Braver than John Wayne?
No one could take the fight out of Gene Autry.
Categories: Westerns
By: Henry Cabot Beck 08/01/2007
Who was Gene Autry? It’s a fair question. In his time, Gene Autry was many things to many people, but it’s fair to say that Autry was a man who, by dint of will and some modest musical talent, rose from his hardscrabble origins to transform the popular culture of the 20th century.
He influenced or changed everything he touched, and he had a hand in every area of popular entertainment except literature and theatre, unless comic books and rodeos count (and they do). Autry was the original king of all media.
He was textbook Horatio Alger, but multiplied by a factor of 50. He wasn’t the greatest singer, he couldn’t act much and he had to be taught how to handle a horse by stunt men and wranglers. But he knew how to pick good songs and perform them (“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “You Are My Sunshine”), learned to act well enough to play the same character, Gene Autry, for more than 20 years, and he had an innate instinct for marketing and promotion, which jibed nicely with his love of touring and performing. Autry is the only show business personality with five stars, representing five categories of activity, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Audiences loved him. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t rugged, tall or tough. They liked his music and his modesty. As a Western hero, Autry personified decency, fair play, hard work and clean living.
When he wasn’t touring, broadcasting or turning out seven movies a year, he was battling studio executives tooth and nail and carving a multi million-dollar empire. Gene Autry was a one-in-a-million everyman.
Holly George-Warren is the author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry (left), a book that opens the door wide on the phenomenon and the man, Orvon Gene Autry, who would have turned 100 on September 29 (Autry died in 1998). She is also the author of Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country and Western Music and Cowboy: How Hollywood Invented the Wild West.
I spoke to Holly while she was visiting Los Angeles to participate in the opening of the Gene Autry Centennial Exhibition at the Autry National Center, a show that runs through January 13, 2008.
TW: I would imagine that a lot of interesting people with close connections to Autry have been coming forward to talk to you at the opening.
HGW: Oh yeah. It’s so crazy. I’ve just finished three days of book signings and even though I worked on the book for 10 years, people I was desperately trying to find have just now come out of the woodwork. Frankie Marvin was Gene’s best buddy going back to 1928 and worked with him his entire life. He also really helped Gene make it in New York. Frankie’s daughter came to meet me Wednesday night. It was amazing. So now I’m getting all these people’s phone numbers for whatever, whenever, you know, to add more material sometime down the road.
What kind of access did you have to Autry’s personal material?
It was so incredible. I had total complete access to everything—all his personal papers, files, contracts, everything. And then they put me in touch with everyone they had contact information for. The great thing was [no one asked] for editorial approval or anything. This was about as good as it gets.
But here’s the really amazing part: Gene, back in the early ’70s, bought all the negatives to all his Republic pictures, and, unbelievably, with all the film stuff they gave him, they also handed him all the files they had there that related to him, through all the years!
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