WESTERN WRITERS OF AMERICA CONVENTION Part 2
On Saturday morning, June 28th, the last
day of the Western Writers of America Convention began (if you missed my
coverage of part 1, go HERE )
with three panel discussions. Monty
McCord, author of MUNDY’S LAW, moderated Steps
to Successful Book Marketing. He
shared the stage with H. Alan Day, who co-wrote the best-selling memoir LAZY B.
with his sister, Sandra Day O’Connor; literary agent and publicist Krista
Soukup, owner of the Blue Cottage Agency;
and Lynn Wiese Sneyd, author, and founder of LWS Literary Services, which handles editing and publicity as well
as ghost-writing.
Next up was Other
People’s Lives: Writing Biography Right, moderated by JOHN MUIR:
MAGNIFICENT TRAMP author Rod Miller. One
of the delightful admissions came from “THAT FIEND IN HELL”: SOAPY SMITH author
Catherine Spude who announced that much of what she has written is riddled with
lies! She gave the example of writing
her father’s obituary and, under pressure from her insistent mother, neglected
to mention his previous marriage. It’s
worth remembering that when we’re fighting to get the testimony of people who
were ‘there’, wherever ‘there’ happens to be, that just like all of us, primary
sources have a tendency to improve stories, to skip over embarrassing elements,
and to simply remember things incorrectly, even when doing their damndest to be
honest. Washington State University Press editor-in-chief Bob Clark
attacked one of my personal peeves in alleged non-fiction: invented
dialogue. He also advised that in
writing about the life and times of someone, to make sure it’s more of their life and less of their times.
Robert Larson, whose biographical subjects include Red Cloud and Gall, suggested
starting a biography with a big event, and warned that in research, primary
sources like obituaries and birth records are often wrong. In answer to an audience question about
researching, I believe it was Catherine Spude who suggested using Ancestry.com
to find descendants of your subject, and make them your friends.
CRAZY HEART and WITH BLOOD IN THEIR EYES author
Thomas Cobb chaired the last discussion, Truth
and Fiction. On the panel were Matthew
P. Mayo, who last year won the Best Western Short Novel Spur for TUCKER’S RECKONING; two-time Spur Award winner Lucia St. Clair Robinson; and Ann Weisgarber, a Spur finalist this year for her
historical novel THE PROMISE.
After a break for lunch, the writers piled into a
convoy of buses and headed to the Barnes
& Noble store in nearby Citrus Heights for a massive book-signing
event. Spread throughout the massive
emporium, clusters of authors sat with their books, signing them for the large
contingent of readers who strolled
through the store.
Among the authors I spoke to was Anne
Hillerman. With her
first western novel, SPIDERWOMAN’S DAUGHTER, which won this year’s Spur Award for Best First Novel, she’s continuing
the beloved novels that her father, the late and great Tony Hillerman, wrote. I asked her what it was like to be stepping
into those shoes.
ANNE HILLERMAN:
It was wonderful; it was a little bit intimidating, at least at
first. Because I was thinking of all the
people who had loved my dad’s books for thirty years. But then, once I started writing it, I really
enjoyed it. And I thought that all those
people who had the potential to intimidate me also had the potential to love
this book. And it made me happy. SPIDERWOMAN’S DAUGHTER is continuing the Jim
Chee, Joe Leaphorn series, with Bernadette Manolito as the main
crime-solver. My contract with Harper-Collins was for two books, so I’m
finishing up the second novel now; it’s due August 1st. And I’m hoping they’ll have it out some time
between April and August of 2015.”
HENRY: You
also have a strikingly beautiful book called TONY HILLERMAN’S LANDSCAPE.
ANNE HILLERMAN:
My husband, Don Strell, took the photos, and I wrote the text; the book
is about places my dad loved. (There
are) descriptions of what those places are, and there are quotes from my dad’s
books. And the last chapter is a piece that my dad wrote about why he loved
living in Los Ranches, New Mexico.
Bill
Hill
writes mostly about trails, and his books have covered the Pony Express,
Oregon, Santa Fe, Lewis and Clark, California and Morman trails. “Mainly
the immigrant trails, the historic trails out west. Yesterday and today I worked with them, so I
could find old photos, drawings, sketches.
Things that were made by the immigrants or the military, when they did
their surveys, and go back and photograph the same places today. It’s a lot of
fun.” I asked him what audience his
books are aimed at. “Some are for the
general audience, adults ordinarily.
Then we have introductory books about the trails, that have a little bit
of everything in them. So they have
information about the early maps, diaries, guidebooks that were available to
the travelers. And a lot of ‘yesterday
and today’ quotes that are related to those sites. I like to pick two or three artists or immigrants
who made sketches, and then follow them all along the west. I’ve used people like Bruff, Tappin, Jackson,
Simmons. The last one, on the Pony
Express, I used a lot of Jackson photos in addition to his sketches and
paintings.”
Bill
Markley, author of DEADWOOD DEAD MEN, and WWA new member chairman,
has written non-fiction, both for books and for magazines like TRUE WEST, but
he’s branched out into fiction, and finds it liberating. “For the past twelve years I’ve written
non-fiction, and when you write non-fiction, you stick to the facts. And in any story there’s always holes in the
facts, and you think, ‘If I only had this one more piece of information it
would make my story complete.’ With my
new book, DEADWOOD DEAD MEN, it’s historical fiction, and I started thinking
about this one story: why did this actually happen the way it did? Why don’t I just create the scene in the
barroom as it happened? One thing grew
into another, and I had the first chapter done.
And the editor of this publication said, ‘Write the story.’ So that’s how I got into writing historical
fiction. It’s Deadwood, August 1876,
couple weeks after Wild Bill gets shot, and there was a series of murders. And there were always rumors that there was a
gang behind the scenes pulling the strings.”
Interestingly, Bill’s career with the west started onscreen. “I got my start in the film DANCES WITH
WOLVES. I kept a journal during the filming,
and then self-published. I was in the
opening Civil War scene, when they were going to cut Kevin Costner’s foot
off. Then I switched to Confederates, and I’m one
of the guys who tries to shoot him off his horse. I wasn’t a reenactor then, but I am
now. I was also in the films SON OF THE
MORNING STAR, FAR AND AWAY with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, in the big
land-rush scene at the end. That was a
crazy deal – 250 wagons, a thousand riders.
The insurance actuaries predicted that there would be one death, and a
lot of injuries, but no one died. Then I
was in GETTYSBURG and CRAZY HORSE.”
There were a lot of writers of western fact and
fiction present, but Harlan Hague,
whose book THE PEOPLE will be published by Five
Star in August, was my first interview with a writer of western speculative
fiction. “The People are a confederation of plains
tribes that have put aside ancient enmities and formed a joint opposition to
the United States. They decided that
they had an enemy worse than the next tribe over the hill. I rearranged time and place so outrageously
that I don’t mention places or places in the story, but I would guess it was in
the 1840s. The tribe on which I focus is
a tribe which supposedly went extinct in the 1820s. They had lived on Newfoundland. But in my book I rescue the Beothuk and have
them migrate westward and settle on the western plains.”
James
E. Meuller’s third book, SHOOTING ARROWS AND
SLINGING MUD – CUSTER, THE PRESS, AND THE LITTLE BIGHORN, has been in the works
for about twenty years, ever since the author was working towards his PhD at
the University of Texas, Austin. “Custer
was stationed there on reconstruction duty after the Civil War, and there’s
actually a picture of a U.T. building with Custer sitting on the steps. At that point I wrote a paper for a class
about Custer and the press coverage.
Then I wrote a series of academic articles. It took about two and a half years to write
the book after I got the contract, but I’ve actually been working on it for
about twenty years. It’s a study of how
the Little Bighorn was covered in newspapers of the day, and talks about
various aspects of the coverage, including humor. For example, within a week or less of the
battle, newspapers were telling jokes about it.
One newspaper in Kentucky had on its front page that Custer’s death was
‘Siouxicide!’ There are chapters
discussing how accurate and inaccurate the coverage was. There’s a chapter on
the impact on the 1876 presidential campaign, because it was an election
year. Surprisingly, it didn’t have that
much impact. The battle was front-page
news from July through August. But
relatively quickly, the Hamburg Massacre, which was a race riot in South
Carolina, between a black militia unit and ex-Confederate soldiers, knocked the
Little Bighorn off the front page.
”
I was eager to talk to Paul Colt, author of BOOTS AND SADDLES – A CALL TO GLORY, because I
overheard that it was about Blackjack Pershing’s pursuit of Pancho Villa. My grandfather, Henry Charles Parke, whom I
am named after, rode in Pershing’s cavalry in that adventure. “It’s a historical dramatization. I like to do what I call unexpected history, where
it focuses on some little known or overlooked aspect of a famous character of
event. Everybody knows George Patton because
of George C. Scott’s dramatic portrayal.
But most people don’t know that early in his career he was a cavalry
officer; he was the Army’s first saber master. And on the cusp of the twentieth century, just
before World War One, he could already see that the cavalry was on its last
days. He was very frustrated; he was 32
years old, still a 2nd lieutenant and he was thinking of resigning
his commission. Then Pancho Villa raided
Columbus, New Mexico, Woodrow Wilson sent Pershing into Mexico to get him. Patton talks his way onto Pershing’s staff;
during that nine month campaign, Pershing puts his arm around Patton and saves
his career.”
Fiction writer Thom
Nicholson’s inspiration for REVENGE OF THE STOLEN DOVE came from life. I asked if the dove of the title was of the
soiled variety. “When I was eighteen, I
met a 95-year-old woman who, when she was sixteen, working in her father’s
field in Nebraska, two men came by in a wagon and scooped her up. Took her to Denver, addicted her to opium, turned
her into a prostitute and sold her to a brothel. And it took her ten years to get away; she
went back to Nebraska, and her family was gone.
She never saw them again, ever.
She didn’t have any skill other than what she’d been doing. So she went back to doing that, and was a
prostitute, and became a madam. She
bought property, and when I met her at 95 she was a genteel woman of leisure
living off her investments. She told me
part of the story. I told her I had to
hear the rest. She told me to come back
later; when I did, she had died. So I
had to make up the (rest of the) story for her.
So this is written in her honor.”
I knew that evening I’d be watching Clu Gulager -- famous
for his role as Sheriff Ryker in THE VIRGINIAN, and as Billy the Kid in THE
TALL MAN, and movies as disparate as THE KILLERS and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW --
emcee the Spur Awards that
night. But when I spotted him at Barnes & Noble,
I thought it would be a better time to get an interview. I was right.
To say the talk was wide-ranging is an understatement, but even if I got
few direct answers to my questions, the responses were always informative and
entertaining. I asked him why he was
attending the convention.
Clu channeling Jack Benny
CLU GULAGER:
Sex. Pure sex. It’s a sexual reasoning I have. Most people here are not spring chickens –
certainly I am not. And I am drawn to
women who are not spring chickens; and there are quite a few here.
HENRY: It is
the Western Writers of America convention.
Have you done any writing yourself?
CLU GULAGER: I
write scenes for my film-acting workshop, for the actors. Other than that, I am very, very intimidated
by you guys, and your editors. Because wordsmiths,
to me, are the supreme art. And I know that
Picasso wouldn’t enjoy me saying it, but I’ve said it, and I’ll say it
again. Tonight I’ve got to say a couple
of words; and I’m very frightened.
Because I know the cynicism that goes into writing. I’ve written enough to know that you have to
be somewhat skeptical of all of your sources, of your subject, and of your
wording – and especially your syntax. I have written a western that I like, a
screenplay, and my son, who is a filmmaker (writer/director John Gulager),
likes a lot, called MISTER. And I’ve
written about fifteen screenplays, none of which have been done. We’ve gotten some of them partially made, and
then run out of money all the time. I
should probably know your films --
HENRY: It
depends how late you stay up, and what strange channels you watch.
CLU GULAGER: Well,
I don’t watch TV. I don’t have any
machines in my house, except a refrigerator, and a stove that’s broken. And of course, my head. That machine doesn’t function well at this
time, but it’s there; I sleep with it.
HENRY: Okay,
this will come out of left field: what was it like doing THE TALL MAN, with
Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett?
CLU GULAGER: He
looked like a turtle, when he was looking good.
Otherwise he looked to me like he was about to crumple, most of the
time. Alcoholics tend to feel badly when
they get up in the mornings, and we started shooting early. So by noon he was about ready to go
home. That’s showbiz talk.
HENRY: Was he
drinking while you were doing the show?
CLU GULAGER:
Oh yes. We sat down from time to
time. I was a young actor, and did not
like that. I knew everything then. And what I know now you could put on the head
of a needle.
HENRY: What
is your favorite role among your screen performances?
CLU GULAGER:
Oh, I enjoyed mounting Cybil Shepherd on a pool table in THE LAST
PICTURE SHOW. That was fun.
HENRY: That
sounds fun.
CLU GULAGER: Thank
you. I enjoyed shooting Alan Alda in the
belly with a double-barreled shotgun in THE GLASS HOUSE. He deserved it.
HENRY: For a
long time.
CLU GULAGER: Mm-hm
– yup. I got him at the end of the
movie. And I enjoyed it when Randolph
Scott’s pony fell with me while I was doing Billy the Kid. Fell with me in a gully in the back lot of
Universal and almost killed me. I
enjoyed that a lot because I felt it would be a good story to tell. I never tell it, but I’m telling you.
HENRY: Randolph
Scott was not in the show with you, was he?
CLU GULAGER:
No, he’d gone, but he left his pony, and that’s what they gave me to
ride. It was 19, and I rode it for a
while. Then it gave out, and they gave
me another horse that was so high that I could hardly mount it. This one time Ronald Reagan came on the set; his
wife was in it with me – very good actor, Nancy. He
came on. I had a hard time getting on
that damn horse. So about the eighth
time, I just fell flat and just lay there.
He said, “Clu. Clu.” I said, “Yeah, Ron?” He said, “I’ll tell you how I did it. I started mounting the horse, and just as I
started to get up, I said, ‘Cut.’ And so
they cut, and then they showed me on top of the horse, already mounted.” I said, “Thank you.” I wanted to tell him to shove it, you know,
but I couldn’t, because he was the future governor and president. Good guy; real good guy. He’s the one that closed all the Indian
schools. And the Indians wouldn’t go to
the white schools, so they just stopped going to school. I’m an Indian. So all my friends who taught in Indian
schools said, “Look, could you help us, could you talk with Ron and ask him not
to do it? Tell him that the kids won’t
go to the white schools?” And I said,
“Yeah.” But I never did. I didn’t feel – not my place. He was not going to listen to me.
HENRY: Was
that when he was Governor of California?
CLU GULAGER: President.
They were economizing. They were
conservatives from Illinois. And he
believed in saving moola, no matter the consequences. But he was a kind gentle man to me. I did a movie called THE KILLERS with
him. He played a villain. He was very good; very good. He hated it.
HENRY: Wasn’t
that his last movie?
CLU GULAGER: Yeah. But he was really good in it. You see, his agent ran Universal, Lew
Wasserman. So Lew prevailed upon him:
“Look, I’ve helped you all these years.
We need you in this picture.” It
was a TV movie, not worth two cents. He
didn’t want to do the movie, but he had to do it, because Lew got him elected
Governor, and eventually President, and he knew which side his bread was
buttered on, and he took it seriously, this political activity he was engaged
in. He loved it. Nancy said, “He doesn’t like show business
any more. He likes politics; he’s very
interested in politics, Clu.” And I knew
what she was talking about, because of my whole family; I come from a political
background. You do get involved with
different things. I don’t know what
you’re involved in other than your writing, but you do become obsessed with
things. And look what happened. He could fall asleep in an instant, in a
meeting of Congress. Brilliant,
brilliant mind – you try falling asleep when you’re President, in the middle of
Congress. He could nap, and not even be
drunk. I don’t think he drank to excess.
HENRY: Now in
THE KILLERS, you were with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson.
CLU GULAGER:
Yes, and I hit Angie Dickinson in the face as hard as I could, and I
enjoyed it.
HENRY: So
you’re really fond of her, I take it.
CLU GULAGER: I
like her, except for one time I asked her to come down to The New Beverly. (Note: The New Beverly is a revival house in
L.A. owned and operated by Quentin Tarantino; very funky and very chic.) We were showing THE KILLERS, and I’d talk
with her. And she said she couldn’t make
it. And I wanted to say…but I didn’t;
I’m a gentleman.
HENRY: THE
KILLERS was directed by Don Siegal. What
was he like?
CLU GULAGER: I
loved him as a person, very much. Very
kind and gentle. We bonded, we were very
good friends. And his boy, Kristopher
Tabori was a good friend of mine. I must
say that one of his films was one of my favorite horror films for decades. And that was INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS,
with Kevin McCarthy, in black and white.
And then other things took over. I
loved ALIEN a lot, that Don O’Bannon wrote.
And Dan O’Bannon wrote a piece one time for me, called RETURN OF THE
LIVNG DEAD. And I did it. And I said, how come you cast me in this
thing, because I was a cowboy actor, kind of a legitimate actor. And this was nonsense. And he said, well, who would you put in
it? And I thought and thought, and I
couldn’t think of anyone that would accept that role, it was so
ridiculous. I said, I can’t think of
anyone. He said, there you go.
THE SPUR AWARDS DINNER
Jim Beaver
The convention was capped that night with the
banquet, and the bestowing of the Spur
Awards. The main course was salmon,
the desert was tiramisu, and the entertainment began with a bit of
time-travel. We were brought back to a
mid-80s western film festival. Actor and
film historian Jim Beaver, known for his roles in DEADWOOD, SUPERNATURAL and
JUSTIFIED, was hard to recognize within a wreath of crusty whiskers, as he
played the festival’s special guest, an amalgam of all the great and near-great
and not-that-great sidekicks of yesteryear.
To the delight of we hard-core cowboy-movie nerds, peppered among the
jokes were frequent references to the most obscure of B-western productions.
The program continued with a series of special awards. The first, The Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement, went to Robert J.
Conley. As a Cherokee, he wrote about
the west from a not too common perspective, writing short stories, novels and
non-fiction, including THE CHEROKEE ENCYCLOPEDIA.
A beloved and much honored
member, described as ‘the face and heart of the WWA,’ he died this February, at
the age of 73. But fortunately, this was
not a posthumous presentation; Candy Moulton, executive director of the WWA,
aware of his health problems, travelled to his home in Sylva, North Carolina,
and made the presentation a week before his death. Along with all the remembrances of him, his leather-braided
cane was placed across the top of the lectern.
Clu Gulager, a close friend of Conley, and part
Cherokee himself, told the audience of the time he asked Conley to play a
lawman in a film, and Conley eagerly agreed, even though he had to shave his
head for the part. And then, to Gulager’s
chagrin, that scene ended up on the cutting-room floor!
Johnny Boggs and Ollie Reed
The
Stirrup Award was presented to Ollie Reed Jr., by Roundup Magazine editor Johnny D. Boggs,
for his article on the LONGMIRE TV series.
Diane & John Gulager, C. Courtney Joyner, Clu Gulager, Kirk Ellis
The
Lariat Award for exceptional support to the WWA and
literature of the West, went to Tucson radio host Emil Franzi. The
Branding Iron Award for support to the WWA and its goals went to writer and,
until recently, chair of the membership committee, Rod Miller.
Anne Hillerman & Sherry Monahan
Clu and new WWA President Sherry Monahan handed out
the Spurs. The Spur for Best Western Contemporary novel
went to James Lee Burke for LIGHT OF THE WORLD.
Best Western Historical Novel was SILENT WE STOOD, by Henry
Chappell. Best Western Traditional Novel
was CROSSING PURGATORY, by Gary Schanbacher.
Anne Hillerman’s SPIDER WOMAN’S DAUGHTER was the Best First Novel. Mark Lee Garner’s SHOT ALL TO HELL: JESSE
JAMES, THE NORTHFIELD RAID, AND THE WILD WEST’S GREATEST ESCAPE, was Best
Western Non-Fiction – Historical. Best
Western Nonfiction – Contemporary, was William Philpott’s VACATIONLAND.
Earle Labor and his family of researchers
Best Western Nonfiction - Biography was JACK LONDON:
AN AMERICAN LIFE, a book sixty years in the making, by Earle Labor. Just a personal note here: I was delighted that Labor, who brought
on-stage his family of researchers, credited his interest in the subject with a
book he read as a kid, JACK LONDON’S STORIES FOR BOYS. It was also my father’s favorite book as a
kid, and the one he gave to me when I was bored with what they were having me
to read in school.
Juni Fisher
Best Western Juvenile Fiction was PAPA’S GOLD by
Ellen Gray Massey. Best Western Juvenile
Nonfiction was Jean A. Lukesh’s EAGLE OF DELIGHT. STORYTELLER (Best Illustrated Children’s
Book) was YOSEMITE’S SONGSTER: ONE COYOTE’S STORY, by Ginger Wadsworth, illustrated
by Daniel San Souci. Best Western Short
Fiction Story went to CABIN FEVER by Brett Cogburn. Best Western Poem, by Amy Glynn, was
CHAMISE. Best Western Song was STILL
THERE, by Waddie Mitchell and Juni Fisher, and Juni was there to perform
it. Best Western Documentary was INDIAN
RELAY by M.L. Smoker. Best Western Short
Nonfiction was THE OTHER JAMES BROTHER by Mark Lee Gardner in Wild West Magazine.
Me & Clu bid a fond farewell to the WWA Convention!
WEDNESDAY
LUNCH @ THE AUTRY: COWBOYS AND COMICS: FAST ON THE DRAW!
Wednesday,
July 16, at High Noon, Rob Word’s ‘A Word On Westerns’ Cowboy Lunch will take
place, as it does on the third Wednesday of every month. The focus this time will be on western-themed
comic books. As Rob points out, “The boom years for television westerns were in the 1950's
and 1960's. It was the same with comic books. The shelves of dime and
drug stores were filled with comics featuring glossy covers of practically
every TV and movie western. And new western heroes like Ghost Rider, The
Rawhide Kid, The Trigger Twins and Tomahawk were being offered in glorious Four
Color stories. Westerns were outselling superheroes and you'll discover
some things you didn't know about the reasons why!”
Guests will include legendary MAD
MAGAZINE artist and ‘Bat Lash’ creator Sergio Aragones; ComicCon’s Mark
Evianer; actor and would-be ‘Lieutenant Blueberry’ (a French Western strip)
Martin Kove; Will Ryan on sidekicks who got their own comics; music by the
lovely Saguaro Sisters; and Olympic Gold Medalist and stuntman Dean Smith,
talking about his adventures with John Wayne.
You buy your lunch, but the entertainment is free!
DEAN SMITH SIGNS AUTOBIO ‘COWBOY
STUNTMAN’ WEDNESDAY AT THE AUTRY!
If you needed another reason to go
to the Autry on Wednesday, track & field Olympian-turned-stuntman Dean
Smith will be signing his autobiography at the Autry! Starting in 1957 on WAGON TRAIN and
continuing through ROUGH RIDERS in 1997, Dean has stunted and stunt-coordinated
in nearly a hundred movies and series, doubling for stars like Roy Rogers, James
Garner (in 1994!), Doug McClure, Dale Robertson, and worked with John Wayne on
THE ALAMO and MCCLINTOCK!
WIN TWO TICKETS TO SEE G.T. HURLEY THURSDAY NIGHT!
I’ve got two free tickets to the first person who
emails me at swansongmail@sbcglobal.net,
and asks for them! Part of the OutWest
Concert series at the Repertory Playhouse (a.k.a. The Rep) at 24266 Main
Street, Newhall, CA 91321, it is sponsored by the charming folks at OutWest
Boutique – click their link on the upper left-hand corner of the Round-up to
learn more. Hurley comes from Montana,
and he sings about his life as a rancher and hard-rock miner. He’s opened for Baxter Black and Jon
Chandler. To buy tickets (in case you’re
not the first with the email), which
are $20, call 661-255-7087.
INSP
COMING BACK TO DIREC-TV!
If you,
like me, have been missing Saddle-up Saturday, and your required weekly doses
of THE VIRGINIAN and HIGH CHAPARRAL, I have great news! While no official announcement is being made,
my sources at INSP have confirmed that folks who have continued to call DirecTV
and complain about INSP being dropped are now being told that the station will
be back on July 21st!
DICK JONES, ‘BUFFALO BILL JR.’, DIES
Dick Jones at the 2012 Silver Spurs
Last Monday, actor Dick Jones died at the age of
87. Born in Snyder, Texas, he was a fine
horseman by the age of four (no, that’s not a typo), and was quickly hired by
Hoot Gibson to perform in his rodeo as the world’s youngest trick-rider and
trick-roper. “Hoot told my mother the famous words: 'That kid
ought to be in pictures.' She said, 'Whoopee!' and away we went to Hollywood.”
After a few years playing dozens
of often uncredited bits in major features, Bs and OUR GANG shorts – he’s great
as the pesky neighbor kid in NANCY DREW…REPORTER – he became famous as the
voice of the wooden puppet who wanted to be a boy in Walt Disney’s PINOCCHIO. Appreciated by western filmmakers for his
saddle-skills, he was not only cast in the excellent ROCKY MOUNTAIN, with Errol
Flynn; he was put on the film early, to see which actors could actually perform
the various ‘mounts’ that were required.
Gene Autry was among the
filmmakers who appreciated Dick’s talent and potential, and used him in five of
his movies, most dramatically in LAST OF THE PONY RIDERS (1953), where Dick
goes gunning for Gene. Counting TV
episodes, Dick and Gene shared the screen nineteen times. And Autry produced the two series Dick is
best remembered for, THE RANGE RIDER, where he played Jock Mahoney’s sidekick,
Dick West; and BUFFALO BILL JR., where Dick was the title character. Mahoney and Jones never used stuntmen, because
no one could do the demanding stunt-work any better than the stars.
In 1965, after REQUIUM FOR A
GUNFIGHTER, he retired from the screen, and went into business. But he never lost his fondness for the genre,
sometimes attended film festivals, and over the past few years I met him
several times at Silver Spur dinners and events at The Autry. He was about the nicest man you’d want to
meet. I’m linking an episode of THE
RANGE RIDER, so you can see Dick at work.
Enjoy!
THAT’S A WRAP!
That’s all for this Round-up! Have a great week!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright July 2014 by Henry
C. Parke – All Rights Reserved
