract paying seventy-five dollars a week. Republic Studios’ president Herbert Yates was looking for a musical actor to go boot-to-boot with singing-cowboy sensations Gene Autry. Renamed Roy Rogers, Leonard had the integrity, the talent, and the look the studio was hoping to find.

Three short years after singing with Republic, Roy Rogers would be the number-one-box-office draw in the country and be crowned the King of the Cowboys.

To learn more about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans read

The Cowboy and the Senorita.

Enter now to win

The Cowboy & the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Hundreds of excited children, with hard-earned nickels and dimes clutched tightly in their fists, exchanged their money for a ticket at Saturday matinees across the country in the 1940s. The chance to see singing cowboy Roy Rogers, his horse, Trigger, and leading lady Dale Evans come up against the West’s most notorious criminals brought young audiences to theatres in droves.  And, in the process, it elevated western musicals to one of the most popular film genres in history.

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were the reigning royalty of B-rated westerns for more than a decade. They helped persuade moviegoers that good always triumphs over evil in a fair fight and that life on the open range was one long, wholesome sing-along.  Together, the King of Cowboys and the Queen of the West appeared in more than 200 films and television programs.

Roy and Dale made their first picture together in 1944. The film, The Cowboy and the Senorita, brought an estimated 900,000 fans to movie houses in America and began a partnership for the couple that lasted fifty-two years.  The chemistry between Roy and Dale was enchanting, and together they were an entertaining powerhouse.  In addition to their films, they had popular radio programs, comic book series, albums, and a long list of merchandise (including clothes, boots, and toys), all bearing their names.

Roy and Dale were successful individually, as well. Dale, a talented singer-songwriter, performed with big band orchestras, shared the stage with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and penned many popular tunes, including the song that would be Roy and Dale’s theme, “Happy Trails.”  Roy was a co-founder and member of the group the Sons of the Pioneers.  The band made a name for itself singing original country music songs, including “Cool Water” and “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds.”

To learn more about Roy Rogers and Dale Evans read

The Cowboy and the Senorita.

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The Trials of Annie Oakley.

When humorist Will Rogers visited Annie at her home in Ohio in the spring of 1926, the peerless, lady wing shot was pale and physically exhausted, but the spark in her eyes was just as vibrant as it had always been. The two, old friends sat and talked of days gone by and of when she was a young girl in the Wild West shows. She remembered staring down the barrel of a rifle with confidence at a target across the arena and waving to the cheering crowd when the target was hit. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Buffalo Bill Cody would announce. “I present to you Little Annie Oakley. Little Sure Shot. Positively the world’s champion shot; the world’s one and only of her kind.”

Annie and Will reminisced about friends they had in common and of comedian and actor, Fred Stone. It was through Fred that Annie and Will had met. The Stones and the Butlers had been neighbors when they lived in the Northeast. Stone had a small estate in the exclusive community of Forest Hills Gardens in Bayside, New York. Annie, Frank, Will, and Fred hunted together on the land.

Annie shared an article with Will from the June 7, 1925, edition of the San Antonio Light entitled “Women Must Prepare to Go Into the Trenches When Next War Comes.” The report echoed Annie’s sentiments regarding how a woman’s skill for shooting could be put to use for the country.

“Women will be part of the regular army, the volunteers, and the draft troops,” the story proclaimed. “And why not? There have been ferocious women warriors in history…. Women go to the polls now, run for all offices and appear in all the businesses. Why should they not take their place in the trenches? For one thing, the women will not object.

“Women can shoot as well as men. Some women shoot better than most men. How many men ever equaled Annie Oakley?”

Shortly after Will Rogers left the Butlers’ home, he wrote a piece about the time he spent with Annie and the colorful life she’d lived.

“She [Annie Oakley] was the reigning sensation of America and Europe during the all the heyday of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show,” Rogers boasted. “She was their star. Her picture was on more billboards than a modern Gloria Swanson.

“She is bedridden from an auto accident a few years ago. What a wonderful, Christian character she is! I have talked with Buffalo Bill cowboys who were with the show for years and they worshipped her….

“I want you to write her, all of you who remember her, and those that can go see her. Her address is 706 Lexington Avenue, Dayton, Ohio. She will be a lesson to you. She is a greater character than she was a rifle shot.

To learn more about the famous sure shot read

The Trials of Annie Oakley.

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The Trials of Annie Oakley.

A gray automobile sped toward the entrance of Bohannon Hospital and Sanitarium in Daytona, Florida, on November 20, 1922, and jerked to a stop. Nurses and doctors scrambled out the building to meet the vehicle. The driver jumped out and raced to meet the medical team. He flung the back door of the car open and removed the limp body lying on the seat. The doctors surrounded the disheveled figure and immediately began examining the unconscious patient. Annie Oakley was pale and bruised, and the sheet under her head was stained with blood from a cut over her right eye. It was a mad dash to get the sixty-two-year-old woman inside the building and into the emergency room.

When the police arrived on the scene, they informed the physicians that the noted rifle shot was the victim of a car accident. She was with a party of five, including her husband, when the accident occurred. They were en route from the north to Leesburg where they had been vacationing. The chauffer driven Cadillac was forced off the road by a vehicle trying to pass at a high rate of speed. The chauffer tried and failed to keep the car on the Dixie Highway. It overturned, and the passengers were injured.

According to the November 12, 1922, edition of the Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Annie was nearly crushed to death. “The huge car careened off the roadside and ‘turned turtle,’ pinning Annie under the vehicle,” the article read. She was in critical condition when she arrived at the hospital. The Cadillac, which weighed more than two tons, fractured her hip and her right ankle.

Mr. B. Benson of Fort Pierce was following behind the Cadillac in his car when he witnessed the automobile Annie was in leave the road. Mr. Benson stopped to assist the shaken passengers. He helped free Annie from the rubble and drove her to the nearest hospital forty-six miles away in Daytona.

Doctor Clyde C. Bohannon, the well-respected physician for whom the hospital was named, attended to the hurt markswoman. Annie was in shock and in a great deal of pain. Once she was stabilized, Doctor Bohannon determined the extent of her injuries. The break in the upper quarter of the femur bone was substantial. Surgery was required for both the hip and the ankle. Annie would never fully recover.

To learn more about the famous sure shot read

The Trials of Annie Oakley.

The Tombstone Epitaph is a Tombstone, Arizona, based monthly publication that serves as a window in the history and culture of the Old West. Founded in January 1880 (with its first issue published on Saturday May 1, 1880), The Epitaph is the oldest continually published newspaper in Arizona.

It long has been noted for its coverage of the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on Oct. 26, 1881, and its continuing research interest in Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and their cowboy adversaries. In 2005, for example, it presented for the first time a sketch of the O. K. Corral gunfight hand drawn by Wyatt Earp shortly before his death. 

An article about The Pinks was featured in a recent edition of the Epitaph.  Thanks to the paper’s editor Mark Boardman for the kind review.  In celebration of the article I’m going to giveaway two copies of The Pinks today.  Drop me a line at gvcenss@aol.com and I’ll send you the book.