Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1949)

Word reached Koy in San Fernando Valley. That noon he jumped in his car and drove across the vast city to sit by the kid. Thenceforth, every other day at lunchtime he was at the boy’s bedside until he died, a picture of Roy in his hand. After ten years of Hollywood where duplicity, as elsewhere, makes cynics of men, Roy still has the wide-eyed naivete that goes with the soul of goodness. His wife, Dale Evans, is like him. Kids, with their intuitive wisdom, saw she was regular and though they have small use for dames and don’t like to see their cowpoke heroes going soft for them, they yelled Dale back from her retirement of a year ago. Dale Evans composes songs as well as sings them. She sang her "Under a Blanket of Blue” while gazing soulfully at Roy. When the studio fathers saw the rushes they shook their heads. The scene was retaken with Dale singing the song to Trigger. Trigger took it like sugar. He says, “Talk about the life of Riley, someone should do the life of a horse in horse opera.” A horse gets all the kisses and corn. There is likeness in the early lives of the two top vaqueros, Autry and Rogers. Both were poor farm boys who took to the guitar while boys and got their big chance singing hillbilly ballads. Oklahoma and Texas share honors in producing Autry. He was bom Sept. 29, 1907, on a ranch near Tioga in Texas, moved as a small ’poke to a farm near Ravia on the Oklahoma side of the Red River. His grandpappy was a minister of the gospel and Gene sang in the choir. His father became a cattle buyer. Gene helped round them up, brand and dip. Not ranching, but railroading, was Gene’s ambition as a boy. He became a telegraph operator at eighteen. By then he had paid up on his guitar, purchased at age eleven for a dollar down and fifty cents a month. He was playing it in the telegraph office at Chelsea, Oklahoma, when that great roping Okie, Will Rogers, came in to send a wire. Will was visiting his sister in Chelsea. He asked Gene to sing him a song, told him he should quit clicking the telegraph key and get on the air in person. Gene didn’t recognize Will until he saw the signature on the telegram after the great humorist had departed. The humorist wasn’t joking and Autry acted on his tip. Roy Rogers, bom in Cincinnati, moved when seven to a village thirteen miles from Portsmouth, Ohio. His father worked in a shoe factory in Portsmouth. Roy helped’ his mother and three sisters with farm chores until he was old enough to take a job beside his dad. His dramatic debut was as Santa Claus in a school play; Roy still plays it in real life. He took correspondence lessons in guitar playing. Soon he was a hillbilly entertainer and square dance caller. While working in the factory, Roy saved money to educate himself in dentistry. A visit to a horse breeding farm put him in the saddle and from then on he had the cowpoke virus. Roy went to California during the hungry depression to work with the Okie migratory fruit pickers. He played his guitar for the migrants and for road gangs. They joined in the choruses of the sentimental ballads, stomping it out with their hobnails. In 193J. Roy got into radio as one of Uncle Tom Murray’s Hollywood hillbillies. Soon he formed his own gang of itinerant musicians, variously known as International Cowboys, The Rocky Mountaineers and the Sons of the Pioneers. He applied at Republic Studios when he heard they wanted a new cowpoke lead. D OGERS and Autry have been far in the ll lead of Western stars, but the breath of rugged Bill Elliott is hot on their necks. He arrived on the screen in a tux in society dramas, via Rockingham College and Pasadena Playhouse, which sure must have made him look sissie to the cattlemen who taught him, as a boy, to ride and rope and bulldog at the Kansas City stockyards where his dad was a commission man. Bill put away that tux a long time ago. He has made sixty Westerns for Republic where Roy Rogers also shines. Bill hit the bull’s eye with “Wild Bill Hickok” and wants to do the life story of William S. Hart, the two-gun man of silent Westerns. Cantankerous old Gabby Hayes has a lurid past. He was in burlesque for twelve years. He didn’t strip (he always wore a beard). Gabby was forty-five when first he was histed on to a horse. He was busted then. At sixty-five he is loaded, drives a Cad convertible, lounges in tweeds and rings for the butler in his little ol’ Palm Springs hole-up. Another moola-stuffed comic of Westerns is Master Andy Devine who owns flocks of planes for shuttling passengers around California from the Devine airport. This three-hundred-pound bundle from heaven wanted to be a priest but fell on his face at age of five with a stick in his mouth. It scarred his palate and gave him a voice for horse opera and radio. Giving up kissing girls must have been the supreme sacrifice for Hopalong Bill Boyd ’cause he always favored women over horses, being a natural romantic lead, starred in Cecil De Mille’s “The Volga 9 Boatman.” Women favor Hoppy too. Sev i eral married him ’fore he could get settled 1 1 down with Grace Bradley for life. WithH silver hair, dressed ail in black, astride i] a silver horse, Hoppy is a knight to inspire ' ] maidens to dream. “Hopalong Cassidy” was the only late , J vintage film released to television. This 1 1 did for Bill what “The Jolson Story” did for Al. He is in demand for radio, personal . appearances and commercial tie-ups. Lester Alvin Burnette had no sooner been christened than he smiled and got nicknamed Smiley. His parents were or 1 dained ministers of the gospel. Smiley 1 learned to be a good scout early. He also learned to play fifty-two musi I cal instruments, borrowed from friends, J when he had a high school band in As ] toria, 111. Smiley was ready when Gene I Autry called for an accordion player dur j ing a personal appearance at Champaign, j 111. The friendship of Autry sponsored ] Smiley’s career as it has the fortunes of many young men of talent. A genuine humorist, as well as musician, Smiley spouts gags and songs as he goes along playing with Charles Starrett in “The Durango Kid.” Starrett, handsome as an Arrow collar j ad when he came to Hollywood from Dartmouth, was well fortified for the town, id He had a B.S. degree and he had majored in philosophy. A millionaire by inheritance from his j grandfather, he is the Durango Kid by choice, and he rides his horse Raider for j pleasure in and out of pictures. Starrett holds a record for riding the j brand of the same studio, Columbia, for j thirteen years. Handsomest and singingest of the on i coming cowpoke chanteurs is Jimmy Wakely. He was the first cowboy to have his own type radio show. Now he has his own publishing company, a contract with Decca records, another with Monogram Pictures and four kids. Jimmy’s one-sixteenth Cherokee Indian, like Will Rogers. The son of a major from Arkansas, I he has everything — and lives next door to Doris Day besides. Oh for a sixteenth shot of Indian blood! The first cowpoke to the Hollywood manor born is Tim Holt, son of veteran actor Jack Holt, descendant of the first families of old Virginy. A briar-smoking young gentleman and scholar out of Culver Military and UCLA, Tim is heavy with decorations from the war when he rode bucking planes over Japs. He is likely to become first of Western stars in the authoritative opinion of John Wayne and John Ford. A dark-eyed Southerner of soft-spoken charm, Johnny Mack Brown dropped into the Rose Bowl to play football for Alabama and next thing he knew he was playing in the arms of Garbo, Shearer, Joan Crawford, Mary Pickford. Johnny was taking a breather when Mae West spied him. That unquestioned authority on male and horseflesh invited him right up to be her leading man. When Mae finished with him, Johnny lit out for the tall cacti and fast horses. Jennifer Jones’s dad, Phil Isley, heard Monte Hale at a Texas bond show play his little ol’ guitar. Monte picked cotton as a kid to earn $8.50 to pay for it. Jennifer’s pa sent him hitching for Hollywood with a letter to the chief of Republic, Herbert J. Yates. Them horse operas sure do have diamond horseshoes like the Met, all right. Dowagers are attending in plaid shirttails. A man used to be hep if he had a tux but now he is not in unless he has Champion engraved on his suspender clasps and Trigger on his necktie ring. The End X X * X X X X XX-X-* X-M-X-X-X A for every good voter to cast a ballot for a favorite star to appear in Photoplay’s color pages. So register now with our PORTRAIT POLL EDITOR, c/o PHOTOPLAY 205 E. 42 St., New York 17, N. Y. my choice 96