Quotes

My dad was a fiddle player. He used to play for all the dances and stuff, and I learned to play guitar when there was nobody to accompany him. And then I sang in all the church choirs and glee clubs in the school. Basically, all I ever wanted to do was try to be a singer and make a living at that. And then, went into radio and the recording field, and had a few hit records. Roy Rogers was getting ready to leave Republic Pictures and get into television, and they were looking around for another poobah in a white hat, so I got my foot in the door there.

Yeah, I rode bulls and buckin' horses for about two years when I first got out of high school, but I got tired of pickin' myself up off the arena floor, and I found that a guitar never kicked me, never hurt me a bit, so I decided I better stick with that.

I didn't want anybody to say, "Well, he's copying Roy Rogers" or "He's copying Gene Autry" or "He's copying Hoppy". So I purposely looked for a horse that was different, that no cowboy had used -- I turned my guns around backwards, and didn't know for two years that Bill Elliott did it, too. I just didn't want to be accused of copying anybody else, so I tried to go in as opposite a direction in everything that I could.

You strap two guns on, they're heavy, and it's like wearin' a girdle. And then they say, "Run, jump on that horse, go do so-and-so and so-and-so", and you got all that gear and it's in your way, and I was happy to go with just one gun, just so you could get off and on a horse.

[on his first film, The Arizona Cowboy (1950)] I'd like to find the damn negative of that thing and burn it. It was the most horrible thing ever made. Boy, was it bad.

[on Republic Pictures boss Herbert J. Yates and why the studio finally went out of business in 1959] He absolutely would not recognize that television was the wave of the future. He thought the studios could destroy TV.

[in 1982] Now I'm not for gun control, but the week that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, I decided I just didn't feel right about appearing with guns. And I haven't since.

[on Roy Barcroft] When I think of Barcroft, I think of him coming to work on a motorcycle, roaring through the front gate. Off screen, he was the nicest, big, old Saint Bernard you could ever want to be around. I had a very high respect for his acting ability and his photographic memory. He was a real pro.