Hollywood Hoofbeats. Audrey Pavia
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Little Trigger. Named Trigger Jr., he took over as Rogers’s personal appearance horse when Little Trigger was retired in the early 1950s. A flashy dark palomino with a blaze and four white stockings, Trigger Jr. was also trained by Glenn Randall. The new horse specialized in crowd-pleasing dance routines. Corky Randall showed Trigger Jr., a Tennessee Walking Horse, under his registered name of Golden Zephyr. Trigger Jr. appeared in a namesake film, Trigger Jr. (1950), alongside Trigger, who was six years his senior. Trigger Jr. was nine years old when Rogers purchased him. He died at twenty-eight and was also mounted and put on display at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum.
Trainer Corky Randall and Trigger Jr.—as Golden Zephyr—demonstrate the elegant Spanish walk at a horse show.
Jane Russell and Bob Hope share a meal with their costars Roy Rogers and Little Trigger on the set of 1952’s Son of Paleface.
Little Trigger and Glenn Randall play jump rope with Roy Rogers.
The Queen of the West and Buttermilk
In 1944, Rogers made his first picture with a dynamic singer and dancer named Dale Evans. The Cowboy and the Senorita proved to be a hit, and Rogers and Evans went on to make twenty-eight more features and one hundred television shows together. Along the way, they fell in love. Rogers proposed to Evans as they were about to ride into Madison Square Garden for a public appearance by asking, “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” They married on December 31, 1947. The wife of the “King of the Cowboys” became known as the “Queen of the West.”
In her early Rogers films, such as 1945’s Bells of San Angelo, Evans rides a pinto. Rogers decided the Paint was too flashy, and Glenn Randall found a gentle palomino gelding called Pal for Evans. Rogers worried, though, that the horse’s color would draw attention away from Trigger. The quest began for a horse of just the right color.
Glenn Randall spotted an athletic little buckskin Quarter Horse named Soda on a Wyoming ranch. Soda had an extremely shaggy winter coat, but Randall could see his potential through the hair. He purchased the buckskin and hauled him back to California. When Soda shed his winter coat, his pretty conformation was revealed. Randall brought him to the location of one of Rogers and Evans’s movies and tied him next to Trigger. The two looked great together, with the buckskin’s black mane and tail contrasting nicely with Trigger’s opposite markings. Rogers approved, and Evans gave Soda a try. Quick and athletic, he was challenging to ride, but the “Queen of the West” was up to the task. She purchased Soda from Glenn Randall, who retrained him for the movies.
Soda needed a more theatrical name. On location in Lone Pine, California, the site of hundreds of Westerns, Evans and wrangler Buddy Sherwood were admiring the sunset. Sherwood remarked that the mottled milky clouds looked like “clabber.” Evans reportedly replied, “You mean buttermilk?” Thus she was inspired to rename the buckskin Buttermilk Sky.
Buttermilk Sky became known simply as Buttermilk, and Evans rode him in the remainder of Rogers’s films and the television series. He was not only smart and fast but also exceptionally quick off the mark. As soon as he heard “Action!” Buttermilk would spring forward, and Evans had to rein him back to let Trigger get ahead in films.
Buttermilk had a long, successful career supporting the superstar Trigger. Buttermilk also stands mounted at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum, alongside Trigger, Trigger Jr., and Roy and Dale’s German Shepherd, Bullet. Originally in Apple Valley, California, the museum is now in Branson, Missouri.
The Queen of the West, Dale Evans, and Buttermilk Sky display the charm that made them a perfect complement to Roy and Trigger.
Trainer Glenn Randall in a rare portrait aboard Soda before he became Buttermilk Sky.
The Second String
The immense success of Gene Autry and Champion and Roy Rogers and Trigger pushed many more singers into the saddle. Some of these “singing cowboys” were good horsemen but couldn’t sing—like John Wayne, whose voice was dubbed in his brief career as Singin’ Sandy Sanders. Others were decent crooners, but their cowboy personas were strictly Hollywood fantasy.
Popular star Eddie Dean could sing all right but he did not have a particular equine partner. Even though his various mounts were virtual unknowns, the studio still gave them cobilling: the mere fact that they were horses helped sell Dean’s films.
Broadway star Tex Ritter was tapped for the movies by Grand National Pictures in 1936 and quickly brushed up his horsemanship for his new career as a singing cowboy. Following the formula, Ritter was paired with White Flash, a studio invention played by different rental horses. It wasn’t until 1941 that Ritter purchased a permanent White Flash. Like his role models, the white horse with brown eyes went into training with Glenn Randall. Consequently, scenes were written for White Flash that enabled him to show off his tricks.
Crooner Monte Hale made a number of films for Republic during the 1940s. His equine partner was, appropriately, named Pardner. Despite an appealing singing voice and an affable persona as a gentleman cowboy, Hale never hit the big time. He maintained a sense of humor, however, and well into his eighties in 2005 when he received a star on Hollywood Boulevard’s Walk of Fame, was still passing out stickers commemorating the most ridiculous line of dialogue he ever had to utter, “Shoot low! They may be crawlin’.”
Herb Jeffries and Stardusk
One of the most unusual singing cowboys was jazz musician Herb Jeffries. Born in 1911 in Detroit, Jeffries inherited his light brown skin from his father’s Ethiopian ancestors. He learned to horseback ride on his grandfather’s farm and enjoyed watching Tom Mix and Buck Jones Westerns.
Jeffries began singing professionally as a teenager and toured with some of biggest names in jazz. While traveling through the South in 1934, Jeffries noticed that blacks-only movie theaters played all-white Westerns. Unfortunately, the trend started by the Norman Company and rodeo star Bill Pickett in the 1920s had not resulted in more Westerns about African-American cowboys.
One afternoon, in an alley behind a jazz club, Jeffries spotted some children playing cowboys and Indians. He noticed a little boy crying because his friends wouldn’t let him play. The child told Jeffries that he wanted to be Tom Mix, but his friends wouldn’t let him “because Tom Mix isn’t black.” Deeply touched, Jeffries determined that black children ought to have a cowboy hero who looked like them. He approached independent producer Judd Buell with an idea for a musical Western with a black hero. Buell agreed to finance such a film.
The challenge was finding a black actor who could sing and ride a horse. Jeffries wound up with the lead role by default. Because his skin was light brown, he applied dark makeup so black audiences would better relate to him. With the release of Harlem on the Prairie (1936), Jeffries—billed as Herbert Jeffrey—became the first black singing cowboy hero in a feature film. Of course, the hero had a four-legged friend. Jeffries chose a white horse named Stardusk. A hit with the kids, this pair made movie history.
Part Arabian, Stardusk had been bred on a ranch in Santa Ynez, California. When preparing for their first film together, Jeffries and Stardusk spent two weeks getting acquainted. By that time, Jeffries said, “We were pretty much in love with each other.”
After shooting wrapped on Harlem on the Prairie, Stardusk was returned to his owners in Santa Ynez. Jeffries, who was living in a Los Angeles boarding house, would visit regularly. As soon Jeffries arrived at the ranch, Stardusk would start whinnying for him. When producer Richard C. Kahn approached Jeffries with a deal for three more movies, the star made the purchase of Stardusk a condition of his contract. Together