Beech Tree News Network

I suspect we all have celebrity heroes of one kind or another. 

As a kid mine were down at The Palace-Palace Theater (Greenville), on Saturday afternoons. For 9 cents a kid could spend all afternoon there…from noon until dark. This was good during the winter months- watching the feature, comedy, and serial, over and over. You were warm and snug from the miserable watcher outside. 

What more could a kid ask for than a long stint with his heroes: Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Johnny Mac Brown, Tim Halt, Charles Starett (aliss the Durango kid)… we pronounced it “Drango”. Too there were: Buster Crabble and Rocky Lane. 

Later, we learned something about them in real life. Charles Starrett (Durango Kid) came to Hollywood from Boston, Mass. Charles wanted to be a mouse cowboy. He sure didn’t need the money. He already had that. Charles was an heir to the Starrett Tool Fortune of Boston. 

Roy Rogers (Lyn Sly) came from Duck Run, Ohio, so did Bobby Bare, and Dean Martin. Roy was a fruit picker and truck driver before the movies. His sister (By then the whole family had come later to California) encouraged him to enter an amateur singing contest. We’re told his sister ironed his shirt and shined his shoes for the contest. The sister said Roy didn’t want to get his shoes dirty, so he showed up at the contest in his sock-feet, carrying his guitar and his shoes. Roy won. The rest is show business history. 

Gene Autry (real name) was probably the only real cowboy among the B-movie Cowboys. Born on a ranch in Oklahoma, Gene could rope and ride with the best of them. 

After leaving the ranch in his twenties, he got a job as a railroad telegrapher-working the night shift. When nights were long and traffic was slow Gene played his guitar and sang. One night another guy from Oklahoma wandered by and listened to Gene for a while. “You keep that up young fella”, the man told him, “it could make you a living someday.” Gene did. It did...make him a living-a good one. 

By-the-way, the man’s mane was Will Rogers. When World War Two came, Gene, already an accomplished pilot; joined the Army Air Corps. He went through advanced training in B-24 bombers (four-engine school) at Smyrna, Tennessee, near Nashville. He was then assigned as a B-24 pilot in the China-Burma, India Theater, flying the infamous “Hump” from India into China and Burma, dropping not bombs, but supplies to the ground troops fighting the Japanese. 

Gene came home after the war, climbed aboard “Champ” and began singing “Back In the Saddle Again”… Again. 

The rest: Johnny Mac Brown was a star football player at Alabama; before Hollywood, Buster Crabbe was an Olympic swimmer. Alan Rocky Lane later married his girl co-star, Peggy Stewart-she was a “looker”. 

None of those heroes ever smoked or drank. Tim Holt did occasionally smoke pipe while sitting around the bunkhouse at night. This was O.K. though. My Granddad smoked a pipe. Happy Trails.. 

Kindest regards…