Copyright 1998 The Seattle Times Company

Posted at 12:50 p.m. PDT; Friday, October 2, 1998

Cowboy Gene Autry dies at 91 by The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Gene Autry, who parlayed a $5 mail-order guitar into a career as Hollywood's first singing cowboy, died today. He was 91. Mr. Autry, who also built a multimillion-dollar fortune in broadcasting and was the original owner of the California Angels baseball team, died at his home in the city's Studio City neighborhood, said Karla Buhlman, vice president of Gene Autry Entertainment. His death came less than three months after the death of his great rival, Roy Rogers.

Though a pennant for his Angels eluded him, Mr. Autry succeeded at just about anything he undertook: radio, records, songwriting, movies, TV, real estate and business. He first sang on radio in 1928 and then went on to make 95 films and star in a TV show from 1950 to 1956. He also cut 635 records, including "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and his signature "Back in the Saddle Again," which was back on the charts in 1993 as part of the sound-track to the hit movie "Sleepless in Seattle." Mr.Autry hung up his performing spurs in 1956 but continued to own four radio stations, the Gene Autry Hotel in Palm Springs, and several other properties.In 1982, he sold Los Angeles TV station KTLA for $245 million.He ranked for many years on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, before he fell in 1995 to the magazine's "near miss" category with an estimated net worth of $320 million.

Chance to play ball Mr. Autry, who once turned down a chance to play in the minor leagues, had been the Angels'owner since the team was formed as an American League expansion fran-chise in 1961. In spring 1995, Mr. Autry announced that the Walt Disney Co. was buying a part interest in the team, and the following year Disney took operating control. Recent baseball seasons ended as all seasons have ended for the Angels,with Mr.Autry still awaiting the team's first World Series appearance. Disney had an agreement to acquire Mr. Autry's remaining share of the team at his death.

Throughout his business dealings, Mr. Autry collected Western memorabilia and art. In December 1988, the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, built largely with funds from Mr. Autry's foundations, opened in Los Angeles' Griffith Park. `West has been very kind' "I felt that I owed something. The West has been very kind to me over the years," Mr. Autry said. He called the museum a gift to the world rather than a monument to himself.

He first came to Los Angeles in 1934 to appear with Ken Maynard in a movie called "Old Santa Fe." "I was the first singing cowboy in that picture," Mr. Autry once said. "John Wayne had made an earlier movie in which he played a singing cowboy, but he didn't do his own singing."It was the heyday of the Western, and Mr. Autry was ranked top Western star at the box office from 1937-43, and in 1940-42 he was in the Top 10 of all movie box-office favorites. Smiley Burnett was popular as Mr. Autry's comic sidekick, and Mr. Autry's horse,Champion, also was an audience favorite. Rogers replaced Mr. Autry as Republic Studios' top cowboy when Mr. Autry took time out to serve as a flier in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, he went over to Columbia Pictures and obtained a new partner: Pat Buttram. Among his postwar pictures were "The Last Roundup," 1947, and "Riders in the Sky," 1949.

After Rogers died July 6, Mr. Autry called it "a terrible loss for me.I had tremendous respect for Roy and considered him a great humanitarian and an outstanding American." Mr. Autry's broadcasting career included appearances on the "Melody Ranch" CBS radio show, beginning in 1939. From 1950-56, he was host of "The Gene Autry Show" on CBS-TV, one of the first TV series made by a motion-picture star. Singing `Rudolph' Mr. Autry's records sold more than 40 million copies. His first gold record was "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine."Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" has sold 10 million copies and is a Christmas perennial. He wrote many of the songs he performed.

Mr. Autry was born Sept. 29, 1907, in Tioga, Texas, and grew up in the small Oklahoma town of Ravia. As a boy, Mr. Autry occasionally earned spending money singing at local nightspots and with the extra cash, he invested in a mail order guitar and taught himself to play.

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