HONORED by the National Cowboy Symposium with its Lifetime Achievement Award was western novelist and former Livestock Weekly associate editor Elmer Kelton, left. Previous recipients included John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Kelton shared this year's top honor with Symposium founder Alvin Davis, Lubbock.

Western Movie Veterans Lament
Loss Of Old Ways In Business

By David Bowser

LUBBOCK — Sitting in a ballroom at the Lubbock civic center last weekend, movie stunt man Dean Smith stopped a panel discussion on western movies to point out a man in the audience.

"Elmer Kelton," Smith said, "This guy knows how to write about westerns. Guys like Elmer Kelton and Dale Robertson are the ones who ought to be writing westerns."

Kelton was at the National Cowboy Symposium here signing his new books, The Buckskin Line, and Texas Cattle Barons -- The Families, Land and Legacy.

The movie panel discussion, which included actor Dale Robertson, covered topics ranging from the panelists' backgrounds in the movies to where and how movies are shot.

Smith said a lot of movies are being shot in Canada today, reportedly to keep costs down. He blames the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"That's why they're making all their westerns in Canada, he said. "They did a Texas Ranger picture in Canada now that will be released soon. A Texas Ranger picture being made in Canada, but they say they saved almost four million dollars doing it. I don't believe that."

Smith said that despite NAFTA, there are also labor laws that make it difficult for U.S. actors to work in Canada.

"I'm not sure you do save any money in Canada," Robertson agreed. "The crews up there don't compare to crews in Hollywood. It takes you longer to shoot. It doesn't take many extra days to eat up whatever money you're saving on the production by shooting in Canada."

Still, Robertson termed the costs of shooting movies in Hollywood ridiculous.

"That's why everybody's run off," Robertson said. "I think if they come down here to the state of Texas, they could do some great things. It doesn't mean we have to break any laws. We're not going to have to pay — we can't pay — what these unions are asking in California."

Smith said he never worked on any of the "spaghetti westerns" made in Spain.

"I didn't like those little narrow trains, and I didn't like those narrow stagecoaches," Smith said. "I sure didn't like those little horses. When I was a little boy, we used to see a sign on the back of Ford pickups that said, 'Built in Texas by Texans.' I think we ought to do movies like that."

Robertson, who lives in Yukon, Okla., received the Symposium's Cowboy Cultural Award for Western Movies and Television. He appeared in movies and on television from 1946 through the 1960s. He was in about 430 television shows, including 167 episodes of the television series "Tales of Wells Fargo."

"It was a long-running series on NBC," said Dr. Dennis Harp with Texas Tech University, who hosted the panel discussion. "It ran for five years. Today they don't last that long."

Robertson was also on the television show "The Iron Horse" and was a host, along with Ronald Reagan, on "Death Valley Days."

"I came back to Oklahoma in 1976," Robertson said.

He explained that he went out to Hollywood in the first place to make enough money to get back into the horse business. He had been in the horse business prior to World War II. While industry held jobs for others who went off to war, Robertson had been a fighter, and there was no job waiting for him when he returned.

When he got an offer to go to California and act, Robertson said he thought that he might be able to make enough money to buy a place and get back in the horse business.

"I recently sold out all my horses and have settled down and plan to write stories for the rest of my life," Robertson said.

Many of the scripts he's been working on are westerns. There has been some interest in filming them, he said, but nobody's written a check yet.

"I tell them that until that check clears, I'll be here," he grins.

Smith now lives in Breckenridge, Texas.

"He was an accomplished athlete in his college days at the University of Texas," Harp said in introducing the veteran stunt man.

Smith was a 100-yard dash Southwest Conference champion and an All American in 1952, 1954, and 1955. In the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games, he won a gold medal in the 400 meter relays. He was a halfback on the University of Texas football team.

His film credits include "Stagecoach", "The Outlaw", "How the West Was Won", "Rio Lobo", "Big Jake", "True Grit", and "The Sting". Smith appeared on such 1950s and 1960s television shows as "Gunsmoke", "Laramie", "Maverick", "Wagon Train", "Tales of Wells Fargo", and "The Six Million Dollar Man".

"I spent 28 years out in California, in 'La-La Land'," Smith said. "In 1992, I was out there and woke up one morning and decided I needed to get out of there. They'd quit making westerns, so I came back to my home town. I have some Quarter horses that I got from Dale, and I've got a few Longhorn cows."

"I've never been a cowboy in my life," Robertson said. "I've worked with horses all my life. I love animals. I've never had anything to do with cattle. I'd let them all die of old age if they were born on my place; I couldn't send them down to get killed if my life depended upon it."

Robertson said he started out with Thoroughbreds before there were Quarter horses.

"The horses we match raced in those days we called 'short horses'," he said. "They later became Quarter horses.

As the Quarter horse developed, Robertson got into the business.

He recalls a Thoroughbred that Bing Crosby and a partner brought to the U.S. from Ireland. They put up a quarter of a million dollars for a match race.

"He was supposed to be the fastest short Thoroughbred horse brought to this country," Robertson continued.

Only one man accepted their bet. He put up a local Quarter horse mare to run against the Thoroughbred.

"She was a good one," Robertson said, "but she wasn't the fastest one around."

Robertson said he had a few hundred dollars and an old car that he put up to raise money for a bet on the mare.

"I came up with $750 to bet on that mare," Robertson remembered. "That horse out-jumped her coming out of that gate and I would have sold my bet for just enough to have dinner on that night, but she caught him right at the wire."

He went into the Quarter horse business. Robertson said he started developing his Quarter horse herd using the very first money he made in motion pictures.

"I was right," he said. "Mares that I had bought for two or three or four thousand dollars, I raised a half million dollars worth of colts out of them and sold them at an advanced age for forty or fifty thousand dollars."

Robertson maintains he didn't price them, he just put them in sales.

"I've studied the percentages all my life," he said, "in the Thoroughbred business and the Quarter horse business, and I know where the percentage lies. I've always kept it on my side of the line. I've never priced a mare that I know is beyond her greatest production years. If I put her in a sale and people don't want to read and don't want to study, they can roll her up to forty or fifty thousand dollars. I'm all for it, but I've never looked them in the eye and said, 'Oh no, this mare has a lot of great colts left in her.'"

After they're 15 years of age, he contended, their high production days are there, but the good colts are gone.

"They may produce more and more colts that will outrun somebody," Robertson said, "but for the most part when they hit their 16th year, they're beyond their outstanding production years. I can't look a man in the eye and price that mare like she's going to go ahead and keep producing world champions."

While Robertson has never been in the cattle business, he does know the movie business.

"You've got a great opportunity right here in Texas," Robertson said. "You've got the right to work law. You've got all the scenery anybody ever needs. You could make pictures here for a fraction of what they'd cost in California and not cheat anybody. You don't have to cheat anybody."

He said when he first started "Tales of Wells Fargo", he came to Texas and contacted several people in riding clubs.

"I told them, 'I can't pay you, I can't feed you and I can't buy grain for you, but if you'll get your horses and meet me out here on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we'll shoot some film," Robertson said. "We shot a whole lot of what is called 'stock shots' with those people. I always wore the same costume. I always rode the same horse."

They could take any of those shots — one man following him, two men following him, four men following him, six men following him — going left to right and right to left — and plug them into a script. But the writers for the show had to write the script for the numbers they had stock shots for.

"Don't write for five now," Robertson said. "We've got one, two, three, six, seven or eight. We wrote the script to use that stock footage."

When they were finished, he would put fifty or sixty thousand dollars in the riding club treasury.

"Whoever heard of a riding club with $50,000 in their treasury?" Robertson grins. "I couldn't pay them the going rate for a horse and rider. We did that show for $35,000, but I'll assure you that in any episode of Wells Fargo I'll show you more people on the streets, better horses, better costumes."

Both Robertson and Smith lamented the lack of good stories and directors for westerns today.

So many of the new directors don't know anything about how to direct a western, Smith said.

"Today, I think all the experienced people who know westerns are on the outside, looking in, so when Hollywood starts to do a western, they really don't know what they're doing," Smith said.

Robertson would make a good director, Smith insisted.

"He's already forgotten more about editing and writing and directing than anybody I know," Smith explained. "I'd rather work with Dale as compared with some of these 25 year-old guys who think they know everything about a western."

Robertson said he was on a movie set recently and was amazed at what he found.

"I sat there and looked at the most disorganized bunch I've ever seen," Robertson said. "A little blonde-headed girl comes by — a very attractive young girl — and said, 'Mr. Robertson, we're so happy to have you on this film.' I said, 'Thank you, what do you do around here?' She said, 'I'm associate producer. I was studying drama in New York City and I met this gentlemen and this opportunity came up, and he gave me this job as associate producer.'"

Robertson said the bottom line for movies, western or not, is that they are entertainment.

If you want to preach, become a preacher. It you want to teach, become a teacher, Robertson said, but don't use the business of entertainment to be a preacher or teacher.

The key to a good film, he continued, is not presenting real life, but life the way the audience wants to see it.

"Who wants to see life?" Robertson said. "We see it every day. You want to go to a movie to see life how you'd like for it to be."