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Alamo Fats Draw: The Rough Rider
LLedslinger: Hello Jim I heard you been doing some research.
Jim Martin: Yeah I've been kind of boning up my fault memory. You know most of the stuff I already know but then I'm a little hazy on dates and I have to go back and look into my reference books. The thing that I was going to forward you came from Bobby Copeland and it was a picture of him with all of his books standing up in front of him on a table. I think there was total of 14 books that he has written about these old time movie stars. Various ones Bill Elliott, Johnny Mack Brown and just on and on, he's a very well read, very well researched writer for these old westerns and he has met a lot of these guys over the years. Personally he was Lashed Le Roux's road manager I believe for 22 years, he met Charles Ferret many times not to mention some of the other what you might call luminaries of the old time. He was telling me about a gal here a while back and I wish I could think of her name. I think he said it was Peggy Stewart but don't quote me on that but he talked to her about the year and 1/2 or two years ago and my god she hasn't been in a movie since the forties. I think that was the name but I'm not sure but anyway it was one of those old time Gals you know that played in the old western movies, lead roles and everything.Bob Marten:(sounds like Peggy Stewart). Bobby has been attending the film festival since they started, back in the 1980s or late seventies when they first started having these film festivals and that's what some of these guys were still around. Of course I met Lash Larue at some of the festival's I went to back several years ago. Will Hutchens was there I had some personal experience with him years ago with a horse shows which is a hold another story. I took him on a carpet one time in a horse show over in California, I was on the portion he was on the carpet. Actually it was called a hide race but they don't use hides any more they use carpet now. We were going around a 55 gallon drum out there in the middle of an arena for time, he was riding on the carpet and I was riding the horse. Remember I told you earlier that Chuck Anderson would be a good guest on here. I gave him some of my personal pictures out of my collection to put on his site called the Old Corral and I also told him about meeting Charlie King and Tom London after their careers were over and most people today haven't got the foggiest notion about who I am talking about but Charlie King was best known by his character name of Blackie, a heavyset guy with a big belly who always played the villain, but he was a good comedian to an 18 use him for That. Tom London not only played bad guys when he played good guys to. When I met the two of them they were security guards out that Masco's Field in the San Fernando valley this was after the B westerns were all gone. It would have been around 1955 or 56 if I remember correctly. I met Ken Maynard in a bar down in Long Beach, Ken Maynard was one hell of a horseman in his younger days. One of the things this guy could do and I know this sounds fantastic but is documented he could be on a galloping horse and leave the saddle, crawl underneath the horse from the left side and come up on the right side at a full gallop, can you believe that.
LLedsinger: How about we just kind of jump in and get started with this I know you've done a lot of research.
Jim Martin: I wanted to read a paragraph out of a book its called Tim Mccoy Remembers the West it was written by him and his son Ronald McCoy and I've had several conversations with his son when I was building the Tim Mccoy gun and I will talk about that in a minute. This pretty well describes what kind of a guy Tim McCoy was in the movies. It says here one fan writer James Horowitz the self proclaimed Front Row Kid, attempted to track down his western film idols in the mid 1970s. The result was They Went That Away, ("that's a book and by the way I have the book") an engaging book in which Horowitz touches on the effect Tim McCoy had on so many young people. He was Horwitz reflected a cowboy hero with his own unique personality and image, not to be mistaken for anyone else. If William S.Heart was the good bad man and Tom Mix was a rhinestone and neon cowboy, if Ken Maynard was the daredevil and Hoot Gibson was the ragtime clown then Colonel Tim McCoy's image would be the man of destiny in basic black. He wasn't every front row kids idea of a cowboy hero but only the smart ones. Horowitz remembered is remembered as a man of style, it was the military bearing and the air of an aristocrat that helped create the Tim McCoy image which Horowitz has characterized as the straight and immaculate lightning fast on the draw good guy. ("I'll talk about that in a minute") The icy stare that froze the hearts and gun hands of the bad guys. The sideways glance, almost a twinkle in his eye that told the bad guys they didn't have a chance and it would be wise to throw in their hand before he made them look foolish. Will that pretty well sums it up the old boy. He was really in what we used to refer to as a man's man and there's not too many of those around anymore you know. If you can imagine at age 51 going back into the army for world war two, can you imagine what kind of character this man had to do this. He damn sure did have to he was 51 years old in 1942 and went back into the service. Now when this Rough Rider series of movies was made, they made eight of them and when they did all three of the stars were over 50 years old Buck Jones, Ramon Haten and Tim McCoy. They made these movies, I believe they started them in the last part of 1940 and they ran until 1942. The reason they stopped was two reasons of course Tim McCoy and Buc Jones died in the Coconut Grove fire there in Boston. Now you're familiar with some of the guns I built, the theme guns. I built the southwestern guns with southwestern Brands all over them and then I built a Bob Wills gun and then I built a Tim Mccoy gun. I have this gun here in front of me. Now on the Bob wills gun it was all Texas brands and stuff about Bob Wills, each one of these guns has a theme. Now this Tim Mccoy gun, the theme on it that I put on here is biographical and filmagraphical and the engraving that is on here covers his career. Around the cylinder I have six movies engraved six of which are the Rough Rider movies and dates they were released by the way and on the right side of the frame is a seventh movie and on the right side of the barrel is the eighth Rough Rider movie th all with fed dates of their release.

If any of you Gunfighters would like to hear more of this interveiw you can listen to episode 26 on the audio player(red) on the right side of this page. If you would like to join in the show live or listen live to the Alamo Fast Draw show or call 1-724-444-7444 show#16056. Whether you are a gunfighter or not its a fun show.