Author: Holly George-Warren
Oxford University Press, 2009

{>}Click here for the podcast of radio interview with Holly George-Warren on KHTS 1220 AM, June 18, 2011.

From our Purveyor of Books:
We were thrilled to have Holly George-Warren with us in the Buckaroo Book Shop during the 2009 Santa Clarita Cowboy Festival. Click the photo for a picture of Holly with friends. From Left to Right: Petrine Mitchum, Bobbi Jean our Book Purveyor, Holly, Western wear designer Amy Hoban, and Jim another of our Purveyors.

From our Purveyor of Books:
I had the privilege of first meeting Holly George-Warren several years ago at the opening of a major exhibition organized by the Autry Museum, How The West Was Worn. I've been a fan ever since! Not only she is delightful in person, her writings are engaging, entertaining, thoroughly researched, and thought provoking. This book, the first and only authorized biography of Gene Autry, was released in time to celebrate his Centennial Year - 2007. 

Holly takes you along for the ride, and it's a great trip! You'll meet Gene and walk where he walked, you'll ride with him atop Champion, the Wonder Horse,  in Madison Square Garden.  You'll be on every soundstage and in every recording session. You'll experience his World War II years and join him on the playing field of his beloved Angels. You'll meet the man and all the hats he wore: son, brother, husband, friend, entrepeneur, singer, songwriter, actor, radio personality, rodeo and TV star, and baseball fan.

Winner of the Belmont Book Award for the Best Book on Country Music for 2007
Winner of the non-fiction category of the 2007 Hollywood Book Festival Certificate of Merit, Best Research in Recorded Country Music, given by the The Association for Recorded Sound Collections

 

The only performer to earn 5 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame--for film, recordings, TV, radio, and live performance--Gene Autry was the singing cowboy king of American entertainment. Now, in Public Cowboy No.1 , Holly George-Warren offers the first serious biography of this singular individual, in a fascinating narrative that traces Autry's climb from small-town farm boy to multimillionaire.

Here for the first time Autry the legend becomes a flesh-and-blood man--with all the passions, triumphs, and tragedies of a flawed icon. George-Warren recounts stories never before told, including revelations about Autry's impoverished boyhood, his adventures as an up-and-coming singer, and the impact his unbelievable success had on his personal life. She describes Autry's loving but doomed mother, who died on the brink of her son's success, and his ne'er-do-well father, who married five times and wandered the west. Autry battled his own demons but emerges here in a positive light, an immensely personable man, one of America's most charitable benefactors, known for his boundless generosity, and a patriot who enlisted during World War II.

 

The book provides equally colorful details of Autry's lengthy radio and recording career, which included such classics as "Back in the Saddle Again" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"; his movie career, where he breathed new life into the Western genre; and his role in early television, being the first movie star to develop his own TV shows. And along the way, we see how he invested shrewdly in radio, real-estate, and television, becoming the owner of the California Angels and the only entertainer listed among 1990's Fortune 400.

Based on exclusive access to Gene Autry's personal papers, as well as interviews with more than 100 relatives, employees, colleagues, and friends, this engaging biography brings to life a major Hollywood star--a man who, more than anyone else, put Western music and style on the American cultural map.

 

About the Author:
Holly George-Warren is an award-winning writer, editor, and frequent commentator on Western films, music, and fashion. A contributor to more than 40 books on popular music, she is the author of Cowboy! How Hollywood Invented the Wild West and coauthor of How the West Was Worn. She is coeditor of The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll and editor of Farm Aid: A Song for America. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, and many other publications. An Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York-New Paltz, she lives in the Catskill Mountains with her husband and son.

Soft Bound.

Please Note: This popular title is on Back Order until further notice.