Gene Autry’s life story reads like a great American novel. Known as “America’s favorite singing cowboy,” the country star paired his entrepreneurial spirit with his love of entertaining audiences and became one of the country-western genre’s most unique and beloved figures.
After amassing an audience with a slew of performances throughout the 1920s, he signed with Columbia Records and made the “musical Western” a cinematic staple. Autry went on to star in almost 100 films featuring him on horseback, serenading a love interest or saloon patrons, throughout adventurous plots.
The television star was also no stranger to airwaves and hosted “Melody Ranch,” his variety show, on the CBS Radio Network throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The opening theme song featured one of his most popular hits, “Back in the Saddle Again,” a fiddle-laced tribute to traveling cowboys throughout the United States.
‘The Gene Autry Rodeo Show’
A member of organizations such as the ProRodeo Hall of Fame and the Texas Cowboy Rodeo Hall of Fame, Autry blazed a trail for future singing cowboys by combining his musical entertainment skills with his cowboying prowess for live audiences. Known as “The Gene Autry Rodeo Show,” these live-action, one-of-a-kind events scored him the honor of being the first entertainer to sell out Madison Square Garden in New York.
At the height of his career, America entered World War II. Autry took a break from showbiz and enlisted in the military, serving in the Army Air Corps while overseas. His fearless, bold spirit carried over into his military career. His assignment involved transporting supplies to locations along an air route between India and China over part of the Himalayan Mountains known as “The Hump.” This remote course was one of the most dangerous routes for Army airmen due to a lack of reliable maps of the area, unavailable radio transmission signals, and unpredictable weather systems often found above the mountain range.
After serving in the Army and traveling with the USO from 1942 to 1946, America’s favorite singing cowboy was ready to reignite his entertainment career. A visionary at heart, instead of falling back on his tried-and-true successful radio show and Western-themed films, he took his status as a “household name” literally and kick-started his career in television in the 1950s, something that no movie star before him had dared to do.
Not only did he star in 91 episodes of “The Gene Autry Show'' on CBS, but he produced them, too, under his company Flying A Pictures. Through his production company, he kept the spirit of the Old West alive by producing specials featuring actor portrayals of folk heroes like Annie Oakley and the popular fictional outlaw Buffalo Bill Jr.
While garnering accolades over the years for his exhaustive work in the TV and film industry, the singer-songwriter also recorded over 600 songs, with many of his records ultimately being certified gold or platinum.
Celebrating the American West
Perhaps the most evident accomplishment of Autry’s entrepreneurial zeal was a milestone that came just a decade prior to his passing in 1998. Throughout his entertainment career, it had long been a dream of his to give back to the Western community that had been so hospitable to him since he was a young boy riding the rails from his home in Texas to the open pastures of Oklahoma.
In 1988, his dream finally came true when he opened the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, with the purpose of celebrating the cultures of the American West that have poignantly influenced every part of the nation for decades.
Since its initial opening in the late ‘80s, the museum expanded substantially and is now the Autry Museum of the American West. Hosting close to 200,000 visitors annually, the Los Angeles museum is home to an expansive collection of historical Southwestern artifacts and ongoing art exhibitions like “The Silent West,” which features some of the Western genre’s earliest films, and “Western Frontiers: Stories of Fact and Fiction,” which pays tribute to American heroes like the 26th U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt.
Gene Autry was a true Renaissance man, even acquiring the California Angels baseball team in 1961 and holding the role of vice president for the American League until his passing. His eclectic legacy shows that he was more than an actor and musician. From his decades-long entertainment career to his service during World War II and final act as a museum founder, we see that Autry wasn’t just “America’s favorite singing cowboy.” His pioneering spirit and entrepreneurial legacy show that he continues to be an irreplaceable icon of the American West.
