Gene Autry

We boys who lived in Blackwood where there were three cinemas did not like Gene Autry. We liked and admired some of the other B picture cowboys like Hopalong Cassidy and Buck Jones but could not take the rather feminine charms of Autry who, with his other unmanly traits, sang cowboy songs. Later, there was another famous singing cowboy named Roy Rogers who we accepted, don't know why. I think it was that Autry was rather girlish in voice and manner. Maybe it had something to do with his being a singing cowboy, though Roy Rogers sang too if memory serves me right. Yet he was very successful as a B picture cowboy and also as a singer. He was the only celebrity to have his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame 5 times: for films, radio, records, television and live theatre.
Then again, he was not just successful as a film star and singer, he also made heaps of money outside the film industry as an acute business man.
Some of his songs were famous and some still are:"Back in the Saddle Again"; "Frosty the Snowman" and the biggest success of them all, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".
In an obituary in The Times in 1998 (he died at the age of 91) was written: "Autry's screen persona was conveyed by a spoof: 'Them bandits have beaten my mother, ravished my girl, burned down my house, killed my cattle and blinded my best friend. I'm goin' to get 'em if it's the last thing I do. But first, folks, I'm going to sing you a little song.' "