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Preface
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
PREFACE I saw my first Roy Rogers Western in 1939, sitting in the first row of the Princess Theater in Luling, Texas. I liked the slim young cowboy who rode like the wind on a beautiful palomino and who dispatched the bad guys with authority and style. On the other hand, at that time, my favorite cowboy among the Saturday matinee heroes was Gene Autry. My loyalty to Gene lasted until he went off to war in 1942 and Republic Pictures boosted Roy Rogers into the studio's top Western spot and labeled him King of the Cowboys. Roy and his producers had already gathered a remarkable ensemble cast that included George Gabby Hayes, the Sons of the Pioneers, and, of course, Trigger. Roy's unassuming but compelling style, Gabby's rustic humor, and the Pioneers' engaging Western tunes appealed to me, so when Gene put on his uniform and Hew off into the "wild blue yonder," I easily made the switch. Within a year, Dale Evans joined Rogers and his buddies and added a dimension to the films that made them special among the genre. The chemistry between Rogers and Evans, while not obvious to us front-row kids, added romance and dash to the series, especially as screenwriters scripted Dale Evans's character with more verve than the traditional B Western heroine. My attachment to Roy, Dale, and their friends continued throughout the 1940s but was limited to their movie star roles. I knew little about Roy and Dale as recording artists, radio stars, or comic book characters. I just knew that I liked them on the silver screen, and I liked the way they enhanced my fantasy world. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as I moved into the teen years, my interest in B Westerns waned, and girls, football, track, and automobiles became more inviting. Although I still loved Westerns, the adult versions struck my fancy more than the lowbudget variety. Not having access to television in my college years, I was unaware that Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were gaining a whole new generation of fans. Indeed, I lost track of my childhood heroes as 1 concentrated on college, marriage, graduate study, and professional work as a college history teacher. It was not until the mid-1970s, when I was teaching a course on recent American social history, that my interest in B Westerns returned. One of my students in the class, Ron Stith, a local social studies teacher, collected 16 mm prints of old B Westerns. When Ron screened one of his films for me, I was jolted backward more than thirty years to my childhood. There, on the screen, were XIII Copyrighted Material XIV faces as familiar as anyone in my family. I had no idea how deeply imbedded these childhood heroes were in my mind. As I viewed more of Ron's B Western prints and reminisced with him, we realized that our students in the 1970s had little knowledge of the B Western and the impact that it had had upon the generation of the 1930s and 1940s. The upshot of our conversations was the development of a college course on the history and cultural significance of the B Western. In 1977, the course began. It ran in the Ball State University history department for eighteen years. Indeed, teaching the course altered the direction of my scholarly interest as I came to understand and appreciate the importance of these low-budget films as cultural and historical artifactsdocuments that could be studied to better understand twentieth-century American society and culture. I explored numerous aspects of the films (themes, stars, heroines, bit actors, studios, horses, budgets, production values, etc.) and presented papers on them at professional conferences. The scholarly endeavors led to this book. When I first started the research on the project, I anticipated completing the task within two years. Although my knowledge and understanding of Rogers and Evans's careers had increased from what it had been in the 1940s and '50s, I had no idea of the magnitude of the undertaking. What I thought would be a two-year project now comes to fruition after a dozen years. Over that twelve-year period, I have altered the scope and range of the book more than once. Originally, I wanted it to cover every aspect of their long and varied careers. However, my compulsiveness to be all-inclusive made the project overwhelming, and I concluded that I needed to...