Rudolph Wednesday! 2 of 3

Last week I gave the run-down of the origin of Rudolph in 1939, with a Christmas give-away at Monkey Wards. This week I bring you 2 great leaps in the character's popularity that occurred long before every one's favorite Rankin-Bass TV special.

The Theatrical Short:

In 1944, just 5 years after the initial comic book was handed out to millions of kids, a theatrical animated film was released to theaters. Max Fleischer himself had just been ousted from his own studio by the bigwigs at Paramount and was working for the Jam Handy Company. Jam Handy was usually in the business of producing commercial films for General Motors and training films for the military, this is one of the few forays they made into pure entertainment.

This edited version of the cartoon was edited with the Rudolph song (not written for 4 more years) dropped into the opening credits. Probably the way millions of kids saw the film on TV the following decade.



This version of the Rudolph story was very successful after being sold into television syndication in the 1950's and was re-run every Christmas on stations everywhere for a decade or better.

The Song:

It was in 1948 that Rudolph really fell into our national consciousness. Prolific songwriter Johnny Marks was enlisted to tell the little-reindeer-that-could's story in his own way.

The song was recorded by Gene Autry, then at the pinnacle of his career as B-movie western hero, matinee idol of millions and America's number one singin' cowboy!

No video for this one. You know the words though. Sing along!



Next week: the "Little Golden Book" version with great artwork by the wonderful Richard Scarry. See ya then!

I'm Back in the Saddle Again!

It's Gene Autry's birthday, and I feel back in the saddle after yesterdays lame job of a post.



It's been 102 years since Gene Autry was born in 1907. And we could still use him.

The era of "The Singin' Cowboy" was before my time. It only lasted from the mid 1930's until the late 1940's, maybe 15 years at the most. Gene Autry and Roy Rogers continued to have great success through the 1950's, especially on television, but the "singin'" part was mostly gone by then and they were mainly "B" westerns for the kiddie set.

If you've never treated yourself, there's plenty of the stuff available out there on DVD. Here's basically what you get:

1. Gene, Smiley Burnette and a bunch of cowboys are on a cattle drive singing in choral harmony about the joys of hard working. Then they find there's some trouble any one of the following will do. The heir to the ranch they're working on is a playgirl spending the profits, hoods representing the cattle buyers are scheming to undercut the price, the sheep rancher next door owns the water-rights to the brazing land and won't let the cows in, someone finds mineral rights on the ranch and tries to put Gene's boss out of business.

2. Gene gets in a quick fistfight.

3. Gene meets a girl and sings to her.

4. The bad-guys ambush Gene, but he kicks their butts.
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5. Gene sings another song to the girl.

That's it! And all told in about 65 minutes. At the Saturday matinee back int he day you;d get a double feature of two of these. Gene always won because he was doing what was right. There was justice in the world.

All you needed to do was do what's right. And it helped if you sang a song, had a smart horse and a not-so-smart sidekick.

Another reason Gene gets a cool guy award, is the above movie serial.

The movie serial was a way of getting the kiddies to flock back to your theatre week after week. Part of the playbill was a serialized adventure story, continued week to week after a cliffhanger ending. The setting would be anything from a Western, a jungle film, science fiction, a comic book/newspaper strip/pulp fiction hero...whatever would catch the kiddies' eyes and imaginations.

Gene Autry's first ever screen appearance was as the star of "The Phantom Empire"
(think George Lucas ever saw this?). This one had everything. A singing cowboy, robots, bad guys after a mysterious radioactive metal and a futuristic city 20,000 feet underground ruled by a beautiful woman. GOD THAT'S GOOD SHIT!!!



Oh yeah. And he owned a baseball team too. boooooorrrrrrrrring!

I'm still trying to do what's right, like Gene, hoping that I may win one day.

And whenever the world smacks me around, I sing a song. It makes people look at you funny sometimes, but I know I'm winning.

Thanks Gene!