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After bemoaning the scarcity of good books on Westerns and cowboy stars, there seems to be a veritable rodeo parade of winners galloping off the presses. Latest to appear on this range is "The Tex Ritter Story," by Johnny Bond (Chappell Music, $11, 95), It’s a beaut, Profusely illustrated, too,
Of the singing cowboy stars in the movies after 1935, Ritter's fans have been, if not numerically superior to the Autry and Rogers contingent, certainly the most fiercely loyal, Surprising in a way, because Tex never got the attention lavished on him that the other two did. His first set of pics were good, but they were made for Grand National, a new and struggling company, Afterwards he moved over to Monogram, where the budgets were still tight and all the ingenuity available couldn't cover the tackiness. And after a while, the ingenuity ran out too. Ritter's best films were for Columbia and Universal, but he had to take second billing to Bill Elliott, then to Johnny Mack Brown, He would appear infrequently on the screen after 1945, But to compensate for this, he kept working, playing various dates from county fairs to radio shows. He was a tremendous in-person performer, and probably won as many devotees this way. He sang the theme song for High Noon, recorded it, and became one of — the big countryWestern music names, moving his headquarters from Hollywood to Nashville. He had a brief, unsuccessful fling in politics (emphatically conservative) and might well have continued along those lines at the time of his death in 1974,
Bond, himself a wellknown composer ("Cimarron," etc.), appeared in Ritter's Universal films and was a longtime friend and associate, It goes without saying that his book will instigate loud and prolonged cheering from the ranks of Ritter fandom. In addition to the biography, the book's nearly 400 pages include a filmography (and one for Ritter's wife, Dorothy Fay--Bond doesn't do things by halves) and a detailed discography, valuable for its thoroughness; some may be startled to find that Ritter's pre-Capitol recording experience was so extensive.
So much for the Tex Ritter fans, They'd buy it in any case, For the nonRitter devotee, perish the thought, or the casual observer, it's still well worth‘while, For one thing, Bond can write. For another, he doesn't do it the easy way--there's plenty of research, and it's all documented at the end of each chapter. Bond also takes an approach which, in less talented hands, can be murder; he writes long stretches in dialogue, almost like a film script. Usually, this can sound false and fabricated, but not here, The author has caught the spirit of the man, That's Tex talkin', and no mistake.
Most important, it’s a thoughtful recounting of the life of a rather special person, Reading it, we feel we now know Tex Ritter a little better. And are better for it, You can't ask for much more than that,
CAPTAIN GEORGE'S PENNY DREADFUL, a weekly review established in 1968, is published by the Vast Whizzbang Organization at Memory Lane, 594 Markham Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, )