I know it is a sin, and I hope my dad does not read this, but I am no fan of John Wayne. In fact, he does not even make my top ten cowboys list. It’s not that he was a bad cowboy, it’s just that in my book of the rooting tooting he just wasn’t a great cowboy.
When I was a lad there were a bonanza of cowboy shows on television ranging from High Chaparrals to Big Valleys, from Riflemen to Virginians. There was a literal Wagon Train full of westerns. These days we would battle to fill a quarter of a stagecoach.
So partners, put on your leg irons, have gun will travel, let’s list a few of the memorable:
Roy Rogers
Gunsmoke with Marshal Dillon
Kit Carson
Cisco Kid
Broken Arrow
The Lone Ranger
Texas John Slaughter
Maverick
Audie Murphy
Just to name a few. And there were the horses for courses:
Champion
Fury
Silver
My Friend Flicka
Some of the cowdies had guns (rifles, colt 45s and there was even a television character called the man without a gun); some, like Jim Bowie, had knives; plus there was a tomahawk or two and a mask or three.
Some had sidekicks that fumbled, festered or freed the hero from peril, saddle buddies like Pancho, Mingo (I loved Mingo, he sounded like Mango), Chester, Doc, Festus, Miss Kitty or any number of Walter Brennan look a likes.
Later on we had semi westerns like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Here Come the Brides, Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain), the quirky Alias Smith and Jones and a man called Horse and another called Shenandoah.
On that point, I often think that the Wild West must have been as tough for a cowboy
named Shenandoah as school would have been for a boy named Sue.
Whatever, I would like to pay tribute here to some who have not cracked a cowboy mention yet.
Firstly, the Public Cowboy Number 1, Gene Autry. Gene died in 1998 with $300 million in his bank account, which is $299,999,999 more than most cowboys. He started as Oklahoma’s yodelling cowboy on radio, became the singing cowboy on the silver screen, and even had his own television show complete with cap guns and Cowboy Commandments, including:
The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
- He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
- He must always tell the truth.
- He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
- He must always be a patriot.
I am not sure that the Magnificent Seven or The Wild Bunch followed all of Gene Autry’s Cowboy Commandments to the T, but I think Roy Rogers and John Wayne might have.Gene was the original white hat, so you knew he stood for all that was good. His world was a black and white one and what couldn’t be solved with a gunfight could be overcome with a fistfight or a song. In his fights, his white hat stayed ever in place. In his songs, his champion of a horse would seemingly sing harmonies. Despite his cowboy songs, his Christmas 1949 version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was his biggest singing hit. Later on, he owned radio stations, television stations and even a baseball team. Some people might argue that Gene Autry was more rhinestone than cowboy, but in life he was the real thing. Pure magic.
Another favourite was Annie Oakley and her almost twin Calamity Jane. Annie Oakley was a real character and presented entertainment in the original bullet points. Chief Sitting Bull dubbed her “Little Sure Shot” partly because she shot cigarettes from her husband’s mouth when performing in Wild Bill Hickok’s Wild West Show. Irving Berlin wrote a musical based on her, and she has been played on stage and screen by stars like Ethel Merman, Betty Hutton and Doris Day. Added to this, she was quick on the trigger with targets not much bigger than a pinpoint. She was number one.
Like Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane never got any schooling and ended up as part of Wild Bill Hickok’s Wild West Show, too. Doris Day also played her in a movie, and Calamity makes it on the small screen as a central character in the dark, deadly and dynamic Deadwood. Both Oakley and Calamity proved that anything men could do they could do better.
And this brings me to my favourite western of all times. Bigger than any Sam Peckinpah film, taller than Alan Ladd in Shane, more powerful than the baked beans of Blazing Saddles, more manly than anything from Rawhide to Brokeback Mountain and more moving than Randolph Scott or anything the Alamo could toss up, the greatest of them all has got to be F – Troop.
Captain Wilton Parmenter, Sergeant O’Rourke, Corporal Agarn and the lovely Wrangler Jane. Toss them together with the best Indians since Mango Mingo – I think we’re lost “Where the heck are we?” — and you have pure schoolboy cowboy heaven.
I mean, how often can you laugh at a canon ball blowing up a look out tower – hundreds of times!
So, happy trails to you my partners, as I ride off into the sunset – or at high noon – to places where Indian fights are colourful sights and nobody takes a lickin’. From Ben, Adam, Hoss, Hoss’s long suffering horse, Little Joe, the cook, Calamity, Annie, Will Bill and a cast of thousands, it’s wagons
ho and away. Hi ho Silver and away and John Marion Wayne and away, too. And when we say Yeeow! Ayipioeeay! We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, all you cowboys and cowgirls okay!