Hollywood Hoofbeats Read online

  Rogers made the most of their fame. Roy Rogers’ and Trigger’s names and likenesses appeared on sixty-five products marketed in 1949. Roy Rogers’ Trigger, a Dell comic-book series based on the palomino’s escapades, sold millions of copies.

  Trigger and Roy Rogers inspired scores of toys, such as this one.

  Trigger worked well into his twenties and was eventually retired in 1957 at the Rogers’ ranch. After he died on July 3, 1964, at the age of thirty-three, Rogers had him mounted so the public could view Trigger at the Roy Rogers–Dale Evans Museum.

  Little Trigger and Trigger Jr.

  A couple of years after he acquired Trigger, Roy Rogers purchased another blaze-faced palomino stallion, known by insiders as Little Trigger (aka the Little Horse). A Morgan, this horse was smaller than Trigger (who then became known to the Rogers and Randall families as Old Trigger) and lighter in color. He had four white stockings. Seen on his own, however, Little Trigger looked enough like Old Trigger, with his handsome body and long flowing white locks, that he could pass for the original. He was presented to the public as simply Trigger. Just as Gene Autry always had one Champion, Roy Rogers perpetuated the myth of one Trigger and never mentioned Little Trigger in an interview.

  Little Trigger was, according to both Rogers and Glenn Randall, truly the smartest horse in movies—or anywhere else for that matter. Highly intelligent, he learned quickly and retained more than a hundred cues for tricks and dances. Most astonishing of all, he was housebroken, a quality that allowed him to accompany Rogers on his many appearances in hospitals to visit sick children and into fancy hotels without worrying about an embarrassing mishap. He is the only celebrity horse of record who could accomplish this feat.

  Little Trigger was also notoriously ornery and quick to show his displeasure by biting. According to Cheryl Rogers-Burnett, he didn’t like kids or women, which is ironic considering they composed much of his fan base. He did love the spotlight, however, and he knew that as long as he was performing in front of a crowd, Rogers wouldn’t discipline him. On one occasion, Little Trigger ruined a dramatic routine during which he and Rogers played dead. The stallion tried to sneak out of the stadium as the houselights were dimmed, leaving Rogers lying alone in the middle of the arena. The actor grabbed for Little Trigger’s reins and found his saddle horn. When the houselights came on, Little Trigger was gleefully galloping around the arena with Rogers hanging off the saddle. Furious, the actor intended to reprimand Little Trigger backstage and backed him into a corner. However, when Rogers approached the horse, the wily stallion started desperately going through his tricks, finally sitting down and bowing his head in prayer. Instead of punishing Little Trigger, Rogers cracked up laughing, along with the cowboys who had witnessed the amazing display.

  Little Trigger doubled Trigger in dancing sequences in Don’t Fence Me In (1945). He also masqueraded as Trigger in the 1952 musical comedy Son of Paleface, starring Rogers, Bob Hope, and Jane Russell. He danced and performed many tricks, including untying ropes, running up a staircase, and sharing a bed with Hope, fighting over the covers. “Trigger” stole the show and won a PATSY, the American Humane Association’s version of the Academy Award, for his work.

  Rogers and Little Trigger toured the country regularly, but their most famous appearance—and most notorious publicity stunt—took place in New York City during a 1944 Madison Square Garden engagement. Rogers led the stallion into the lobby of the Hotel Astor and offered him a pencil. Holding the pencil in his teeth, Little Trigger marked “X” on the guest register. Later, he attended a cocktail party honoring him in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom.

  According to trainer Buford “Corky” Randall, son of Glenn Randall, Little Trigger lived well into his twenties and was humanely put down due to complications of old age. Rogers purchased a third palomino to understudy Little Trigger. Named Trigger Jr., he took over as Rogers’s personal appearance horse when Little Trigger was retired in the early 1950s. A flashy dark palomino with a blaze and four white stockings, Trigger Jr. was also trained by Glenn Randall. The new horse specialized in crowd-pleasing dance routines. Corky Randall showed Trigger Jr., a Tennessee Walking Horse, under his registered name of Golden Zephyr. Trigger Jr. appeared in a namesake film, Trigger Jr. (1950), alongside Trigger, who was six years his senior. Trigger Jr. was nine years old when Rogers purchased him. He died at twenty-eight and was also mounted and put on display at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum.

  Trainer Corky Randall and Trigger Jr.—as Golden Zephyr—demonstrate the elegant Spanish walk at a horse show.

  Jane Russell and Bob Hope share a meal with their costars Roy Rogers and Little Trigger on the set of 1952’s Son of Paleface.

  Little Trigger and Glenn Randall play jump rope with Roy Rogers.

  The Queen of the West and Buttermilk

  In 1944, Rogers made his first picture with a dynamic singer and dancer named Dale Evans. The Cowboy and the Senorita proved to be a hit, and Rogers and Evans went on to make twenty-eight more features and one hundred television shows together. Along the way, they fell in love. Rogers proposed to Evans as they were about to ride into Madison Square Garden for a public appearance by asking, “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” They married on December 31, 1947. The wife of the “King of the Cowboys” became known as the “Queen of the West.”

  In her early Rogers films, such as 1945’s Bells of San Angelo, Evans rides a pinto. Rogers decided the Paint was too flashy, and Glenn Randall found a gentle palomino gelding called Pal for Evans. Rogers worried, though, that the horse’s color would draw attention away from Trigger. The quest began for a horse of just the right color.

  Glenn Randall spotted an athletic little buckskin Quarter Horse named Soda on a Wyoming ranch. Soda had an extremely shaggy winter coat, but Randall could see his potential through the hair. He purchased the buckskin and hauled him back to California. When Soda shed his winter coat, his pretty conformation was revealed. Randall brought him to the location of one of Rogers and Evans’s movies and tied him next to Trigger. The two looked great together, with the buckskin’s black mane and tail contrasting nicely with Trigger’s opposite markings. Rogers approved, and Evans gave Soda a try. Quick and athletic, he was challenging to ride, but the “Queen of the West” was up to the task. She purchased Soda from Glenn Randall, who retrained him for the movies.

  Soda needed a more theatrical name. On location in Lone Pine, California, the site of hundreds of Westerns, Evans and wrangler Buddy Sherwood were admiring the sunset. Sherwood remarked that the mottled milky clouds looked like “clabber.” Evans reportedly replied, “You mean buttermilk?” Thus she was inspired to rename the buckskin Buttermilk Sky.

  Buttermilk Sky became known simply as Buttermilk, and Evans rode him in the remainder of Rogers’s films and the television series. He was not only smart and fast but also exceptionally quick off the mark. As soon as he heard “Action!” Buttermilk would spring forward, and Evans had to rein him back to let Trigger get ahead in films.

  Buttermilk had a long, successful career supporting the superstar Trigger. Buttermilk also stands mounted at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum, alongside Trigger, Trigger Jr., and Roy and Dale’s German Shepherd, Bullet. Originally in Apple Valley, California, the museum is now in Branson, Missouri.

  The Queen of the West, Dale Evans, and Buttermilk Sky display the charm that made them a perfect complement to Roy and Trigger.

  Trainer Glenn Randall in a rare portrait aboard Soda before he became Buttermilk Sky.

  The Second String

  The immense success of Gene Autry and Champion and Roy Rogers and Trigger pushed many more singers into the saddle. Some of these “singing cowboys” were good horsemen but couldn’t sing—like John Wayne, whose voice was dubbed in his brief career as Singin’ Sandy Sanders. Others were decent crooners, but their cowboy personas were strictly Hollywood fantasy.

  Popular star Eddie Dean could sing all right but he did not have a particular equine partner. Even
though his various mounts were virtual unknowns, the studio still gave them cobilling: the mere fact that they were horses helped sell Dean’s films.

  Broadway star Tex Ritter was tapped for the movies by Grand National Pictures in 1936 and quickly brushed up his horsemanship for his new career as a singing cowboy. Following the formula, Ritter was paired with White Flash, a studio invention played by different rental horses. It wasn’t until 1941 that Ritter purchased a permanent White Flash. Like his role models, the white horse with brown eyes went into training with Glenn Randall. Consequently, scenes were written for White Flash that enabled him to show off his tricks.

  Crooner Monte Hale made a number of films for Republic during the 1940s. His equine partner was, appropriately, named Pardner. Despite an appealing singing voice and an affable persona as a gentleman cowboy, Hale never hit the big time. He maintained a sense of humor, however, and well into his eighties in 2005 when he received a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame, was still passing out stickers commemorating the most ridiculous line of dialogue he ever had to utter, “Shoot low! They may be crawlin’.”

  Herb Jeffries and Stardusk

  One of the most unusual singing cowboys was jazz musician Herb Jeffries. Born in 1911 in Detroit, Jeffries inherited his light brown skin from his father’s Ethiopian ancestors. He learned to horseback ride on his grandfather’s farm and enjoyed watching Tom Mix and Buck Jones Westerns.

  Jeffries began singing professionally as a teenager and toured with some of biggest names in jazz. While traveling through the South in 1934, Jeffries noticed that blacks-only movie theaters played all-white Westerns. Unfortunately, the trend started by the Norman Company and rodeo star Bill Pickett in the 1920s had not resulted in more Westerns about African-American cowboys.

  One afternoon, in an alley behind a jazz club, Jeffries spotted some children playing cowboys and Indians. He noticed a little boy crying because his friends wouldn’t let him play. The child told Jeffries that he wanted to be Tom Mix, but his friends wouldn’t let him “because Tom Mix isn’t black.” Deeply touched, Jeffries determined that black children ought to have a cowboy hero who looked like them. He approached independent producer Judd Buell with an idea for a musical Western with a black hero. Buell agreed to finance such a film.

  The challenge was finding a black actor who could sing and ride a horse. Jeffries wound up with the lead role by default. Because his skin was light brown, he applied dark makeup so black audiences would better relate to him. With the release of Harlem on the Prairie (1936), Jeffries—billed as Herbert Jeffrey—became the first black singing cowboy hero in a feature film. Of course, the hero had a four-legged friend. Jeffries chose a white horse named Stardusk. A hit with the kids, this pair made movie history.

  Part Arabian, Stardusk had been bred on a ranch in Santa Ynez, California. When preparing for their first film together, Jeffries and Stardusk spent two weeks getting acquainted. By that time, Jeffries said, “We were pretty much in love with each other.”

  After shooting wrapped on Harlem on the Prairie, Stardusk was returned to his owners in Santa Ynez. Jeffries, who was living in a Los Angeles boarding house, would visit regularly. As soon Jeffries arrived at the ranch, Stardusk would start whinnying for him. When producer Richard C. Kahn approached Jeffries with a deal for three more movies, the star made the purchase of Stardusk a condition of his contract. Together they made Two-Gun Man from Harlem in 1938 and two films in 1939, Harlem Rides the Range and The Bronze Buckaroo. Jeffries later moved to France and gave Stardusk back to his original owners, and the former thespian equine enjoyed the rest of his life in Santa Ynez.

  Rex Allen and KoKo

  An Arizona rancher’s son named Rex Allen would be the last of the singing cowboys. Like Autry and Rogers, the handsome blond Allen was signed by Republic Pictures after a career in radio. And like his predecessors, Allen knew he needed an extraordinary horse. Glenn Randall, meanwhile, had recently acquired KoKo, a stunning dark sorrel stallion with a flaxen mane and tail, from a female trick rider in Missouri. A Quarter/Morgan cross, KoKo had originally been purchased for Dale Evans but had proved too much horse for her.

  The minute he laid eyes on KoKo, Allen fell in love with him. An accomplished rider, Allen found that the horse just needed a firm hand and some fine-tuning to get him ready for the movies. He bought KoKo from Glenn Randall in 1950 for $2,500. Randall continued to work with KoKo and Rex Allen during their short but successful career.

  Allen’s first film, The Arizona Cowboy (1950), featured KoKo in an uncredited role, but in their next film, Hills of Oklahoma (1950), KoKo received billing. Dubbed the “Miracle Horse of the Movies,” he costarred with Allen in nineteen films for Republic, including Silver City Bonanza (1951), Rodeo King and the Senorita (1951), and their swan song, The Phantom Stallion (1954).

  His unusual coloring destined KoKo to do nearly all of his own stunts. Although doubles were used for galloping long shots, they required considerable work to look anything like the stallion, even from far away. White horses were dyed a rich chocolate with vegetable coloring, with only a blaze, mane, tail, and stockings left white. Consequently, KoKo was worked hard, according to Allen, who once lamented, “I just had to run KoKo to death on nearly every film because we just couldn’t double him that close.”

  KoKo only worked in movies for five years, from 1950 through 1954, during and after which time he also went on personal appearances with Allen. KoKo was retired in 1963 after foundering (the result of getting into a grain bin and gorging himself) and lived out the rest of his life at the Diamond X Ranch, Allen’s California spread. He died in 1968 at age twenty-eight. His remains are buried at the Cochise Visitor Center and Museum of the Southeast, in Wilcox, Arizona. His grave is marked with a plaque that reads: “KoKo, Rex Allen’s stallion costar in 30 motion pictures. Traveled over half million miles with Rex in U.S. and Canada. Billed as ‘The Most Beautiful Horse in the World.’ At rest here, ‘Belly High’ in the green grass of Horse Heaven.”

  Rex Allen, the last of the singing cowboys, and Koko, showing off that famous Glen Randall trained rear.

  White Flash shows off his Glen Randall-trained rear, with crooner Tex Ritter aboard.

  Spotlight on Sidekicks

  It gets lonely on the celluloid range, and a cowboy has only so many songs for his horse. He needs a human companion to help move the plot along, too, and in Westerns the bill was often filled by a sidekick. Offering comic relief, a helping hand, and a ready ear, the sidekick became a horse-opera staple. Two standout sidekicks, Smiley Burnette and Slim Pickens, rode alongside three of the most famous singing cowboys, on their colorful mounts Ring-Eyed Nellie and Dear John.

  Smiley Burnette and Ring-Eyed Nellie

  Lester “Smiley” Burnette had the distinction of working as a comic sidekick of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. A musical prodigy, the twenty-two-year-old Burnette started his career with Autry as an accordion player on Gene Autry’s WLS radio show in 1933. Smiley accompanied Autry to Hollywood and appeared in his first feature film, In Old Santa Fe. Honing his screen persona as “Frog Millhouse,” the gangly, pudgy, sweet-faced Smiley used his deep bass voice to add comic punctuation to musical numbers. He appeared in fifty-four prewar Westerns with Autry, wearing a checkered shirt and trademark black Stetson with a pinned up brim. He rode a white horse with a black ring drawn around his (or her) left eye—so Burnette would remember to mount from the left. First known as Black-Eyed Nellie, the horse later became know as Ring-Eyed Nellie and finally just Ring Eye. The horses were studio rentals, but according to Smiley’s son, Stephen Burnette, his dad did have a favorite, one who would allow Smiley to lounge on his back reading the newspaper between takes.

  When Gene Autry went into the service, Republic Pictures recruited Smiley and Ring Eye for several Roy Rogers films, beginning with Hearts of the Golden West (1942). When Autry returned to Hollywood, Burnette and Ring Eye resumed their partnership with him in 1951’s Whirlwind for Columbia Pictur
es. They worked in six more Columbia films during the 1950s. The name of Frog Millhouse belonged to Republic, however, so Burnette became Smiley once more. Ring Eye didn’t have to change his (or her) name.

  Smiley Burnette had his own sidekick, played by Joseph Strauch Jr., who appeared with Burnette in five Autry films, beginning with Under Fiesta Stars (1941). Dressed in the same clownish outfit as Burnette, Strauch got laughs portraying Frog Millhouse’s younger brother, Tadpole. He was mounted on a Little Ring Eye, a white pony with a black circle painted around his eye.

  Autry and the original Champion with their sidekicks, Smiley Burnette and Ring Eye and their sidekicks, Joseph Strauch Jr. and Little Ring Eye, as they appeared in Under Fiesta Stars.

  Slim Pickens and Dear John

  Rex Allen’s sidekick was Slim Pickens, a former rodeo clown known for his goofy charm and rubber-faced reactions. Born in Kingsburg, California, in 1919, Louis Bert Lindley Jr. acquired his nickname as a fifteen-year-old rodeo contestant. He was told his chances for winning were going to be “slim pickin’s.” As Slim Pickens, however, Lindley went on to reap many riches, along with a blue roan Appaloosa named Dear John.

  Slim first spotted Dear John in 1954, in a Montana pasture. Although the young gelding had bucked off everyone who had tried to ride him, Slim saw something special in the Appaloosa. He purchased Dear John for $150 and took him to California to work in Rex Allen movies. Their first picture went smoothly, but on the second one, Dear John tested his new master, coming unglued. “After that,” Slim said in a 1973 interview, “it took more’n six months of us punishin’ each other before we came to an understandin’. After that there wasn’t anything that horse wouldn’t do that was in reason.”

  Slim worked with Glenn Randall to teach Dear John a variety of tricks, including bucking on cue. Look closely at most bucking horses in a movie or at a rodeo, and you can see a “bucking strap” circling their bellies well behind the saddle. This piece of leather is so annoying to a horse that it drives him into a mad fit of bucking. Dear John was unusual in that he did not need a strap and was trained to buck with a combined rein and leg cue. Using this shtick to great comic effect, Slim would go galloping and bucking after Rex Allen and KoKo, bellowing, “Whoa John!”