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What Dreams Were Made Of
S TA R
★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩ AMERICAN CULTURE / AMERICAN CINEMA
D E C A D E S
Each volume in the series Star Decades: American Culture/American Cinema pres-
ents original essays analyzing the movie star against the background of contempo-
rary American cultural history. As icon, as mediated personality, and as object of
audience fascination and desire, the Hollywood star remains the model for celebrity
in modern culture and represents a paradoxical combination of achievement, talent,
ability, luck, authenticity, superficiality, and ordinariness. In all of the volumes, star-
dom is studied as an effect of, and influence on, the particular historical and indus-
trial contexts that enabled a star to be “discovered,” to be featured in films, to be
promoted and publicized, and ultimately to become a recognizable and admired—
even sometimes notorious—feature of the cultural landscape. Understanding when,
how, and why a star “makes it,” dazzling for a brief moment or enduring across
decades, is especially relevant given the ongoing importance of mediated celebrity in
an increasingly visualized world. We hope that our approach produces at least some
of the surprises and delight for our readers that stars themselves do.
ADRIENNE L. McLEAN AND MURRAY POMERANCE
SERIES EDITORS

Jennifer M. Bean, ed., Flickers of Desire: Movie Stars of the 1910s

Patrice Petro, ed., Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s

Adrienne J. McLean, ed., Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s

Sean Griffin, ed., What Dreams Were Made Of: Movie Stars of the 1940s

R. Barton Palmer, ed., Larger Than Life: Movie Stars of the 1950s

Pamela R. Wojcik, ed., New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960s

James Morrison, ed., Hollywood Reborn: Movie Stars of the 1970s

Robert Eberwein, ed., Acting for America: Movie Stars of the 1980s

Anna Everett, ed., Pretty People: Movie Stars of the 1990s

Murray Pomerance, ed., Shining in Shadows: Movie Stars of the 2000s

What Dreams
Were Made Of
Movie Stars of the
1940 s
★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

EDITED BY

SEAN GRIFFIN

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

N E W B R U N S W I C K , N E W J E R S E Y, A N D L O N D O N
L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S C ATA L O G I N G - I N - P U B L I C AT I O N D ATA

What dreams were made of : Movie stars of the 1940s / edited by Sean Griffin.
p. cm. — (Star decades : American culture / American cinema)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–4963–7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978–0–8135–4964–4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography. I. Griffin, Sean.
PN1998.2.W45 2010
791.4302'80922—dc22
2010024093

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British
Library.
This collection copyright © 2011 by Rutgers, The State University
Individual chapters copyright © 2011 in the names of their authors
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce
Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair
use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
To Drew Casper, for getting me here
 C O N T E N T S
★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Stardom in the 1940s 1

SEAN GRIFFIN

1 Abbott and Costello: Who’s on First? 12

DAVID SEDMAN

2 Gene Autry and Roy Rogers: The Light of Western Stars 33

EDWARD BUSCOMBE

3 Ingrid Bergman: The Face of Authenticity in the Land of Illusion 50

ROBIN BLAETZ

4 Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall: Tough Guy and Cool Dame 70
RICK WORLAND

5 Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, and Barbara Stanwyck:

American Homefront Women 96
DAVID M. LUGOWSKI

6 Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney: Babes and Beyond 120

SEAN GRIFFIN

7 Greer Garson: Gallant Ladies and British Wartime Femininity 142

HANNAH HAMAD

8 Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth: Pinned Up 166

ADRIENNE L. McLEAN

9 Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn: Domesticated Mavericks 192

CHARLIE KEIL

10 John Wayne: Hero, Leading Man, Innocent, and Troubled Figure 217
EDWARD COUNTRYMAN

In the Wings 235

SEAN GRIFFIN

Works Cited 239

Contributors 245

Index 247
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩

First and foremost, thanks are owed to Murray Pomerance

and Adrienne McLean, the editors of the Star Decades series, who ap-
proached me back in 2007 with the invitation to edit this volume. Since
then, they have provided invaluable help and guidance, as individual pieces
were conceived and reconceived (I still think a chapter on Bugs Bunny
would have been ideal for this volume, but there you go!), as potential con-
tributors came and went, and as deadlines approached and sailed past. I
appreciate their patience, advice and—in the case of McLean—specific writ-
ten contribution to this tome. I also express my debt to all the authors who
have lent their expertise and enthusiasm to this endeavor.
I also want to state my gratitude and admiration to a number of people
at Southern Methodist University. The Division of Cinema-Television has
been of enormous support to me throughout the process. I am privileged to
be teaching among so many nationally esteemed colleagues, many of
whom are represented in this tome. Whether specifically contributing or
not, the SMU community has never ceased to offer inordinate encourage-
ment, advice, and friendship.
Much of the work herein is also indebted to two invaluable research
resources: the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences, and the Constance McCormack Collection of star scrap-
books housed at the Cinema-Television Library at the University of South-
ern California. Both contain a veritable treasure trove of clippings from trade
papers, movie fan magazines, and studio press releases, primary sources
that were vital for such a project as this series. I am certain everyone
involved herein extends a thank you to the staff at both these institutions.
I have always thought the 1940s to be an undervalued decade in Amer-
ican film history, and so was very pleased when I was invited to be involved
in this project. I wanted to try to evoke the uniqueness of the moment as
personified by the stars who are specifically identified with the era. A num-
ber of them have of course received their own chapters in this collection.
Many others did not—Danny Kaye, Jennifer Jones, Alan Ladd, Veronica
Lake, Lena Horne, Carmen Miranda, Sabu, Van Johnson, Margaret O’Brien,
Esther Williams, Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews. I hope the ambience of the
period that they helped shape still emerges. So, to quote a hit song from
the period, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition . . .

ix
What Dreams Were Made Of
 INTRODUCTION
★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩
Stardom in the 1940s
SEAN GRIFFIN

The 1940s are often conceptualized as a split decade, a tem-

poral “house divided.” Most obviously, World War II deftly cleaved the
decade in half. Hitler invaded Poland in late 1939, resulting in Britain and
France declaring war on Germany. While the United States refrained from
entering the fight initially, the pull grew month by month, until the Japan-
ese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war then dominated all
aspects of American public life for the next few years. Victory came in both
the European and Pacific theaters in 1945, and suddenly the country and
the entire world had entered a new world order. This postwar era saw a
rapid and full-scale revision of life and thought. Not unexpectedly, many
hoped to revert quickly to the way things were before the upheaval of the
war. Yet major changes in global politics and advances in scientific research
also irrevocably altered American life. The onset of the Cold War created a
new enemy for the United States, and new fears of internal subversion—
which at times veered into a fear of anything that diverged from majority
thought. The postwar era was also referred to as the Atomic Age, as human-
ity started coming to terms with the fact that we could now literally destroy
the planet and ourselves. As Jacqueline Foertsch has written, “The momen-
tous events of the mid-1940s are thus pivotal in multiple respects,” creating
an “impulse to read the 1940s as a decade that is as neatly bisected as it
neatly hangs together” (1–2).
It was a split decade for the Hollywood studios as well. Many film his-
tory books cut the 1940s in half, regarding the first part as an extension of
the classic Hollywood era of the 1930s, and the second part as the start of
the post-classical era of the 1950s (Schatz; Lewis; Jewell; Casper). While the
studios in wartime had to adjust to the loss of employees to the military,
and to stronger involvement (and potential interference) from the federal
government, the first half of the decade was generally a high time for Holly-
wood. With national employment figures suddenly at an all-time high after
a decade of economic woes, but with wartime rationing limiting what was
available for purchase, everyone went to the movies. Furthermore, the stu-
dios had by this time refined their business patterns and the “Hollywood
1
2 SEAN GRIFFIN

style” of production, resulting in a number of expertly produced, smoothly

told, and confidently crafted films. Motion picture theater attendance
reached its highest level ever in 1946.
And then the bottom fell out. The federal government’s antitrust case,
which had been shelved during the war, was revived and in 1948 the
Supreme Court decreed (in what became known as the Paramount Deci-
sion) that the major studios divest themselves of one arm of their vertically
integrated holdings (production, distribution, or exhibition)—signaling an
end to the smooth organization of the classical Hollywood system. Further-
more, certain members of the government began training their suspicions
on communist infiltration on Hollywood, throwing filmmakers into new
panic. Most of all, though, audiences started abandoning film theaters. With
the onset of the postwar Baby Boom, many moved to newly formed subur-
ban communities—far from urban centers where most movie theaters
resided. Whether in cities or suburbs, Americans also increasingly stayed
home to watch the new mass-marketed gadget called television (whose
development, like the antitrust case, had been put on hold until the end of
the war). As the decade ended, Hollywood was scrambling to figure out
how to survive in a very different environment (Dixon).
If the studios felt a sharp divide in the 1940s, it is unsurprising that stars
experienced it as well. The war significantly impacted the lives and careers
of most stars, and the postwar period brought even more changes. Actors
and actresses, like all Americans, were deeply affected by the war. Some
men signed up for active duty in the military, such as James Stewart, Robert
Montgomery, and Clark Gable. Others were drafted, like Gene Kelly, Victor
Mature, and Mickey Rooney. Some, such as (somewhat ironically) Roy
Rogers and John Wayne, received deferments and consequently felt certain
pressure to explain why they were not “doing their part.” Such losses left
the studios scrambling to find leading men—resulting in a number of young
actors promoted to stardom, such as Van Johnson, Gregory Peck, Danny
Kaye, and Alan Ladd. With women only allowed to enlist in women’s aux-
iliary units (the WACs, the WAVEs), actresses did not feel as much pressure
to put their careers on hold. Yet female stars did actively participate in the
war effort, volunteering at war bond drives, and meeting with soldiers at
camps, on USO tours, or at the Hollywood Canteen. Older male stars not
eligible for the draft did likewise (Doherty; Dick; Koppes and Black).
In multiple ways, then, stars increased their actual physical presence
among the rest of the population, strengthening their connections to the
general public. Cheesecake photos and films shipped overseas for screen-
ings in combat zones provided troops with a sense of home and “what they
 INTRODUCTION 3

With many male performers entering the armed services during World War II, Hollywood
studios began grooming and promoting a new crop of men. Van Johnson, for example,
quickly became MGM’s top male star during the war. Collection of the author.

were fighting for.” Increased movie attendance further deepened the felt
relationship audiences had with stars. Together, these elements created a
sense that stars were “just like us,” just perhaps a little “more so.” As one
woman opined at the time, “If your idea of a factory girl is a thin little crea-
ture who looks downtrodden and underfed, you’re way off the beam, as my
chums say. A factory girl in real life looks very much like Brenda Marshall,
Anne Shirley, or Betty Grable” (Giles 123).
4 SEAN GRIFFIN

The major studios had instituted a relatively well oiled system for dis-
covering, grooming, and showcasing talent (as well as controlling it) long
before the 1940s, knowing that stars helped market their product. Articles
in the industry press indicate that studios began relying more on stars dur-
ing the decade. Efforts to alleviate pressure from the antitrust case led stu-
dios to lessen the amount of block-booking done with theaters, resulting in
individual films needing to be able to sell themselves. This often meant
employing stars more often in projects (Schatz 103–04). While budgets on
average increased during the 1940s partly due to this development, even
pictures made at B-studios such as Republic began to rely on stars such as
Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Judy Canova.
No doubt recognizing their net worth to the studios, stars began to
assert greater power. More and more stars finished their studio contracts
and became independent artists. This trend had begun by the early part of
the 1940s (with the likes of Fred Astaire, Claudette Colbert, Ronald Col-
man, Ginger Rogers, and Barbara Stanwyck working freelance), but the
numbers grew dramatically after the war. New income tax laws spurred
individuals to “incorporate” themselves, leading a large number of actors
and actresses to set up independent production companies. Stars had
greater opportunity to become independent due to a landmark case brought
by Olivia de Havilland against Warner Bros. in 1943. The courts decided
against the conventional Hollywood studio policy of adding the time an
actor was on suspension to the end of the contract period (for stars usually
set at seven years), which potentially kept an actor in the studio’s control
indefinitely. The ruling granted actors the right to refuse roles and to sit out
the duration of their contracts (Schatz 206–08).
Thus, as the war ended, stars were finding new power and independ-
ence. Independence, though, also meant a lack of protection by the studio
against scandal. While valuable contract players could depend upon their
studio to help sweep ugly matters under the rug, stars increasingly had to
fend for themselves. Headlines about Robert Mitchum’s arrest for posses-
sion of marijuana or Ingrid Bergman’s extramarital pregnancy exemplified
a newer “no holds barred” era of star coverage in the press. Most devastat-
ingly, stars found themselves easy targets for communist paranoia in the
second half of the decade. Many actors and actresses had looked into social-
ism or other leftist groups during the depths of the Depression; others had
made films or public comments showing support of Soviet Russia as a
wartime ally. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and
various civic groups that sprang up after the war to ferret out communist
sympathizers quickly jumped on these factors to accuse a number of people
 INTRODUCTION 5

Olivia de Havilland’s successful lawsuit against Warner Bros. helped free stars from inor-
dinate studio control over their careers. As an independent artist in the late 1940s, de
Havilland won two Oscars as Best Actress for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress
(1949). Collection of the author.

of working to help the Soviet Union undermine American strength. Some

stars (such as Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, and Ginger Rogers) eagerly testi-
fied about potential communist influence in the industry. Others (Larry
Parks, John Garfield) had their careers destroyed (and sometimes their
lives) as a blacklist developed to keep suspects from finding work.
6 SEAN GRIFFIN

Stars, therefore, like Hollywood and America at large, experienced the

1940s as a split decade. Yet a sense of division has been a key concept to star
studies in general. Dyer theorizes how star images are “related to contra-
dictions in ideology. . . . The relations may be one of displacement . . . or of
the suppression of one half of the contradiction and the foregrounding of the
other . . . or else it may be that the star effects a ‘magic’ reconciliation of
the apparently incompatible terms” (Stars 30). Barbara Deming, writing
about films in the 1940s, also stressed that “the heroes and heroines who
are most popular at any particular period are precisely those who, with a
certain added style, with a certain distinction, act out the predicament in
which we all find ourselves—a predicament from which the movie-dream
then cunningly extricates us” (Deming 2). Many analyses of star images
emphasize how performers become stars by somehow embodying (and thus
resolving) cultural contradictions.
That Deming writes specifically about the 1940s indicates that the
decade was split not just in terms of timeline. Examinations of the decade
are often rife with metaphors of ambivalence, divided emotions, and even
schizophrenia. Film books about the 1940s stress this duality, often directly
in the titles: Deming’s Running Away from Myself or Dana Polan’s Power and
Paranoia. Even a book about Hollywood studio design in the 1940s touches
on this lack of cohesion, describing a tendency to collapse multiple decora-
tive styles into an overarching mélange of tastes (Madelbaum and Myers
25). That Deming began putting together notes for her book during the time
in question shows that considering this period as dislocated was common
then, and not just in hindsight.
The growing interest in psychoanalysis in 1940s America undoubtedly
helped spur thought about split personalities and divided desires. Psycho-
logical testing in the military rose during the war, most notoriously in an
effort to weed homosexuals out of the service. Many in Hollywood also
became enamored with Freudian therapy at this time. Conceptualizing the
conflict between one’s id and one’s ego led to a consideration of warring
tendencies within the cultural landscape of the period—and there were cer-
tainly plenty of “incompatible terms” to negotiate. While World War II is
often portrayed as uniting everyone together in a shared goal, plenty of
internal disagreement still existed. Until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the
country was locked in vibrant debate between isolationists and interven-
tionists, but fighting the war created its own contradictions. Most centrally,
the war was being fought to restore liberty for all individuals, but doing so
required people to suppress their individualism and work as part of a team
(either in the ranks or on the factory line). Championing freedom also led
 INTRODUCTION 7

to much propaganda about America as a land of opportunity for all races

and religions. Yet the Zoot Suit riots between white sailors and Los Angeles’
Latino population during the war, as well as the number of race riots in cities
where factories began integrating their workforce, demonstrated the wealth
of prejudice still to be overcome. Women’s place in American society was
also very ambiguous. Wartime propaganda promoted female strength and
capability at traditionally masculine work, while many other aspects of cul-
ture (pulp novels and film noir in particular) expressed deep fears about
powerful women. Such worries became exacerbated once the culturally
enforced unity of wartime ended. Postwar culture became littered with
ambivalent antiheroes, and the call for humanist brotherhood after the war
was matched by a concomitant growth of existentialist nihilism.
Such emotional dislocation was matched by actual physical dislocation.
Men were being drafted and sent to military bases and overseas, and large
numbers on the home front moved to industrial centers to work in facto-
ries. Integration of women and people of color into the workforce also
physically redistributed populations. The federal government also forcibly
relocated thousands of Japanese Americans into internment camps. With
parents away in the service or working in factories, children were often
largely unattended (an issue that was of importance during this period, but
has largely been overlooked in subsequent histories of the home front).
New housing arrangements, and often housing shortages, were widespread
during the war. Such mobility continued after the war, albeit in a different
fashion, as thousands abandoned the cities for the suburbs (Polan 254).
Polan and Deming both note the motif of the “wanderer” in films of the
period—someone without a home, without direction (see, in particular,
Polan 264–71). Home itself becomes a site of ambivalence and duality.
While a number of films glorify the American home—particularly nostalgic
representations of America at the turn of the century—the shadowy apart-
ments and mansions found in noir, gothic romances, and wartime spy
thrillers present home as entrapment and danger. Certain films encapsulate
both emotions, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Vin-
cente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), or Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful
Life (1946). For male veterans attempting to adjust to a civilian life that no
longer felt comfortable, as well as women feeling constrained by a con-
certed effort to place them back into the domestic sphere after the war,
home was an increasingly complex environment.
Stars, therefore, may have provided an anchor for audiences feeling cut
adrift from everything they had known before. Certain stars seemed pres-
ent to address each of the contradictory set of values or emotions listed.
8 SEAN GRIFFIN

Brazilian “bombshell” Carmen Miranda became an iconic figure of the Good Neighbor
Policy, singing and dancing in musicals of the 1940s. While presented as comically outra-
geous, her stardom celebrated cultural outreach between the United States and nations
south of its border. Collection of the author.

Some performers even founded their stardom on divided selves: Danny Kaye
constantly played dual roles, and Lon Chaney Jr. was forever typecast as the
Wolf Man. The prevalence of star couples also suggests the divided self:
Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Individual stars such as Car-
men Miranda, Sabu, or Lena Horne acknowledged racial and ethnic diversity,
 INTRODUCTION 9

but often within a certain comfort zone for white audiences. Others helped
negotiate the thorny issue of individualism versus working as a unit. For
example, male stars such as John Garfield, James Cagney, and Errol Flynn
regularly played self-centered guys learning to be part of a team.
Various female stars became prominent by balancing elements of self-
assertiveness with conventional female glamour—whether the gumption
and gams displayed by Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, the grace yet grit
of Greer Garson, or Jennifer Jones’s ability to be both earthy and innocent
(in different proportion depending on the role). Representative of the inter-
est in psychoanalysis, a number of actresses starred as characters with frag-
mented psyches: Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942), Ginger Rogers in Lady
in the Dark (1944), Joan Crawford in Possessed (1947), Gene Tierney in Leave
Her to Heaven (1947), Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (1948). Female
stars such as Veronica Lake, Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, and Barbara Stan-
wyck also delved into the duplicitous figure of the femme fatale common to
noir (Renov).
The most emblematic stars of the decade, though, were the actors who
crafted images of weary souls, cynical about the world but upholding a
sense of morality and justice nonetheless. Deming’s analysis of the decade’s
films reveals the prevalence of disenchanted heroes who take up the war
effort, yet often with a semi-suicidal sacrifice implicit. She connects these
figures to “tough guys” after the war actively courting the ultimate dis-
investment of death. Whether crusading in the cycle of social problem films
that developed during the postwar period or wading through webs of
intrigue in noir thrillers, leading men (John Garfield and James Cagney
again, but also Robert Mitchum and Dick Powell, among others) doggedly
carried on in their missions, even though they were not certain of victory,
or even survival (Naremore; Palmer). Nowhere is this more evident than in
the rise to popularity of Humphrey Bogart, whose star image perfectly
demonstrates the dualities of the era, and who stands as probably the most
iconic star of the entire decade. He and others gave voice to the dis-ease
many seemed to feel at the time, yet these stars appeared to hold seemingly
opposite aspects together and resolve the tensions, at least for the duration
of each performance.
In various ways, the stars discussed in this volume negotiated the un-
stable, ever-shifting terrain of the 1940s and helped audiences do the same.
Certain stars are emblematic of the decade. The comic duo of Abbott and
Costello, as David Sedman describes, shot to stardom in a series of military
farces that helped prepare a still wary American public for entrance into
another war. Their slide after the war and rebound toward the end of the
10 SEAN GRIFFIN

decade by uniting with various iconic horror figures is an almost perfect

mapping of how many stars had to reconfigure their careers across this
period. Similarly, Hannah Hamad details how Greer Garson became the
queen of the MGM lot in the early 1940s, supplanting Greta Garbo, Joan
Crawford, and Norma Shearer, but then found it difficult to adjust to post-
war tastes. The 1940s also saw the rise of the pinup, and Adrienne McLean
examines the two most famous ones: Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth.
McLean shows how the two, in different ways, counterbalanced the overt
objectification of their bodies with expressions of female independence.
While such a balance fit the “Rosie the Riveter” era of the war, it became
more problematic afterward. McLean details how Grable began to fade in
popularity toward the end of the decade and Hayworth became the source
of scandal for asserting what was considered a bit too much independence
in her affair with Aly Khan. Robin Blaetz describes how Ingrid Bergman
was also punished by Hollywood for her extramarital relationship with Ital-
ian director Roberto Rossellini. Having become one of the most respected
and in-demand stars of the mid-1940s, Bergman’s story provides a stark
picture of how quickly fortunes could change during this era.
As mentioned, Humphrey Bogart has become symbolic of 1940s Holly-
wood, precisely for his ability to straddle categories and attitudes—arguably
American cinema’s first antihero. Rick Worland describes Bogart’s path
from villain in supporting parts to existential romantic figure. Part of that
transition happened through the chemistry the actor found with Ingrid
Bergman in Casablanca (1943), and then in his films with Lauren Bacall.
Worland also examines the rise of Bacall, who developed a female persona
that matched Bogart’s sense of strength yet cynicism. Ed Countryman’s chap-
ter on John Wayne suggests many parallels between Wayne and Bogart.
While Wayne is often regarded as an uncomplicated icon of American mas-
culinity, Countryman shows how often Wayne played characters who were
just as world-weary and emotionally isolated as Bogart in his westerns and
war films of the 1940s. The personae of singing cowboy stars Gene Autry
and Roy Rogers are considered usually in even more simplistic terms than
Wayne. Ed Buscombe, though, displays how each, in his own way, medi-
ated between city and county and between tradition and modernity.
Charlie Keil’s examination of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant along
with David Lugowski’s discussion of Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, and
Barbara Stanwyck are reminders that performers who rose to prominence
in the 1930s had to negotiate the ever-shifting terrain of the 1940s as well.
Both authors describe the personae that had served each of these stars ear-
lier, and then show how those images were altered to maintain popularity
 INTRODUCTION 11

both during the war and afterward. In particular, the female stars in vari-
ous ways domesticated their images—or played characters punished for
their independence and strength. Grant’s image, though, as Keil points out,
also felt pressure to become more “ordinary.” The emphasis on stars as not
much different than the average Joe or Jane trails through many of the
analyses in this volume. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the popu-
larity of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland during the decade. My overview
of their careers shows how audiences liked to perceive them as “ordinary
Americans” or average teenagers, even though it was plainly obvious how
extraordinarily talented they were. That both had troubles balancing that
sense of ordinariness and extraordinariness in the latter half of the 1940s
matches up with the experiences of many of the other stars investigated
herein.
In sum, the 1940s were—for the United States, for Hollywood, and for
its stars—exhilarating and frightening, filled with potential and uncertainty:
the best of times and the worst of times, but always (as Bogart’s Sam Spade
intones at the end of The Maltese Falcon [1941]) what dreams were made of.
 1 ★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩
Abbott and Costello
Who’s on First?
DAVID SEDMAN

Up from the deeps of bedizened burlesque, and toting all the gags
mellowed in the memories of that medium and the medicine shows
before it, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello have spiraled in two short years
and seven quick pictures from nowhere on the screen to the Number
One spot among the Money-Making Stars.
—William R. Weaver, Motion Picture Herald, 26 December 1942

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were undeniably the most

prolific comedic actors of the 1940s. In that single decade the comedians
appeared in more than two dozen films, as well as performed live on

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello portrait, c. 1944. Collection of the author.

12
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 13

stage, broadcast multiple radio shows, appeared on Broadway, and made

numerous fund-raising tours to sell U.S. war bonds. Their slapstick routines
and flawless comedic timing captivated audiences and helped catapult
them to fame far beyond the burlesque shows in which they began their
partnership.
In contrast to some Hollywood stars of the era who tried to maintain
some degree of privacy in their lives, Abbott and Costello chose the path of
all-out publicity to further enhance their reputations. Consistent exposure
was the guiding force in building their public image and promoting them as
the country’s preeminent comedy team. Publicity experts, as well as the duo’s
film studios (Universal and MGM) and broadcast networks (NBC and ABC),
went to considerable effort to ensure that the public knew what Abbott and
Costello were up to personally as well as professionally. Abbott and Cos-
tello’s onscreen and offscreen pursuits were covered regularly throughout
the 1940s by the major Hollywood columnists, including Hedda Hopper,
Wood Soanes, Sheilah Graham, and Jimmy Fidler. The sheer volume of
their appearances in films and broadcasting led to consistent coverage by
fan magazines such as Photoplay, Screenland, Motion Picture, and Movie Story.
Beginning in 1948, they even had their own monthly comic book. The pair
granted scores of interviews to the press and enjoyed performing for
reporters while relating colorful stories about their days on the burlesque
circuit prior to hitting it big.

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ The Abbott and Costello Story
Bud Abbott was born in 1895 to parents working in the cir-
cus. He left school at fourteen to work at Coney Island, which led to jobs in
the theater and vaudeville. He married burlesque dancer and comedienne
Betty Smith in 1918 and began producing touring shows. By the mid-
1920s, Abbott had become a highly regarded straight man on the burlesque
circuit.
Lou Costello was athletic as a youth and excelled in basketball and box-
ing at school. His athletic skills were put to good use when he was hired as
a stuntman in Hollywood in the late 1920s. When that failed to provide a
steady income, Costello decided to become a performer in burlesque. Like
Abbott, he was also married to a burlesque dancer, Anne Battler. As a
result, Abbott and his wife would cross professional paths with Costello and
his wife while touring the country. Abbott and Costello worked together for
the first time in 1935 and became a comedy team in 1936, with Abbott
playing the part of the straight man and Costello delivering the punch lines.
14 DAVID SEDMAN

The comedy pair’s humor was anything but subtle. As Abbott put it, “There
are only two types of comedy: there’s the topical such as Jack Benny and
Bob Hope do, and there’s the old-fashioned corny comedy from the ‘burley’
houses—and that’s us” (Frank Daugherty, “Comedy as Comedians See It,”
Christian Science Monitor, 17 October 1941, 14). Abbott explained that their
approach to comedy was based on two-man comic strips such as Mutt and
Jeff. From the newspapers came their formula: “Right then an idea was
born, why couldn’t we be animated comic strips?” (Hold That Ghost Show
Showman’s Manual, 1941).
Abbott and Costello’s rise as a team was rather rapid by show-business
standards. They secured an agent and manager, Eddie Sherman, and were
represented by Sam Weisbord of the William Morris Agency. Within three
years of debuting the new formula on the burlesque stage, they received
their first national exposure on radio’s “Kate Smith Hour” as guest per-
formers in 1938. Their popularity grew, and they continued on as “Smith
Hour” regulars for the next two years. This led to roles in a 1939 Broadway
musical, The Streets of Paris, for which they received rave reviews. Holly-
wood scouts soon recognized their stage presence and visual humor, and
the bid was made.
In 1940, Universal Pictures signed the comedy team for the musical One
Night in the Tropics (1940), designed primarily as a showcase for its star,
Allan Jones. Abbott and Costello would be supporting characters and, sup-
posedly, perform one comedy bit. The duo’s first filmed scene was what was
to become their signature skit, “Who’s on First?”—the baseball-themed
routine that had captivated audiences on the burlesque circuit. The news
from the set was that Abbott and Costello’s comic timing was so stellar that
they might be headliners on film and certainly deserved more exposure in
Tropics.
Universal was confident enough in the duo’s appeal that it directed its
newsreel division to highlight them in coverage of the film’s world premiere
in July 1940. The studio moved the scheduled October opening of One Night
in the Tropics from New Orleans to Lou Costello’s hometown of Paterson,
New Jersey, where Costello was performing a benefit to help raise funds for
his church. Universal took no rental fees for the opening, and the publicity
continued with the town declaring it “Costello Day” as its native son broke
ground on the site of the new Saint Anthony’s Church.
The Abbott and Costello publicity effort would continue unbridled
throughout the decade. Their success encapsulated the American dream, a
storyline that would only escalate thanks to the star-making publicity
machinery of 1940s Hollywood.
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 15

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ Early Publicity in Hollywood
“Publicity,” Lou Costello said. “We’re always reading things we didn’t do.”
—Frederick James Smith, This Week Magazine, 28 September 1941

In the late 1930s, Abbott and Costello gave the impression

that their earliest professional meetings occurred in 1929. They told of their
struggles together until being discovered in 1938. The team reportedly
could make as much as $100 a week during the 1930s (Frank S. Nugent,
“Loco Boys Make Good,” New York Times Magazine, 24 August 1941, 112).
In the embellished story, the comedy duo met their spouses simultaneously
at an unspecified performance after separating the dancers during a “back-
stage squabble” (Dee Lowrance, “Hollywood Finds a New Team,” Washington
Post, 1 June 1941, L1). In a nationally syndicated column, Dale Harrison’s
“New York,” Costello punctuated the story by saying that the newfound
female acquaintances were plied with the invitation, “Let us all go forth to
a lunch wagon and partake of some rare delicacies—hamburgers with
onions, let us say” (Reno Evening Gazette, 12 July 1939, 4). From there,
Costello said it was true love and both were married. While this account
was not quite accurate in its timeline, the populist storyline would play well
to an America that had suffered through the Depression years. For Univer-
sal Studios, having signed the duo to star in two low-budget B-comedies
following One Night at the Tropics, the rags-to-riches theme was too good to
pass up.
Universal’s publicity was based upon the theme that the team began its
professional alliance in 1930, with success following many years of finan-
cial deprivation. The studio’s bio, sent out to both the press and fans,
began, “Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in 1940 celebrated their tenth year
as partners and their second year as partners with money in the bank”
(Abbott and Costello–Biography, News Release, 1940–1942). Articles in the
press that echoed the Universal bio were commonplace in the early 1940s.
Wood Soanes, in his nationally syndicated column, wrote that the comic
pair “had been turned away from the studios and been kicked around gen-
erally” (“Curtain Calls: Miracle of Abbott, Costello Told,” Oakland Tribune,
25 August 1941, 14). Movie Album wrote, “The death of vaudeville hit the
boys hard, and they were playing for peanuts” prior to getting into movies
(“Fun for Your Money,” 1941, 30). In the pages of the Movie-Radio Guide,
Abbott and Costello’s struggles were said to have occurred after the “1929
era,” where “for seven years they kicked about ‘small time’ and offered
their act for free to passers-by in Times Square.” The publication awarded
the duo its “Stars of the Year” award because “never has there been such an
16 DAVID SEDMAN

utter phenomenon as the team of Abbott and Costello” (“Stars of the Year:
Abbott and Costello,” 12–18 July 1941, 8).
The comedy team’s leap from obscurity to stardom is generally told in
fan magazines and newspapers as that “one big break” where “dame for-
tune smiled upon” them. One could easily point to the team hooking up
with manager Eddie Sherman and getting William Morris representation
from Sam Weisbord as their biggest breaks. Television producer and direc-
tor Bob Banner, who directed the TV biopic Bud and Lou (1978) and also
once worked with the boys in live television, said that “Sherman ran their
lives” and was responsible for virtually all their professional dealings (per-
sonal interview, 14 June 2007). Of Weisbord, Norman Brokaw, the founder
and chairman of William Morris, said, “We get the talent in the right ven-
ues; that’s what we do and that’s what Sam could do” (personal interview,
15 June 2007). The notion of a singular big break is a moving target because
the story as told by Abbott and Costello themselves incorporates several
“one big break” themes.
One story the pair liked to tell was that Jesse Kay of the Roxy Theatre
gave them their biggest break by moving them out of small-time appear-
ances and to a much bigger presence on the stage of the Roxy. Another of
their oft-told stories is that Harry Kaufman gave them their break by put-
ting them in the Broadway version of The Streets of Paris, which legitimized
their stature beyond the burlesque circuit. Another undeniable big break
was that Ted Smith, Kate Smith’s manager, saw the pair live and was con-
vinced by Weisbord and Sherman to feature them as guests on “The Kate
Smith Hour.” The guest spot proved so successful that it turned into nearly
a hundred consecutive guest spots on Smith’s show. And again, another big
break came when producer Jules Levey wanted them for a supporting role
in Universal’s One Night at the Tropics.
Despite the fact that the team’s success revolved around a series of
major breaks that occurred in a timeframe between roughly 1937 and 1941,
Abbott and Costello would generally concentrate their success on one big
break as opposed to a series of breaks, apparently to make the storyline
more approachable to their readers. That big break varied from interview to
interview. Yet one of the lesser-told storylines of their fame in Hollywood
was their pairing with producer Alex Gottlieb in 1940 for their first starring
role in Universal’s Buck Privates (1941). Although rarely focused on publicly,
it would be a milestone in the team’s professional history.
Gottlieb was a reporter who became a publicity director in live theater in
the 1930s and moved on to publicity and advertising jobs in the film industry,
after which he began writing for both radio and film. With this diverse back-
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 17

ground, Universal hired him as a producer for Buck Privates. Much like RKO’s
Wheeler and Woolsey and Fox’s Ritz Brothers films made in the 1930s, Gott-
lieb said his goal was made clear by the head of Universal with the Abbott
and Costello comedies: “Do anything you want with them, just make the pic-
tures and don’t spend too much money” (Furmanek and Palumbo 43).
Gottlieb’s frugality and efficiency was embodied on the set. Moreover,
it led to a large profit potential and a model for virtually every Universal
Abbott and Costello film to follow. The formula was rather straightforward:
shoot the project quickly while allowing the comedy team to fulfill its radio
commitments and live touring schedules. The key was to get as much in
one take as possible. This method only worked because Abbott and Costello
frowned upon multiple takes and eschewed most rehearsals. Their enor-
mous talent for performing comedy bits flawlessly on the burlesque stage
translated well to the medium of film where they could perform their
scenes in a time-efficient manner. While most films of the period would
take several months to shoot prior to their post-production editing, Buck
Privates was shot in about twenty shooting days covering four weeks,
including a break at Christmas. Within three weeks of wrapping its shoot-
ing schedule, the film was edited, given its premiere, and released as a B-
picture which, like any such B-film, was designed to play with A-films as
the lower half of a double bill.
Buck Privates is fairly typical of most of Abbott and Costello’s films in
which they work in comedy bits from their live act. The boys play Slicker
Smith and Herbie Brown, tie salesmen struggling to make ends meet, either
looking for a better job opportunity or becoming entangled in some comi-
cal scenario not of their own making. Peddling their wares from the street
with no small amount of hucksterism, Slicker and Herbie also must stay one
step ahead of the police. One fateful day, the boys elude the police by enter-
ing a movie theater. While there, they sign up for what they think is a
drawing for a prize, only to find out that the theater has become an army
recruiting center and that they have unwittingly volunteered for the
army. This turn of events allows Abbott and Costello to perform a comedy
routine from their stage act known as “The Drill,” in which the boys deliver
a staggering array of jokes and sight gags. As straight man, Abbott’s Slicker
barks out “Order arms,” to which Costello’s Herbie responds with “I’ll have
a cap gun.” This basic formula would repeat itself throughout much of the
Abbott and Costello oeuvre of the 1940s.
In their first starring film roles, Abbott and Costello delighted audiences.
Gottlieb and company had delivered in a big way, as Buck Privates would
become Universal’s biggest grossing film in 1941, taking in $4 million at the
18 DAVID SEDMAN

box office (which was more than the year’s most talked-about film, Orson
Welles’s Citizen Kane). Reviews were stellar. Variety noted that the film “has
a good chance to skyrocket the former burlesk and radio team of Bud Abbott
and Lou Costello into topflight starring ranks” (5 February 1941, 12). There
was a word of caution in the Dallas Morning News review, however: “Unless
they are badly messed up by corny handling, they will take a place among
movie greats” (John Rosenfeld, “Ladeez and Gen’mun, Abbott and Costello,”
6 April 1941, 6:1). The concern voiced by the Dallas critic and a number of
others centered on the longevity of comedy teams in general. In the 1930s,
teams such as Wheeler and Woolsey and Olsen and Johnson had simply run
out of good quality scripts. As a result, the shelf life of comedy teams in Hol-
lywood tended to be rather short. The publicity savvy of Gottlieb came to the
fore, however: he declared that he had writers working on some ninety-two
stories that would keep Bud and Lou busy until the year 1983.
The success of Abbott and Costello’s first film was a pleasant surprise
and, at the same time, a missed opportunity for Universal. Because Buck Pri-
vates was released as a B-film, the lion’s share of the profits went not to the
studio but to the movie theater exhibitors. It was something of an embar-
rassment that a film the studio had pegged as a B-film outgrossed all of the
more prestigious films that it had released as A-pictures. Universal quickly
realized the financial error it had made and sold the team’s second starring
film, In the Navy (1941), as an A-picture.

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ Giving the Public What It Wants
Sure we know it’s low comedy that we do, but that’s apparently just what
the public wants. . . . 100,000,000 Americans can’t be wrong.
—Lou Costello, qtd. in Hold That Ghost
Showman’s Manual, 1941, 1

In the two-year period 1941–1942, Abbott and Costello

starred in a staggering eight feature films. They filmed five to six days a
week, and, on Sundays, they were also regular performers on “The Chase
and Sanborn Hour” radio show starring the venerable ventriloquist Edgar
Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy. This was said to be by design, as
Universal publicity noted that Bud and Lou “have a dread of inactivity, real
or anticipated. When a variety man is not busy, he is out of work and out
of pocket. In a decade of vaudeville, night club engagements, tent shows,
tabloid tours, and revue assignments, Abbott and Costello were never at lib-
erty” (Who Done It? Showman’s Manual, 1942, 2). Scripts for the comedy
team were prepared while one film was in release and another was being
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 19

Abbott and Costello’s humor was anything but subtle; here the pair yuck it up for pub-
licity shots on the set of Keep ’Em Flying (1941), one of four service comedies made by
the team during the 1940s. Copyright 1941, Universal Pictures, Inc.

shot. As Costello said, “If you don’t have a good picture ready to show right
now, you’re a dead duck” (Don Reeve, “Rumors on Set of Killers,” Univer-
sal Studios News Release, 1 March 1949, 1).
Three of their eight films, Buck Privates, In the Navy, and Keep ’Em Flying
(1941), were service comedies that played well as America entered World
War II. In her nationally syndicated column, Hedda Hopper called Abbott
and Costello “the first cinematic heroes of the present war” (“Balmy
20 DAVID SEDMAN

Biographies!,” Washington Post, 17 June 1942, 14). Some articles attributed

the success of these service comedies as the team’s sole reason for becom-
ing breakout film stars. “Loyal Americans and excellent citizens, Bud and
Lou hate and despise Hitler, but had it not been for him and that atmos-
phere,” a 1942 Liberty magazine cover story noted, “Abbott and Costello
would probably still be playing some four-a-day grinder” (Frederick Van-
Ryn, “Abbott, Costello, and Hitler,” 23 May 1942, 21). Twice in 1942,
Abbott and Costello would prove their loyalty by engaging in cross-country
tours raising money for the war effort.
Following Pardon My Sarong (1942), the team decided to tour to buy a
bomber to knock out Hitler. Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson sug-
gested that the tour be revised to raise money for the Army Emergency
Relief Fund. The comedy team’s connection to the public was never made
clearer than when they had no problem raising their targeted goal of
$500,000. After shooting Who Done It? (1942), Abbott and Costello toured
seventy-eight cities in thirty-four days and raised a staggering $85 million
for war bonds and stamps (It Ain’t Hay Showman’s Manual, 1943, 3).
The combination of radio, burlesque tours, war bond tours, populist mar-
keting, and approachable humor led the public to feel extremely close to the
comedy duo. Children, in particular, had no reservations about approaching
them for special requests. One such example occurred on their cross-country
tour. On a stop in Omaha, a twelve-year-old named Jerry Young sneaked into
their hotel and offered Abbott and Costello seventy cents to perform at a
benefit being held in the child’s backyard. After an appearance in nearby
Lincoln, the comedy team honored their commitment to the youth, helping
him raise some eighty dollars. The exploits of Costello, Abbott, and Young
made national headlines and their show was even captured in an issue of
True Comics (“Jerry Young Presents Abbott and Costello,” December 1942,
52–53). On another stop, some boys requested a cheering-up gift to a local
orphanage, and Costello soon sent a case of gum to the children there.
For Universal, the embedding of its star comics in public service an-
nouncements and newsreels, as well as promoting the boys’ great service to
the country on their fund-raising tours, was pure gold. In a report of its
own war effort carried in the Film Daily Yearbook of 1943, Universal ex-
plained how the studio worked closely with the Navy and War Departments
on two Abbott and Costello service comedies. The publicity department’s
copy was well rooted in patriotism: “Long before Pearl Harbor, Universal
pictures went on alert. Buck Privates starring that indefatigable pair, Abbott
and Costello, broke the ice for a steady flow of productions keyed to the war
effort before and since that fateful December 7” (Alicoate 232).
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 21

In 1942, the comedy pair toured seventy-eight cities in just over a month and raised $85
million for the war effort; this photo taken by a fan in the crowd of an event in Septem-
ber 1942 demonstrates the magnitude of the event. Collection of the author.

In the years 1941 through 1944, Abbott and Costello placed in the Top
Ten of the annual Motion Picture Herald Exhibitor Poll each year, including a
first-place finish in 1942. The New York Times called them the “best and most
promising clowns to hit the screen in ten years” (“Low Comedy of a High
Order,” 15 June 1941, X3). In an article explaining why Abbott and Costello
were “slap happy,” the pair felt their stock had risen to the point that they
valued their gags—which they willed to their sons, Bud Jr. and Lou Jr.—at
$100,000,000 (Movie Life Yearbook, “Why Abbott and Costello are Slap
Happy,” 1943, 92).
But despite their number one status at the box office, their incredible
good will from the American public, and their continued presence in live
shows, radio broadcasts, and films, trouble was just under the surface. The
quickly produced films that were once seen as box office security were
becoming too similar. These films, which had thin premises even by Abbott
and Costello standards, began receiving fewer positive reviews. For Univer-
sal, the films were profitable and allowed the studio to finance more pres-
tigious films during a period in which it was trying to recast itself as a
serious movie studio. But Abbott and Costello did not sit back quietly and
let this happen; they began to use the press to complain about the ongoing
film production system of the 1940s. This led to favorable press coverage in
22 DAVID SEDMAN

their support. An example can be found in a 1942 issue of the fan magazine
Hollywood:
When Hollywood wants to get rid of a player, it uses its own peculiar process
that works like slow poison. Poor stories, typed roles, unsympathetic parts,
too much publicity. . . . Right now, the most flagrant case of killing players is
going on with Abbott and Costello. They’re new in Hollywood. They don’t
know how the subtle, slow killing works. They’re being shoved into one pic-
ture after another. . . . Every critic in the country is crying out against the
treatment they’re receiving. But they’re a couple of geese who are laying
golden eggs. Yet, their studio insists upon feeding them material that is better
suited for the scrap heap. “They’re giving us five dollar stories,” they com-
plain bitterly, “but what can we do about it?”
(Gene Schrott, “How Hollywood Kills Its Stars,” July 1942, 25)

Universal was aware of the concerns and countered such articles in the
publicity material it sent to motion picture exhibitors. In the 1942 show-
man’s manual for Who Done It? the studio highlighted the fact that it was the
boys’ ninth comedy in two years. It commented, “All this talk about the
boys making too many pictures and thereby recklessly spending their box
office value seems to be just that—talk.” Despite the publicity effort and the
financial success of each Abbott and Costello film, many reviewers directed
their critical barbs not at the actors but toward the film studio for the short-
comings that were apparent in the films. A New York Times review of the
comedy team’s film In Society (1944) demonstrates the focus of the problem
for Universal:
Probably no other comedy team in pictures has been so sincerely and enthu-
siastically supported by screen observers and critics generally. Whatever crit-
icisms have been leveled, they have been pointed, not at the comedians, but
at their vehicles. This almost universal loyalty from the press springs from the
personal warmth of the comedians themselves plus a deep faith, on the parts
of most critics, in the real comedy potentialities of the two men. Thus we find
a team generally accredited with having all the qualifications of a long-
enduring comedy and money-earning combination being bled white, so to
speak, in pieces beneath their abilities. . . . In Society will undoubtedly make
money for the studio, too. But what will they do for Abbott and Costello?
That’s the thought for today.
(Paul P. Kennedy, “Abbott-Costello, Inc.,” 24 August 1944, X1)

Many Hollywood columnists credited Deanna Durbin and Abbott and

Costello with saving Universal Studios from financial ruin. But, by the end
of the war, even Universal had to rethink its handling of its top-drawing stars,
as its comedy team would drop off the list of the top ten money-making
stars for three consecutive years, 1945 through 1947. In the marketing of
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 23

comedy teams, Hollywood had found it difficult to resurrect a comedy

team’s act once it began to fade at the box office. As such, Universal had a
challenge ahead of it.

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ Refreshing the Act
Although enormous profits continued to be derived from
each Abbott and Costello film, problems began to exist for Universal in the
marketing of the duo. Universal had built an image based upon a couple of
regular Joes who had struggled together since the beginning of the Depres-
sion and who were enormously patriotic during World War II. But once
both the war and the Depression had ended, the studio had to face the fact
that what it had was a very rich but aging property. Critics complained
about the studio’s handling of its stars, but if there were any question about
the comedy team being well compensated for its endeavors, a Treasury
Department report put an end to it. For the 1943 tax year, the Treasury
Department listed Abbott and Costello as the fourth-highest earners in the
country, at $424,320 (“Film Magnate Again Tops U.S. Personal Income
List,” Dallas Morning News, 13 December 1945, 6). (Abbott and Costello had
the distinction of being the only unrelated taxpayers in the country consid-
ered as a pair.) The next year, the Treasury Department listed them as the
highest salary earners of 1944 with $469,170, just ahead of the combined
salaries of Universal’s chairman of the board J. Cheever Cowdin and Uni-
versal executive producer N. J. Blumberg (“Abbott, Costello Top Big Pay
List,” New York Times, 7 January 1947, 27).
To combat the potential for the public viewing its underdogs, the “Mutt
and Jeff” comedy duo, as getting too big for its britches, Universal publicity
sent out a press release that explained how Abbott and Costello spent their
money. Said Abbott and Costello:
Well, we give each of us $234,535. Then each one of us gives Uncle Sam
$175,000. Then we toss most of the remainder into the foundation. Then we
spend a little bit on our families, and, if there’s any left over, we go out and
buy a new shirt or a pair of socks. . . . Just shows what success can do for a
couple of guys—it makes paupers out of them!
(qtd. in Don Reeve, Buck Privates Come Home,
Universal Studios News Release, 16 February 1947, 1)

The publicity material added that Bud and Lou were known as “soft
touches for any worthy cause.” When they heard of a child who needed
life-saving surgery, they paid all expenses, “all of this without the benefit of
publicity,” according to a Universal press release (Reeve, Buck Privates
24 DAVID SEDMAN

Abbott and Costello were recognized as among Hollywood’s most generous stars; here
they pose with Father Bernard Hubbard (a.k.a. the “Glacier priest”) as Bud and Lou
reportedly give up their personal 16 mm film library and projectors for the sake of Amer-
ica’s “entertainment starved troops” in the Aleutians. Collection of the author.
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 25

Come Home, 1). In another instance, an Oklahoman in need of an iron

lung was sent the medical item, and Bud and Lou paid all related costs. The
comedians helped acquire a “new wonder drug” known as penicillin to save
the life of a two-year-old (“Ethel Powell Gives Rare Drug to Boy,” Case
Grande Dispatch, 24 September 1948, 8). Even Abbott’s own restaurant, The
Stagedoor, was a haven for people who needed a meal or a job. Said to lose
about $50,000 per year, the restaurant, Abbott claimed, was purchased and
operated to help those in need. “For years,” he said, “I walked the sidewalks
without the price of beer in my pocket. I finally made enough money to buy
a place” where he and some selected patrons who were less fortunate could
“receive a free meal” (Don Reeve, “Bud Offered $75k for His Restaurant,”
Universal Studios News Release, 23 February 1949, 1). Abbott said he
would put old-time friends who found themselves out of work on his pay-
roll as assistant managers at his restaurant. This theme of helping out the
less fortunate extended to the movie sets, according to Lou’s daughter
Chris. She explained that it was not uncommon for Costello to “support the
underdog” and provide accommodations for cast and crew that the studio
would not fund. In one instance, Costello used his own money to buy air-
conditioned trailers for co-stars because Universal would only provide
flimsy tents (personal interview with Chris Costello, 21 May 2007).
One reason that Abbott and Costello earned as much as they did was
because of their grueling schedule, which included their weekly radio show,
films, endorsements for products ranging from antacids to car batteries, and
personal appearances. The sheer amount of time spent together took a
physical and mental toll on both. Lou Costello was diagnosed with rheu-
matic fever that took him out of work for parts of 1943 and 1944. Further
bad news came in 1944 when Costello’s infant son, Butch, drowned in the
family swimming pool. Even though Costello, in show business tradition,
continued with his professional duties the night after learning of Butch’s
death, the event obviously changed Costello forever. He would create a
foundation devoted to building a youth center in Los Angeles for under-
privileged children.
The team faced further unfortunate events at this time. Alex Gottlieb,
who had produced eight of the team’s comedies, left Universal for Warner
Bros., and his understanding of how to handle the team was to be sorely
missed. Each of the next three Abbott and Costello films—In Society (1944),
Lost in a Harem (1944), and Here Come the Co-eds (1945)—would have differ-
ent producers, each with only middling success. Meanwhile, in Washing-
ton, D.C., some criticism was leveled at the nature of the war bond sales
effort. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau criticized a press release from
26 DAVID SEDMAN

Universal’s publicity department lauding Abbott and Costello’s war bond

efforts. Morgenthau said that entertainers should not exploit bond sales for
personal publicity. He commented, “I have been watching this sort of thing
and will check it still more closely” (“Scores Publicity for Bond Sellers,” New
York Times, 16 July 1942, 11).
Finally, in 1945, rumors of a split between Abbott and Costello were
becoming rampant. A national column by Elizabeth Poston suggested that
the team was finished. In the article, Costello said there was no reconciling
his differences with Abbott: “I’ve tried to keep the team together, but
Abbott and his advisors have been hitting me time and again below the
belt” (“Funny Man Lou Costello Bares an Old Feud with Bud Abbott,” The
Oklahoman, 22 July 1945, 9). Other gossip columns echoed that the split
was either imminent or had already taken place.
One of the earliest internal memos at Universal dealing with such con-
cerns suggested changing the duo’s bio to say that their initial performance
together occurred in 1936 rather than in 1930. In a January 1947 memo,
publicity chief Maurice Bergman wondered if the studio were to alter their
timeline up and accordingly promote the team’s tenth anniversary that
“we might freshen the boys up a bit,” especially if “it is a fact.” Indeed, Uni-
versal moved up the anniversary, and their future communications cited
1936 as the year the team first appeared in vaudeville acts together, at a
Chicago theater. As a result, Abbott and Costello had two twelfth anniver-
saries, one cited in the publicity materials for Rio Rita (1941) (Rio Rita Show-
man’s Manual, 1941, 4) and another in a Universal press release picked up
by a number of newspapers (Don Reeve, “Bud and Lou Celebrate Their
12th Anniversary,” Universal Studios News Release, 27 September 1948, 1).
Many articles in the early 1940s referenced the boys’ propensity for
playing rummy on the set with each other. This masked the reality that they
were well known among insiders as big-time gamblers in poker and horse
racing. As a result, they became involved with non-Hollywood business-
men, which in one case led to a legal battle. The team was subpoenaed and
forced to testify in a trial involving a nightclub owner and poker acquain-
tance to whom the comedians had paid $85,000 in a four-year stretch
(“Abbott and Costello Subpoenaed,” New York Times, 21 March 1947, 28).
This not only was their first widely reported negative publicity but also the
first indication of their financial liabilities. The financial woes would mount
by decade’s end to the point that Costello faced tax liens from the Internal
Revenue Service (“Costello, Flynn Faced by Income Tax Liens,” Cedar Rapids
Times, 21 September 1949, 18) and Abbott was forced into bankruptcy dur-
ing the 1950s. Universal’s publicity department was also concerned about
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 27

the impact the gambling-related trial might have on its stars. At the time of
the trial, it issued a press release: “Costello has never taken an alcoholic
drink nor a smoke, they gambled for money just once in films but then
didn’t hold their winnings. Neither has knowingly broken a law.” In an
almost hopeful tone, the release continued, “Few other fun-maker pairs
have held on to box office potency through as many pictures as Abbott and
Costello. . . . Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are still going strong but have not
approached Abbott and Costello’s 20 vehicles” (Harry Friedman, Wistful
Widow of Wagon Gap, 6 June 1947, 1).
The most aggressive publicity campaign was associated with the Lou
Costello Jr. Youth Foundation. The actors personally funded $400,000 for a
community space for underprivileged children in Los Angeles, which
opened its doors in 1947. Costello also produced a film short, 10,000 Kids
and a Cop (1948), that would be shown in movie theaters across the United
States to spotlight the project. Columnist Jimmie Fidler wrote that despite
the fact that the pair would never win Academy Awards, they should
receive “an even more enviable award. They’re neither child psychologists,
‘welfare workers’ nor reformers—just good Americans who saw a job to do
and did it” (“Costello’s Charity Going Strong,” The Oklahoman, 22 May
1947, 11). In another column, Fidler noted that they “deserve an extra deep
bow” for donating all proceeds from one of their films to the foundation,
and appealed to other stars to donate to the cause. “I want to wonder a bit
about the apathy of other in-the-money stars who seem strangely disinter-
ested in the magnificent job that these two comics are doing” (“There
Oughta Be a Law,” The Oklahoman, 11 November 1947, 13).
In hoping to refresh the act, Universal also heeded advice from its stars
and from the industry and raised the bar on the first two postwar Abbott
and Costello films, Little Giant (1946) and The Time of Their Lives (1946). A
top-rated director, William A. Seiter, was brought in to direct Little Giant,
working from a script that downplayed gags and slapstick. In the publicity
material for the film, Seiter said that “an artist must grow or fall into a
decline. And since there seemed no further room for improvement in the
established technique of Abbott and Costello, it followed a new prescription
was indicated” (Little Giant Showman’s Manual, 1946, 5).
Both films broke the established formula of Bud as straight man, Lou as
funnyman, and scenes built around comedy bits from the team’s stage act.
The Time of Their Lives best reflects the new approach, featuring Costello as
Horatio, an eighteenth-century tinker hoping to marry a housemaid. His
rival is Abbott’s character, a butler named Cuthbert. Horatio and the house-
maid’s mistress are mistaken for traitors and shot to death by the army. The
28 DAVID SEDMAN

story moves to the twentieth century where the ghosts of Horatio and his
fiancée’s mistress are trying to clear their names. Abbott, in a dual role, por-
trays a psychiatrist who is a descendant of Cuthbert. What makes this film
different is that Abbott and Costello’s characters share dialogue in just one
scene early in the film. Not one Abbott and Costello routine from their live
act is included in the film. Abbott would get a chance to play a comic char-
acter instead of the usual straight man. Further, the production costs for The
Time of Their Lives were the highest yet for an Abbott and Costello picture.
The studio brought in director Charles T. Barton, who would direct the
team in its next eight features. The Hollywood Reporter wrote of The Time of
Their Lives, “Something new is being offered by Abbott and Costello. . . .
Long specialists in the borrowed and the blue, Bud and Lou had their first
whirl at situation comedy in Little Giant, and they came out so well that
Universal really throws the book at them. . . . By long odds, it is the best
A&C show to date” (16 August 1946).
Universal International (Universal having merged with International
Pictures in 1946) tried to upgrade Abbott and Costello pictures much as
they were trying to move up into the upper echelon of film studios. In a
press release, Universal International Pictures noted, “This is part of the stu-
dio’s plan to stress that Abbott and Costello are now playing characters in
well-formulated stories, rather than in loosely contrived farces” (Universal
Studios News Release, 4 June 1947, 1). When the box office results did not
pay off, the comedy team went back to familiar turf, doing a sequel to Buck
Privates entitled Buck Privates Come Home (1947). The boys reprised their
roles from the earlier film, now having returned from their tour of duty in
World War II. Playing familiar characters allowed the comedy team to
return to the straight man and funnyman formula associated with their ear-
lier, more successful films.
Their follow-up film, The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947), also found
the team returning to their familiar formula, as Bud and Lou played Duke
Egan and Chester Wooley, traveling salesmen who are wrongfully charged
with murder in a financially strapped Montana town. The scenario has
many comic scenes, including a revised routine from one of their earlier
movies. By film’s end, not only are Duke and Chester cleared of the charge,
but Duke’s claim that the town would be saved financially if the local judge
married the “wistful widow” turns out to be true. Audiences welcomed the
familiarity of Buck Privates Come Home and the Wistful Widow judging by their
success at the box office. This return to form for Abbott and Costello led the
studio to sign a new deal with the team that would call for two low-budget
films per year.
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 29

Costello exploited columnist Sheilah Graham in helping to secure yet

another new contract with Universal International. “Lou Costello had coffee
with me at the U.I. Café and sprung the bombshell that directly [after] he
finishes his current Mexican Hayride [1948] he’ll stage another fight to pry
himself loose from the studio. Lou says he’s not getting enough money”
(“Hollywood in Person,” Dallas Morning News, 2 July 1948, 17). Clearly,
Graham felt burned in a subsequent column pertaining to UI’s new contract
with the comedy team. She wrote, “If Lou Costello ever complains again,
I’ll have no sympathy for him! His new percentage deal, based on returns
of recent pictures, will give him and partner Bud Abbott $1,000,000 for two
pictures—which makes them top earners in Hollywood” (“Hollywood: Good
Deal for Abbott and Costello,” Dallas Morning News, 26 May 1949, 4).

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ Abbott and Costello Meet Profits
at Decade’s End
The formula for the Abbott and Costello films in the late
1940s was straightforward: keep the productions cheap, produce them
quickly, and hold advertising costs low. Abbott and Costello would receive
bonuses for films that came in under budget. UI treated its Abbott and
Costello films like a property akin to a B-series and, as a result, the adver-
tising and marketing budgets were minuscule, often one-tenth the amount
of other comedy films. The advertising agency that handled many of Abbott
and Costello’s films wrote a memo in 1947 to the head of UI, William Goetz,
which pleaded, “Could you possibly use your influence to get Abbott and
Costello to start mentioning on their radio program . . . their forthcoming
picture Buck Privates Come Home . . . in view of the fact we have no national
advertising on this picture . . . most of this success is in their hands” (19
February 1947, 1).
The studio’s reliance on the Abbott and Costello series to maximize
profits is also seen in its use of the team-up concept in which the duo was
paired with some other property owned by the studio. Universal utilized
the characters associated with its successful horror series of the 1930s and
1940s to create new genre-bending films. For example, Abbott and Costello
Meet Frankenstein (1948) was one of UI’s highest earning films of the year.
The film starred Bud and Lou as Chick Young and Wilbur Gray, well inten-
tioned but bumbling railroad baggage clerks. Two crates headed for Mac-
Dougal’s House of Horrors that contain the remains of Frankenstein and
Dracula are mishandled by the clerks. The clerks are then forced to go to
the House of Horrors where a mixture of comedy and thrills await them,
30 DAVID SEDMAN

including meeting up with the Universal Studios monsters Frankenstein,

Dracula, and The Wolf Man.
The financial success of Meet Frankenstein paved the way for Abbott and
Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible
Man (1951), and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953). With
a profit and speed mentality combined with fairly predictable storylines, UI
had virtually ensured that Abbott and Costello would earn neither an Oscar
nomination for their work at the studio nor the critical attention Universal
International had contemplated for the pair just a few years earlier. But
what it did find was a business plan for financial success at a time when stu-
dios were beginning to worry about the impact of television on their profits.
The studio would replicate its production model with the highly profitable
“Ma and Pa Kettle” and “Francis the Talking Mule” films in which the char-
acters’ names were also placed in the title to sell the films to theaters and
audiences alike.
Abbott and Costello’s resurgence at the box office was demonstrated in
their return to the top ten, according to the Exhibitors Poll; they finished
third in both 1948 and 1949. These were the team’s first top ten appear-
ances since 1944. In terms of their standing in the community, Abbott and
Costello were viewed as two of Hollywood’s “Ten Best Citizens” according
to Modern Screen magazine. The Lou Costello Jr. Youth Foundation helped
lead to a 40 percent decrease in juvenile delinquency on Los Angeles’s east
side (“Hollywood’s Ten Best Citizens,” February 1950, 73). From the theater
owner’s standpoint, a Life feature crowned the comedy duo as the champs
at the concession stands. “Their comedies sell more popcorn than anyone,”
said one theater owner (“Popcorn Bonanza,” 25 July 1949, 41). This fact
was not lost on UI, which decided to use the item in their trade advertise-
ment for one of their features (David Lipton, memo to Hank Linet, 25 July
1949, 1).
Though shooting twenty-five feature films in the 1940s, not one Abbott
and Costello movie during this period was shot in color. The decade opened
with Deanna Durbin and Abbott and Costello keeping the lights on at Uni-
versal Studios and, by decade’s end, Hedda Hopper noting that films such as
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein made “everyone at Universal-International
happy because the Abbott and Costello pictures plus Ma and Pa Kettle pay
the salaries” (“$4.5 million for A&C Meet Frankenstein,” Pittsburgh Press, 25
January 1949, 17). While critics still complained about Universal’s treat-
ment of the decade’s busiest and most bankable stars, director Charles Bar-
ton held a different view. He explained that a number of radio comics had
tried to make the transition into films but not all succeeded. “Who made
 ABBOTT AND COSTELLO 31

Bud and Lou?” Barton asked. “It was the studio in back of them that said
we’ll gamble on them” (Furmanek and Palumbo 32).
Despite the smiles within the studio’s accounting office, rumors of
Abbott and Costello’s breakup were still active at the end of the decade. In
Harold Swisher’s United Press Radio Feature, “In Movieland,” Abbott said,
“I hear the rumor is out again that Lou and I are breaking up. Please help
us deny it. We’ve been together 13 years day and night. We’ll continue to
be a team for many years to come. Sure we have squabbles. What partners
don’t?” (18 July 1949, 1). There was a need to quash such rumors; UI itself
may have contributed to the problem by suspending the duo just before the
end of 1949. The studio said it was “just a technicality” so that Universal
would not have to pay the stars’ $6,500 weekly salary while Costello recov-
ered from a prolonged illness (“Costello Illness Cited in Suspension of Duo,”
Cedar Rapids Times, 22 December 1949, 3). Despite the suspension, Abbott
and Costello were poised to start the 1950s in strong form with projects
already lined up. The boys had signed to do their first European comedy
tour, rumors abounded that the pair was being courted to do television,
their radio series continued, and there seemed to be no end in sight for the
Abbott and Costello films. Press agent Joe Glaston and the boys believed
that his clients’ biggest moneymaking film would be Abbott and Costello Meet
Hopalong Cassidy if the money could be raised for the production (Cedar
Rapids Gazette, 1 September 1949, 24).
UI addressed the breakup rumors head-on with a press release suggest-
ing that the two had a lifetime contract that prohibited either from appear-
ing without the other. The contract would run for as long as the two were
physically able to continue their careers together. “I have a copy in my safe
at home,” Abbott said, “and Lou has a copy in his safe” (Reeve, “Rumors on
Set of Killers,” 1). The comedians ended the 1940s looking forward to the
decade ahead and hoping for new and improved professional opportunities.
Costello said, “Comedians like Danny Kaye and Red Skelton get color and
good stories, and girls like Esther Williams in their pictures. We’re third on
the box office list, a bigger draw than any of them. But we’ve never done a
color picture: we’ve never gone on location, and instead of Jane Russell we
get Patricia Alphin. From now on we’re going to give the fans more” (Patri-
cia Clary, “Costello, Well Again, Thinner Than Bud Abbott,” Cedar Rapids
Gazette, 7 September 1949, 13). For the comedy team that had shot more
than two dozen features, starred in hundreds of hours of radio shows, and
made countless personal appearances during the 1940s, as well as perfect-
ing one of comedy’s most enduring sketches in “Who’s on First?,” giving the
fans more would be a daunting task.
32 DAVID SEDMAN

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ Postscript: Bud and Lou after the 1940s
As they entered the 1950s, Costello’s prediction of the team’s
starring in its first color film came true but it would not be backed by Uni-
versal. Instead, Abbott and Costello independently financed their color
feature Jack and the Beanstalk (1952). They appeared on television semi-
regularly as hosts on twenty episodes of the “Colgate Comedy Hour” in
1951, and in two seasons of their own situation comedy, “The Abbott and
Costello Show” in 1952 and 1953. Unfortunately, the added exposure of tele-
vision did not help their longevity as a team. When Abbott and Costello’s
status as the most sought-after comedy pair was taken over by Dean Martin
and Jerry Lewis, the team’s descent was almost as rapid as its rise to stardom.
Abbott and Costello finished 1951 with their seventh top ten ranking in
the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor’s poll, behind Martin and Lewis. Less
than four years later, in 1955, Abbott and Costello found themselves with-
out a studio movie contract when Universal could not reach an agreement
with the two comedians. The team made what would be its final film
together in the independently produced Dance with Me, Henry (1956). The
absence of a regular film, radio, or television series contract meant that the
Hollywood fan magazines provided scant coverage of the pair during the mid-
1950s. For a team that depended on maximum exposure, the future looked
dim. Meanwhile, bad financial news came when, in 1956, at a most in-
opportune time, the IRS forced each of the stars to pay back taxes. The
financial liabilities resulted in tremendous loss of their assets, including
their homes and their film rights. The team even lost its comic book deal
when the publisher, St. John’s, discontinued the comic line in September
1956. When news of their split as a team was announced in 1957, neither
the fan magazines nor the general press gave the story much prominence.
The comedians, known for feuding away from the cameras, continued to
have moments of bad blood. Abbott sued Costello for $222,000 in 1958
over a dispute concerning the amount of money Abbott earned on the sit-
uation comedy earlier in the decade (“Bud Abbott Sues Costello Over Pay,”
The Oklahoman, 12 March 1958, 2). Abbott would retire temporarily from
show business until his less-than-stellar return in the 1960s, while Costello
died in 1959 just after completing his only solo comedy, The 30 Foot Bride of
Candy Rock (1959). Yet the pair received perhaps its most prized recognition
when the Baseball Hall of Fame placed their gold record of the skit “Who’s
on First?” in a permanent exhibit. Said Costello, “This is better than win-
ning an Oscar” (“Baseball Skit in Shrine,” New York Times 30 May 1956, 16).
 2 ★★★★★★★★★★
✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩✩
Gene Autry and
Roy Rogers
The Light of Western Stars
EDWARD BUSCOMBE

Friends have learned to tolerate my apparent obsession with

the western movie (they don’t any longer call them “cowboy films” when
I’m around). Even so, there were some sniggers when I said I was trying to
write something about singing cowboys. “You mean Roy Rogers?” they’d
say with a laugh, scarcely bothering to disguise their disdain. “Do you really
like that stuff?”

Gene Autry portrait, c. 1942; Roy Rogers portrait, c. 1944. Both photos collection of the
author.

33
34 EDWARD BUSCOMBE

Such an apparently simple question raises a lot more questions in turn.

First, there’s the assumption that in order to write about something you
have to actively enjoy it. Perhaps only people who aren’t film studies aca-
demics (normal people, if you like) believe that. They think that film criti-
cism or film history is a sort of cheerleading activity. You write about things
to convey your enthusiasm and hopefully to convert others to your enthu-
siasm. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and I’ve done it myself.
But that’s not why I am writing this piece. I really don’t mind if not one
reader is inspired to watch a Gene Autry film. I don’t want to turn anyone
into a fan. I’m not really a fan myself. What I’d like to do is try to under-
stand something that was once a considerable phenomenon in the cinema,
something too big to be ignored, though mostly it has been.
I was a fan once. When I was very young, I was passionate about Roy
Rogers. In the small town in the west of England where I grew up, the local
picture house—called, with a deplorable lack of ambition, The Cinema—ran
double bills that changed twice a week, and as likely as not a singing cowboy
western would make up one half of the bill. There must have been plenty of
Gene Autry films on offer, but my memory is that whenever I pleaded with
my mother to be allowed to go to the pictures for the second time in a week,
it was always because there was a new Roy Rogers film I simply had to see.
My brother and I preferred Roy because, first, his films also featured
George “Gabby” Hayes, whom we much preferred to Gene’s regular partner,
Smiley Burnette. I guess we just thought he was funnier, though actually I
now think I prefer Smiley. Gabby is just, well, too gabby. Also, Gabby was
relentlessly misogynistic, whereas Smiley was always mooning after girls,
which we didn’t approve of. (I feel differently now.) Second, it was our feel-
ing that there was more action in Roy’s films, more chases on horseback,
more fistfights and gunfights. And the action (you could hardly call it vio-
lence) was just a little more realistic in Roy’s films. Most important, Roy didn’t
sing as much. At least that’s what we thought. In fact, further research shows
that both Gene and Roy sang five or six songs each per film. For us that was
five or six too many. We liked the films because they were westerns, not
because they were musicals. But while I suspect most small boys at the time
shared our views, the music that Roy and Gene made was immensely popu-
lar with older audiences, and it’s clear that both performers regarded them-
selves as singers who acted, not the other way round. In his autobiography,
Back in the Saddle Again, Autry put it thus: “Music has been the better part of
my career. Movies are wonderful fun, and they give you a famous face. But
how the words and melody are joined, how they come together out of air and
enter the mind, this is art. Songs are forever” (Autry 18).
 GENE AUTRY AND ROY ROGERS 35

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ The Careers: Stardust on the Sage
Gene and Roy (it seems natural to refer to them in that
friendly manner; they encouraged that kind of identification) had a lot in
common; in many ways they were mirror images of each other. Both came
from humble backgrounds. Gene Autry was born in rural Oklahoma in
1907 (originally named Orvon Grover Autry). His education was limited; at
age seventeen he got a job working on the St. Louis–San Francisco Railroad.
In his early twenties he combined railroad work with singing on local radio
shows, and by 1929 he had begun a successful recording career, though his
family was too poor to buy a phonograph on which to play his records. It’s
hard to imagine that degree of poverty now; in 1932 Autry’s mother died
of pellagra, a disease caused by malnourishment. (His father was constantly
in and out of jail for petty frauds.) In 1931 Autry moved to Chicago to
appear on the highly popular “Barn Dance” show put out by radio station
WLS. It was at this point that Autry began dressing in western style and was
billed as “The Oklahoma Yodeling Cowboy,” his style of music owing much
to the “hillbilly” yodeling songs of Jimmie Rodgers.
In 1934 Autry was taken to Hollywood and signed by Mascot Pictures
to appear in a couple of westerns starring Ken Maynard. Mascot was almost
immediately taken over by Republic, who would produce almost all of
Autry’s early films. His role in these first films, In Old Santa Fe and Mystery
Mountain, was mainly to sing, while Maynard supplied the action. Though
Autry’s acting was stiff and awkward, the popularity of his singing was not
in doubt, and when Maynard left the company Autry was offered the star-
ring role in The Phantom Empire (1935), a serial that was a bizarre hybrid of
the western and science fiction genres. The film was enough of a success for
Autry to be given his first starring role in a feature western, Tumbling Tum-
bleweeds (1935), in which Autry sings in a total of nine musical numbers. In
subsequent films that number was trimmed to half a dozen, but otherwise
the format was to vary little over the next twenty years. During that time
Autry made some ninety films, which up until 1948 were distributed by
Republic and thereafter by Columbia.
Roy Rogers was born Leonard Slye in Ohio in 1911. Like Autry, his parents
were poor and he had minimal schooling. His family moved to California in
1930, and Roy got work as an itinerant fruit picker. He joined several short-
lived musical groups before helping to found in 1934 the Sons of the Pio-
neers, who would eventually achieve great and lasting success. By this time
he had changed his name to Dick Weston, but when he was signed by Repub-
lic in 1937 the studio renamed him once more, and Roy Rogers was born.
36 EDWARD BUSCOMBE

Though he had several bit parts, largely uncredited, with the Sons of
the Pioneers, Rogers’s big break came in 1938. Gene Autry was in the middle
of a bitter dispute with Republic, essentially about getting a bigger share of
the spoils from his growing movie popularity. As a means of putting pres-
sure on Autry to settle, Republic head Herbert J. Yates offered a contract to
Rogers, whose first feature, Under Western Stars, was released in 1938.
Though Autry soon returned to the fold, Rogers was enough of a success for
Yates to keep him working, and the careers of the two singing cowboys con-
tinued in tandem for some years.
When the United States entered World War II, Autry enlisted in the
Army Air Corps and spent the war years flying planes, his film career sus-
pended. Rogers, on the other hand, stayed behind in Hollywood. There are
different accounts of why Rogers did not join the military. In his autobiog-
raphy, Happy Trails, he says that he was too old for active service; he would
have been thirty when war was declared (Rogers and Evans 71). But another
version was that he was kept out by chronic arthritis (George-Warren 224).
However this may be, Autry’s absence provided Rogers with the perfect
opportunity to leap ahead in the popularity stakes, and in 1943 he topped
the list of western stars performing best at the box office.
Autry resumed his Hollywood career in 1946 and thereafter he and
Rogers vied for the number one spot. The following year Autry left Republic
and his remaining films were to be produced by Columbia. Both Rogers and
Autry were alert to the coming appeal of television, and each tried to prevent
Republic selling their old films to TV, because such screenings would affect
the box office for their current theatrical releases. At the same time, each was
anxious to begin production of his own television show, and screenings on
TV of their old films damaged the prospects for this. Eventually these disputes
were settled and the two stars made the transit from cinema to television.
Autry’s final feature film, appropriately titled Last of the Pony Riders, was
released in 1953. “The Gene Autry Show” first aired on television in 1950.
Roy Rogers’s last leading role in a western was in Pals of the Golden West
(1951); “The Roy Rogers Show” premiered on television the same year.

✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★✩
★ The Films: Happy Trails
Not surprisingly, in view of the fact that Rogers was groomed
as a replacement for Autry, their films were similar in many respects. Bud-
gets were tight; Republic’s boss, Herbert Yates, didn’t like to throw his
money around. The films generally ran just over an hour. The formula was
arrived at very early, and scarcely deviated in twenty years of production.
 GENE AUTRY AND ROY ROGERS 37

In his autobiography, Autry describes it thus: “1) a decent story; 2) good

music; 3) comedy relief; 4) enough action, with chases and fights; and 5) a
little romance. And always we played it against the sweep of desert scenery,
mountains and untamed land, and an ocean of sky” (Autry 39).
From the sound of that summary, one might suppose that the films
made by the singing cowboys closely followed the recipe for westerns that
had been laid down almost from the beginning of cinema: an entertaining
tale of the frontier, with glorious western scenery, and plenty of action, with
the only variation being the addition of songs integrated into the diegesis.
But in fact the differences from the standard A-feature western as it had
become codified by the mid-1930s are as striking as the similarities.
In the films of Autry and Rogers the stories follow a basic pattern. The
motor that drives the plot is usually some kind of criminal activity. Bad guys
are trying to cheat or strong-arm some nice, ordinary folks out of their
rightful possessions, often a ranch, a mine, or some kind of business. Gene
or Roy comes to their rescue, convincing the victims of his honesty of pur-
pose, winning their trust, and eventually defeating the villains with a com-
bination of ingenuity, good sense, and a little forceful physicality. The films
eschew the historical themes and narratives that commentators have seen
as the essence of the western genre, lacking the mythical dimension the
western has frequently exhibited. Manifest Destiny, the winning of the
West, the conflict of civilization and savagery—none of these plays a large
role. Instead of dealing with such grand themes as the Indian Wars, build-
ing the transcontinental railroad, or westward migration, singing cowboy
films are concerned with problems of a more contemporary nature. As
Peter Stanfield has shown, there is a considerable affinity between their
actions and the ethos of Roosevelt’s New Deal (Stanfield, Horse Opera 144).
Small farmers and ranchers are often the victims of crooked bankers or
lawyers from the city. Roy or Gene is successful in defending them because
the hero is very much an ordinary man, not possessed of superhuman qual-
ities, and with only one exceptional talent—a pleasing singing voice.
The west of Gene and Roy has largely been settled; it’s not really a fron-
tier world at all. Indians scarcely exist. The films take place in a curious
never-never land that mingles past and present. Many iconographical trap-
pings originating in the western’s historical roots are present onscreen:
Gene and Roy appear on horseback (Autry on Champion, Rogers on the
equally famous Trigger), dressed in a stylized version of western costume
(wide-brimmed hat, fancy shirt, embossed gunbelt and six-shooter, cowboy
boots). But the stories are not usually set in the historical past. The milieu
they inhabit is recognizably modern, replete with radio, telephones, cars,
38 EDWARD BUSCOMBE

Roy Rogers with his trusty equine sidekick, Trigger, c. 1941. Collection of the author.

and even airplanes. Thus the films are able to deliver many of the tradi-
tional pleasures of the western (fistfights and gunfights, chases on horse-
back) while at the same time the stories are more closely related to a
contemporary everyday world.1
Under Fiesta Stars (1941) is representative. It has a present-day setting.
Gene is left a half-share in a mine by an elderly man who had been his
mentor. The man has been employing local men ruined by the dustbowl,
many of them Mexicans. Unfortunately, the other half of the mine has been
 GENE AUTRY AND ROY ROGERS 39

left to the man’s niece, Barbara (Carol Hughes), who simply wants to sell
her share for as much money as she can get. She hires a couple of shyster
lawyers, who in turn pay some hit men to dispose of Gene. In a confronta-
tion, Gene tells her off for being mercenary, and she counters by calling him
a cheap rodeo rider. But eventually through the sheer goodness of his per-
sonality Gene wins her over to his way of thinking and the bad guys are
routed. The mine can continue to fulfill a socially useful purpose.
In Silver Spurs (1943), Roy’s employer owns a large ranch where oil has
been discovered. Legal complications mean he is unable to sell it, but his
widow could. Some crooks from the big city hatch a plan to marry him off to
a pretty newspaper reporter. He is then shot and Roy is framed for the crime.
But eventually Roy unmasks the crooks, having first won over the reporter
to his side. At the end Roy and the girl plan to set up a cooperative oil com-
pany to benefit all in the community.
One curious feature of the narratives is that almost invariably the char-
acter that Autry plays is named “Gene Autry.” Rogers, too, is more often than
not playing a character named Roy. This further removes the story from any
historical referent, serving instead to blur the line between a fictional world
and the world outside the movies, in which Gene Autry and Roy Rogers are
real people. The films thus become something resembling the stars’ personal
appearances or their radio shows, expressions not so much of a recognizable
western milieu as a continuation of their life as showbiz personalities.
In the A-feature western of the 1940s we find an increasing concern
with issues of masculinity, focused in particular on the nature and conse-
quences of violence, the need for a man to stand up and be counted, and to
overcome whatever doubts he has about his courage and commitment. This
is the era of the so-called “psychological” western, in which the troubled
hero broods upon his fate, often suffering from the burden of some emo-
tionally crippling incident in his past. The hero’s personality is often domi-
nating, harsh, even bitter. Frequently condemned to live on the margins of
society, he shoulders a heavy burden, and the forces he pits himself against
are merciless. Gene and Roy have undergone no such psychological trau-
mas. Invariably sunny and serene in their disposition, they never doubt
themselves, nor suffer anxiety about what to do next. Their way forward is
always clear, and they integrate easily into the world they inhabit. Instead
of an aggressive masculinity, they display a genial and friendly manner,
kind to children, animals, and women.
Occasional musical interludes are not unknown in the A-feature west-
ern. One thinks of the stars of Rio Bravo (1959) singing “My Rifle, My Pony,
and Me” together in the jailhouse. But such numbers are not an essential
40 EDWARD BUSCOMBE

part of the film’s appeal. With Autry and Rogers, their fame as singing stars
was what made their films viable. The western musical, such as The Harvey
Girls (1946) or Calamity Jane (1953), is a special case, a separate subgenre.
The music of such films does not have a specifically western style. Instead,
it comes out of the American stage musical tradition, the show-business
world of composers such as Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin.
The plots of these musical films center around a romantic relationship, as in
nonwestern musicals, whereas in the singing cowboy films, as we shall see,
romance is incidental.
The singing cowboys’ musical style originates in what was later to
become country music, at that time still labeled “hillbilly” music. Autry
early modeled himself on Jimmie Rodgers, whose distinctive style of “blue
yodeling” gained him a large following in the South in the 1920s. Rodgers’s
songs are plaintive, sometimes scabrous laments for a rambling, restless life,
full of brushes with the law, drinking bouts, and women who played fast
and loose with his affections. Rodgers had nothing of the cowboy about
him; Peter Stanfield’s thesis is that this music lent itself to adaptation to a
western idiom because the cowboy was a similarly restless roamer. But in
transposing the music from south to west, Autry, a key player in this process,
effaced the “overt racist or class connotations of the hillbilly,” as well as
repressing the “black heritage apparent in so much early country music.”
Repackaging the popular music of the south into a cowboy format gave it
nationwide popularity, and cleaning up the sexual frankness of the hillbilly
tradition made it more suitable for a public medium such as the radio, upon
which so much of the economics of popular music depended at that time
(Stanfield Horse Opera).2
There’s little to choose between the singing styles of Autry and Rogers.
Both of them were hugely popular as recording artists as well as movie per-
formers, and Autry in particular had some breakout numbers that took him
beyond the limitations of his cowboy persona. “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed
Reindeer,” released in 1949, reached the top of both the country & western
and pop charts in Billboard magazine. In the first year the song sold two mil-
lion copies, and sales reached twenty-five million over the next forty years.
But in terms of their movies, both Rogers and Autry remained comfortably
within their niche market. True, Roy Rogers had occasional parts in bigger
movies, appearing alongside Bob Hope in Son of Paleface, a comedy western
of 1952. But this was a rare excursion outside the self-contained world of
the singing western.
Although, as I have said, romance is not a major element within the
films, it does feature prominently in the songs that Autry and Rogers sing.
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will, and not consult her own inclinations, as people said had been
the case. For the first time a light broke upon Barbara, and she knew
Captain Lyster's story as plainly as if he had told it to her in so many
words. Following his glance as he stopped speaking, she saw that it
rested on Alice Schröder, to whom Mr. Beresford was now talking,
bending over her chair with great apparent devotion; and looking
from them to Mr. Schröder, Barbara remarked that the gloom had
returned to his face, while Frank Churchill himself looked somewhat
annoyed.

It was not without a very great deal of trouble that Mr. Pringle had
induced his friend Prescott to accompany him to Saxe-Coburg
Square. Even after that gentleman had given a reluctant consent he
withdrew it, and on the very morning of the reception Mr. Pringle
was not aware whether or not he should have to go alone. For Mr.
Prescott was very much in love with Kate Mellon still: that interview
in the Park had by no means had the effect of curing him of his
passion; although, being a sensible young fellow, he saw that there
was not the slightest use in giving way to it.

"He's a thoroughly changed buffer, is Jim, sir!" Mr. Pringle would

remark of him; "he used to be the cheeriest of birds; always good
for going out some where, and no end of fun; always in tip-top
spirits, and the best chap out. But now he sits in his chambers, and
smokes his pipe, and grizzles himself to death, pretty near; wishing
he'd got more money, and all sorts of things. That won't do, you
know! He must be picked up and trotted out; and the man for that
line of business is yours truly." In pursuance of which determination
Mr. Pringle opened a system of attack on his friend, and in the first
place insisted that they should go together to Mr. Schröder's
reception. Even at the last, when Prescott gave in his final consent,
it was under strong protest. "I shall be dreary, old boy; and you'll be
sorry you took me. You know I'm not very good company just now,
George. I've not got over--"
 "All right; I know. 'Tell me, my heart, can this be?' &c. But we'll
have some dinner at Simpson's, and a bottle of old port; and that'll
set you up, and make you see life under a different aspect, as they
say in novels."

The dinner was very good; and finding his friend still silent and
low-spirited, Mr. Pringle exerted himself to rouse him. He was very
well known at the dining-rooms, and called the waiters by their
Christian names, and asked after their families, and little events in
their private lives.

Mr. Prescott could not help laughing at the absurdities perpetrated

by his friend, and gradually his spirits revived. After dinner they went
to Mr. Pringle's chambers, and smoked and had some hot whisky-
and-water, which, coming after the port-wine, had a very hilarious
effect upon Mr. Pringle, who then wanted to "go out some where,"
and not to go to the Schröders at all; but Mr. Prescott overruling this,
they dressed and went. Mr. Pringle--and especially Mr. Pringle after
half a bottle of port-wine and a couple of tumblers of whisky-punch--
was a trying person to go about with, and Prescott had to call him to
order several times. When they arrived at the house, and were
asked their names, he gave them as the Duke of Wellington and Mr.
Babbage; and on the servant's being about gravely to repeat them,
he stopped him, saying they did not wish their names announced, as
they were detectives come on very private business. On the
staircase he feigned a wild terror at the powdered heads of the
footmen; asked "how they came so white;" by nature or not? and
altogether so behaved himself, that Mr. Prescott declared he would
not enter the room with him.

Once in the room, Mr. Pringle toned down visibly, and conducted
himself like an ordinary mortal. He was very friendly with Alice
Schröder, and expressed poignant regret at Mr. Townshend's sudden
indisposition (for that worthy gentleman declined to come upstairs
after dinner; Beresford's mention of Pigott and Wells had been too
much for him), though secretly Mr. Pringle was pleased at missing
his godfather, whom he was accustomed to regard as the essence of
sternness; and he was introduced to Churchill, of whom he spoke
the next day at the office as a "deuced clever fellow, a literary bird;"
and he listened for a few minutes to Klavierspieler's pianoforte-
fireworks; and, then went down and got some refreshment. He
endeavoured to induce Mr. Prescott to accompany him; but that
gentleman not merely absolutely declined, but addressed his friend
in strong words of warning, and declared that as for himself he was
thoroughly happy where he was.

Indeed, once more in society, surrounded by well-looking, well-

dressed people, listening to music and conversation in a splendidly-
appointed home, Mr. Prescott began to think to himself that the
solitary pipe-smokings in dreary chambers, the shutting himself
away from the world, and giving himself up to melancholy, was
rather a mistake. Of course the grand cause of it all remained
unaltered,--he never could get over his passion, he never would give
up thinking of Kate,--and just then he started as he heard a light,
musical, girlish voice behind him say, "it is James Prescott!" He
turned rapidly round, and saw two or three people standing by him;
one of whom, a very pretty, fresh-coloured buxom girl, stepped
forward, laughed as he made a rather distant bow, and said, "You
don't recollect me! Oh, what a horridly bad compliment!"

"It is excessively absurd, to be sure, on my part, I know. I cannot,

by Jove! Emily Murray!" Prescott burst out as the face recurred to his
memory.

"Emily Murray, of course!" said the young lady, still laughing;

"Why, what ages since we've met! not since you left Havering; and
how's the dear Vicar and the girls? which of them are married? I
should so like to see them; and you--you're in some Government
Office we heard; which is it? and--"

"I must come to Mr. Prescott's rescue, Emily, if you'll introduce me.
You've stunned him with questions," said an elderly lady standing by.
 "Oh, aunt, how can you say so! James--Mr. Prescott,--I don't know
which I ought to say; but I always used to say James,--this is my
aunt, Mrs. Wilmslow, with whom we're staying. I say we, for papa is
in town; but his gout was threatening; so he wouldn't come to-
night."

"My brother will be very pleased to see you, though, Mr. Prescott,"
said Mrs. Wilmslow; "I know he has the kindliest recollection of your
father at Havering. Will you come and lunch with us to-morrow?"

Mr. Prescott accepted with thanks, and Mrs. Wilmslow moved back
to her party; but Emily Murray stayed behind, and they had a very
long conversation; during which he settled not merely that he would
lunch in Portland Place on the next day, but that he would
afterwards accompany Miss Murray and some of her friends in their
subsequent ride. As Miss Murray departed with her friends, Mr.
Pringle came up and apologised for having left his friend so much
alone. "Very sorry, old fellow, but I got into an argument with an old
German buffer downstairs. Very good fellow, but spoke very shy
English. Told me he was nearly eighty years old; and that he
accounted for his good health by having been always in the habit of
taking a walk past dinner. Took me full ten minutes to find out he
meant after dinner. But I say, old fellow, I'm really sorry; you must
have had a very slow evening."

"On the contrary," said Mr. Prescott, "I've enjoyed myself

amazingly."

Mr. Pringle looked hard at his friend, and whistled plaintively.

CHAPTER XIX.
 THE OLD OR THE NEW?

Thirty years before the date of my story, Braxton Murray and Alan
Prescott were college friends. Braxton was a gentleman commoner
of Christchurch; Alan, a scholar of Wadham. Braxton had four
hundred a-year allowance from his father, and the direct succession
to one of the richest estates in Kent. Alan had his scholarship,
seventy pounds a-year exhibition from a country foundation-school,
and another fifty allowed him by his uncle. The disparity between
the positions of the two young men was vast, but they were
thoroughly attached to each other; and when Braxton had
succeeded his father, and the old vicar of Havering died, Braxton
Murray sent for Alan Prescott, then doing duty as a curate and usher
in a suburban school, and presented him with the vicarage of
Havering. That was a happy time in both their lives; the income of
the Vicar was small, certainly, but so was the parish, and the duties
were light; and having only himself, his wife, and a son and
daughter to provide for, and being constantly in the receipt of
presents from his friend and patron, the Rev. Alan Prescott did very
well indeed. Situate in the heart of Kent, no prettier spot than
Havering can be found; and Brooklands, the squire's place, is the
gem of the county. In the bay-window of the old dining-room,
overhanging the fertile valley through which the Medway lies like a
thread of silver, the two men would sit drinking their claret,
discussing old university chums or topics of the day, and pausing
occasionally to look at the gambols of the Vicar's son, Jim, and the
Squire's only daughter, Emily, who were the merriest of little lovers.
But as years went by, and the Vicar's family steadily increased,--first
by twin girls, then by a bouncing boy, and finally by a little crippled
girl,--and as, each year, expenses grew heavier, Alan Prescott was
somewhat put to it to obtain the necessary connexion of those two
ends, the means of bringing which together puzzles so many of us
all our lives; and when the governors of the foundation-school where
he had been usher, remembering his abilities, wrote to offer him the
vacant headmastership, he was too poor to refuse it. Duff borough,
a big, staring, gaunt, manufacturing town, perched on one of the
bleakest of the northern hills, was a bad exchange for beaming little
Havering, with its smiling orchards and glorious hop-gardens; and
the society of the purse-proud, cold, stuck-up calico-men was
heartbreaking after the ease and warmth of Braxton Murray's
companionship. But Alan Prescott felt the spurs of need, and buckled
to his work like a man. An active correspondence was kept up
between him and the Squire of Havering; and occasionally,--once in
the course of four or five years, perhaps,--he had spent a week at
Brooklands; but it was too expensive to remove his family; and
consequently, until that evening in Saxe-Coburg Square James
Prescott had not seen Emily Murray since they were children
together, playing out in the old dining-room at Brooklands.

Emily Murray had been a pretty child; had become a beautiful girl.
There was no doubt about her; one look into those honest brown
eyes would have convinced you that she was thorough. A plump
rosy-rounded bud of woman; a thoroughly English girl, void of
affectation, conceit, and trickery; clean, clear, honest, wholesome,
and loving. As she talked to James Prescott of the old days at
Havering, she spoke out freely, referring to bygone gambols and fun
with frank laughter and many a humorous reminiscence; and when
she suggested his joining their riding-party the next day, she looked
him straight in the face without the smallest shadow of
entanglement or guile. To her own brother her manner had not been
different, Prescott thought, as, after they had parted, he recalled
every word, every glance; and he wished for a moment that there
had been something different in it, a trifle more tenderness, a hand-
pressure, a sly upward glance, or--and then he flung such nonsense
behind him, and was delighted to remember the warmth of her
recognition, the cheeriness of her chat. She was nothing to him, of
course; his doom was fixed; he had loved, and--and yet how pretty
she was! how perfectly gloved! how charmingly dressed! what a
pleasure it was to feel that you were talking to a lady! to know that
no slanginess would offend the eye, no questionable argot grate
upon the ear; to feel that--and then Mr. Prescott remembered how
the idol of his soul had called him "Jim," ay, and "old buffer;" how
she had smoked cigars, and used maledictions towards refractory
animals; how there had been all kinds of odd discussions about all
kinds of odd people before her; and how he had seen men take wine
without stint, and smoke cigars in her face, and wear their bats
before her, without the smallest self-restraint. And, smoking a final
pipe before turning into bed, Mr. Prescott pondered on these things
long and earnestly.

Mr. Prescott found a warm welcome awaiting him. Mrs. Wilmslow

had been impressed with his manners and appearance, and old Mr.
Murray had a yearning for the friend of his youth, and longed to
receive that friend's son with open arms. A hale pleasant gentleman,
Mr. Murray, with that wonderful cleanliness which is never seen out
of England, with polished bald head fringed with iron-gray hair,
ruddy complexion, keen little blue eyes, and brilliant teeth. He wore
a slipper on his right foot, but hobbled forward, nevertheless, and
gave the young man a hearty shake of the hand.

"Glad to see you, Jim! Little Jim you were; but, by Jove! I should
not like to carry you on my back now, as I have done many a time.
Very glad to see you! Old times come again, by George! Trace every
feature of your face, and can almost see Magdalen tower behind
your back--you're so like your father. How's the Vicar, eh? I'll drag
him out of that infernal spinning-jenny place yet, and give him a
breather across the home-copse at Havering before next season's
over."

Prescott said that his father was well and jolly, but scarcely up to
shooting now, he had had so little practice lately.

"So much the more reason we should give it him, then! He used to
be a crack shot; one of the few men I've seen shoot a brace of
woodcock right and left! And walk! by George, he'd walk me into--
has he had any gout?"

"Not yet, sir;--a threatening last year."

"Bravo!" roared the old gentleman; "I've got some 20-port that
shall bring that threatening to real effect, if he'll only drink enough
of it. And to think that Pussy should have found you out!"

"Pussy?" said Mr. Prescott.

"Emily, of course! a wayward gentle puss who never shows her

claws!" and at that moment Emily entered the room, and advanced
towards Prescott with frank smile and outstretched hand.

Luncheon passed off pleasantly enough. The old gentleman rattled

on incessantly, and availed himself of Prescott's presence, and Mrs.
Wilmslow's distracted attention consequent thereupon, to take three
bumpers of dry sherry, instead of that one half-glass to which, by
doctor's orders, he was so strictly relegated. Mrs. Wilmslow was
thoroughly charmed with Prescott, led him on to talk of his home-
life, of his office friends, and seemed to regard him with real
interest. Emily was less talkative than she had been the previous
evening, and seldom looked up from the table; but she joined readily
in the conversation, and none were too pleased when the horses
were announced.

"Got a horse, Jim?" asked the Squire. "That's right! hope it'll carry
you all right, though one never knows any thing about these hired
hacks. You might have ridden the cob, if I'd known you'd been
coming earlier! This is his third day's rest, and the cob will be about
as fresh as paint when I get across him again. Not that I care much
for your Rotten-Row riding--dull work that, up and down, up and
down! The Vicar and I--we used to go to work in a little more
business-like fashion than that! I suppose he never gets a day's run
now? Ah! thought not! Those spinning-jenny locals would think it
unprofessional for a parson to follow hounds, eh? There, bless you,
pussy! good-by, child! and good-by to you, young Jim! Call here
again in a day or two, and we'll settle about your coming to
Havering in the vacation--and the Vicar too, d'ye hear?"

"I'm getting rather nervous about my responsibility, Miss Murray,"

said Prescott, as they passed through into the hall. "I don't think I've
forgotten my old knack of mounting. You needn't fear my not lifting
you high enough, or jerking you over the side, I mean; but I've
never seen your amazonship yet, and if any thing should happen--"

"Oh, don't fear that, James--Mr. Prescott, I mean!" said Emily with
a clear ringing laugh. "You'll mount me rightly enough, I know: and
as for looking after me afterwards, I forgot to tell you my riding-
mistress would be with us."

"Your riding-mistress!" but as he spoke, the footman threw open

the street-door; and the first thing that met his glance was a well-
known figure sitting erect on a black thoroughbred. Kate Mellon! no
one else. James Prescott had watched too often the rounded outline
of that compact figure, the fall of that dark-blue skirt, the pose of
that neat little chimney-pot hat, under which the gold-shot hair was
massed in a clump behind, not to recognise them all at the first
glance. Kate Mellon, by all that was marvellous! Two young ladies,
also mounted, were with her; and a groom was leading another
horse, with a side-saddle on it for Emily Murray, and another groom
was leading the very presentable hack which Prescott had engaged
from Allen's. As she caught sight of Prescott, Kate gave one little
scarcely-perceptible start, and then saluted Miss Murray with uplifted
whip. Prescott swung Emily to her saddle, and the cavalcade started.

"You see I have brought a cavalier, Miss Mellon," said Emily, with a
smile; "though I don't know whether such an encumbrance is
permissible; but this is Mr. Prescott, whom I have known for a very
long time. James, this is Miss Mellon, who is good enough to
superintend my clumsiness on horseback, and who is the very star
of horsewomen herself."
 Kate started a little at the "James," but merely repeated the whip
salutation, and said, "Mr. Prescott and I have met before, Miss
Murray. Besides, you're coming it too strong about yourself! you're
quite able to take care of yourself now, and have no clumsiness left,
whatever you might have had at first. This has relieved me of some
of my charge; for these two young ladies will want all my eyes, and
another to spare, if I had it. Perhaps you'll not mind my riding
forward with them, and you and Mr. Prescott can follow us; you're
both of you to be trusted--with your horses, I mean!" and she smiled
shortly, and cantering on, joined the anonymous young ladies in
front.

You see it is perfectly right to tell a man who is desperately

smitten with you that he is on the wrong tack; that though you have
a great regard for him as a friend, you cannot reciprocate his love-
passion; and that the whole affair is ill-judged, and should properly
be put a stop to at once. But when you come upon him suddenly,
within three weeks, evidently consoling himself by dangling at the
heels of another woman--well, there is something provoking in it, to
say the least! Kate Mellon was thoroughly honest during all that last
interview with Prescott in Rotten Row, but she scarcely expected
this.

So they rode on in two divisions; and the young ladies in front,

who were the daughters of a picture-dealer who had recently risen
from nothing, and who were in the greatest state of fright at the
unaccustomed exercise, were surprised to find a tone of asperity at
first tinging their mistress's instructions at being told of their
rounded shoulders and their heavy hands, in far plainer terms than
had been hitherto employed. But this severity gradually subsided as
they went on, and as Kate thought to herself how all was for the
best, and how, instead of being annoyed, she ought to do every
thing she could to help the fortunes of one who had been so
staunchly gallant to her, until he was repulsed. As for the couple
behind, they got on splendidly; Emily looked to the greatest
advantage on horseback; and Prescott could scarcely take his eyes
from her as he watched the graceful manner in which she sat her
horse, and as he listened to the encomiastic remarks which her
appearance extracted from the passers-by. He talked to her of the
old days, and she answered without an ounce of coquetry or
affectation; and she spoke of her father, of her happiness in her
home, of the little simple duties and pleasures in their village, and of
other little suchlike matters, in an honest way that touched James
Prescott deeply, and sent purer, calmer thoughts into his heart than
had found lodging there for many months.

After a couple of hours in the Row the party returned to Mrs.

Wilmslow's, where Emily bade them farewell, and Prescott also
alighted, giving up his horse to the groom waiting for it. Kate Mellon
saw her other pupils to their home close by, and then turned into the
Row again, intending to have one final gallop on her way to The
Den. She was at full speed when she heard the dull thud of a horse's
hoofs close behind her, and turning saw Mr. Simnel. In a minute he
was by her side.

"How d'ye do, Kate?" said he, reining-in his big hunter; "I came on
the chance of seeing you here."

"How do, Simnel?" said Miss Mellon, shortly; "what do you want?"

"I want you to say when I can come up to The Den and have half-
an-hour's chat with you, Kate."

"And I tell you, never! as I've told you before. Look here, Simnel,"
said she, pulling up short; "let's have this out now. I don't like you; I
never did, and I never shall! and I don't want you at my place. Do
you understand?"

"Perfectly," said Simnel, with a hard smile; "and yet I think I must
come. I want to say something specially particular to you."

"What about? What you've said before? About yourself?"

 "No," said Simnel, smiling as before; "I never say things twice
over. I want to talk to you about a friend of ours--Charles Beresford."

"Charles Beresford?--what of him?"

"That's just what I propose to come and tell you."

Their eyes met. The next instant Kate cast hers down as she said,
"I shall be at home on Friday from two till six. You can come then."

"You may depend on me," said Simnel; "I'll not bore you any
longer." He raised his hat with perfect politeness, turned his horse,
and rode slowly away.

CHAPTER XX.

THE CHURCHILLS AT HOME.

Three months' experience sufficiently indoctrinated Barbara

Churchill into her new life. At the end of that time she could scarcely
have been recognised as the Barbara Lexden who had held her own
for three seasons, and done undisputed havoc among the
detrimentals: not that she was changed in appearance; that grand
hauteur, that indefinable something of delicacy, breeding, and
refinement, was even more noticeable than ever; if any thing, her
nostrils were more frequently expanded, her lips more constantly in
their curve; nor had her eyes lost their brightness, her figure its trim
form, her walk its grace and elegance. Though Parker had long since
served under another mistress Barbara's hair had never been more
artistically arranged than by her own hands; and though her dress
had been modified from the nearest approach to excess in the
prevailing fashion which good taste would permit to the merest
simplicity, she had never, even in the height of her queendom, been
more becomingly attired than in the plain silk dresses and simple
linen collars and cuffs which she donned in Great Adullam Street.
Where was the change, then? whence the source of the alteration?
In truth she herself could scarcely tell; or if the idea ever rose in her
mind she thrust it out instantly, arguing within herself, in a thousand
unimpressive, undecisive, unsatisfactory ways, that she did not feel
as she had imagined, and that she was merely "a little low."

That phrase was Frank Churchill's bane. He would return from the
Statesman Office, where, after the regular daily consultation, he had
remained and written his leader (Harding always hitherto had
managed to free his friend from night-work), and would find his wife
with red-rimmed eyelids and the final traces of a past shower. At first
he was frightened at these manifestations, would tenderly caress
her, and ask her what had happened, Nothing! always nothing! no
cross, no domestic anxiety, no special trouble. But then something
must have happened. Frank's logical spirit, long trained, refused to
accept an effect without a cause; and at length, after repeated
questioning, he would learn from Barbara that she was "a little low"
that day. A little low! What on earth had she had to be a little low
about? And then Frank would imagine that there were more things
in women than were dreamt of in his philosophy; and would pet her
and coax her during dinner, and restore her somewhat to herself,
until he took up his review or his heavy reading, when the "little low"
fit would come on again; and after half an hour's contemplation of
the coals Barbara would burst into sobs and retire to bed. And then
Frank, laying down his book and pondering over his final pipe, would
first begin to think that he was badly treated; to review his conduct,
and see whether any act of his during the day could have caused the
"little lowness;" to imagine that Barbara was making mountains of
molehills, and was losing that spirit which had been one great
attraction to him; then gradually he would soften, would take into
consideration the changes in the circumstances of her life; would
begin to accuse himself of neglecting her, and preferring his reading
at a time when she had a fair claim on his attention; and would
finally rush off to implore her forgiveness, and pet her more than
ever.

An infatuated fellow, this Frank Churchill; so happy in the

possession of his wife, in the knowledge that she was his own, all his
own, that nothing, not even the fact that she was occasionally a
"little low," had power to damp his happiness for more than a very
few minutes. He would sit at dinner of an evening, when she was
engaged with her work, and he had a book in front of him, in
company, when he could steal a minute from the general
conversation, looking at her in rapt admiration; not one point of her
beauty was lost upon him; the shape of her head; its pose on her
neck; her delicate hands with that pink shell-like palm; those long
tapering fingers and filbert nails; her rounded bust and slim waist,--
all her special excellences impressed him more now than they had
when he had first seen her; but, above all, he revelled in her "bred"
appearance, in that indefinable something which seemed to lift her
completely out of the set of people with which he saw her
surrounded, and to show her by right the denizen of another sphere.
If you could have persuaded Frank Churchill that another man held
such opinions as these; that another man had such feelings with
regard to his wife; and that through holding them he was induced to
regard somewhat intolerantly those among whom he had hitherto
moved, and from whom he had received the greatest kindness and
friendship,--what words would have been scathing enough to have
expressed Frank Churchill's disgust!

Yet such was undoubtedly the case. Churchill's most intimate

friend was George Harding,--a man whom he reverenced and looked
up to, but whom he, since his marriage, had often found himself
pitying from the bottom of his soul. Not on his own account: loyal to
his craft and steadfast in his friendship, Churchill thought there were
few more desirable positions than the editorship of the Statesman,
when as free from influence or partisanship as when Harding held
the berth. It was because his friend was Mrs. Harding's husband that
Churchill pitied him; though, indeed, Mrs. Harding was a very fair
average kind of woman. A dowdy little person, Mrs. Harding! the
daughter of a snuffy Welsh rector, who had written a treatise on
"Aorists," and with whom Harding had read one long vacation,--a
round-faced old-maidish little woman, classically brought up, who
could construe Cicero fluently, and looked upon Horace (Q. Flaccus, I
mean) as rather a loose personage. In the solitude of Plas-y-
dwdllem, George Harding was thrown into the society of this young
female. He did not fall in love with her--they were neither of them
capable of any thing violent of that nature; but--I am reduced to the
phraseology of the servants' hall to express my meaning--they "kept
company together;" and when George took his degree and started in
life as leader-writer for the Morning Cracker (long since defunct), he
thought the best thing he could do for his comfort was to go for a
run to Wales and bring back Sophia Evans as his wife. This he did;
and they had lived thoroughly happily ever since. Mrs. Harding
believed intensely in the Statesman; read it every day, from the title
to the printer's name; knew the name of every contributor, and
could tell who had done what at a glance. Her great pride in going
out was to take one of the cards sent to the office, and observe the
effect it made upon the receiving attendant at operas, flower-shows,
or conversazioni. She always took care that the tickets for these last
were sent to her; and her head-dress of black-velvet bows with
pearl-beads hanging down behind was well to the fore whenever a
mummy was unrolled, the fossil jawbone of an antediluvian animal
was descanted on, or some sallow missionary presented himself at
Burlington House, to be congratulated by hundreds of dreary people
on having escaped uneaten from some place to which he never
ought to have gone. She herself was fond of having occasionally
what she called "a social evening." This recreation was held on a
Saturday, when there was no work at the Statesman office, when
the principal members of the staff would be bidden, and when the
condiments provided would be brown-bread and butter rolled into
cornets, tea and coffee and lemonade, while the recreation consisted
in conversation (amongst men who had met for every night during
the past twelve months), and in examining photographs of the city
of Prague. The ribald young men at the office spoke of Mrs. Harding
as "Plutarch," a name given to her one night when Mr. Slater, the
dramatic critic, asked her what novel she was then reading, and she
replied, "Novel, sir! Plutarch's Lives!" But they all liked her,
notwithstanding; and for her sake and their dear old chief's did
penitential duty at the occasional "social evenings" in Decorum
Street.

Of course this little body had nothing in common with Mrs. Frank
Churchill, and neither understood the other. George Harding had
been so anxious that his wife should pay all honour to his friend's
bride, that Mrs. Harding's was the first visit Barbara received. They
did not study the laws of etiquette in Mesopotamia, or Mrs. Harding
thought she would break the ice of ceremony with a friendly call; so
the arrived one morning at 11 A.M. dressed for the occasion, and
having sent up her card, awaited Barbara's advent in the drawing-
room. No sooner had the servant shut the door and Mrs. Harding
found herself alone than she minutely examined the furniture, saw
where new things had replaced others with which she had been
acquainted, mentally appraised the new carpet, and took stock
generally. The result was not satisfactory; an anti-macassar which
Barbara had been braiding lay on the table, with the needle still in it.
Mrs. Harding took it up between her finger and thumb, gazed at it
contemptuously, and pronounced it "fal-lal;" she peeped into the
leaves of a book lying open on the sofa, and shut them up with a
sigh of "Novels! ah!" she turned over the music lying on the little
cottage-piano which Frank had hired for his wife, and again
shrugged her shoulders with an exclamation of distaste. Then she
sat herself down on a low chair with her back to the light (an old
campaigner, Mrs. Harding, and seldom to be taken at a
disadvantage), pulled out and smoothed her dress all round her,
settled her ribbons, made a further incursion into the territories of a
refractory thumb in her cowskin puce-coloured glove, which had
hitherto refused submission to the invader, and awaited the coming
of her hostess.

She had not long to wait. Frank had gone out on business; but he
had so often spoken of Harding as his dear friend, that Barbara,
though by no means gushing by nature,--indeed, if truth must be
told, somewhat proud and reserved,--had made up her mind to be
specially friendly to Mrs. Harding; so she came sailing into the room
with outstretched hand and a smile on her face. Mrs. Harding gave
one glance at the full flowing figure, the rustling skirts, and the
outstretched hand; she acknowledged the superior presence, and
then suddenly maxims learned in her youth in the still seclusion of
Plas-y-dwdllem rose in her mind,--maxims which inculcated a severe
and uncompromising deportment as the very acme of good
breeding. So, instead of coming forward to meet Barbara and
responding to her apparent warmth, the little woman stood up for a
quarter of a minute, crossed her hands before her, bowed, and sank
into her seat again. For an instant Barbara stopped, and flushed to
the roots her hair; then, quickly perceiving it was merely ignorance
which had caused this strange proceeding on Mrs. Harding's part,
she advanced and seated herself near her visitor.

"You are a stranger in this neighbourhood?" commenced Mrs.

Harding.

Barbara, feeling that the admission would be what policemen call

"used against her," answered in the affirmative.

"It's very healthy," said Mrs. Harding.

Barbara again assented.

"Do you like it?" asked Mrs. Harding.

"I can scarcely say. I have had so little opportunity of judging. It is

very convenient for where my husband has to go, and all that; but it
is a long way from that part of London which I know."
 Two or three things in this innocently-intended speech jarred
dreadfully on Mrs. Harding's feelings. That worthy matron had all the
blood of Ap-somebody, a tremendously consonanted personage of
Plas-y-dwdllem in old times, and she was irritable in the highest
degree. But she made a great gulp at her rage, and only said, "Oh,
you mean the Statesman office; yes, of course I ought to know
where that is, considering Mr. Harding's position there! We think this
a very nice situation; but, of course, when you've been brought up
in Grosvenor Square, it's different! What does Vokins charge you?"

"I--I beg your pardon!" said Barbara. "Vokins?"

"Yes; Vokins the butcher!" repeated the energetic little woman.

"Sevenpence or sevenpence-halfpenny for legs? Your mother-in-law
was the only woman in the neighbourhood who got 'em for
sevenpence, and I'm most anxious to know whether he hasn't raised
it since you came here."

"I'm sorry I'm unable to answer you," said Barbara; "but hitherto
my husband has paid the tradesmen's bills. I've no doubt" she
added, with a half-sneer, "that it shows great shortcomings on my
part; but it is the fact. I have hopes that I shall improve as I go on."

"Oh, no doubt," said Mrs. Harding, faintly. "Live and learn, you
know." But she gave up Barbara Churchill from that time out. She,
who had known the price of every article of domestic consumption
since she was fourteen years old, and had fought innumerable hand-
to-hand combats with extortionate tradesmen, looked upon this
insouciance of Barbara's as any thing but a venial crime. A few other
topics were started, feebly entered into, and dropped; and then Mrs.
Harding took her leave, with faintly-expressed hopes of seeing her
new-made acquaintance soon again.

That afternoon George Harding, returning home to dinner, was

told by his wife that she had called on Mrs. Churchill.
 "Ay!" said the honest old boy; "and what did you make of her,
Sophy? I'd trust your judgment in a thousand; and Frank has a high
opinion of it, I know. Is she pretty, and clever, and managing, and all
the rest of it?"

"Well, as to prettiness, George, she's not one of my style of

beauties," said Mrs. Harding. "She's a tall slip of a woman, with
straight features, such as you see on the old coins; and she's very
stand-offish in her manners; and, as to managing--well, she's too
fine a lady to know her tradespeople's names, or what she pays
them."

George Harding whistled softly, and then plunged into his hashed
mutton. He made but one remark, but that he repeated twice. "I
told him to beware of swells. God knows I warned him. I told him to
beware of swells."

That same night Mrs. Churchill told her husband of the visit she
had had.

"I'm so glad!" said Frank. "I knew old George would send his wife
first. Well, what do you think of Mrs. Harding, Barbara?"

"Oh, I've no doubt she meant every thing kindly, Frank," said
Barbara, "She's--she's a right-meaning kind of woman, Frank, no
doubt; but she's--she's not my style, you know."

Frank was dashed. "I don't exactly understand, dear. She was
perfectly friendly?"

"Oh, perfectly! But she asked me all sorts of curious questions

about the tradespeople, and the housekeeping, and that. So strange,
you know."

"I confess I don't see any thing strange so far. She offered you the
benefit of her experience, did she? Well, that was kind; and what
was wanted, I think."
 "Oh, I'm sorry you think it was wanted," said Barbara. "I didn't
think any thing had gone wrong in the house."

"No, my darling, of course not," said Frank "nothing--all is quite

right. But, you know, housekeeping is Mrs. Harding's strong point;
and young beginners like ourselves might learn from her with
advantage. I think we must lay ourselves out for instruction in
several matters, Barbara darling, from such persons as Mrs. Harding
and my mother."

And Barbara said, "Oh, yes, of course." And Frank did not notice
that her little shoulders went up, and the corners of her little mouth
went down, and her eyes sparkled in a manner which did not
promise much docility on the part of one of the pupils thus to be
instructed.

It took but a very short time for Barbara to discover that she and
her mother-in-law were not likely to be the very best friends. On
their first meeting the old lady was very much overcome, and
welcomed her new daughter-in-law in all fulness of heart. And
perhaps--though Barbara never knew it--it was at this first meeting
that a feeling of disappointment was engendered in Mrs. Churchill's
heart. For long brooding over the forthcoming events of that day, ere
the new-married couple had returned to town, Mrs. Churchill had
settled in her own mind that there were to be no jealousies between
her and the new importation into the small family circle as to the
possession of Frank, and that to that end the right plan would be to
receive Barbara as her daughter, and to make her part recipient of
that affection which had hitherto only been lavished on Frank. This
idea she forthwith carried into execution, kissing Barbara with great
warmth, and addressing her as her dear child. Unimpulsive Barbara,
though really pleased at her reception, accepted the caresses with
becoming dignity, offered her cheek for the old lady's warm salute,
and addressed her mother-in-law in tones which, though by no
means lacking in reverence, certainly had no superfluity of love. The
old lady noticed it, and ascribed it to timidity, or the natural shyness
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