Biography

Monte Hale

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American B-Western star and singing cowboy Monte Hale was born Samuel Buren Ely in 1919 in Ada, Oklahoma, to Herod and Helen Ely. He learned to sing and play guitar at an early age. In Houston and later Galveston, Texas, he played for vaudeville shows and local rodeos. During World War II a job as a replacement guitar player with the Stars Over Texas War Bond Drive led to a friendship with several Republic Pictures stars and staff. At the completion of the tour, the Republic contingent recommended young Hale to studio president Herbert J. Yates. Hale went to California and met Yates, who saw promise in the tall, good-looking musician, and signed him to a seven-year contract, and promptly discarded his birth name for the more appealing name of Monte Hale. After a quick apprenticeship in a couple of bit parts, Hale was given the lead in Home on the Range (1946), which led to a five-year run as one of Republic's popular singing-cowboy stars.

Following the demise of the "B" western in the early 1950s, Hale toured the country as part of a musical cowboy act in rodeos and circuses. He made a few television guest appearances and taught James Dean his rope tricks during their work together on Giant (1956). Hale thereafter retired from films. In his later years, he wrote songs and continued making appearances at Western film fan conventions.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net> (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)

His cowboy heroes were Ken Maynard and Bob Steele while growing up.
His parents divorced when he was about 12 or 13 and Monte was sent to live in rural Kansas with his uncle, who was a bootlegger.
Was a collector of police badges, believed to be the largest in the world. They were donated to the Gene Autry Museum.
Hale and his wife, Joanne, co-founded the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, later renamed the Autry Museum of Western Heritage and now part of the Autry National Center, with the late singing cowboy Gene Autry and his widow, Jackie.
Featured in "Monte Hale Western" comic books from 1948-1956, as well as various other Western comic books including "Real Western Hero," "Western Hero," "Six-Gun Heroes," "Movie Comics," and "Cowboy Western Comics."

[on why he never watched himself on film] Cowboy stars are supposed to be brave, but I just don't have that kind of courage.
[on Roy Barcroft] . . . the most likable, kindly, soft-spoken gentleman you ever crossed trails with. But when the cameras started rolling, he was the meanest, low-down, orneriest son-of-a-gun on the face of the earth. He always made the leading man look really good, no matter with whom he was working. He could always handle his part with the best of actors.