Why Gene Autry Can’t Quit

One day back in 1929 a young fellow from the Oklahoma cow country swung off a B. & O. coach on the Jersey side of the Hudson River and stood there gawking at the Manhattan skyline.

The yellow clay of the prairies still smudged his butterfly boots and an aroma of sagebrush wafted from his new suit of store clothes. He lugged a battered case that housed a five dollar, second-hand guitar.

A fellow passenger watched him stare at the silhouette of the Great City, and grinned. “Well, Bud,” he asked, “what do you think of that?”

“My goodness!” drawled Gene Autry. “Once I get inside that place—how’ll I ever get out?”

“Well,” comforted the stranger, “a lot of people in there don’t want to.”

At that point, Gene had just ditched his railroad telegrapher’s job, on Will Rogers’ advice, to seek his fortune as a singing cowboy. By now Gene’s five dollar guitar has been parlayed into a multimillion dollar career, and he’s the busiest man, by far, in all of Hollywood. But sometimes the fabulous empire which he has built with his own brains, talent and luck seems as inescapable a labyrinth to Gene’s friends as New York’s canyons once looked to him.

The thrill that comes once in a lifetime: Young Roger Ladage met Gene at the Illinois State Fair. He lost his family, but with Gene’s help everything turned out all right.

‘Every now and then they ask him, “Gene, when you going to slow down and take it easy?” Or as his pal, Chill Wills, put it the other day, “Doggone, Gene, why don’t you stop supporting all them Demmycrats back in Washington?”

At such times Gene grins the wide, white smile that has become famous wherever movies are shown, and astonishment shows in his mild blue eyes. “You mean quit?” he asks. “Why, honest, I wouldn’t know how.” And he’s speaking the gospel truth. Even when he thinks he’s taking it easy, Gene’s about as passive as a Texas tornado.

One afternoon a few weeks ago, Gene climbed into his Beechcraft plane and roared off from Pioneertown, in the blazing California desert. He’d just finished the last of 52 TV shows, and was off for a well-earned week-end vacation.

Big smile for the grandstand: Gene spends weeks on tour. Here the fair officials in Springfield escort him to the stage where he appeared 20 years ago as a band singer.

By nine o’clock Gene was in Colorado Springs, by 9:30 he was em-ceeing a rodeo, at 10:30 he took in a reception at the Broadmoor Hotel, and at 2:30 in the morning he took off in his plane for Springfield, Illinois, arriving at six o’clock in the dawn. Ten o’clock that morning he led a parade opening the Illinois State Fair, and at noon visited a hospital. At one o’clock he rehearsed a show for the Fair and at eight that night staged it. The next morning he rehearsed his “Melody Ranch” radio program and put it on, smooth as silk as usual, at seven that night. Then Gene flew back home to Hollywood.

When he got there his wife, Ina, who ought to know better by now, posed him the familiar query. “Gene,” she said, “when are you going to relax?”

“Why right now, honey,” came back her hustling husband. “Haven’t got a thing in the world to do all week. Is that the telephone?”

A couple of Champions: Gene has played over 300 towns on tour and never missed a performance. Once he had to ride a freiaht car with the horses to keep a scheduled date.

Multiply that hectic hitch of time by around 52 and you have a fair picture of a year in Gene Autry’s life. Gene makes six feature westerns a year, two TV shows a week, 52 radio performances, and cuts 32 sides of Columbia records. Last year he toured 67 towns in these United States and played before 600,000 people in 71 days. His annual Madison Square Rodeo show ran five weeks in New York and two in Boston. In between, Autry hopped around the country by air looking over oil wells and ranch property, and other business interests. All in all, he traveled 100,000 miles. And that’s his year-in-year-out program.

Why does he do it? What makes Autry run and keep running? You have to know how Gene’s made to answer that, and something about the streaks of gratitude, loyalty, and humanity that run through his six-foot frame.

Three out of 150: The Gene Autry enterprises have a payroll of over 150 employees, most of them long-termers. Here Rufe Davis and Ed Waller talk thin as over with the boss.

Gene Autry isn’t chasing more money, more honors or more fame. He has enough of all three to last a couple of lifetimes. Gene has no idea how much he’s worth, but it’s probably around $4,000,000. Each year he collects close to $1,500,000, of which 90 per cent goes to Uncle Sam. He’s always had a golden touch that makes King Midas look like a piker. Gene bought a sandy 5-acres in Burbank once for his horses, paid $10,000 for it, and all his pals agreed sadly he’d been stung. He sold it for $25,000 when the city condemned it for a park. When Gene began looking into oil wells with Dick Powell and John Wayne not long ago, he joined up with Douglas Johnson, a Texas wildcatting wizard who had hit 57 times out of 61 tries. Some of those hits were Gene’s.

He’s a natural business man (Gene has no business manager) and so far he hasn’t missed. Gene has real estate in the San Fernando Valley leased by chain drug stores. He has three big paid-up insurance policies. He has an interest in 130,000 acres of ranch land, scattered ground in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona. He has his Melody Ranch and his Laurel Canyon hacienda, two radio stations, in Phoenix and Tuscon, and even a western haberdashery at Phoenix called “Gene Autry’s Branding Iron.” In short—as a cowpoke pal of his says, “They won’t be playing no benefits for Gene.”

The best medicine yet: Gene never fails to visit the children’s wards. In Springfield he also inspected some hospital equipment bought with funds from a benefit he did in the winter.

As for fame—Gene’s the first cowboy star ever to land in Hollywood’s Big Box-Office Ten (he was 8th, 6th and 4th). He captains the oldest, biggest and most active Hollywood star fan club (over 50,000 members); he’s a colonel on the staff of a dozen states and a while back, 50,000 school teachers in Oklahoma signed a petition for him to run for U. S. Senator. He’s had firm friends among the great—all the way from President Roosevelt to Dizzy Dean. As one Hollywood critic recently put it, “Gene Autry is a national institution.” That’s getting closer to the real reason why Gene will be carrying on for a long, long time to come. There are too many people who’d miss him—and miss him badly—if he ever quit.

Probably the biggest disappointment of Gene’s life is that he has no kids running around his house. But if he felt like it he could say, “I’ve raised a million of ’em,” and he wouldn’t be stretching the truth very far.

There are boys everywhere named after Gene, some of them with deep voices now and sprouting whiskers, who shake Gene’s hand and tell him what he’s meant to their boyhoods. There are sick and crippled kids, too, in all corners of the land who’ve had their shut-in lives brightened by Gene. In every town he plays he makes it a point to visit the local children’s hospital, and what he sees in the delighted eyes of the kids there is his reward.

Backstage bedroom: Gene’s often up from 6 AM to 3 AM. He keeps going by snatching cat naps backstage between shows. He’s been promising himself a rest for 15 years.

Last year in Lincoln, Nebraska, Gene hosted the entire population of Father Flanagan’s Boystown—600 kids—at his show, the first time they’d ever left the place as a group. This year Gene decided to turn his Melody Ranch into a resort for underprivileged boys. When Gene came back from the war the biggest worry on his mind was kids. “Why just think,” he puckered, “there are kids four years old by now who’ve never heard of Gene Autry!” That’s why he sank over a million dollars in his rodeo tours—to meet this new generation of kids in person. Doing that, Gene Autry has collected some memories he wouldn’t sell for all the boxoffice gold he’s. collected so far.

There was the little girl in Youngstown, Ohio, for instance. Sally Sue was her name and she loved horses, especially Prince, her own. But she couldn’t ride him any longer. She had leukemia. All she talked about was Gene Autry and—oh—if she could only see him! All she lived for was the moment when Gene came to town.

They told Gene about Sally the minute he arrived. He had two performances to play, one right after the other and not a minute to spare, but he went right out to her house. Outside the window Prince whinnied as they talked. “Isn’t he a nice horse?” begged the little girl. “Why, honey,” said Gene, “he’s the finest horse I ever saw. He’s better than Champ!”

“I’ll ride him again—won’t I, Gene?”

“Sure you will,” Gene lied.

He stayed there an hour while the show crowd waited. Then when she slept he tiptoed out. It was Sally Sue’s last big thrill. She died soon after.

And there was the little girl in Belle-flower, California, close to Hollywood, whom the doctors said didn’t have a chance to live. Something malignant, they said, was wasting her away. When Gene went to her house he found her bedroom literally papered with his pictures—over 500 covered the wall. Gene didn’t do much—there isn’t much even a movie star can do. He sang some songs, left her an album of records, told her stories, told her to get well.

And miraculously, she did get well. Today she’s 15, healthy and pretty, and she never misses coming to Gene’s broadcasts when he’s in town.

Gene realizes his role as a kid’s hero and he won’t be walking out on the children who worship him—even the ones who sometimes take him for a ride, like the girl who swiped his boots one night in a Pullman when he left them for the porter to shine. They’re all a big family of his, they’ve written him as many as 108,000 letters in one month. And they’re a family he’d hate mighty bad to desert.

And there’s another family Gene Autry has, a family of grown-ups with families and kids of their own. They’re the people who long ago hitched their wagons to Gene’s star. Gene repays loyalty with loyalty; that’s his style. Today over 150 of Gene’s professional pals get weekly checks signed, “Gene Autry.” Thousands more indirectly have their fortunes linked with Gene’s. One whole town in Ohio, for instance, works at making Gene Autry cap pistols. At Christmas, Gene has to give two parties for 80-odd guests each, to crowd all his closely knit gang into his house. No other Hollywood star has half as many close show business associates, or ones of such long standing.

Armand “Mandy” Schaefer, for instance, who produces Gene’s pictures, has been doing that for 16 years. Frankie Marvin, one of his guitar players, has plunked accompaniment to Gene’s songs for 17. Carl Cotner, his musical director, has 15 service stripes. Johnny Bond, another guitarist, 11; Johnny Agee, his horse trainer, 13—and that’s how it goes.

Sometimes Gene kids them, “How can I ever quit? I’d have to get all you guys jobs!” As for the guys—they wouldn’t work for anybody else. By now they’re Gene Autry men—they’d fight you if you knocked their boss—and in the competitive world of Hollywood that’s something rare and refreshing.

Of course, one of the biggest and best reasons why Gene hasn’t really a remote thought about hanging up his well worn spurs, or even letting them cool off, is that he loves what he’s doing and thrives on it, too. “If they put me out to pasture,” he says, “they might as well sell me for glue. I’d fall apart pronto.”

In spite of his man-killing schedule, Gene, who is in his early 40’s, keeps the tensile, indestructible physique of a young buckaroo. Each year he trots dutifully to his doctor for a complete physical checkup. After the examination the doc growls disgustedly, “Now beat it, Gene, and don’t bother me. They’ll have to shoot you to get rid of you, I guess. You’ve got the arteries of a young government-inspected bull.”

Ina, Gene’s wife, is a devout and practicing Christian Scientist. Gene’s not, officially, but he’s caught a lot of the sunny, affirmative outlook on life from his marriage partner in the 19 years they ve been together. Maybe that’s why Gene has small patience with anyone who bogs down with the petty miseries of mortal men. When you’re around Autry, you’d better keep on your feet, like he is, or chances are he’ll yank you upright fast.

Last year, for instance, one of Gene’s gang, traveling with him through the South, got bogged down behind him with a bad cold in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Knowing Gene, he just rose above his aching bones and ploughed his car through the rain to catch up. But halfway over to Dallas, Texas, it skidded and he gashed his arm. That really landed him in a local bed and he called Autry, told him his woes. “Drive with the other arm,” said Gene, “but get here.’ He did.

Gene’s not a flintheart—on the contrary—but he feels so aces all the time himself, that he can’t imagine anyone else having a pain. And Gene admits he bears a charmed life.

Only the other day, making his latest picture, Valley of Fire, Gene was out in Newhall on the long straight stretch of track where many a Hollywood thriller has been filmed. The script called for Autry to race Champ alongside a highballing freight and swing aboard. There was nothing new about that stunt for Gene. Only he’s a pretty valuable hunk of man to risk on a dangerous scene which stunt men have handled for Western stars since the days of Tom Mix. Sandy Sanders, Gene’s stunt expert, stepped up to mount Champ but Gene waved him back. “Take it easy,” he said. “I could do this with one hand tied behind me.”

It might as well have been tied, because Gene missed the grips and tumbled down in the cinders by the grinding wheels. That’s a very nice way to make hamburger out of yourself, but, of course, Autry rolled clear. Then—cussing just a little bit—he got up and did it right. Professional daredevils have been killed for doing less—and in Hollywood, too.

Gene has been flying his own plane ever since he earned his wings at Luke Field back in 1942 during the war, and seasoned them flying bombers across the dangerous “Hump” above Burma in the Air Transport Command. By now he has 3500 officially logged hours in the air and hundreds more not down in the book. After the war he bought a surplus P-38 fighter—a plenty hot plane to handle. But in that and his favorite Beecheraft, which he flies today, he’s never had a real crackup. The closest shave came only a few weeks ago. Hopping back to Hollywood from the East, Gene sat down in Las Vegas, Nevada, to refuel. Taking off at 95 miles per hour, his landing gear pulled up too soon, the ‘crate skidded 200 yards and ended up on its nose.

How Autry has stayed all in one piece mystifies even his. closest pals, plenty of whom will fly with Gene anywhere but decline politely to sit beside Autry when he’s at the wheel of any one of his four Cadillacs. In fact, the only person who rests easy with Gene in the driver’s seat is his trusting wife, Ina. She used to push the floor boards nervously, too, but now Ina laughs, “I can ride with Gene and at the same time put up my hair.” It’s not that he’s reckless, but just that he herds his buggy like a cow pony cutting out steers, with a sure touch but a hairline fender margin. “When I go somewhere,” explains Gene simply, “I like to get there.”

This driving, cannonball urge of Gene’s is directed just one way—straight ahead. That’s why he could never stop and rest on his laurels. They’d just make him itch. “What Gene’s done doesn’t mean beans to him,” drawls Frankie Marvin, the guitar player who’s been with him 17 years. “It’s what he’s doing and gonna do that counts.”

The past is always a dead duck the way Gene’s mind ticks, and I can’t think of a better way to prove that than what happened when Gene’s house burned back in 1941. Gene was East with Ina at the time, and his old friend, Bev Barnett, was slated to fly to meet him that morning with some important contracts.

Between the time Bev left home to drive past Gene’s empty house, it caught fire, burned in 20 minutes with everything in it—including the contracts. Bev took a look at the ashes, and rushed to a phone.

“Say,” he was greeted, “why aren’t you on that plane?”

Bev let him have it. “Gene,” he said, “I hate to tell you this—but your house just burned. Nobody hurt, but everything in it’s gone.”

“Well, come on,” he got back.

“I guess you didn’t hear me, Gene,” repeated Bev, saying it slower. “I said your house just burned down to the ground!”

This time there was an impatient snort. “Well, you said it burned. So it’s burned. Get going now. We’ve got business here.” That’s a typical Gene Autry reaction to any news, good or bad: He doesn’t want to know what’s happened, but what’s coming up, and he’s right on the ball with that.

In fact, the way things look now, Gene won’t ever have that vacation he’s been talking about for the past 15 years.

Like most stars, Gene pretends to play golf. He belongs to Lakeside, polishes a fancy set of clubs at home. He gets time to play maybe once a year. This year somebody promoted a charity contest between Gene and Roy Rogers. Gene got a terrific bang out of the fact that he won. But the scores were nothing to give Ben Hogan a scare. Gene shot 102 and Roy 105. A quick game of bridge or canasta is really Autry’s only frivolity.

Right now, instead of pulling in his horns, Gene’s expanding. He has just bought a half block on Sunset Boulevard where a big super market sat. He’s remodeling it into 24 offices, and putting up a sound stage on the parking lot. He’ll bring his TV operations there, his music publishing firm (yep, he still writes hit songs, too), his own offices, and several other Autry enterprises. And he’ll be busier than ever, if that’s possible, which is to say he’ll be happier than ever, if possible.

“Guess I’ll be around as long as the folks’ll have me,” he grins.

“You’ll be around, you mean,” his pal, Chill Wills, snorts, “until they sharpen yore heels and stake you down!”

That time looks like a far spell away. Hollywood hasn’t softened Gene Autry up. Last fall Gene dropped in a Broadway café after his Garden rodeo show. Some toughs started boobing his Stetson and high heels and slamming “Hollywood cowboys” in general. Gene rose above that; he’s learned to take it. But as he turned to leave, one of them shoved him. Gene whirled, measured the guy, and let him have one. Just one—but that did it. Then he walked out.

So it looks as if Chill Wills had something there. After 16 years as top hand in Hollywood’s cowboy corral, there are absolutely no signs yet of Gene Autry’s greasing his guns or slinging his saddle up on the rack. As for the fast-bucking, hell-for-leather pace he sets for himself—Gene has a ready answer for that:

“If it was easy,” he grins, “everybody’d e doin’ it!”

THE END

—BY JACK WADE

 

It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1952