Hollywood Hoofbeats. Audrey Pavia
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Range and The Bronze Buckaroo. Jeffries later moved to France and gave Stardusk back to his original owners, and the former thespian equine enjoyed the rest of his life in Santa Ynez.
Rex Allen and KoKo
An Arizona rancher’s son named Rex Allen would be the last of the singing cowboys. Like Autry and Rogers, the handsome blond Allen was signed by Republic Pictures after a career in radio. And like his predecessors, Allen knew he needed an extraordinary horse. Glenn Randall, meanwhile, had recently acquired KoKo, a stunning dark sorrel stallion with a flaxen mane and tail, from a female trick rider in Missouri. A Quarter/Morgan cross, KoKo had originally been purchased for Dale Evans but had proved too much horse for her.
The minute he laid eyes on KoKo, Allen fell in love with him. An accomplished rider, Allen found that the horse just needed a firm hand and some fine-tuning to get him ready for the movies. He bought KoKo from Glenn Randall in 1950 for $2,500. Randall continued to work with KoKo and Rex Allen during their short but successful career.
Allen’s first film, The Arizona Cowboy (1950), featured KoKo in an uncredited role, but in their next film, Hills of Oklahoma (1950), KoKo received billing. Dubbed the “Miracle Horse of the Movies,” he costarred with Allen in nineteen films for Republic, including Silver City Bonanza (1951), Rodeo King and the Senorita (1951), and their swan song, The Phantom Stallion (1954).
His unusual coloring destined KoKo to do nearly all of his own stunts. Although doubles were used for galloping long shots, they required considerable work to look anything like the stallion, even from far away. White horses were dyed a rich chocolate with vegetable coloring, with only a blaze, mane, tail, and stockings left white. Consequently, KoKo was worked hard, according to Allen, who once lamented, “I just had to run KoKo to death on nearly every film because we just couldn’t double him that close.”
KoKo only worked in movies for five years, from 1950 through 1954, during and after which time he also went on personal appearances with Allen. KoKo was retired in 1963 after foundering (the result of getting into a grain bin and gorging himself) and lived out the rest of his life at the Diamond X Ranch, Allen’s California spread. He died in 1968 at age twenty-eight. His remains are buried at the Cochise Visitor Center and Museum of the Southeast, in Wilcox, Arizona. His grave is marked with a plaque that reads: “KoKo, Rex Allen’s stallion costar in 30 motion pictures. Traveled over half million miles with Rex in U.S. and Canada. Billed as ‘The Most Beautiful Horse in the World.’ At rest here, ‘Belly High’ in the green grass of Horse Heaven.”
Rex Allen, the last of the singing cowboys, and Koko, showing off that famous Glen Randall trained rear.
White Flash shows off his Glen Randall-trained rear, with crooner Tex Ritter aboard.
Spotlight on Sidekicks
It gets lonely on the celluloid range, and a cowboy has only so many songs for his horse. He needs a human companion to help move the plot along, too, and in Westerns the bill was often filled by a sidekick. Offering comic relief, a helping hand, and a ready ear, the sidekick became a horse-opera staple. Two standout sidekicks, Smiley Burnette and Slim Pickens, rode alongside three of the most famous singing cowboys, on their colorful mounts Ring-Eyed Nellie and Dear John.
Smiley Burnette and Ring-Eyed Nellie
Lester “Smiley” Burnette had the distinction of working as a comic sidekick of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. A musical prodigy, the twenty-two-year-old Burnette started his career with Autry as an accordion player on Gene Autry’s WLS radio show in 1933. Smiley accompanied Autry to Hollywood and appeared in his first feature film, In Old Santa Fe. Honing his screen persona as “Frog Millhouse,” the gangly, pudgy, sweet-faced Smiley used his deep bass voice to add comic punctuation to musical numbers. He appeared in fifty-four prewar Westerns with Autry, wearing a checkered shirt and trademark black Stetson with a pinned up brim. He rode a white horse with a black ring drawn around his (or her) left eye—so Burnette would remember to mount from the left. First known as Black-Eyed Nellie, the horse later became know as Ring-Eyed Nellie and finally just Ring Eye. The horses were studio rentals, but according to Smiley’s son, Stephen Burnette, his dad did have a favorite, one who would allow Smiley to lounge on his back reading the newspaper between takes.
When Gene Autry went into the service, Republic Pictures recruited Smiley and Ring Eye for several Roy Rogers films, beginning with Hearts of the Golden West (1942). When Autry returned to Hollywood, Burnette and Ring Eye resumed their partnership with him in 1951’s Whirlwind for Columbia Pictures. They worked in six more Columbia films during the 1950s. The name of Frog Millhouse belonged to Republic, however, so Burnette became Smiley once more. Ring Eye didn’t have to change his (or her) name.
Smiley Burnette had his own sidekick, played by Joseph Strauch Jr., who appeared with Burnette in five Autry films, beginning with Under Fiesta Stars (1941). Dressed in the same clownish outfit as Burnette, Strauch got laughs portraying Frog Millhouse’s younger brother, Tadpole. He was mounted on a Little Ring Eye, a white pony with a black circle painted around his eye.
Autry and the original Champion with their sidekicks, Smiley Burnette and Ring Eye and their sidekicks, Joseph Strauch Jr. and Little Ring Eye, as they appeared in Under Fiesta Stars.
Slim Pickens and Dear John
Rex Allen’s sidekick was Slim Pickens, a former rodeo clown known for his goofy charm and rubber-faced reactions. Born in Kingsburg, California, in 1919, Louis Bert Lindley Jr. acquired his nickname as a fifteen-year-old rodeo contestant. He was told his chances for winning were going to be “slim pickin’s.” As Slim Pickens, however, Lindley went on to reap many riches, along with a blue roan Appaloosa named Dear John.
Slim first spotted Dear John in 1954, in a Montana pasture. Although the young gelding had bucked off everyone who had tried to ride him, Slim saw something special in the Appaloosa. He purchased Dear John for $150 and took him to California to work in Rex Allen movies. Their first picture went smoothly, but on the second one, Dear John tested his new master, coming unglued. “After that,” Slim said in a 1973 interview, “it took more’n six months of us punishin’ each other before we came to an understandin’. After that there wasn’t anything that horse wouldn’t do that was in reason.”
Slim worked with Glenn Randall to teach Dear John a variety of tricks, including bucking on cue. Look closely at most bucking horses in a movie or at a rodeo, and you can see a “bucking strap” circling their bellies well behind the saddle. This piece of leather is so annoying to a horse that it drives him into a mad fit of bucking. Dear John was unusual in that he did not need a strap and was trained to buck with a combined rein and leg cue. Using this shtick to great comic effect, Slim would go galloping and bucking after Rex Allen and KoKo, bellowing, “Whoa John!”
Dear John was also taught to sit on his haunches like a dog, a trick he would perform on his own, long after he was retired to pasture. A powerful jumper, Dear John could clear teams of horses, wagons, and huge stone walls that scared Slim to confront. But he knew that if Dear John went at an obstacle, he could clear it. If the horse refused, it was because he knew he couldn’t make it, and Slim trusted Dear John’s decision. The two developed more than an understanding; they had an uncanny rapport and seemed to communicate telepathically.
By the end of his stint in Rex Allen films, Dear John had become so famous in Hollywood that Slim began getting calls for the horse. The actor refused to let anyone else ride Dear John and insisted on being hired to handle him as well.
Slim retired Dear John to a pasture owned by veterinarian Joe Hird, in Bishop, California, in 1964. He visited the horse frequently but had difficulty catching him as John was afraid he would have to go back to work. One day, however, when Slim and Rex