Gene Autry, who parlayed a $5 mail order guitar, charm and a smooth
voice into a career as Hollywood's first singing cowboy, died Friday. He was 91.
Autry, who also built a multimillion-dollar fortune in broadcasting and was the
original owner of the California Angels baseball team, died at his home in the
city's Studio City neighborhood, said Karla Buhlman, vice president of Gene Autry
Entertainment. A private funeral was planned.
His death came less than three months after the death of his great rival, Roy
Rogers. Though a pennant for his Angels eluded him, Autry succeeded at just about
anything he undertook: radio, records, songwriting, movies, TV, real estate and
business.
He first sang on radio in 1928, and then went on to make 95 films and star in a
TV show from 1950 to 1956. He also cut 635 records, including 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer and his signature Back in the Saddle Again, which was back on the charts
in 1993 as part of the soundtrack to the hit movie Sleepless in Seattle.
Autry hung up his performing spurs in 1956, but continued to own four radio stations,
the Gene Autry Hotel in Palm Springs, and several other properties. In 1982, he
sold Los Angeles television station KTLA for $245 million.
He ranked for many years on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans,
before he fell in 1995 to the magazine's "near miss" category with an estimated
net worth of $320 million.
Autry, who once turned down a chance to play in the minor leagues, had been the
Angels' owner since the team was formed as an American League expansion franchise
in 1961.
In spring 1995, Autry announced that the Walt Disney Co. was buying a part interest
in the team, and the following year Disney took operating control. But Autry never
did see his beloved team make it to the World Series. The team, now called the
Anaheim Angels, was in the running for the playoffs this year, but lost the American
League West division lead in the last week of the regular season.
"Like all Americans, I grew up with him and when I became an adult I learned he
was a brilliant entrepreneur," said veteran television producer Dick Clark. "I'll
always harbor this secret feeling that he gave up when the Angels didn't make
it this year."
Disney had an agreement to acquire Autry's remaining share of the team at his
death.
Throughout his business dealings, Autry collected Western memorabilia and art.
In December 1988, the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, built largely with funds
from Autry's foundations, opened in Los Angeles' Griffith Park.
"I felt that I owed something. The West has been very kind to me over the years,"
Autry said at the time. He called the museum, which covers the West from prehistoric
times to Hollywood, a gift to the world rather than a monument to himself.
Among the items in the $54 million museum are an 1870s-era steam fire engine from
Nevada, guns owned by Annie Oakley and Wyatt Earp, and costumes of TV's Lone Ranger
and Tonto.
Autry, already a successful singer, first came to Los Angeles in 1934 to appear
with Ken Maynard in a movie called In Old Santa Fe.
"I was the first singing cowboy in that picture," Autry once said. "John Wayne
had made an earlier movie in which he played a singing cowboy, but he didn't do
his own singing."
It was the heyday of the Western, and Autry was ranked top Western star at the
box office from 1937-43, and in 1940-42 he was in the Top 10 of all movie box
office favorites. Smiley Burnette was popular as Autry's comic sidekick, and Autry's
horse, Champion, also was an audience favorite.
Rogers replaced Autry as Republic Studios' top cowboy when Autry took time out
to serve as a flier in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war,
Autry went over to Columbia Pictures and obtained a new partner - Pat Buttram.
Among his postwar pictures were The Last Roundup, 1947, and Riders in the Sky,
1949.
After Rogers died July 6, Autry called it "a terrible loss for me. I had tremendous
respect for Roy and considered him a great humanitarian and an outstanding American."
Autry's broadcasting career included appearances on the Melody Ranch CBS radio
show, beginning in 1939. From 1950-56, he was host of The Gene Autry Show on CBS-TV,
one of the first television series made by a motion picture star.
Autry's records sold more than 40 million copies. His first gold record was That
Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer has sold 10 million
copies and is a Christmas perennial. He wrote many of the songs he performed.
Last year, Rhino Records released a box set of Autry's records called Sing, Cowboy,
Sing.
"Some of the material hasn't been heard in a long time," Autry told The Associated
Press in a lengthy exchange of questions and answers by fax. "It brought back
a lot of wonderful memories."
Autry was born Sept. 29, 1907, in Tioga, Texas, and grew up in the small Oklahoma
town of Ravia. As a boy, Autry occasionally earned spending money singing at local
nightspots and with the extra cash, he invested in a mail order guitar and taught
himself to play.
By 18, Autry was working as a telegrapher on a St. Louis to San Francisco railroad
line. It was here that he met comedian Will Rogers, who heard Autry strumming on
his guitar and singing.
"You're good," Rogers is said to have told Autry. "Stick to it, young fellow, and
you'll make something of yourself." Autry recalled later that he thought about
what Rogers had said for about a year before he worked up the nerve to pursue
show business full time.
Autry began singing on radio shows in 1928 as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy." In
the early '30s, he was a success on the popular WLS Barn Dance in Chicago.
Among the honors accorded to Autry over the years was the naming of an Oklahoma
town for him. Gene Autry, Okla., population 175, is about 20 miles west of Ravia.
Autry stopped appearing in the movies and on television in the mid-1950s to concentrate
on his businesses.
In 1991, a letter written in the '30s came to light that said the performer had
no future in Hollywood. The note from producer Al Levoy was found in the Republic
Pictures archives.
It said the young Autry needed to improve his acting, that a preliminary acting
course was "evidently wasted" and that the actor needed darker makeup to "give
him the appearance of virility."
Autry's response: "A lot of that is true. I got better as I went along. I couldn't
get any worse."
Autry is survived by his wife, Jackie, and a sister.
