Episode 348: The Gene Autry Show - "Hot Lead" (November 26, 1950)
Gene tries to tame a horse, and I'm reminded of Mike Pence
What I watched: The nineteenth episode of The Gene Autry Show, a kid-friendly Western starring the titular singing cowboy and Alan Hale Jr. as his sidekick Tiny. "Hot Lead" was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Dwight Cummins, with guest stars Jim Frasher, Harry Cheshire, Harry Lauter, and Don C. Harvey. The episode originally aired at 7:30 PM on Sunday, November 26, 1950 on CBS, and is available on Shout Factory TV.
What happened: Gene Autry is helping out a guy named Bert Hodge (Cheshire around the ranch when a man shows up looking to sell him a horse. Gene agrees to buy it instead. The horse is Fury, who wildly rears up in suspiciously repetitive footage. When a man abuses the horse, and a stablehand too, Gene slugs him, and they get into a hell of a slobberknocker (that’s a type of fight.) They eventually get pulled apart, and Gene gets into antics with Tiny, who’s the replacement sidekick for this episode. Gene sings “Strawberry Roan”, which is also a song about a rebellious horse.
There’s a bank robbery in town, with three masked men running out of the bank, guns blazing. Tiny has apparently lost all his money. Fury has also disappeared. The robbers are the strangers who were in town selling horses, led by Sam Blake (Lauter). The only flaw in their plan is Matt (Harvey)’s kid brother Jeff (Frasher), who is the same kid that got slugged earlier. We see the kid caring for Fury and his sprained leg. Gene and Tiny come across the kid, and he shoots at them, much to their surprise. Gene sneaks up on him and easily disarms him.
Gene and Tiny take the kid in, and explicitly compare him to the horse. Gene sneaks out at night to help break Fury, and lets Jeff believe he did it. Jeff lets slip that Sam and the others committed the robbery. One of the other robbers kidnaps Jeff. He sends Fury away and gets cold-cocked for his troubles. Gene shows up and says that he’s just looking for Fury. It’s just a distraction, however, for Tiny to take him out with a lasso.
The other two robbers are out trying to catch Fury, Gene catches up with them amidst a bunch of rocks. He takes one down, but the other takes his hat off to play dead. He gets the drop on Gene and tries to run away, but Fury chases after him and lays in some punishment with his hooves. There’s a lot of awkward cutting again, but it’s still pretty cool. After everyone’s been sent to jail, Gene sings a song that rhymes “showdown” with “hoedown.”
What I thought: Mike Pence, allegedly quoting Reagan, once tweeted “There’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.” Now, that did sound vaguely sexual, but I think it did reveal something about the cultural symbolism of horse-riding in the American imagination. Mastering a horse symbolizes the triumph of man over his environment, and that’s especially evident in this week’s Gene Autry Show.
Gene is at his best as a paternal figure, and he pulls double duty in this episode, both breaking a rebellious young horse and raising a young man who wants to do good despite being under the influence of his criminal brother. The latter plot is one the show’s done before, and the bank robbery plot feels very stock, so it’s really up to the horse Fury to make this story stand out. I think it succeeds on this front, even if the actual breaking of the horse happens largely off-screen.
Fury is something of a special attractions, injecting a lot of horse stunts and chases into the narrative. We even get to see a horse fighting the bad guy a few times, although there’s a lot of awkward cutting back and forth to try to hide the fact that the actor was not, in fact, in danger of actually getting kicked in the head and ending up like Steve in Deadwood. Western shows always promise but can rarely deliver the action and stunts that one would see in a feature film. In this episode, The Gene Autry Show doesn’t quite get to that cinematic level, but at least comes a little closer.
Coming up next: Perhaps the biggest radio star of all comes to TV with The Bob Hope Show.