Cowboys You Might Remember

[HoosierDaddy]

http://oldfortyfives.com/thoseoldwesterns.htm

 

[carouselvic]

Very good!! I rode thousands of miles with those guys.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Hey!...Me too!
I was the guy with the low slung Mattel "Fanner"...!

 

[The Captain]

Thanks, HD. Even though it did bring a tear to my eye (yes, I remember every one of them), I have some good memories. Like the cold and snowy night in Nebraska I met Audy Murphy at a premier of one of his films.

I think of this short verse by Wallace Tripp a lot.

"Oh, wretched world,
more rank each day,
and ruled by lunatics,
the heroes all
have gone away.
Where are you
now, Tom Mix?"

 

[Leesensei]

Boy that brought back some wonderful memories! Thank you so much for posting that.

Lee

 

[carouselvic]

Most all of my six-shooters had a Texas longhorn on the grips.

 

[Hondo]

a tear to my eye

Yes! I remember, and so does my dad at 85, he some times mumbles...
"Their all gone now" as he watches western channel of old TV show or movies.
I used to think corny as a teen, but when a kid I always favored Roy Rogers.
Now over the hill nearing 60, I feel closer to my father, with respect
towards westerns, and or heroes we grew up with, real sad.
but the memory lives on like on Western Channel,
then its off into the sunset, as John Wayne did in The Searchers.
Adios amigos!

 

[xwray]

When I was a kid there were 4 theatres in town one of which played mostly westerns. They had a stage with a large elevator platform, sorta like a carrier elevator that lifts aircraft to the flight deck. Every Saturday they would show a double feature western and a couple of cartoons, a serial, and frequently a comedy. Every two or three Saturdays they would also have a live act - Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, etc would rise out of the floor on that elevator sitting astride their horses and they would put on a little act of some sort. We waited for those shows with bated breath (of course I had no idea what bated breath was at that age) for the chance to see our heroes in the flesh. Right across the street was a soda shoppe that I would go to after the movies and buy a fountain drink if I had enough money left over from the quarter my mom would give me - the movie cost fourteen cents - so I had eleven cents to spend.

On one such trip to the soda shoppe I was sitting at the table with my friend and in walked Lash Larue. LASH LARUE! One of my favorite cowboys! He had just put on his whip act (he did all those movie whip action shots himself). I just had to get his autograph. I grabbed the only thing I could see for him to sign, my napkin, and scrounged a pen from somewhere and approached him. He looked 12 feet tall in his black outfit and black hat - he was one of the few good guys that could get away with wearing a black hat - and that big whip hanging on his belt. I was awestruck. He smiled, said sure, kid, and signed my napkin.

I remember it as clearly if it had happened yesterday...one of the few vivid memories retained from my childhood...they made a good impression on a young kid. We were lucky to have had such heroes to look up to...kids didn't know or care about human frailties...they were truly the good guys.

I think it would be interesting to hear of other young encounters with childhood western heroes so please share 'em if you got 'em

 

[The Good]

Wow... it's actually pretty depressing you know, seeing our old television or film heroes pass away in the recent decades. I'm only twenty years old, but I remember a lot of these names on the website. My personal cinema favorites are John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Clint Eastwood. Pretty recently though, I've been watching quite a few of those old Tom Mix serials, they're actually very enjoyable, despite the short length.

 

[dhermann1]

Oh, wow! Overwhelming! Several categories of western stars lumped in together there. There are the earliest silent stars. like Tom Mix, and (to me) the greatest western star of them all, William S. Hart; the serial stars, like Lash Larue, Wild Bill Elliot and Gene Autry; the "A" movie western stars, like Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper; and the TV series stars, like James Arness and Hugh O'Brian. Different genres, different ideas of heroism.
I was afrain my favorite western star, William S. Hart, was going to be forgetten, but he was there. If you've never seen a Wm. S. Hart movie go rent one immediately. He's probably the most AUTHENTIC western star of all. Great great flicks.
As a kid my favorites were Roy Rogers, the human western Christmas tree (he had the greatest outfits ever), and good old Hopalong Cassidy. William Boyd played Hoppy in more movies than any other actor ever played a single character. He did 60 movies, and several years worth of TV shows as well. He was HUGE in his day.
Not many that were left out. Let me see . . . Clint Walker from Cheyenne (how about that whole group of TV westerns Warner Bros put out in the 50's, starting with Cheyenne, etc.)?
There were a couple of female stars, very few but a couple. Annie Oakley was one series starring . . . I don't know . . . and who else? Speaking of which, would you put Betty Hutton in there for her role in "Annie Get Your Gun"? I dunno, whatever.
Gabby Hayes used to have a TV show that I saw in New York (I assume it was syndicated, but it was very early TV, like 1952) where he talked to the kids for a while, then showed episodes of theatrical serials. He was sponsored by Quaker Puffed Wheat and Rice ("Shot From Guns!") and at the end of the show he'd take a big cannon, put wheat or rice in the back and point it at the camera and say "Stand back from yer television aerials, cause here it comes!" And he'd blast the cereal at the camera. I made sure I was standing back so I didn't get hit!
Ah, fond memories! Thanks for sharing!

 

[T Smith]

Wow what memories!

Thanks for posting the link!

 

[carouselvic]

Western Art Presentation

http://www.greatdanepro.com/Western Paintings/index.htm

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I was a kid during all of the '50s. Wouldn't miss Saturday morning westerns on TV...of course with my trusty bowl of soggy Wheaties...Grape Nut Flakes...Frosted Flakes..Sugar pops..or Sugar Smacks. Soggier the better...and Mom's toast fixed in the oven(brown on one side..chewy white on the other). I'd sit crosslegged on the floor in a trance and watch Roy,Hoppy,Cisco,LoneRanger to name just a few. At the movies some favorites were Gary Cooper...Randolph Scott...Jimmy Stewart. In fact those three probably personified my idea of a true cowboy more than all the others.
HD

 

[Foofoogal]

http://bransonmissouri.missourinetizen.com/2009/10/roy-rogers-museum-closing-announcement.html

for further sadness on this subject. I still say if someone would do a great Western a whole new generation could grow to love them.
I guess the gun issue is what holds anyone back from attempting it though. [huh]

a bit of money to be a Cowboy now.
http://www.capguntoys.com/

or cowgirl as I shot a many of em myself. Either that or I was being captured and rescued by my brothers.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

http://bransonmissouri.missourinetizen.com/2009/10/roy-rogers-museum-closing-announcement.html

for further sadness on this subject. I still say if someone would do a great Western a whole new generation could grow to love them.
I guess the gun issue is what holds anyone back from attempting it though. [huh]

a bit of money to be a Cowboy now.
http://www.capguntoys.com/

or cowgirl as I shot a many of em myself. Either that or I was being captured and rescued by my brothers.

Somehow Foofoogal...I don't think even a good western TV serial would mean much to kids these days. It's my experience that video games have taken over that territory.
HD

 

[dhermann1]

May I just toss in here that my favorite cowboy would have to be my granddaddy? (See my avatar.) He worked as a cowboy in Oklahoma for less than a year around 1910. He was about 19 at the time.

 

[442RCT]

I was a kid during all of the '50s. Wouldn't miss Saturday morning westerns on TV...of course with my trusty bowl of soggy Wheaties...Grape Nut Flakes...Frosted Flakes..Sugar pops..or Sugar Smacks. Soggier the better...and Mom's toast fixed in the oven(brown on one side..chewy white on the other). I'd sit crosslegged on the floor in a trance and watch Roy,Hoppy,Cisco,LoneRanger to name just a few. At the movies some favorites were Gary Cooper...Randolph Scott...Jimmy Stewart. In fact those three probably personified my idea of a true cowboy more than all the others.
HD

Besides the TV shows, I went to the Saturday matinee to watch Johnny Mack Brown, Lash LaRue, Bob Steele (my dad told me he was once a professional boxer), and the others.

Being a cowboy was so deeply ingrained in me, that I joined the Single Action Shooters Society (SASS) and strapped on a pair of real sixguns to play cowboys and sling lead on weekends with all the other guys who wanted to be cowboys.

Currently in my neck of the woods, Have Gun Will Travel, plays twice a day on TV, I record and watch both episodes every day. [huh]

 

[Dixon Cannon]

I'm glad they got 'Rough Riders' in there; the first TV Cowboy show I ever remember seeing!

-dixon cannon