Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Ken Maynard #1


I have a lot of pictures of Western Movie actor Ken Maynard as well as his 1936 Wild West Show, so I decided to run four today and four more tomorrow.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

So many of the cowboy stars put out shows in the mid-30's, I suppose because they'd been well paid working on other people's shows and figured they'd really profit if they owned the whole thing. Did any of them ever make any money on a show with their own name, other than perhaps the first season of Tom Mix?

Anonymous said...

Did any show make money that had animals.? They had to eat no matter what. What I made was soon used up in the winter months when work was scarce. If you had no animals you had no circus.

Anonymous said...

As we know, Ken Maynard co-starred with Clyde Beatty, first on the '35 Cole-Beatty show. By all accounts, his being difficult had overrun numerous film budgets. Some said he was surly and ornery. Others recorded he was violent, threatening, "even dangerous". His decline, whether brought on by himself, or the cruelty of Hollywood, was as film critic Leonard Maltin described, lived out in "an alcoholic stupor". He lived in the small trailer he had toured in, which finally fell apart, at the Shady Tree Trailer Park, on Ilex Street, in a bad end of San Fernando, California. Gene Autry, strictly unbeknownst to Maynard or the public, had money passed to him each month for expenses. It is unclear how he entered Motion Picture Hospital, in Woodland Hills, but it was too late for him to be treated for alcoholism and starvation. He died there 23 March 1973, at 78. He is buried next to his Cole show wire-walker wife, Bertha, in Forest Lawn Cypress, in Orange County, California.

Anonymous said...

Hm. Did I hit the "anonymous" button? I usually hit the "other" button, more aptly descriptive of my contributions.

Anonymous said...

Gene Autry's first film appearance was in a Ken Maynard Movie. Also Roy Rogers First was in a Gene Autry movie.

Anonymous said...

Someone once told me that while on a troup train some enlisted men were refused beer. Roy Rodgers was on this train. He had a porter fill the mens room with bottles of beer for these men. These men were too young to drink but old enough to be killed for their country. I think this was a wonderful thing for Roy Rodgers to do. And I am not overly fond of cowboys.