Two-Gun Man from Harlem - 1938

Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938) creates a world for us that is both strange and familiar, an image placed over another image. We see a separate world, but it is our world and we are at home here, even if we are not cowboys, even if we are not Black, even if we are not white.

This movie is one of a handful of B-westerns starring Herb Jeffries, and the first of a series of three featuring him playing the cowboy called Bob Blake. We discussed Mr. Jeffries in this previous post, how his stature as The Bronze Buckaroo, the Singing Cowboy of the Black Cinema in the 1930s put him on par with the likes of Gene Autry and a posse of others who were all white and all more famous.

The Bronze Buckaroo traveled in somewhat different circles. He rode the range in movie houses that played to African-American audiences. General audiences, i.e. theaters where patrons were either mostly white, or, as in the South, all white, were not shown these films.

They missed out on something big, those white patrons. A simple message a lot of them would have to wait another 20 or 30 years to hear, and under much more turbulent circumstances. If they had only seen Herb Jeffries riding into town on his white horse to save the day, heard him sing “I’m a Happy Cowboy”, one wonders if the battles for social justice fought in the streets and on the back of the bus, and at the lunch counter would have been necessary.

Not that Two-Gun Man from Harlem was the greatest movie in the world. It wasn’t even the greatest movie in the small neighborhood movie houses where it played. It was typical B-western.

That is its charm, and the very magic of its power.

Herb Jeffries is the hero. We know that because he’s jaw-droppingly handsome, he’s taller than everybody else, and he wears a white hat. He’s no great actor - none of the singing cowboys were, although in this movie he gets to play a dual role. As the gunfighter “The Deacon” he looks like he’s having a blast.

Manton Moreland is his shorter, funnier brother. He is sly and loyal, and a lot smarter than most cowboy sidekicks. He tells a story to divert the bad guys, about Lot’s wife. Only in his rambling version, Salt Lake City is the result of the biblical curse.

Mae Turner is the ranch owner’s wife, who is unfaithful and tries to lure our Herb. Failing that, she frames him for murder. Unlike most of the other awkward and wooden performances here, Miss Turner had stage training at the University of California, and played Lady Macbeth among her professional roles. She knew how to do evil ladies.

Spencer Williams, who would go on to write and produce in Black Cinema, played Butch, the bad guy who did the bidding, for a hefty fee, of Clarence Brooks. He gives a quite natural performance and has great screen presence.

Mr. Brooks played the head bad guy, a man of means and just plain mean. He tries to buy the love of the beautiful young ingénue, played by Marguerite Whitten. He is as oily as Snidely Whiplash.

Miss Whitten is the guardian of her younger brother, Matthew “Stymie” Beard, who you’ll recognize as one of the Little Rascals. Here, he’s a funny, talkative, know-it-all kid who hero-worships Herb Jeffries.

And who wouldn’t?

That’s all pretty standard for a B-western. The writing is stilted and corny. The acting isn’t the best. The production values are distinctly low budget. Even the fight scenes are funny because they lack proper choreography, and the sound effect of the punching sounds a lot somebody slapping a tennis ball against a garage wall.

But look again. Jess “Jesse” Lee Brooks, one of the finest actors and singers of his generation (see this previous post with a clip of his “Let My People Go” in “Sullivan’s Travels”), plays the sheriff.

He is a man of authority, no-nonsense, steely-eyed, but fair. You can put your life in his hands. He always gets his man.

Films exhibited for “general” audiences did not show dark-skinned sheriffs. Nor dark-skinned rapacious landowners paying off henchmen. Nor dark-skinned cowboy heroes.

Which is why when offered a chance to “pass” in the movies, light-skinned Herb Jeffries, who was of mixed African and European heritage on his father’s side, and Irish on his mother’s side, refused. He did one better and wore darker makeup on screen. Mr. Jeffries reasoning was:

"In those days, my driving force was being a hero to children who didn't have any heroes to identify with," Jeffries says in a quote from his website. "I felt that dark-skinned children could identify with me and, in The Bronze Buckaroo they could have a hero. Many people don't realize (to this very day) that in the Old West, one out of every three cowboys was a Black... and there were many Mexican cowboys, too."

The familiar image of the B-western types: the hero, the villain, the pretty girl, the hero-worshiping little boy, and the loyal sidekick, they are all played out here by Black people. African-American audiences could enjoy the same storybook sagebrush fare as the “general” audiences without fear of being demeaned or stereotyped, this time.

White audiences, however, missed out on a revelation. The hero, the villain, the pretty girl, the hero-worshiping little boy were all people they knew very well. They saw them all the time at the movies.  The only difference -- the only difference -- was skin color.

About ten minutes into the movie, one sees that is no difference at all.

Powerful stuff, and not what some people wanted to hear.

For more on Herb Jeffries, have a look at his website.

Wishing you a meaningful Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Herb Jeffries - the Bronze Buckaroo

This is Herb Jeffries singing “Flamingo”, in his silky baritone as only he can do it.

Mr. Jeffries, still with us at 98 years of age, holds a unique place in film history. He is considered the first black singing cowboy. He rode fences on a most curious range, an industry sitting on the fence about a nation divided by race.

Born Herbert Jeffrey of mixed-race African and European ancestry, he was a band vocalist with Duke Ellington in the 1940s. In “Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams - the Story of Black Hollywood” by Donald Bogle (One World-Ballantine Books, NY, c. 2005), he is described as a bit of a nightclub heartthrob who headed to Gower Gulch like so many others looking for a back door into Hollywood (see this previous post on Gower Gulch), and the B-westerns.

His “Harlem on the Prairie”, shot in ten days, was touted by Variety as having much “box office promise… as a novelty, for the colored theaters, it’s surefire.” It was called the first Negro musical western, and that would launch a new genre. Below, we have Herb Jeffries from “Harlem Rides the Range”.



A strange, surreal prairie it was for a light-skinned mixed race man, the forerunner of a new genre that was meant to play only to what Variety called “colored theaters”. Black audiences were given a singing cowboy hero at last. He sang better than Gene Autry, but would not reach Autry’s iconic and financial stature.

There were few blacks in the other B-westerns that played to mainstream (non-segregated theaters), though as mentioned in this previous post on Autry’s “The Singing Cowboy”, the blacks in his movies were usually not demeaned by stereotype. However, seeing few African-Americans in westerns may have left audiences of the day, and for a generation afterward, with the impression that the Old West was a homogenous place, as segregated a place as the schools in Little Rock before the showdown of 1957.

In her memoir “To See the Dream” (Harcourt, Brace and Company, NY, 1957) by Jessamyn West on the filming of “Friendly Persuasion” (which was discussed in this previous post on books on movies), the author ponders the reaction of a little white girl about black cowboys. When two teenaged boys, one white and one black, visit Miss West and excitedly discuss their future dreams, the black teen declares he wants to be a cowboy.

Miss West is especially interested in the reaction of the little girl, who is her neighbor. The child dismisses this young man’s goal in life as silly because, as she declares with authority, there are no Negro cowboys. Jessamyn West gently plays devil’s advocate and ruminates that cows do not care about the color of the skin of whoever rides herd. But, the little girl is adamant. It makes no sense to her. There just are no Negro cowboys.

Will Rogers, famed “Ziegfeld Follies” self-styled cowboy comedian and folk hero, and movie star in his own set of B-films, was taught how to be a ranch hand by a former slave. The little girl, and much of America, probably didn’t know that.

At that time, tales of African-American pioneers in the west, and the Buffalo Soldiers in the U.S. Cavalry got little play in the history books, and not a much of even a footnote in the movies.

But, Herb Jeffries, called The Bronze Buckaroo after the title of one of his films, represented the possibility of there being such a thing as a black hero in the wild west, if only to segregated audiences.

When he was in his 80s, Mr. Jeffries recorded an album of cowboy songs in Nashville, called “The Bronze Buckaroo (Rides Again)”, and continued to perform live even into his 90s at jazz festivals, and at benefits to raise money for autism research. That surely makes him a hero.

In 2004, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.

Below, we have the Bronze Buckaroo singing “Payday Blues” from “The Bronze Buckaroo” (1939). For more on Herb Jeffries, have a look here at his website.

The Singing Cowboy - 1936

“The Singing Cowboy” (1936) didn’t exactly invent the genre, if we can call it that, of the singing cowboy kind of B-westerns, but it certainly cemented it.

Gene Autry, ever afterwards called The Singing Cowboy, starred as himself. Like Roy Rogers a few years later, Gene almost always played a character called Gene Autry, though unlike King of the Cowboys, Mr. Rogers, Autry was really his last name. I suppose if you just always play you in the script, you don’t have the aggravation of trying to remember your character name.

This is a Republic B-western in the grand old sense, meaning rustlers, happy-go-lucky ranch hands, a hero, a stupid sidekick, the hero’s horse who is smarter than the stupid sidekick, a certain amount of lassoing, shooting of cap pistols, and saving pouty virginal ingénues on runaway horses. You can’t beat that for entertainment. At least not for 10 cents at a matinee.


Gene and his stupid sidekick Smiley Burnette, who co-wrote the songs in this movie, live with a bunch of happy-go-lucky and very musical ranch hands. Their boss’s daughter, a moppet who adores Gene is something of a cross between Jane Withers and Jane Withers, only played by Ann Gilles (also billed as Gillis). We see a cathedral-style radio in the bunkhouse, which seems quaint when we consider the more futuristic technology to come later on in the plot.


The ranch boss has a partner, played by Lon Chaney, Jr. who is the villain of the piece. Mr. Chaney, Jr. will have a better break in his career playing the sadly tormented wolfman in a few years, and the tragic Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” Right now, he doesn’t have too much to do. Except steal horses from his partner. It’s the Great Depression and Lon, Jr. has to pay his bills.

The boss catches him, and throws us a heap ‘o plot exposition with the line, “So, it’s my old partner who’s been stealing the stock! Figure you could bankrupt me, make me sell off my share of the ranch to you! Is that it?”

Yeah, that’s it. This is one of the fun things about B-westerns. We don’t have to wait too long for the plot to unfold. They just spill it in first few minutes, like an ansty little kid bursting with a secret.


There is a fight. (“You’re nothing but a double-crossing skunk!”) The boss gets shot (dies in Gene’s arms and gives him guardianship of the moppet). A fire starts in the barn. The moppet runs inside to save kittens, and gets trampled by panicked horses.

So, let’s see. In the first ten minutes you’ve got a villain out to get the ranch, a murder, arson, and a moppet totally paralyzed from the neck down (except when she forgets and moves her arms), who needs a $10,000 operation. YE GADS! And the healthcare bill is still being debated in Congress!

But in lieu of national healthcare, Gene has another idea. He and the ranch hands are going on the radio and get rich and famous!

It doesn’t work. Radio doesn’t want them. They start on Plan B. Television.

Keeping in mind this is a 1936 movie, it’s really quite charming to see what they imagined television would be, if were there such a crazy thing. In some ways their idea of the future medium was really remarkably…stupid. Like the broadcast station inside the chuck wagon they haul from town to town. There are a couple of antenna on the floppy canvas chuck wagon roof that look like either leftovers from some Crash Corrigan serial, or maybe some old Christmas decorations. You could do better with aluminum foil and a wire coat hanger.

The other really interesting, really stupid, aspect is the apparent fact that you do not need television cameras to broadcast on television. There are never any cameras on Gene and his singing ranch hands while they perform their shows everywhere the broadcast chuck wagon stops. They just magically appear on television screens. Nor does television apparently require electricity.


The screens, large flat things mounted on the walls of everywhere, from the sponsor’s office (Chuck Wagon Coffee), to the moppet’s hospital room, look almost like our flat screens today. Well, they got something right, anyway.




Their sponsor (another thing they got right about future television), has a runaway daughter, played by Lois Wilde, who wants to be a singer. She is the pouty virginal ingénue whom Gene saves from a runaway horse. She joins the troupe of contestants on the amateur hour TV show on which Gene stars. Another group trying out for the show is a trio of black cowboys headed by Fred “Snowflake” Toones. Though they are as silly and cartoonish as everybody else on this TV show, it is one of the few times during this era where African-American performers are not demeaned, though there is some coy banter about referring to these cowpokes as being very sunburned. “Snowflake” gets to be a musical cowboy in this movie. In just about all his other many films, he was a porter or a bootblack.

Speaking of complexions, one can’t help but notice that Gene Autry’s lip makeup is just a tad too heavy. In some scenes he could give Pola Negri a run for her money.

In one funny scene, the ingénue is hiding from her rich daddy’s henchmen who want to bring her back so she can marry a drip. Gene helps her hide. She dons cowboy clothes and starts smearing shaving cream all over her face, pretending to be one of the boys shaving when they interrogate Gene. Hiding in plain sight is always a good gag. After they leave she of course exclaims in relief,

“Gee, that was the closest shave I ever had!”

Yes, I laughed, and I’m not ashamed.

Gene also makes a funny remark when he fails to earn enough for the moppet’s operation and doubts he can borrow it, “Banks don’t loan money on bad risks.” Sure they don’t.


Lon Chaney, Jr. pops back around with his mean hombres to sabotage the show, but Gene performs various acts of courage, like leaping off his horse, Champion (who gets his own screen credit), onto moving autos, driving the runaway broadcast chuck wagon over treacherous mountain roads, and a dangerous amount of yodeling.

This being a move about The Singing Cowboy, Gene or somebody else bursts into song about every minute and a half. By the end of the hour, he saves the ingénue (not only from bad guys, but from her drippy fiancé and mostly from herself), gets the cash for the moppet’s operation, and sings another song.


One aspect of this movie, and movies like it, is the fond familiarity with the kind of dialogue used. You’ve heard it before. Remember where? It sounds like the kind of dialogue we used as children when mimicking these scenarios. It was always “they got me!”, “reach for the sky,” or “say your prayers” (which Yosemite Sam also used to warn Bug Bunny he was about to shoot him).

I can recall rather elaborate backyard plots of make believe mayhem, complicated by sudden and previously unknown patches of quicksand at the bottom of the back stairs, or interrupted by kid brothers who didn’t die like they were supposed to (or forgot to count to 10 before getting up), the dog who ran away with somebody’s red felt cowboy hat in his mouth, or mom hollering for us at suppertime.

I’ve watched children play these days with various space toys, like the light sabers from the Star Wars franchise, and mostly what they do is slash at each other and run around, laughing and running, and whacking each other. There is very little dialogue. I can remember seeing some kid with a Harry Potter getup, carrying a wand and I thought, ah, now we’re going to see some real daytime drama. But no. All he did was run up to the other kids and whack them on the head with the wand, and run away, laughing.

Our games, back in the day, were so drawn out (sometimes over the course of an afternoon, sometimes over the course of the summer), because we had so much dialogue we had to make up. (“No, you don’t say that! I say that! You fall down! Then you take Joey to jail!”)

There was a protocol to those B-movie or television serial pantomimes that required justice being somehow served, and there was a solemnity to the proceedings. We carried this playacting to the very edges of what we knew as reality, like pet funerals. I don’t think there was anything more solemn as a child-orchestrated pet funeral. Especially the part where the guests step up to “say a few words” as Henry Fonda put it in “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939) when they buried Charley Grapewin on the side of Route 66.

(Boy takes off his ball cap, puts it over his heart. “He was a good turtle….”) and then perhaps a sloppy and off-key rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” or humming “Taps” through kazoos.

Maybe those silly B-westerns taught us the protocol of consequence. “The Singing Cowboy” was slim on plot, but had bucketsful of consequences. For every action, good or bad, there was an almost immediate consequence.

That Gene Autry actually would get his own real television show in the early 1950s, and sell a prodigious amount of merchandise to kids, may or may not have been coincidental. I don’t think even Gene, as canny as he was, could have predicted that in 1936. But he made a huge impact on kids, and maybe the money he made off them evened everything out.

Consider that in response to children who were his biggest fans, Gene Autry took the rather kindly responsibility to draw up a code of conduct for them, if they really wanted to be his special hombres. It was called The Cowboy Code:

The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.

He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.

He must always tell the truth.

He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.

He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.

He must help people in distress.

He must be a good worker.

He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.

He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.

The Cowboy is a patriot.

Gene joked about himself, that he was not the best singer, or a very good actor or even horse rider. Some movie stars take themselves way too seriously. Some, like Gene, take their stardom seriously.

On the Old Spanish Trail (1947)

“On the Old Spanish Trail” (1947) is one of those B-westerns that takes its title and premise from a song. The action is fast-paced, probably because it is not slowed down by much of plot. But it has Roy Rogers, who came to be known as King of the Cowboys, and his horse Trigger, who was actually billed as “The Smartest Horse in the Movies.”

Trigger clearly had an excellent agent.

They are assisted by bumbling, raspy-voiced Andy Devine, by pert pouting blonde Jane Frazee as the girl who needs saving from the bad guys, by Tito Guizar as a lovable rogue called The Gypsy, and by a passel of The Sons of the Pioneers.

This tale of the Old West is actually set in present day (1947), and so we have a riot of converging images of horses and sedans, six-shooters and modern music. The Sons of the Pioneers are in debt and Roy must catch a bad guy for the reward and pay the bill. There are songs at every turn, and a female lead so gussied up in country western attire she looks like she belongs on a box of snack cakes. One cannot help but wonder why Roy is wearing his guns around town when this is not actually the old west. The pair of six-shooters makes him appear more overdressed than a lady wearing a fur coat at a barbecue.

Roy Rogers had a long career, appeared in dozens of films, mostly as himself, or rather as this character of Roy Rogers that he had created. Nobody is born King of the Cowboys, it’s not that kind of monarchy, so Roy had to transform himself into this hero of B-westerns. Gene Autry and Tex Ritter did much the same thing, starring as the real-life people they molded themselves into. Interesting that Ann Sothern played a string of “Maisie” films but never got around to calling herself Maisie. This is a phenomenon of the B-western. Reality was probably never more so successfully blended with make-believe, even for a film industry whose hallmark was the blurring of reality. It was done so simply and so well.

With the main patrons of these films being children, perhaps achieving this make-believe was easy. And profitable, especially when the Baby Boomer kids came along on a giant wave of television, marketing, and their parents’ disposable income.

The ca-shink sound of Roy’s spurs on a wood floor makes the whole movie for me. Maybe it was augmented by the sound guy, but I like to think that, at least, was genuine.

Emma Tansey

Emma Tansey was in her mid 40s when she began her film career as a character actress in 1914. She was still at it when she died in 1942 in her 70s. Most of her time spent on film was as “Old Woman” or “Sweet Old Lady” or most often just “Old Lady.”

She played Mrs. Delaney in “Meet John Doe” (1941) and kisses Gary Cooper’s hand in gratitude. She was a peasant woman in “Les Miserables” (1935), and bought a bus ticket for the incognito Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night” (1934). In “The Bank Dick” (1940) she was Old Woman on Bench.

Mrs. Tansey’s three sons also became film actors, and writers and directors, mostly in B-westerns. She played in a fair amount of westerns herself, but went on to appear in modern films as well. She was one of the many character actresses who took the crumbs from the opulent table of Hollywood’s dream factory. One imagines her few scenes in these films paid some bills and kept her alive. One hopes her work gave her pleasure as well. Hers is a face I love picking out in a crowd scene.

Gene Autry - 100th Anniversary

This Saturday marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of B-western hero Gene Autry.

From the official Gene Autry website, we have the following admission, “When Gene Autry went to Hollywood in 1934, he couldn't act, he couldn't ride, he couldn't rope and he couldn't shoot. But that didn't prevent him from becoming the screen's most popular cowboy star within just a few years, revitalizing the whole genre and paving the way for Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter and other Western warblers.”

That pretty much sums up his rise to stardom, that and one thing more. Gene Autry is also the only entertainer to have all five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for records, radio, movies, television and live performances. The man knew how to diversify.

The plots of his films were pretty simple. The romances were chaste, the bad guys lost, the good guys won, and the comedy relief sidekick was always stupid but good natured. It was a winning formula for the 89 of Gene’s films made between 1935 and 1953.

His accomplishments extended as well to business and to philanthropy. The museums of the Autry National Center promoting Southwest history and culture are gems, and not to be missed if you’re traveling to Los Angeles.

Gene Autry’s acting style was a bit wooden. There are planks of wood out there at the Home Depot that are not as wooden as Gene. But when he sings, “Sioux City Sue, your hair is red, your eyes are blue, I’d swap my horse and dog for you,” well, you can’t get any more romantic than that. Gene played a good guy. Today’s filmmakers show us that nobody is all good or all bad, and while that is true, it sometimes seems there is nobody good at all anymore. Gene was good. He just was, and our confidence in his goodness made us care that he bested the bad guys.

The Encore Western channel is running a 100-hour Gene Autry marathon this weekend. Have a look, and at the official Gene Autry website as well (http://www.autry.com), for more on this old movie hombre.

Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts (1937)

“Tex Rides with the Boy Scouts” (1937) stars Tex Ritter, his horse “White Flash”, and features Marjorie Reynolds, who later went on to a better role in “Holiday Inn” (1942) opposite Bing Crosby.

The movie begins with a kind a newsreel feel to it with the announcer voice over telling us a bit about the history of the Boy Scouts. In this short, Tex, and his two bumbling pals Stubby, played by Horace Murphy and Pee Wee, played by Snub Pollard, stumble upon a Boy Scout camp near to where some bad guys are hiding stolen gold.

You have to be a pretty confident guy to hang out with pals named Pee Wee and Stubby, or else just desperate for friends. Tex has an easy time winning over the Scouts, because he lets on he is a former Scout himself. The lead Scout, a freckled, overly enthusiastic youth named Buzzy, who says things like “Jiminy Crickets!” has a big sister, played by Marjorie Reynolds. “Sis” does little more than pout in Tex’s direction, so there is little love interest in the film. Just as well, because that’s sissy stuff.

Tex wears an enormous ten-gallon hat, sings a bit, and says things like “mosey.” There is a smattering of stereotype in the form of the Chinese laundry man named Sing Fung, played by Phillip Ahn, who actually says, “No tickee, no washee.” There is some swell riding, a shootout on horseback where nobody loses their hats, and some fisticuffs. Only the bad guys smoke, and there’s no cussing. Just bad acting and bad writing.

The real charm of this film is a brief but lovely segment where Tex gets to sing “Red River Valley” at a barn dance. His band, and the dancers before us, girls in print dresses and men in the best clothes they could find, look utterly genuine, like the kind of people you would see in a rural dance in Depression-era America. It is remarkably unaffected and natural, and all too brief. Tex also sings “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” and the crowds erupts into a square dance. It is sweet and somehow touching.

The only unnatural part of the scene is when “Sis” enters in a gown she might wear to New York City’s Rainbow Room. Then the rest of the short crumbles back to awkward melodrama when young Buzzy gets shot by the bad guy.

After the local sawbones patches the boy up, Tex asks, “Who shot you, son?” After a dramatic, almost eternal pause (young Buzzy, played by Tommy Bupp, has learned to milk it), Buzzy accuses the bad guy in some mumbled additional plot exposition.

Tex and the Boy Scouts prevail in this Grand National picture, Marjorie Reynolds went on to better things, and alls well that ends well.


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Tex Ritter Movies

Some Movie Icons

Grace Kelly became a 1950s acting icon, after appearing in only 11 films and also in a number of early television guest roles. Audrey Hepburn appeared in about 30 films, reaching icon status almost immediately and staying there. Katharine Hepburn, who appeared in less than 50 films, is so iconic I’m surprised there hasn’t been a commemorative quarter released even if she wasn’t a President.

Running the gamut between character actor and icon is perhaps only John Wayne, amazingly with over 170 roles, who got his start playing extras in the 1920s. Though he became a B-western cowboy in the 1930s and finally got to say lines, it probably wasn’t until John Ford’s “Stagecoach” (1939) when Wayne steps into our popular consciousness, casting a long shadow and making him a star, eventually an icon in his own right. Before that, he spent a lot of time in the crowd scenes.

What turned John Wayne from an extra in a silent film about college football to The Duke, whose fans would carve him on Mount Rushmore if they could, never mind put him on a quarter? What makes an icon, if one person becomes one instantly and another slowly morphs into one after decades? What do they share? We do not see ourselves in these people, as we might with character actors. We see something more, something perhaps we would like to be ourselves, something perhaps unattainable, yet a quality that we think we understand and admire.

Lafe McKee

Lafe McKee has the astonishing accomplishment of having appeared in 329 movies. He debuted as a film actor in 1912 with “All on Account of Checkers” and remained a working actor until 1948 when he appeared as an uncredited extra in “Belle Starr’s Daughter.”

As the title of his final film indicates, Mr. McKee’s career was spent for the most part in B-westerns. He played sheriffs and ministers, and various townspeople, including unnamed stagecoach passengers. In “The Lone Ranger” (1938), he was murdered.

Only rarely using his real name of Lafayette McKee, in the films he was called Pop or Dad, Colonel, Doc, Skipper, Reverend, or Prisoner Shot in Back. He was a working actor, not a star, and few stars had his endurance.

Mr. McKee was born in 1872, long before movies were even imagined, let alone made, which would have made him around 40 at his film debut. In 1934 he made “West of the Divide” with John Wayne, and in just that single year of 1934 appeared in 29 separate films. He was evidently as interchangeable on different sets as flats.

Most of us may remember McKee not for his western films or even his longevity, but for three films made by Frank Capra in which McKee had brief cameo parts. In “Meet John Doe” (1941) he is Mr. Delaney, the man who sells his furniture piece by piece to get through the Depression, whose wife kisses Gary Cooper’s hand in appreciation for giving them hope. McKee has no lines; he merely clings to his wife and smiles, nodding graciously to Cooper. He is a tall, thin man with white hair, merry eyes, and a full white mustache. His appearance is iconic, from another era, a 19th century rail splitter in a battle to keep his dignity in the cold and heartless 20th Century. This is why Capra used him, and used him again.

In “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” director Capra places McKee in another cameo moment as the Civil War Veteran who stands with his grandson at the Lincoln Memorial, while James Stewart, inspired by him as much as by Lincoln’s words etched in stone, looks on.

He is one of the disenfranchised farmers in “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” and while I’m not really sure about this, but I think McKee also has an uncredited part as an extra in Capra’s “Miracle Woman” (1931) sitting in the front row of the revival meeting congregation. There is a gentleman who looks like him, but I could be wrong. It was the kind of setting where he would be used, a decent American in a desperate situation.

His appearance was an American Everyman, from the generation before the Gary Cooper and James Stewart type of Everyman. Unlike them, he was not given snappy lines, or the girl. At that stage of his life, his courtly appearance substituted for dialogue. He is a symbol a bygone, simpler age.