Gene Autry

(1907-1998) With the quiet passing of Gene Autry October 2, 1998, less than a week after his 91st birthday, surely nearly everyone born in the 1920s, 1930s, and even many born in the 1940s may have felt that a small final piece of their childhood died. They remember vividly the shy, unassuming, friendly kid with the blond hair and the huge smile who saved the day in over 90 westerns with a smile and a song as often as he did with six guns and fists. They remember a champion of the common man, the little guy, the small rancher and farmer against the big banks, conglomerates, and syndicates. And they remember the sometimes merry, sometimes heartfelt music that came without pretension or artifice; he was wholly a natural, untutored, not an actor, we felt, but one of us.

Those who came later may remember him not nearly so vividly, for his place in the hearts of kids was largely taken over by Roy Rogers, and he had not had an active performing career since the late 1950s: to a whole other generation he was the dignified older gent in the cowboy hat who owned the California Angels baseball team and millions of dollars of other business interests as well. Many of this generation do not realize what a superstar he was, how every one of his five stars in Hollywood's Walkway of Stars (he is the only performer so often honored) was achieved by coming to the top of his profession in films, records, personal appearances, radio, and television.

And, awed by his megamilliondollar success as a businessman, we have in a way forgotten how profoundly he changed the face of country music in the 1930s--giving it a smooth, winsome, wholesome outdoorsy western feel--as well as starting a whole film genre of singing cowboys, giving rise to many major careers (Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Jimmy Wakely, Rex Allen) as well as many lesser but still important careers (Ray Whitley, Johnny Bond, Eddie Dean, and many many more). More than anything, he took rural music out of the dark hillsides and hobo camps and railroad yards and took it to the wide open spaces where all of America could appreciate it's heartfelt soul and grandeur. He gave it respectability in an era where, hard as it may be to believe now, it was scorned and looked down on.

He named his horse Champion well, for Autry himself was a champion, a champion of his rural roots, a champion of the little guy in all of us who overcomes overwhelming odds to succeed, a champion of a film style like no other in history, a champion of up and coming talent who helped develop many a career, and, in his later years when every possible glory and honor had come his way, a champion of the west and it's legacy, when he funded and built the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, a world class museum and research center celebrating the cowboy in fact and in legend.

We will miss him, though the gifts he has given will live for ages on film, on record, and in the museum he left for posterity.

By Ranger Doug, Riders In The Sky
Copyright 1996-98 - used here by permission