William Lawrence Boyd was born in Cambridge, Ohio. He was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1935 he was offered the lead role in the movie Hopalong Cassidy.
He changed the original character from a whisky guzzling wrangler to a cowboy hero who didn't smoke, drink, or swear.
He let the bad guy start the fight.
Boyd gained lasting fame in the Western film genre beginning in 1935, when he first played Hopalong Cassidy. Boyd shrewdly purchased the rights
to the character of Hopalong.
In the early 1950s he released the movies to television. He was one of the first actors to license merchandise. Boyd became a hero to a generation of
American children and a multi-millionaire.
Orvon Gene Autry
September 29, 1907 October 2, 1998
The Singing Cowboy on the radio,
in movies and on television.
Autry, the grandson of a Methodist preacher, was born near Tioga, Texas. His parents, Delbert and Elnora Autry, moved to Ravia, Oklahoma in the 1920s. After leaving high school in 1925, Autry worked as a telegrapher for the St. Louis Railway.
After a chance encounter with Will Rogers, he began singing on local radio in 1928 as "The Yodeling Cowboy".
He signed a recording deal with Columbia Records in 1931.
His first hit was in 1932 with That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine, a duet with fellow railroad man, Jimmy Long. Autry also sung many Christmas carols, including
"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town."
Autry made 44 films up to 1940, all B westerns in which he played under his own name, rode his horse Champion, had Burnette as his regular sidekick. He became the top Western star at the box-office by 1937, reaching his national peak of
popularity from 1940 to 1942. He retired from show business in 1964.
Leonard Franklin Slye
November 5, 1911 July 6, 1998
He became famous as Roy Rogers, was a singer and cowboy actor. The Roy Rogers Show which ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through For many people, he was the all-American hero.
Rogers was born to Andrew & Mattie
Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his family lived in a tenement building. Dissatisfied with city life, Andy Slye and his brother Will built a houseboat from salvage lumber. In July 1912, the Slye family floated up the Ohio River to Portsmouth, Ohio.
After completing the eighth grade, Rogers attended high school at McDermott, Ohio. When he was seventeen his family returned to Cincinnati where his father began work at a shoe factory. Rogers joined his father at the shoe factory. He went to night school. After being ridiculed for falling asleep in class, he quit school.
The economic hardship of the Great Depression had followed the Slyes to California. The Slyes soon found themselves among the economic refugees traveling from
job to job picking fruit and living in worker camps.
By 1935, Rogers worked steadily in western films, including a large supporting role as a singing cowboy while still billed as "Leonard Slye" in a Gene Autry movie.
In 1938 when Autry temporarily walked out on his movie contract, Slye was immediately rechristened "Roy Rogers." He was assigned the lead in
"Under Western Stars." He soon was a competitor for Gene Autry.
In addition to his own movies, Rogers played a supporting role in the
John Wayne classic Dark Command.
Roy was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1976.
Roy was inducted as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers in 1995.
