Showing posts with label Gene Autry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gene Autry. Show all posts

Sep 28, 2013

Gene Autry

 To the strains of 'Back in the Saddle Again', by Ray Whitley and Gene Autry, TV viewers were treated to the first performance of The Gene Autry Show in September, 1950. Autry and his sidekick, Pat Buttram maintained law and order in the US Southwest for six years. Gene sang just like he did in the movies and his horse, Champion, would do amazing horse tricks while Pat Buttram would invariably get into silly situations. Gene Autry and friends hopped back in the saddle weekly until 1956.

Autry went on to become a Country Music Association Hall of Famer, own Golden West Broadcasting and the California Angels baseball team and he is the only person to have five Hollywood Walk of Fame stars (film, radio, TV, stage, records). He died October 2, 1998.

Jun 7, 2011

Hopalong Cassidy

June 5 is the anniversary of the birth of William Boyd, born in 1895. Boyd is known to movie-goers and TV audiences throughout the world as Hopalong Cassidy. During his heyday, millions of fans would turn out to see him in personal appearances. He first played the role of the cowboy hero in the 1935 movie, Hop-a-long Cassidy. The character came from 28 western novels written by Clarence Mulford.

He was one of the few 'good guys' who wore black. In those days most of the good guys wore anything but black and the bad guys wore black. The picture below shows him in character with Dennis Weaver (as Chester B. Goode) James Arness (as Matt Dillon) from Gunsmoke. Weaver passed away in 2006 and Arness passed away last week, June 3, 2011. Arness' brother was Peter Graves from Mission Impossible fame.

Gunsmoke was just beginning as Boyd was retiring and he turned his whole production company over to CBS for that show, so his entire crew would not be put out of work.

Boyd was Hopalong Cassidy in 66 films through 1948 and then he starred as Hopalong in the successful TV series in the 1950s. For over twenty years, children and adults both loved the adventures of Hopalong Cassidy, his horse Topper, and his sidekick played by George ‘Gabby’ Hayes. He ranks up there with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers who made the successful transition from movie westerns to the 'new' television. Back then westerns dominated TV as much as crime shows do now.

Couldn't resist tossing this one in with my brothers and me in my Christmas Hoppy outfit.

Dec 17, 2010

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

The most famous reindeer of them all. The song is one of the best selling of all time as sung by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. It is also on albums by the Supremes and the Jackson 5.

Rudolph was created ten years before the song in 1939, by Johnny Marks' brother-in-law Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward. The store wanted something to bring in holiday shoppers and the story/poem was given out to children as an advertising gimmick.

Modern reaction to this song about a reindeer, written by a Jewish author - "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" caused a stir at a New Hanover County school at Christmas time in 2008.  A parent complained about the song's religious reference and got it pulled from her child's kindergarten Christmas show at Murrayville Elementary School. The song was pulled “because it had the word Christmas in it,” said Rick Holliday, assistant school superintendent. A Jewish mother, who didn't want her name published, objected to what she called "religious overtones" in the song. So the principal agreed to pull it from the program. Luckily the board and attorneys reviewed it and decided the song was not religious and had it reinstated into the kindergarten program.