Lash LaRue gives David Letterman a bullwhip lesson — and more than you probably wanted to know about the Golden Boot Awards

Alfred Wilson "Lash" LaRue

Lash LaRue starred in a string of B-Westerns in the 1940s and early 1950s, most of them at ultra-low budget studio PRC and its equally low-budget spinoff Western Adventure. In the early days he typically played the Cheyenne Kid or Cheyenne Davis, before ascending to the movie rank of U.S. Marshal Cheyenne Davis. After bailing out on PRC along with producer/director Ron Ormond, legendary B-Western director Ray Taylor and Cinematographer of the Gods Ernest Miller, who combined their talents and hung out their own shingle as Western Adventure Productions, LaRue got to appear for much of the rest of his career as a version of himself, in the person of U.S. Marshal Lash LaRue.

Lash LaRue with his trademark bullwhip

While he had no whip skills to speak of at the time he launched his acting career, LaRue learned fast — and it became his trademark, with Lash earning the nickname King of the Bullwhip. In the video at the bottom of this post, LaRue reveals to David Letterman that he lied about his ability with the bullwhip to land his first acting job. The above promotional still, courtesy of Western movie expert Jerry England, shows LaRue as an accomplished whipsman, plying his trade at the Iverson Movie Ranch, with Chatsworth's Stoney Point visible in the background. Hollywood legend has it that LaRue taught Harrison Ford how to use the bullwhip for the "Indiana Jones" movies.

Lash LaRue's Arch, as it appears today

LaRue  was a regular at the Iverson Movie Ranch in the peak filming era — and even ended up with an Iverson rock feature named after him: Lash LaRue's Arch. The formation can still be found today, near the swimming pool at the Indian Hills Mobile Home Village.

Here's Lash posing for a promo shot, circa 1950, in front of the Iverson arch that would eventually be named for him. The arch was big enough for a rider to take a horse through — barely. This is another photo from Jerry England's awe-inspiring collection.

These days the arch is fenced off, so there's not much chance of any spontaneous equestrian activity.

"King of the Bullwhip" (1950) was one of the more famous of LaRue's B-Westerns of the late 1940s and early 1950s, along with "Law of the Lash" (1947), "Ghost Town Renegades" (1947), "Stage to Mesa City" (1947), "The Hawk of Powder River" (1948), "Son of Billy the Kid" (1949), "The Vanishing Outpost" (1951) and "The Black Lash" (1952). All of these movies were shot at Iverson.

LaRue made his way to TV for a time in the 1950s, including getting his own show, "Lash of the West," a 15-minute clip show and gab session that never took off and no one seems to remember anymore. He also had recurring roles on "Judge Roy Bean" and "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp," along with one-off guest appearances on a few shows. In 1986 he got in on a TV remake of "Stagecoach" headlined by country legends the Highwaymen — Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Lash died in 1996 in Burbank, Calif., at age 74.

The world seems to be divided on whether his last name should be one word, LaRue, or two words, La Rue. Lash's movie credits have it both ways — and for that matter, credit him any number of different ways: Lash LaRue, Lash La Rue, Al La Rue, Alfred La Rue, Al "Lash" LaRue, etc. For what it's worth, IMDb is sticking with La Rue, while Wikipedia favors LaRue. I'm a recent convert to LaRue, which seems to be winning the "preponderance of Google hits" war.

 

Lash LaRue comic book

Lash's series of comic books back in The Day went with the one-word "LaRue," and even if it may be weird to use a comic book as the definitive source, it does seem likely that the comics would have got his name right. A couple of noteworthy tidbits about the above cover: Note that Lash autographed it using his real name, Alfred, but he tells Letterman in the video clip below that even his mom called him Lash. Also, note that the background appears to be the Iverson Movie Ranch, although I haven't been able to make a positive ID on it.

Here's a peek inside one of the comic books. You can click on the photo to enlarge it if you want to make it easier to read the page.

Lash LaRue was awarded the Golden Boot in 1983. In case you don't know what that is (I didn't either), it's an honor that was handed out by the Motion Picture & Television Fund for 25 years, and it was pretty prestigious. Other recipients that year — the awards' inaugural class — included Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Clayton Moore, Slim Pickens, Linda Stirling, Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, Doug McClure, Lee Majors and LaRue's stablemate at PRC, Eddie Dean, with the "In Memoriam" award going to Will Rogers. B-Western regulars Bob Steele, Charles Starrett, Rex Allen, Sunset Carson and Monte Hale were also a part of that illustrious first group of "Bootees."

Pat Buttram

The Golden Boot Awards were the idea of Mr. Haney from "Green Acres" — veteran Gene Autry sidekick and B-Western regular Pat Buttram. They were meant to honor the people who kept the Western tradition alive in film and on TV, while also raising money for the Fund — a charitable organization that looks after veterans of the entertainment industry who wind up in tough health situations and low on money.

Rhonda Fleming

Golden Boot honorees over the years included all the heavyweights of the genre — John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Chuck Connors, Sam Peckinpah, Dale Robertson, Audie Murphy, Jimmy Stewart, James Arness, Tex Ritter, Rhonda Fleming, Glenn Ford, Johnny Cash, Robert Duvall, Burt Reynolds, Robert Mitchum ... the list goes on.

Eva Marie Saint in "On the Waterfront" (1954)

I suppose by 2007, the last year the Golden Boots were handed out, they were running out of Western stars to honor. The "heavyweights" who got in on that last batch of Boots included Caruth C. Byrd — a well-funded but relatively unknown actor and producer who apparently made up for his puny (and not particularly Western-oriented) filmography by being generous to the Motion Picture & Television Fund — Martin Kove — an actor known mainly for "Rambo," "Karate Kid" and "Cagney & Lacey" — "Lord of the Rings" actor Viggo Mortensen — who did make a Western called "Appaloosa" around that time — stuntman Walt LaRue — possibly the most legit recipient in the bunch, having done stunts on "Silverado," "Pale Rider" and even "Blazing Saddles" (I don't know whether he's related to Lash, but my guess is that he is, either by blood or by hero worship) — and that giant of the Westerns, Eva Marie Saint — a terrific actress known more for her Oscar-winning performance in "On the Waterfront" and her star turn in Hitchcock's spy masterpiece "North by Northwest," although she did appear in a 1977 TV remake of "How the West Was Won."

John Wayne is introduced in John Ford's epic Western "Stagecoach" 

in 1939 — with the Iverson Movie Ranch in the background

The organizers of the Golden Boots also took the opportunity in 2007 to bestow the Founder's Award on the late John Wayne, so the Boot went out with a bang.

The other kind of Golden Boot — with Bulgarian soccer star 

Dimitar Berbatov, a striker in Premier League

In recent years the term "Golden Boot" has come to be associated more with sports — specifically soccer, or what much of the rest of the world calls football. The Premier League's "Barclays Golden Boot" is one of a number of Golden Boots and Golden Shoes awarded annually in the sport.

But I digress (as usual) ... back to the reason we're here: Lash LaRue made an appearance on David Letterman's old NBC show way back in Dave's third season in late-night, on Feb. 16, 1984. Before bringing out the cowboy star, Dave ran a few brief clips of Lash's movies — marking what might be the only appearance by the Iverson Movie Ranch on "Letterman," as a number of quick Iverson shots flashed on the screen. Lash may have filmed a higher percentage of his movies at Iverson than just about any other cowboy star, although Starrett and a few others would also be in that conversation.

The clip montage includes Lash slugging a bald-headed guy (whose hat fell off), after which Lash eventually makes his way out to trade quips with Dave and torment the host with his whip technique. It's worth checking out.

Here's the video:

Ma and Pa Kettle's Wild Ride: The rural American archetypes take a "shortcut" through the Iverson Movie Ranch — see the video below

The archetypal rural American characters Ma and Pa Kettle, played by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride, were featured in a series of popular comedy movies released by Universal over a period of about 10 years starting in the late 1940s.

Pa Kettle behind the wheel, with Ma riding shotgun during rampage at Iverson

The fourth installment in the 10-movie series, "Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm," from 1951, included a wild jalopy ride that covered much of the Iverson Movie Ranch, along with a few other spots in Chatsworth, Calif. The sequence provides a high-speed scenic tour of Iverson, and ranks among the most memorable action sequences shot at the ranch.

Early in the sequence the Kettle clan arrives in the family convertible at the old Chatsworth Train Station, which was torn down around 1962. The station was next to the train tracks that roughly follow Canoga Avenue, between Devonshire and Lassen. (Please click on any of these photos to enlarge them.)

In this shot the car enters Sheep Flats on the Iverson property, with a nice view of Smooth Hill in the background — complete with the same telephone poles that occasionally snuck into the old Westerns as anachronisms. The Indian Hills Mobile Home Village now fills Sheep Flats, and Smooth Hill was leveled when the 118 Freeway came through in the late 1960s. The top half of Smooth Hill is now gone, replaced by a large apartment complex and some condos — as seen in the photo below.

This is all that's left of Smooth Hill today, dominated by the Summerset Village Apartments, with a few condos visible at the far left and the 118 Freeway slicing through the middle of the shot.

Another shot from the Sheep Flats sequence reveals that the filmmakers brought in a few cows — presumably to add to the rural feel of the movie. They would have had to pay a small daily fee per head of livestock to the Iverson family as part of the price of filming at the site.

Later in the sequence, Pa Kettle's "shortcut" takes the group through Iverson's Upper Gorge, roughly following the course the Lone Ranger rode on Silver in the opening to the TV show "The Lone Ranger." When the Lone Ranger got to about where the car is here, he turned right and rode up to Lone Ranger Rock — visible at the far left in the above shot. The Lone Ranger then famously reared up on Silver at the start of each episode, and could be heard shouting his trademark "Hi-yo, Silver!" Most of the rocks in the above shot, including Lone Ranger Rock, remain in place today and are in an area that has been preserved as a park.

This shot — a rare view of the Iverson Movie Ranch without any rocks — shows the Kettles powering through Iverson's eucalyptus grove.

In this scene the old jalopy is traveling along the stagecoach road at bottom right, with the large boulders making up Lower Nyoka Cliff in the bottom left corner and Stoney Point in the background, along with a portion of the road that would now be Topanga Canyon Boulevard. (Back then it was Santa Susana Pass Road.) For the record, the so-called stagecoach road, which ran below Nyoka Cliff, was never a real stagecoach route. But it was used so often as a stagecoach road in the old Westerns that it became known as the stagecoach road and that's what it's still called.

Here's a nice view of the corral area directly south of Iverson Village, complete with hay bales that were probably brought in special for the movie — in fact, I'm sure of it, because at one point Pa Kettle crashes into the hay bales. In the background are Hook Rock, just left of center, Lash LaRue's Arch, partially visible to the right of Hook Rock, and a number of other rocks that collectively are called the Cave Rocks — although from this angle I usually call them the Corral Rocks.

The Middle Iverson Ranch Set is prominently featured in the jalopy sequence, including the above shot of the bunkhouse. You'll know you're at Middle Iverson when the car rips through a bunch of laundry hanging on a line.

The Kettles speed through an area north of Garden of the Gods that I call the North Cluster. Today this area borders the Cal West Townhomes development, and some of these rocks have been destroyed while others survived. The large rock at the top-center of the photo — which I call Faux Hangdog 1 for research reasons that are too complicated (in other words, too embarrassing) to get into here — can still be found today. But it's a hard one to locate, as it is now concealed beneath a large tree. The rocks in the foreground have been removed, and condos now stand in that area.

The clip below contains the bulk of the jalopy ride, including most of the shots seen above. The clip includes much more Iverson material than I've been able to spotlight in photos. The clip consists mostly of Iverson footage, but does briefly show one building that was non-Iverson, along with a couple of additional train sequences that are shot nearby in Chatsworth but not at Iverson — including a nice shot of the train emerging from the tunnel above Chatsworth Park. The Smooth Hill/Sheep Flats sequence mentioned above appears a little bit earlier in the movie and is not included in the clip.

Here you go — hang on:

Actors who were "born old": Walter Brennan

Some of the best-loved characters of classic film and the early TV era were brought to life by actors who seemed as though they were always old — with Walter Brennan being perhaps the quintessential example.

Walter Brennan as Grandpa Amos 

on "The Real McCoys"

Brennan worked in movies for decades before he became famous, but the idea of a "young Walter Brennan" remains all but unimaginable to most of us. Born in 1894, Brennan was already working in silent movies in his early 30s, and he had a distinguished early career. But he became a household name when he broke through in 1957 — at age 63 —as Grandpa Amos on "The Real McCoys" — which included an appearance by Brennan and his TV family at the Iverson Movie Ranch in the pilot.

The McCoy family's new house in California was portrayed in the series pilot by the Middle Iverson Ranch Set, seen above. Their arrival is discussed in more detail in a previous blog entry that you can find here.

Brennan in "The Westerner" (1940)

Brennan already had three Oscars by the time he launched his TV career, having won three times for supporting roles (the only actor to do so) — for "Come and Get It" (1936), "Kentucky" (1938) and "The Westerner" (1940). He wasn't exactly "OLD old" in his film roles of that era ... but he was already "playing old." He just had that kind of look.

With Audie Murphy in "Drums Across the River" (1954)

He worked his way into his share of movies shot at the Iverson Movie Ranch in the course of his career — among them, "Drums Across the River" (1954) and "Support Your Local Sheriff" (1969).

A highlight of Brennan's TV work at Iverson — from a location standpoint — is "Vengeance Canyon," an episode of the Western anthology series "Zane Grey Theatre" that premiered Nov. 30, 1956. In the above screen shot from the episode, that's the well-known movie rock Sphinx behind the actors.

Another shot of Brennan from the "Vengeance Canyon" episode of "Zane Grey Theatre," this time a portion of the Hole in the Wall section of Iverson can be seen in the background.

This is what those same rocks — Iverson's Hole in the Wall, seen in the background in the Walter Brennan shot above — look like today. You may be able to spot the similarities in the outline of the rock at the top and its neighbors.

Brennan was all over the Lower Iverson for that 1956 "Zane Grey" episode. Here's a scene that takes place below Lash LaRue's Arch, seen at the left of the shot.

Another scene from the "Zane Grey Theatre" episode "Vengeance Canyon," this one is shot in the Iverson Gorge.

Walter Brennan is the high-profile tip of the iceberg when it comes to those "born old" actors. Most of the others have much less familiar names — but in some cases they have mighty familiar faces. Below are a few of the most beloved fogeys, geezers, codgers and coots — male and female — who worked at Iverson in the days of B-Westerns and early TV ...

Cyril Delevanti ... I posted about him here

Irene Tedrow

Clem Bevans ... click here for more about him

Here are a few examples of Walter Brennan's work, available from Amazon ...