Stan Paregien, Editor
O.J. Sikes
O.J. Sikes works full-time as Chief of the Education and Communications arm of the United Nations. However, he is also a columnist for Rope Burns magazine, as well as several other magazines. He spends countless hours listening to Western music albums and writing reviews of them. And in recognition of his efforts, the Western Music Association awared him their Bill Wiley Award during their annual convention in 1995.
Quincy Silby
(Deceased)
Leon Silby, country comedian and entertainer, was better known by his stage name of Quincy Snodgrass. He performed on The Town Hall Party TV show in Los Angeles during the 1950's.Quincy Snodgrass's son, Lee Silby, sent this information to me via email on Sept. 1, 2002: " Stan, we lost pop last Dec. 8, 2001. He went out the way he had always wanted to. I went to pick him up in Nevada and on the way home , about a half mile from Nowhere AZ., he left us. I had told him I was finally going to do my album/CD. And he said, "Its about time" and started laughing. And took his last breath. Well , #1 , he always wanted to die on the road, laughing. #2 he did!!! And with his only child! So he did get what he wanted, plus he had me with him. He just was gone , and did not suffer at all."
CLICK HERE to see a large group photo of the Town Hall Party cast, including Quincy Snodgrass ( Leon Silby ).
Lee Silva
Lee Silva has published many books on gunfighters and other Western personalities. He writes articles for Guns & Ammo, True West, Skin Diver, The Gun Report, Peterson's Hunting Magazine, Frontier Times, Old West and other magazines. He has twice been a Spur finalist. He has also been known to sing and to play his guitar at WWA conventions and to have accumulated some movie acting credits.
Frank Silveras
(Deceased)
Frank Silvera, actor, was born July 24, 1914 in Kingston, Jamaica, British West Indies of African heritage.
He went to Northeastern Law School in Illinois, planning to become a teacher of law. Somewhere along the route, acting got in the way.
Frank Silvera was one of the few black actors of the 1950's who was able to avoid being typecast by the color of his skin. He he played a wide variety of ethnic types, from Latin to Middle Easter to Oriental.
He made his film debut in 1952's Viva Zapata, and shortly thereafter, he was prominently cast in two of Stanley Kubrick's films, Fear and Desire and Killer's Kiss.
Frank Silvera was the founder of The Theatre of Being, which was devoted to helping young African American actors get started in show business. He also turned to directing stage plays in New York and Los Angeles.
Silvera's Western movie credits included The Cimarron Kid (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), The Appaloosa (1966), Hombre (1967), The Stalking Moon (1969), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and Valdez Is Coming (1971).
For me, personally, Frank Silvera's outstanding role was as the Mexico outlaw pitted, with Richard Boone, against Paul Newman in "Hombre". Chasing Newman and the others up the mountain, Silvera's character takes a rifle slug in the side and--like the Energizer bunny--just keeps going ...and going ...and going. And keep in mind that what we have here, in Silvera, is a black Jamaican playing and speaking as a Mexico. He was great.
His TV Western credits included appearances in The Wild, Wild West, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Daniel Boone, Bonanza, The Rebel, Johnny Ringo, Bat Masterson, and Wanted Dead or Alive.
In 1967, he was chosen for the role of the aristocratic, but prankish, nemesis to the Cannon empire with his portrayal of Don Sebastian Montoya in the TV Western series, "The High Chaparral."
Frank Silvera accidentally electrocuted himself in his home on June 11, 1970, while trying to repair an electrical appliance.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Frank Silvera.
CLICK HERE to go to the Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop Foundation web site.
Jay Silverheels (Deceased)
Jay Silverheels, better known as "Tonto"
and his horse, "Scout".Jay Silverheels, actor, was born as Harold J. Smith on June 26, 1912 at Six Nations Reservation, Brantford, Ontario, Canada. His father was a Mohawk Indian chief.
Silverheels was a star Lacrosse player and a boxer in high school. He entered films as a stuntman in 1938, thanks to the efforts of actor-comedian Joe E. Brown. By 1942 he was in front of the camera as an actor.
Following military service in World War II, Silverheels returned to film work and began landing small, often stereotypical roles as Indian warriors in Westerns.
In 1949, he worked in a movie called "The Cowboy and the Indians (1949)" with another 'B' actor named Clayton Moore. That same year he was hired to play Clayton Moore's companion, Tonto, in the TV "The Lone Ranger". After the series ended in 1957, Jay could not escape the typecasting of Tonto. Still, he made some 60 movies.
The Western credits of Jay Silverheels included guest appearances on such TV series as Wanted: Dead or Alive, Texas John Slaughter, Wagon Train, Gunslinger, Rawhide, Branded, and The Virginian. He, of course, played the role of Tonto in the Lone Ranger series that started in 1949.
His Western movie credits included Valley of the Sun (1942), Canyon Passage (1946), The Last Roundup (1947), Broken Arrow (1950), The Story of Will Rogers (1952), The Lone Ranger (1956), The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958), Alias Jesse James (1959), True Grit (1969), Cat Ballou (1971), The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), Santee (1973), One Little Brother (1973).
He became an outspoken activist for Indian rights as well as a respected teacher within the Indian acting community. He was strongly opposed to the common practice of hiring white actors to play Indians. He thought it was important to give Native American actors the opportunity to play those roles themselves. In later life, Jay Silverheels co-founded the innovative Indian Actors' Workshop in Los Angeles, and helped a new generation of actors get farther in the movie business than he ever dreamed.
He appeared several times on talk and variety shows, often performing his own poetry. Ah, yes, another cowboy poet.
Jay Silverheels died on March 5, 1980, and his ashes are spread over his homestead on the Six Nations Indian Reserve in Ontario, Canada.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Jay Silverheels.
Marc Simmons
Marc Simmons was born in 1937. he served as a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico from 1965 to 1968.focuses his historical research and writing interests on the Spanish and Indian cultures of New Mexico. He is considered an expert on the history of the Santa Fe Trail. Several newspapers carry his weekly historical column.
Marc Simmons is the author of Spanish Government in New Mexico (1968), Yesterday in Santa Fe (1969), People of the Sun (1979), Along the Santa Fe Trail (University of New Mexico Press, 1986), Following the Santa Fe Trail: A Guide for Modern Travelers (Ancient City Press, 1984), The Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life of Manuel Antonio Chaves (Ohio University Press, 1983), Ranchers, Ramblers and Renegades (Ancient City Press, 1984), Taos to Tome (Ancient City Press, 1986), Turquoise and Six-Guns: The Story of Cerillos, N.M. (Sunstone Press, 3rd. ed., 1986), and Witchcraft in the Southwest (University of Nebraska Press, 1980).
Three of his books have received special awards. New Mexico: A History won the Border Regional Library Association's 1977 history award. Albuquerque: A Narrative History (University of New Mexico Press, 1983) was honored with a WWA Spur in 1983 for the best nonfiction book. And Murder on the Santa Fe Trail(Texas Western Press, 1987) won the C.L. Sonnichsen Book Award ($1,000 cash) for 1986. He and Frank Turley wrote Southwestern Colonial Ironwork (Museum of New Mexico Press, 1981). And Simmons edited On the Santa Fe Trail (University Press of Kansas State, 1986).
It was at the 1983 WWA convention in Amarillo, Texas that Marc Simmons took to the podium and soundly rebutted the critics of Western writing, those dozen or so Indians, Chicanos and others who had virtually taken over the 1982 convention in Santa Fe. The critics had accused Western writers of dishonesty, of exploiting minorities, of brainwashing, and of cultural genocide. Simmons replied, "My 30 years experience in the West, getting to know people from Montana to the Mexican border, working as a ranch hand and horseshoer, teaching in universities, reading omnivorously in our Western literature, following he wagon tracks of old trails, and writing books--that 30 years experience convinces me that the bulk of criticism leveled at us is pure unalloyed twaddle" (see The Dallas Morning News, July 10, 1983, G-6, for a full account of his position.
Tim Simmons
Tim Simmons' first novel, Brothers of the Pine, was published in 1995 by BookWorld, Inc.
John L. Sinclair
Born in 1902 at New York City to Scottish parents, John Sinclair headed west as a young man and settled in New Mexico. For years he was a cowboy on various ranches in southeastern New Mexico, around the Roswell area. Later in life he was a research assistant with the Museum of New Mexico, served as curator of the Lincoln County Museum, and was custodian of the Coronado State Monument.
John Sinclair won a Spur Award for his article, "Where the Cowboys Hunkered Down," published in the September, 1977 issue of New Mexico Magazine. He also won a Heritage Award for the same article from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center. Sinclair first began writing for New Mexico Magazine in about 1938. (See the Oct., 1977 issue of The Roundup for his photo and his story-behind-the-story; same photo in the Nov., 1954 issue.) He is the author of Death in the Claim Shack (Sage Books), New Mexico: The Shining Land (University of NM Press, 1983), Cowboy Riding Country (1982), In Time of Harvest (1979), and Cousin Drewey and the Holy Twister (1980).
Deborah Sizemore
Deborah Lightfoot Sizemore majored in agricultural journalism at Texas A & M. She is an agriculture and science writer for Boy Scouts of America.
Deborah Sizemore is a contributing editor to Dairymen's Digest. And her articles have appeared in The Cattleman, Longhorn Scene, and the Dallas Morning News. She was the publicity director of the Texas Livestock Heritage Committee for the Texas Sesquicentennial in 1986.
Mona Dean Sizer
Mona Dean Sizer is the author of three books published by Zebra: The Grandee's Daughter, The Lady from Huasteca, and Concho Woman. She also wrote Texas Storm and Texas Tempest for Zebra under the pseudonym Deana James.
This listing is far from complete and may contain errors.
Therefore, all Western entertainers and/or their agents
are requested to submit recommended changes by
contacting Stan Paregien through his e-mail address.
Paise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
--- Bible: Ephesians 1:3
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.
