Stan Paregien, Editor
Max Terhune
(Deceased)
Max Terhune was born as Robert Max Terhune on Feb. 12, 1891 in Amity, IN. He married Maude Cassada in 1922. During this period he was a blue-colar worker at a battery manufacturing plant in Anderson, Indiana. After work, he was the pitcher for the company baseball team.However, Max Terhune had the heart of an entertainer. So on the side he practiced performing ventriloquism, card tricks, and magic tricks. He finally was hired in about 1932 to perform a comedy routine on the famous National Barn Dance radio program. It was heard all over the country from Chicago's WLS radio station. That is where he became friends with many Western music stars, such as Gene Autry, Patsy Monana, and Smiley Burnette.
And it was Gene Autry who tapped Max Terhune to appear in his Western films. And then he was signed by Republic Pictures. He went on to appear as "Lullaby Joslin" in the Three Mesquiteers series until 1939.
Later went to work at Monogram Pictures, appearing in 24 of the Range Busters series from 1940-1943. He became the sidekick of Johnny Mack Brown in the late 1940's.
One of Terhune's screen compadres, Ray Corrigan, created Corriganville Movie Ranch. It was used for filming, but on the weekends the ranch was opened to visitors. It was there that I got to see both Max Terhune and Ray Corrigan when I was a pre-teen.
Movie poster from the Republic film,
"Three Texas Steers,"(1939), featuring
John Wayne, Crash Corrigan and
Max Terhune.Most all of the B-Western performers supplemented their incomes by doing personal appearances. And Max Terhune was a big hit, as he was a skilled stand-up comedian.
He lived in Slymar, CA., for several years. And he also lived at 2035 Lucas St. in San Fernando, CA. later in life.
Max Terhune died of a heart attack on June 5, 1973 at Cottonwood, AZ .
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Max Terhune.
Bodie Thoene
Bodie Thoene was a staff writer for John Wayne's Batjac Productions from 1978 to 1983, and has also worked for ABC Television. She is the author of more than 100 non-fiction articles for American West, including an interview with Louis L'Amour in the Oct./Nov.1986 issue.
Bodie Thoene is the author of one Western non-fiction book, The Fall Guy (Hancock House, 1980). And she has had these novels published by Bethany House: The Zion Chronicles, Daughter of Zion, Gates of Zion (1986) and Key of Zion.
Hank Thompson
Hank Thompson, singer and guitarist and band leader, was born as Henry William Thompson on Sept. 3, 1925. He studied at Princeton University. And he served in the U.S. Navy.
He blended Texas' musical strains of honky tonk and Western swing, and added a big band sound to it. The result was a steady list of hit records. His hits with his own Brazos Valley Boys band included Humpty Dumpty Heart, Green Light, Oklahoma Hills, Six-Pack to Go, and The Wild Side Of Life. The Brazos Valley Boys were voted the #1 Country Western Band for fourteen consecutive years during the 1950's and 1960's.
A very young Hank Thompson
is shown with Hank Williams, Sr.
Hank Thompson's music was tailored for dancing in the honky tonks across the country. While he make it all look easy and fun, he worked hard to select the right band members and to use the best state-of-the-art sound and lighting equipment.
He wound up going well beyond the dance halls and beer joints. Hank has performed at Carnegie Hall, The Hollywood Palladium, The Smithsonian Institute, Las Vegas, and all seven continents. And along the way he sold over 60 million records.
Hank Thompson was a trail blazer for other artists. He was the very first act to tour with a sound and lighting system. He was the first to receive a corporate tour sponsorship. His was the first country music show to play as a headliner in a major casino in Las Vegas. He was the first to record a live album in Las Vegas ("Hank Thompson, Live At The Golden Nugget In Las Vegas" released on Capitol in 1960). He was the first country-Western performer to record in Hi-Fi stereo. He was the first to perform on a color broadcast of a television variety show ( "The Hank Thompson Show" was telecast over WKY in Oklahoma City in the early '50's, in color).
Hank Thompson's career has spanned a remarkable six decades, from the 1940's and right into 2001.
Friends and guitar pickers par excellence:
Merle Travis & Hank Thompson
Merle married Hank's first wife.PERSONAL NOTE: I grew up listening to Hank Thompson, and he was/is my mother's favorite Western singer. So I was thrilled to death to get to interview Hank for my morning radio show on KSNY in Snyder, Texas, in about 1990. He was kind enough to send autographed photos to both me and to my mother.
Hank Thompson with Evelyn P. Spradling &
son Stan Paregien. Photo by Peggy Paregien.Then on Sept. 15, 2000, my wife and I took my mother to hear Hank Thompson in concert. He was appearing at the Red Dirt Cafe in Norman, OK. We sat just about twenty feet from him as he performed for nearly two hours. Turns out that he had just celebrated his 75th birthday back on Sept. 3rd. He was still sounding very good, and still playing his own style of guitar picking.
CLICK HERE to go to the Hank Thompson Fan Club web site.
Thomas Thompson
(Deceased)
Thomas Thompson was born in Dixon, Calif. on Feb. 24, 1913. He grew up near Fresno, Calif. He graduated from Visalia High School in 1930. Then he had a brief career as a singer, went to sea with the old Dollar Steamship Company and made several trips to the Orient, as well as three trips around the world. Then he went back to singing in night clubs in San Francisco, thereby working his way through Heald Business College in San Francisco.
Tommy Thompson went to work for a company which transferred him to Los Angeles. He became a full-time writer in 1940, and he wrote over 500 short stories for the Western pulp magazines and, later, for such publications as Argosy, Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post. He and Nelson Nye conceived the idea of a professional writers' group for Western writers in 1952. They founded the WWA in 1953, and he served as president of WWA in 1957 and in 1966. In 1953 and again in 1954 he won the Spur Award for the Best Western Short Story. In 1971 the members of the WWA bestowed upon him the prestigious Saddleman Award. And in 1977 he was given a lifetime membership in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.
Thomas Thompson was the author of Range Drifter (1948), Broken Valley (1949), Sundown Riders (1950), Gunman Brand (1951), Shadow of the Butte (1952), The Steel Web (1953), King of Abilene (1953), Trouble Rider (1954), They Brought Their Guns (a collection of short stories, 1954), Forbidden Valley (1955), Born to Gunsmoke (1956), Rawhide Rider (1957), Brand of a Man (1958), Bitter Water (1960), Moment of Glory (a collection of short stories, 1961), Bonanza: One Man with Courage (based on the TV series, 1966), and Outlaw Valley (Doubleday, 1988).
Tommy Thompson wrote scripts for such TV Western series as Wagon Train (1957-65), The Rifleman (1958-62), Cimarron City (1958-59), The Restless Gun (1957-59), The Monroes, The High Chaparral, Empire (1962), and Bonanza (1959-73). He also wrote the screenplays for two movies which starred the late Robert Taylor, "Saddle the Wind" (MGM, 1958) and "Cattle King" (MGM, 1963). (See his letter in the May, 1985 issue of The Roundup) He was one of the featured WWA charter members on the "Oldtimers Pow Wow" panel at the 1989 Convention in Portland.
A special collection of Thomas Thompson material has been made by the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley and a complete collection of his correspondence, television and motion picture scripts and published works is in the special collections division of the Library at the University of Oregon. He was a member of Western Writers of America; Writers Guild of America, West; The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a lifetime member of the Oregon Freelance Club.And the January, 1977 issue of The Roundup reveals this tidbit about Thompson: he won $2,000 on the TV game show, "$50,000 Grand Slam" in December of 1976. His category? "The Wild West," naturally.
PERSONAL NOTE: At the invitation of Jory Sherman, I attended my first convention of the Western Writers of America in 1984. It was held in Branson, MO. I didn't know anyone at all, except Jory. But the very first person I met, down in the lounge, was none other than Tommy Thompson. It was like meeting a favorite uncle. He was down-to-earth, friendly and extremely encouraging to a would-be novelist. He was quite a man.
Tommy Thompson died in 1993 and was survived by his wife, June.
Victoria Thompson
Victoria Thompson is the author of several books for Zebra, including Texas Treasure, Texas Triumph , Texas Vixen and Texas Blond. And interestingly, she swears that as of 1988 she has yet to ride a horse or fire a gun.
Billy Bob Thornton
Billy Bob Thornton, actor and director and writer, was born in Hot Springs, AR. on August 4, 1955. He began his artistic career as a musician, playing drums and singing vocals. In 1981 he and friend Tom Epperson loaded up and headed for Hollywood to act and write. They wrote, but got no buyers, and did little acting. Times were tough in the Golden West.
However, in 1992 Billy Bob starred in "One False Move", a movie he co-wrote with friend Epperson. And he was off and running.
Billy Bob Thornton directed and starred in "All the Pretty Horses" (2001). He calls it his attempt to do a "John Ford movie".
Thornton freely admits to being a fan of Western movies. In fact, he usually watches "High Noon" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" about once a week.
He wishes Hollywood would make more Westerns and hopes his direction of "All the Pretty Horses" might lead to that, if it is highly successful. In an interview with Skip Hollandsworth, Thornton said: "It's not that I just want Westerns because I'm a fan of Westerns. I want Westerns because they let you tell a story about the epic struggles about the human condition. You take away the cowboy clothes and the horses, and what you have is Shakespeare--dramas about love and the need for power, about jealousy and greed, about sorrow and loss. Really, when you think about it, what more could you ask for?" (in Cowboys & Indians magazine, Jan., 2001, p. 162).
His other Western credits include Tombstone (1993), Dead Man (1995) and The Last Real Cowboys (2000).
CLICK HERE to see the complete fimography of Billy Bob Thornton.
Bruce Thorstad
After receiving a B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin, Bruce Thorstad attended the University of Iowa's Graduate Fiction Writers' Workshop in 1974-75. He studied fiction writing and wrote short stories under the tutelage of novelists John Irving, Jack Leggett and Vance Bourjaily. Several of those short stories were bought by Overseas Life magazine (now Overseas!) and that led to his being named editor of that magazine.
Bruce Thorstad lived in Germany for five years while he was editor of Overseas Life, Holiday Inn Companion and OFF DUTY Europe, another magazine distributed to U.S. military personnel stationed throughout Europe. He returned to the U.S. in 1980 for Bruce to become the editor of OFF DUTY America, a magazine with a circulation of 503,000. He left that job in 1988 to concentrate on his first love, fiction writing. His nonfiction articles have appeared in Guns Magazine, Golden Eagle Bow Hunting Guide (1984) and American Handgunner Magazine.
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.
Blessed are they who maintain justic,
who constantly do what is right.
--- Bible: Psalm 106:3
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.
