Public Cowboy No. 1

To the millions of children who grew up with him in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, Hollywood legend Gene Autry was a beloved figure who inspired dreams of cowboy glory and gave sweetness to his swagger with gentle singing in hits like "Back in the Saddle Again" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Worshipped by the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, and Ringo Starr, Autry made an indelible print in the minds of little aspiring cowboys and cowgirls and to this entire generation will always remain a cherished figure.

A monumental figure in the history of Hollywood, Autry was the only entertainer ever to earn five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame-for film, recordings, television, radio, and live performance. He broke through the industry boundaries of his day, becoming the first movie star to transition to playing lead in a television series and the first ever to start his own TV production company. He spent his last decades as owner of the California Angels baseball team, and by 1994 the successful entertainer-turned-business man had made the Forbes 400 eight times.

2007 marked the 100th anniversary of Gene Autry's birth, to be celebrated with the Autry National Center's exhibition in Los Angeles in June to a Hollywood Bowl tribute concert in July. I'm pleased to present you with an advanced copy of PUBLIC COWBOY No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, the first serious biography of Autry and a fascinating narrative that traces his meteoric climb from small-town farm boy to multimillionaire star of more than 90 films and 600 records. The finished book will feature over 130 B&W and color photos.*

As told by award-winning writer and western enthusiast Holly George-Warren, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Entertainment Weekly, the book explores:

* Autry's impoverished childhood-including the role of his loving but doomed mother, who died on the brink of her son's success and his relationship with his ne'er-do-well father, who married five times and wandered the west.

* How Autry created the singing cowboy persona, which, with his movies' vast popularity, reinvigorated the Western in Hollywood.

* Vivid behind-the-scenes accounts of classic recording sessions and Autry's role in transforming country music from a regional to a national sensation.

* Autry's struggles to stay at the top and the toll his success took on his personal life.

* How Autry's shrewd investments in broadcasting would allow him to fulfill a boyhood baseball dream (owning the California Angels, an American League Team), share his good fortune with schools and hospitals, and found the Los Angeles museum which has since become The Autry National Center, where his love of the American West would be preserved for generations

Featuring accounts from over 100 relatives, employees, colleagues, and friends of Gene Autry, PUBLIC COWBOY No. 1 shares the ups and downs of one man's Hollywood American dream and brings to light unknown facts about the legend who put Western music and style on the American cultural map!

********

Reviews for "Public Cowboy No. 1" are now being published.

Here is what the New Yorks Times has sid about this in-depth book...

A Cowboy Tycoon, Back in the Saddle
By JEANINE BASINGER
Published: April 6, 2007
The first man I fell in love with was Gene Autry.  I was only 4, but I wasn’t alone in my ardor. Autry, the singing cowboy, was a true showbiz phenomenon, the only American performer to have five different stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one each for films, recordings, television, radio and live performance.  In 1941 alone, he did eight recording sessions, seven movies and a weekly radio show.

PUBLIC COWBOY NO. 1
The Life and Times of Gene Autry
By Holly George-Warren
Illustrated. 406 pages. Oxford University Press.

In 1940 he was No. 4 on the motion picture exhibitors’ Top 10 box office draws, following Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable — and was No. 1 among western stars, for the fourth year in a row.  When he died in 1998 at 91, Autry was worth $320 million, and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage (now the Autry National Center), in Los Angeles, stands as a testament to his cultural significance. Under the circumstances, it’s surprising that Holly George-Warren’s “Public Cowboy No. 1” is the first full-length Autry biography.

Ms. George- Warren was given access to Autry’s archives, and she presents a complete portrait of the poor boy named Orvon Grover Autry who worked hard to rise to the top of a profession that was alien to his origins.  She doesn’t psychoanalyze Autry, interpret him or tell alleged “secrets” that she alone miraculously knows.  Her Autry is externalized, but her research is deep and impeccable.  Every celebrity could use a biographer like Ms. George-Warren.

In describing his rise to stardom, Ms. George-Warren provides an excellent explanation of how Autry’s 1930s radio career evolved.  (He became a star because of radio.)  She describes his hit songs and traces his gradual fashion change, from work clothes and cheap suits to an upscale buckaroo look.  (Ms. George-Warren has credentials for both Western song and clothing history, having previously written “Farm Aid: A Song for America” and “How the West Was Worn: A History of Western Wear. ”)

She describes Autry as a shrewd businessman who knew how to brand more than cattle.  He sold products bearing his signature (guitars, Western duds, paper dolls and coloring books), shrewdly selected the songs he recorded (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is still with us), created traveling rodeo shows and was a promoter worthy of P. T. Barnum.  

When he had only three days to get his famous horse, Champion, to Madison Square Garden for a sold-out rodeo, Autry turned the problem into a publicity bonanza.  Champion was toasted as “the first horse to make a transcontinental flight cross-country” — on a specially outfitted T.W.A. plane.  (Champion may not have appreciated the honor.  He reared and threw Autry during the “Grand Entry” parade, prompting one sports columnist to report, “You just can’t get entertainment like that anymore.”)

Autry put his signature on 20th-century entertainment.  He mastered synergy before anyone had coined the term.  He used his movies to sell his radio show, his radio show to sell his recordings, his records to sell his sheet music and the covers of his sheet music to sell his movies. When television arrived, he was the first real star to accept it. “Let’s look it square in the face,” he said. “The sooner we all start figuring out how to benefit from it ... the better off we’ll be.”
Autry became the owner of hotels, television and radio stations, record labels, valuable real estate and the Los Angeles area’s American League baseball franchise, then known as the California Angels.

Today he is best known for his western movies, which, Ms. George-Warren takes care to explain, were always musicals.  Autry, called “Bing Crosby on horseback,” was the biggest of the singing cowboy stars.  His voice contained the lonely moo associated with the “alone on the trail” song, but he could also knock out an up-tempo beat or put over a romantic ballad.

He entered films as an amateur with no acting experience but found the perfect movie role: himself.  He was not the legendary hero of the mythic past who rode into town on Old Paint.  He was the guy who drove up in a tour bus clearly marked, “Gene Autry, Radio’s Singing Cowboy.” 
His westerns were set in modern times, and although he ropes, rides and delivers plenty of action, his enemies are Nazi spies, gangsters, evil film producers and crooked oil companies.  In “Public Cowboy No. 1,” the film that gives Ms. George-Warren’s book its title (and one of seven films that Autry released in 1937 alone), Autry fights cattle rustlers who track herds by short-wave radio and airplane surveillance, killing the beef on the spot and carting it off in refrigerated trucks, dropping tear-gas bombs on their pursuers.  “The Phantom Empire” (1935) mixes cowboys and robots in a sci-fi underground empire powered by radium and ruled by Queen Tika, who uses a television set to spy on “surface people. ”

Unabashedly a fan, Ms. George-Warren respects Autry but does not try to hide his demons.  She discusses his considerable ability to knock ’em back, his womanizing and his quarrels with the president of Republic Pictures, Herbert J. Yates.  Autry never forgot how, when he voluntarily enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, Mr. Yates spent lavishly during his absence to promote Leonard Slye from Cincinnati as a rival replacement.  (Slye, renamed Roy Rogers, worked out fine.)

Autry, however, never really lost his fans and always believed in his ability to remain popular: “If you stay out there long enough, it’ll come back in style.”  As Ms. George-Warren makes clear, Autry’s style was original and still hasn’t gone away.  His clothes, his guitars and his easy-does-it manners became the country music prototype.  Johnny Cash called him a major influence, Ringo Starr wanted to be a cowboy like him, and Willie Nelson named a son for him.  “Public Cowboy No. 1” tells the story of the man who inspired their admiration with a quality worthy of the subject. 

New York Times Book Review Link

**********

Bobby Copeland is a well-known and repecyed writer among B-Western fans.  He has had the opportunity to see the new biography ofGene Autry and has been gracious enough to make the following comments:

The book is something I thought would never happen; it reveals Gene - the good and the bad. And, surprisingly, the author was selected by the Autry people.

Holly-George Warren is a superb writer, and she tells truths that some may not want to know. And, she bursts myths that have surrounded Gene since he started in show business. Warren also delves into Gene's early home life - much of which had never been known.

This is not a gossip or tell all book; it is a complete biography of one of the screen's greatest western stars.

The book is an ABSOLUTE must read for western film historians, and for any Gene fan who is grown up enough to accept the truth about the popular cowboy.

I can not recommend the book too highly. After reading it, you will truly know Gene Autry.