World Film and Television Progress (1938)

You may say that America has a reason for hanging on to her Western stars. It is part of her history. But British exhibitors say to-day much the same thing. In spite of the fact that there are fewer cinemas in Britain than in America, the total number of votes recorded for the Western stars was only slightly less in Great Britain. Here is their roster of fame: Gene Autry, Buck Jones, Dick Foran, William Boyd, George O'Brien, John Wayne, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson. If you want to see their picturesyou have, of course, to go a little way from ' Leicester Square but you will find them in their hundreds not three miles away, and in their thousands all over the provinces. There is ample evidence that the youngsters still hold in their hearts a large corner for the cowboys. The singing cowboys do not rate with them. It is Buck Jones that counts. Buck has fallen heir to the reverence once accorded to William S. Hart, Broncho Billy and Tom Mix. Buck jones followed the line of most cowboy stars. He was a real cowboy, came into pictures almost by accident and like all the others, tried to make his personal popularity carry over to the old Wild West Show — and failed. He, too, found that while the Western tradition is far from dead, the cinema has beaten the circus at its own game. Here is part of his story as told recently by J. B. Crisswold in The American Magazine: — On the street early one morning he met a friend from Oklahoma who was dolled up in a ten-gallon hat, boot and chaps. "Where's the rodeo?" Buck asked. "I'm on my way to the studio," said the friend proudly. "I'm in pictures." "What kind of pictures?" "Moving pictures. They make 'em here." This was news to Buck. "Come along", said the friend, "and watch me act." So Buck went along and was standing around watching his friend act, when somebody said, "Go over and make up as a sheepherder." Buck told me, "I got five dollars a day 'for six days — more than I'd made in a month. And all I did was sit under a wickiup. 1 said to myself, 'I've been in a lot of screwy ■ businesses, but this is far and away the screwiest. I'd like to get in it." Even screwier things were to happen. Buck was the handsomest cowboy who had ever been seen in Hollywood, and one of the best riders. He wasn't afraid to try anything and had little trouble in getting work. He played small parts in several pictures and doubled in dangerous stunts for William Farnum and Tom Mix. The producer decided Tom Mix might work a little harder if he thought he had a potent rival. And Buck was thrown into a situation so insane that even Hollywood blinked its eyes. Buck's boss advised him to get out and show himself and to act like a Big Shot, like Mix. But Mix was a master in the art of acting like the Big Shot he was, and even if Buck bought the loudest cowboy clothes in town he never could hope to out-act Tom Mix. So the producer had a Big Idea. He took Buck to the best tailor and the best haberdasher in Los Angeles and bought him $2,500 worth of clothes, including a silk hat, a dress suit, a cutaway coat, spats, a cane, patent-leather shoes, and tailor-made shirts with Buck's monogram on the sleeve. "Wear these," said the producer. "Get out and be seen. It'll worry Mix." "I knew all movie people were crazy", Buck told me, "so I just decided this fellow was crazier than any of them and I'd better humour him." And, quite uncomfortable and bewildered, Buck, with Mrs. Buck, went out to worry Tom Mix. It didn't make sense to Buck, but the sight of a cowboy in silk hat, cutaway and spats certainly alarmed Hollywood and may have worried Mix. Anyway, the producer seemed to be satisfied and after a couple of months Buck was allowed to be himself again. Ten years later, in 1931, Buck was getting S3.000 a week as a star. He was booked on a personal-appearance tour with Silver, and the salary was $5,000 a week. Buck reasoned, "If one guy and one horse could make that much money, what could he do with a Wild West Show?" Because he had refused to gamble in the boom days, the market crash had affected him not at all. He had saved $375,000. He decided to become another Buffalo Bill and Miller Brothers combined, and organized the Buck Jones Wild West Show. Mrs. Jones thought it was a good idea and she appeared with Buck in the show. It opened in San Francisco and closed three months later, in Danville, 111., when a sheriff took it over. Buck lost every cent he had. A rival show had ruined him by tearing down his billing. He would get into a town and find that nobody knew he was coming. Inexperienced, he didn't know how to fight such practices and he moved from town to town, playing to small crowds, paying the expenses out of his own bankroll, refusing to quit. The show that had put him out of business offered Buck $3,000 a week to join it. He said he'd starve, first — and he almost did. He drove back to Hollywood, sleeping in the car because he didn't have enough money to pay for a hotel room. But if the cowboy tradition seemed dead on the road, it was still very much alive on the films. Buck came back modestly but very surely. Now Buck "produces his own pictures, and has mastered the science of quantity production at low cost. The Big Stars make about four a year, consuming from six weeks to six months in shooting time, and the cost may be from $500,000 to $1,000,000. Buck shoots a picture in eight or ten days, makes eight a year at a cost of about $65,000 each, and their gross revenue is approximately $160,000 each. He is paid production cost and 20 per cent, of the gross." These cheap, well-made pictures do more than thriLl each generation of youngsters. They make stars: they make directors. Carole Lombard arid Gary Cooper graduated out of "horse opera" and W. S. Van Dyke directed Buck Jones for four years. Buck Jones's pictures are not only good — they are Good. When the Hays Office and the purity campaigners started their clean-up, they found Buck above criticism. He gets his man but he does not shoot him. usually it is arranged that fists and not guns do the job, and when shooting is necessary the Bad Ones usually shoot each other. Buck never starts a fight, he only defends himself. There is no gambling, there are no love scenes. All this he believes increases his popularity, as the roll of the Buck Jones Rangers, a publicity stunt which has signed on 2.000.000 youngsters, clearly shows. This Hays Office version of the Boy Scouts is sworn to the creed of Buck Jones, the White Man on the White Horse. 169