Gene Autry
Gene Autry (born September 29, 1907, near Tioga, Texas, U.S.—died October 2, 1998, Los Angeles, California) was an American actor, singer, entrepreneur, one of Hollywood’s premier singing cowboys, and the best-selling country and western recording artist of the 1930s and early ’40s.
Autry, who grew up in Texas and Oklahoma, had aspired to be a singer since before he acquired a guitar at the age of 12. While working as a telegraph agent for the railroad, Autry journeyed briefly to New York City, where he tried unsuccessfully to become a professional singer. His real performing debut came in 1928 on a local radio show in Tulsa, Oklahoma: billed as Oklahoma’s Yodeling Cowboy, he told stories and sang Jimmie Rodgers’s hit songs. He also recorded popular Rodgers songs, but Autry’s first hit single, in 1931, was one that he had cowritten, “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine.”
Autry’s recording success led to a position on the National Barn Dance radio program on WLS in Chicago, which made him nationally popular. In his film debut he sang a song in the Ken Maynard vehicle In Old Santa Fe (1934), and it launched his career as a cowboy actor. His first starring role was in the peculiar sci-fi western The Phantom Empire (1935), but the more conventional Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1935) was the first of his dozens of cowboy movies, ending with Last of the Pony Riders (1953). His horse, Champion, and his sidekick, Smiley Burnette, usually starred with him. Aided by the popularity of his films, Autry had a string of hit recordings, including “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” (1935) and his signature song, “Back in the Saddle Again” (1939). He recorded more than 600 songs altogether, many of which he wrote or cowrote. By 1940 he was one of the top movie and music stars in the country. The Gene Autry Show aired on television from 1950 to 1956.
During World War II Autry enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942 and served until 1945, after which he resumed his movie and recording career. Though his popularity had begun to wane, he had hits with holiday classics such as “Here Comes Santa Claus” (1947), “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (1949), and “Frosty the Snow Man” (1950). In 2024 the U.S. Library of Congress added his recording of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Autry was an astute businessman, and he amassed a business empire that included hotels, oil wells, broadcasting stations, music-publishing companies, several ranches, and a flying school. In 1960 Autry became the owner of the Los Angeles Angels (now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) Major League Baseball team, and in 1988 he opened the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum (now the Autry Museum of the American West) in Los Angeles.