Columbia's Westerns (CONT'D)

As one of the most famous western entertainers of all time, singing cowboy Gene Autry was a major star with a string of hits under his belt when he decided to form his own production company and make his own film to regain box office clout after serving in World War II. Autry struck a deal with Columbia to release his films, thirty-one in all, and found success again with favorites such as RIDERS IN THE SKY, THE BIG SOMBRERO, and THE STRAWBERRY ROAN, his first color film featuring his loyal steed, Champion. In his film for Columbia, Autry made sure to maintain the audience appeal with plenty of singing and appearances by his musical group The Cass County Boys and his trusty sidekick Smiley Burnette. 

Smiley Burnette, a popular supporting western player in his own right, was also well-known as the comedic foil to Columbia’s most enduring cowboy star, Charles Starrett. Best known for his role as “the Durango Kid,” the black-masked crusader, Starrett had the most prolific, longest-running and lucrative career of any western star at a single studio. Starrett starred in more than 130 cowboy serials for Columbia between 1935 and 1952, sixty-four of these featuring him as “the Durango Kid.” His early serials were an instant success and often featured singing partners, like the Sons of the Pioneers, in an effort to draw on the popularity of that style of western. But the heart-stopping action and fearsome thrills that the Durango Kid provided brought audiences back to the movie theatres over and over again.

As the audience’s enthusiasm for the genre grew, and with it Columbia’s box office take, the studio started producing feature-length westerns with more complex stories, high-profile movie stars and elaborate productions that could showcase raging fires, cattle drives or horse stampedes. Indeed, Columbia so embraced the success of this genre that its first film made in the Technicolor process was THE DESPERADOES in 1943, directed by Charles Vidor and starring Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford, both of whom would go on to become two of the studio’s biggest stars.