Journal Notes

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

Academy Award winning actress Mercedes McCambridge portrayed Joan Crawford’s vindictive nemesis in Republic Pictures’ psychological Western Johnny Guitar. She was also Rock Hudson’s strong-willed older sister in Giant.

A versatile, radio-trained character actress with a strong resonant voice, McCambridge specialized in playing forceful, domineering characters on screen. Many film critics believed she outshined Crawford in Johnny Guitar. Crawford wanted Claire Trevor for the part of Emma in the film, but she wasn’t available. McCambridge had a way of commanding a scene and audience attention – less performance, more of a presence. Crawford immediately resented the kudos afforded McCambridge by the crew and consistently referred to her as ‘an actress who hadn’t worked in ten years – an excellent example of a rabble-rouser.’

When McCambridge delivered a stirring speech to the posse in the film, her performance received a round of applause from the crew. Crawford was watching the scene from a hilltop in the distance, grabbed McCambridge’s costumes out of her dressing room, and strewn them along a nearby road.

McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, on St. Patrick’s Day in 1916 and grew up on a farm in Blackstone, Illinois, until attending Catholic high school in Chicago. While majoring in English and theatre in Mundelein College in Chicago in 1936, she caught the attention of NBC Radio’s Chicago program director and was signed to a five-year contract. From radio she made the leap to film.

In 1949 she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role of Sadie Burke in the film All the King’s Men. She nominated for the same award for work her work in the film Giant in 1956.

McCambridge success on screen didn’t translate to her personal life. She struggled desperately with alcoholism. She was married and divorced twice and in 1987, her son, John Lawrence Markle, 45, killed his wife and two daughters, then committed suicide.

McCambridge passed away on March 2, 2004. She was eighty-seven-years-old.

To learn more about McCambridge and the movie Johnny Guitar read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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One of Republic Pictures most popular actresses was one of the motion picture industries most troubled.  Her name was Gail Russell.  Russell, a beautiful brunette with dark, blue eyes, was a gifted talent who dreamed of becoming a commercial artist.  She was born Elizabeth L. Russell in Chicago on September 21, 1924.  Throughout her childhood she was painfully shy and often hid under her parents’ piano whenever guests came to their home.

The young girl only felt completely comfortable when she was sketching various people and places in her sphere of influence.  She began drawing at the age of five years old and was considered exceptional by most that saw her sketches and paintings.

When she was in her late teens, her mother, Gladys Russell, encouraged her to set aside her drawing pencils and venture into films.  Russell was fourteen when her parents moved to Los Angeles so their daughter could pursue their dream of her becoming a star.  She attended Santa Monica High School and as soon as she graduated, she auditioned for Paramount Pictures and signed a contract with the studio for $50 a week.

Russell’s shyness followed her as she began her career.  Acting instructors were hired to help her overcome her timidity, but it never completely subsided.

In 1946 Russell starred in the first of four films she made for Republic Pictures.  John Wayne coproduced The Angel and the Badman and specifically requested Gail Russell to play opposite him in the western written and directed by James Edward Grant.  Wayne was moved by her quiet, unassuming personality.  He treated her with the respect and kindness she’d not known from many other leading men or producers.  The two became good friends while working on the film.  Wayne was protective of Russell.  He recognized vulnerability in the actress some could have taken advantage of.  He was a father figure to Russell and she considered him to be a fiercely honest individual.

She was a success on screen, but her personal life was less so. Russell spent a month in a sanitarium learning to deal with the humiliation and hurt she experienced from a public divorce.  Once she was released, she resorted to drinking.  On November 26, 1953, Russell was arrested for drunk driving.  At her hearing two months later, the troubled actress was placed on two years’ probation with the condition she refrain from intoxicants, stay away from places where liquor was sold, and obtain medical treatment.  She was also ordered to pay a $150 fine.

On August 26, 1961, less than four years after her pledge about setting her life on a new course, Gail was found dead in her apartment.  She had lost her battle with alcohol.  Her body was discovered by neighbors that had stopped by to check on her.  Russell was lying on the floor next to an empty bottle of Vodka.  There were additional bottles of alcohol strewn about her home.

Gail Russell was thirty-six years old when she passed away.

To learn more about Western film actresses like Gail Russell read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Claire Trevor made famous the role of Dallas the soiled dove in the film Stagecoach. With a voice once described as sounding like delicious trouble, she was one of the most sought-after supporting actresses during the 1930s and 40s.

She was born in New York City – movie buffs disagree whether it was 1909 or 1910 – to a Belfast, Ireland-born mother and a strict Paris born father who had a custom tailor shop on Fifth Avenue.

As a child, Trevor dreamed of being a ballerina. But along the way she became involved in church plays and fell in love with the stage. After studying art briefly at Columbia University, she attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She had to drop out after six months, though, because her father’s business failed during the Depression, and he told her that she would have to help out.

“That shocked the hell out of me,” she later recalled. “We weren’t rich, but I never thought of money as being a worry, so it scared me. I thought, ‘What do I know how to do? Acting is the only thing I know how to do, and to get a job in the middle of the Depression in New York was not easy.

After a successful run on Broadway at the age of twenty-one, Trevor made her film debut in the early Western, Life in the Raw, and between 1933 and 1938, starred in over twenty movies including Dante’s Inferno, Dead End and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse starring Humphrey Bogart. In 1939, she co-starred with an unknown Wayne in Ford’s classic, Stagecoach, and is one of few stars to have ever received top billing over The Duke.

Trevor appeared in other popular Westerns including Honky Tonk with The King of Hollywood, Clark Gable, and The Desperadoes starring Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford. She became known for her hard-boiled blondes in film noirs, winning her only Oscar for her performance in John Huston‘s Key Largo, but her unconventional Western roles popularized the bad girl of the Wild West making her a cornerstone of the genre.

The Oscar winning actress died on April 8, 2000, at the age of ninety.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Jane Russell was a dark-haired siren whose sensational debut in the 1943 Western The Outlaw inspired producer Howard Hawks to challenge the power and strict morality of Hollywood’s production code. Her provocative performance in the film – and the studio publicity shots posing her in a low-cut blouse while reclining on a stack of hay bales – marked a turning point in moviedom sexuality. She became a bona fide star and favorite pinup girl of soldiers during World War II. Troops in Korea named two embattled hills in her honor.

Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921, the stunning, talented actress would turn her sexy image to comic effect in films with Bob Hope, Marily Monroe and other major stars. Among her better films are The Paleface in which she plays the spirited Calamity Jane opposite Hope’s feckless dentist in a spoof of The Viriginian, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a musical in which she is brunette gal pal Dorothy to Marilyn Monroe’s gold-digging Lorelei Lee. In the latter, the two stars perform a razzle-dazzle production number of the Jules-Styne-Leo Robin hit song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.”

Some of the other Westerns she starred were Son of Paleface, Montana Belle, and The Tall Man.

Russell was a Christian who made several appearances on the Trinity Broadcast Network discussing her faith in Jesus Christ. She passed away on February 28, 2011, at the age of eighty-nine.

To learn more about some of the amazing women in Westerns read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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The most influential woman at Republic Pictures from the early 1940s to the studio’s demise in the early 1960s, was Vera Hruba.  Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on July 12, 1919, the blonde beauty caught Republic Picture’s president Herbert Yates’ attention in 1939 when she toured the United States with an ice-skating show called Ice Vanities.

Vera was an exceptional ice skater, having placed 17^th in the 1936 Olympics behind figure skater Sonja Henie.  Yates was captivated with Vera’s talent and looks and believed she could be as successful as Ms. Henie who was one of the leading stars at 20^th Century Fox.  He cast Vera, and the entire company of the Ice Vanities, in a musical film entitled The Ice Capades.  Critics called the picture “sheer enchantment on ice.”  Vera was mentioned along with five other skaters as “spectacular”.  Yates couldn’t have agreed more and in 1943 signed her to a long-term contract with the studio and added Ralston to her name.  He added Ralston, a name borrowed from the cereal, because Hruba was difficult for moviegoers to pronounce.

The first movie Vera Hruba Ralston appeared as a star, minus the skates, was Republic Pictures’ 1941 horror film The Lady and the Monster.  Her costars were Erich von Stroheim and Richard Arlen.  Billed as “a picture from out of this world” the plot involves a millionaire whose brain is preserved after his death, and telepathically begins to take control of those around him.  The film reviewer for the Havre Daily News referred to Ralston’s debut as a dramatic actress as “the find of the season.”

Most did not agree with the critics who found the foreign ingénue to be a promising star.  Many complained that her performance was wooden and that her accent was too thick.  Yates ignored every voice but his own and quickly reteamed von Stroheim and Arlen with his discovery in another feature entitled Storm Over Lisbon.  In this spy thriller Ralston played an allied operative in Lisbon and Arlen an American newspaper man who she helps get out of Portugal with important information.  Audiences found Ralston attractive, but struggled to understand what she was saying.

Yates hired acting instructors and speech coaches for Ralston.  While her English and her acting soon improved she could not lose her strong Czech accent.  Yates felt that ticket buyers would eventually see how compelling the stunning blonde’s talent truly was and learn to embrace her way of talking in much the same way they did Marlene Dietrich.  In order to help Ralston, gain a broader acceptance he paired her with an actor that had mass appeal – John Wayne.

The western starring Wayne and Ralston was Dakota.  Wayne and Ralston portray newlyweds who plan to use their nest egg to buy property at a location where a railroad town is rumored to be built.  Before the pair has a chance to make a start for themselves, they are robbed of their money and Wayne sets out to find the crooks and retrieve what’s his.

Wayne was hesitant to work with Ralston.  None of the pictures she had made for Republic had done well.  Yates enticed Wayne into making Dakota with the promise of a percentage of the revenue from the next movie he was slated to do for the studio.  The film was Wake of the Red Witch and Wayne made a substantial amount from the percentage Yates agreed to give him.  It was enough to fund a production company of his own.

Widely released on Christmas Day in 1945, audiences were pleased with the fast-moving film.  The movie critic at the Tallahassee Democrat called Dakota a “rip-snorting, fast-shooting, western drama packed with action.”

Returns were better than okay.  Dakota was hugely profitable.  In terms of box office sales, it would be the most profitable film Vera Hruba Ralston would ever make.

Vera passed away in February 2003 at the age of seventy-nine.  To learn more about Vera read Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures.

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For more than nineteen years, Amanda Blake’s character on Gunsmoke, Miss Kitty, gave strength and succor to the parched patrons who visited Dodge City’s Longbranch Saloon. Kitty Russell was extremely softhearted, beneath what could be a very businesslike exterior, and would have willingly become romantically involved with Marshal Matt Dillon.

The few Westerns seen on television during the early 1950s starred old-style move heroes such as the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy, and had little to do with the real West. Two shows, Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, changed all that. Gunsmoke was set in Dodge City, Kansas, around 1880. It first began as a radio program starring William Conrad as Marshal Dillon and Georgia Ellis as Miss Kitty.

When Amanda Blake heard that the successful radio show was going to be made into a television pilot she knew she wanted to audition. Blake was born Beverly Louise Neill on February 20, 1929, in Buffalo, New York. She was educated in Buffalo, Gainesville, Georgia, and Claremont, Los Angeles County, where she moved with her parents in 1943.

Blake made her dramatic debut as a ten-year-old in a school pageant in Buffalo, and later studied acting at Buffalo’s Studio Club. She signed a contract with MGM while still in her teens, and her first film role was in the 1950 film Stars in My Crown.

“I knew I had to have the part of Kitty,” she told reporters in a 1971 interview. “So, I hounded the producer until I got it.” In order to do the long-running Gunsmoke series, Miss Blake commuted by private plane from her home near Phoenix. She left the show in 1974. “I was tired and it was time to go,” she recalled years later. “It was the end of the trail.”

Gunsmoke ran from September 10, 1955, to September 1, 1975. The show lasted only one year without Blake.

In 1968, Amanda Blake was selected as the first female inductee into the Hall of Fame of Great Western Actors and Actresses in Oklahoma City. She died of cancer in Sacramento, California, on August 16, 1989.

To learn more about the actress of television and film Westerns read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Bullseye! The Annie Oakley Show was on the air from 1954 to 1957 and Annie hit the entertainment bullseye every week with her hard riding, straight shooting, and suspense. Actress Gail Davis portrayed the Western legend. To some, Gail was only a minor flicker in the Hollywood star system. But to others, she was something special and more famous than that “other” Davis named Bette.

For more than three years she was TV’s pigtailed, fast-riding, sharp-shooting, good-looking Annie Oakley, who helped keep law and order in her hometown of Diablo through eighty-one black-and-white episodes. The series continues in re-runs for several years after that.

Davis was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and attended the University of Texas where she participated in college plays. From there she headed to Hollywood and landed her first small movie role in Romance of Rosy Ridge, a 1946 movie starring Van Johnson.

Next she had a part in If You Knew Susie with Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis at RKO. Not long after that, she began appearing as the female lead in some of the films of B-Western cowboy stars such as Allan “Rocky” Lane at Republic and Tim Holt at RKO.

She served herself well playing opposite Roy Rogers in 1949’s The Far Frontier. The movie also featured a couple of other figures who also would go on to make their marks in early TV Westerns: Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger) and Andy Devine (“Jingles” on the Wild Bill Hickok Show).

Gene Autry spotted her, was impressed, and signed her to a contract with his Flying A Productions. Davis appeared as Autry’s leading lady in several of his theatrical movies.

When The Gene Autry Show was launched on television in the summer of 1950. Davis showed up in numerous episodes during the series’ first three years. Then Autry put Davis in her own show the “Annie Oakley” series which was produced by Flying A.

Also in the cast was Jimmy Hawkins as Annie’s brother Tagg and Brad Johnson as deputy sheriff Lofty Craig. After a taste of Annie’s deadeye shooting and Lofty’s hard-hitting fists, not many outlaws stayed around Diablo too long.

Appropriately, Annie’s horse in the series was named Target.

Flying A press agents claimed Davis grew up shooting and riding just like the real Annie Oakley. But in the early 1950s interview, Davis said she learned to ride and shoot after coming to Hollywood. Obviously, she picked up on it all quickly, because her shooting act became a part of Autry’s live touring show.

Gail Davis passed away in March 1997 of cancer. She was seventy-one when she died.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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A pair of frantic, disheveled riders race side by side down a dusty, sun-scorched path. Suddenly they plunge into a wooded area. Branches slap at them, but neither dares slow his mount’s gait. They break through the other side, each still jockeying for lead position. The rider barely lagging behind now extends his arm out to grab the young man inches from him. The young man spurs his horse along faster and pulls away from the man trying to catch him. Ahead in the near distance, the crude path ends abruptly, giving way to a rocky cliff with a raging river far below. The two riders continue on fast, unaware of the danger. The young man is the first to leap off the precipice, his horse still under him. The rider behind him doesn’t hesitate but pushes his roan harder. The two fly off the cliff with great speed and plummet into the water.

The daring riders find their way to the surface. They’re dazed, but alive. The animals are alive as well, and they scramble to the water’s edge and hastily step out onto dry land.

After fighting the river’s strong current, both men managed to reach a sand bank and drag themselves out of the water. They are exhausted and drenched. The young man struggles to stand up and, once he finds his footing, hurries off after his horse. The cowboy that was chasing him hasn’t any strength left. He lies flat on his back staring up at the cliff where he dropped, contemplating how he could have survived such a fall.

That particular stunt was executed by legendary rodeo champion turned stuntman Yakima Canutt for the film The Devil Horse starring Harry Carey. Republic Pictures had a stable of daredevils who lived to perform death-defying feats that kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Yakima Canutt and the other stunt staff revolutionized the art and helped make Republic features and serial some of the most exciting and profitable works in the motion picture industry.

To learn more about Canutt and the other dedicated men and women who were willing to risk their lives for the movies produced by Republic read

Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures

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Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

A hush fell over the large crowd at the rodeo arena in Salt Lake City, Utah, in July 1938 as daredevil rider Alice Sisty raced into the arena atop two English jumpers. She was standing on the backs of the animals with one foot on one horse and the other foot on the second mount, known as Roman riding. Alice led the horses into a gallop around the arena as the audience cheered and applauded. She expertly handled the jumpers named Whale and Brownstone.  Alice had performed the Roman standard jump a number of times and was confident the trick would come off perfectly.

The trick involved the excited horses leaping over a parked automobile. It was an outstanding feat that, when executed well, brought rodeo fans out of their seats shouting for joy. Alice did not disappoint. Her signature jump was flawlessly carried out. She waved to the wildly cheering audience as she urged her horses into another pass at the stunt.

Born in Netcong, New Jersey, in January 1913, Alice first broke into national headlines when, at twenty years of age, she rode an Indian pony from Reno, Nevada, to the steps of New York City Hall.  It was a three- thousand-mile journey, and, when she arrived in New York, mayors from coast-to-coast celebrated Alice’s accomplishment with letters of congratulations. The Cheyenne, Wyoming, Chamber of Commerce helped defray Alice’s expenses on the journey, and she helped advertise the Cheyenne Frontier Days by wearing a cowboy suit with the Cheyenne inscription on its back.

Alice had been riding horses since the age of six. Her grandfather owned a racetrack, and the love of horses was undoubtedly born in her. One of Alice’s first rodeo appearances was in Asbury Park. It was followed by well received appearances in such places as Des Moines, Iowa; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Omaha, Nebraska; and Billings, Montana. She performed at the Chicago World’s Fair and at Madison Square Garden.

Billed as a trick and fancy rider, Alice won numerous cowgirl championships. She was one of the highest paid, female rodeo performers in the 1930s. Friends and fans seldom, if ever, saw her without her makeup and hair done to perfection and adorned in beautiful cowgirl clothing. The dark-haired, blue-eyed Alice had decided to become a cowgirl when she was nineteen and signed to ride in Colonel Zack Millers’ 101 Ranch.

In addition to the prized English jumpers with which she used to perform the Roman standard jump trick; she owned a white Arabian horse named Chopa. Chopa was a highly intelligent animal who responded to every command of Alice’s voice. The pair were seen together in rodeo shows from coast to coast.

Alice passed away from an unnamed illness on September 11, 1953, in Crescent City, California, where she lived with her second husband, Hennie Sommer. Alice was forty years old when she died.

To learn more about fearless riders like Alice read

Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Cowgirls of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows

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Tillie Baldwin

Hundreds of rodeo fans filled every available seat at the Pendleton Roundup in northwestern Oregon in late September 1912.  They cheered loudly for Swedish bronc buster Tillie Baldwin sitting atop an outlaw horse named Spike.  The gate was moments away from opening and the bronc was already bucking wildly.  Tillie ground her hat down tight on her head, and then clenched onto the thick reins of her ride.  The chute opened and Spike darted out into the arena.  Tillie bobbed up and down in the saddle, holding on with all her might, as the horse worked violently to try and throw her off his back.  At long last, a horn sounded, and the ride was officially over.  Tillie had survived the long trek around the arena on top an animal who had been unsuccessful in tossing her to the ground.  The crowd enthusiastically applauded the twenty-four-year-old, and the remarkable ride earned her first prize in the women’s bucking bronco contest.  She was awarded a $350 saddle.  In addition to winning the bucking bronco championship, Tillie also won the trick riding competition and its $150 purse.

Tillie Baldwin was born Anna Mathilda Winger in Arendal, Norway, in 1888.  She was fourteen years old when she migrated to the United States with her family in 1902, and she did not speak English.  Six years later, she had not only mastered the language but had become a hairdresser with a healthy clientele of New York ladies wanting a new look.

During a trip to Staten Island in early 1908, Tillie saw a troupe of cowboy and cowgirl actors making a movie.  The teenage hairdresser immediately wanted to learn to ride a horse and join the talent.  Tillie approached one of the actors and asked them to teach her to ride.  She worked for weeks with her paid instructor and eventually became a competent horsewoman.  Shortly thereafter, she asked the producer of the film if she could join the cast.  He agreed.

From those silent pictures, the eager young equestrian signed a contract to perform live in Captain Jack Baldwin’s Western Show.  There she perfected her riding skills and met her husband, cowboy Johnny Baldwin.  While employed in Baldwin’s show, she changed her name from Mathilda to Tillie.  In time, she signed with the renowned 101 Ranch Wild West Show.  When she wasn’t performing, she was competing in various rodeos around the country.

Over the course of her thirteen-year rodeo career, Tillie Baldwin won roping and riding events in such prestigious programs as the Winnipeg and Calgary Stampedes and the California Rodeo in Salinas.  Routinely billed as the “fearless rider who had never been thrown by a bucking bronco”, rodeo fans in 1921 named her as one of three best women riders in the country.  Also on that list were Fannie Sperry and Bertha Blanchard.

Tillie retired from rodeo competition in 1925 and moved to South Lyme, Connecticut, where she operated a horse ranch and riding school.  She died on October 23, 1958, at the age of seventy.

To learn more about talented riders like Tillie read

Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Women of the Rodeo and Wild West Shows