LEGENDARY HEROES #32

RED RYDER

Fred Harman (1902-1982), creator of Red Ryder, had an interesting life.  At the age of two months old, Fred came with his family to Pagosa Springs, Colorado in Archuleta County located in the Blanco Basin of the San Juan Mountains.  Fred's father was a lawyer who was torn between ranching and practicing law.  Except for two interludes with a Kansas City law firm, ranching won out and Fred grew up in the Pagosa Springs region.  During the first World War Fred ran away to enlist but at age 15 the best he could do was the National Guard and he spent several months guarding the Kansas City waterworks against potential trouble.  After the war he arrived back in Colorado with $3 in his pocket which he spent on staples like salt, lard, and flour and spent the next four months living off the land and sleeping in the woods.  Then he got a job as a cow hand on a ranch and supported himself for several years as a cowboy.  One winter he drifted back to Kansas City where he found employment in the pressroom of the Kansas City Star.  He watched cartoonists at work and decided that was the career for him.  He returned to ranching come spring, but the following winter of 1922 he went to work for the Kansas City Film Ad Company that made commercial animated films.  There he met a fellow employee named Walt Disney.  The next year Fred and Walt went into the commercial film business for themselves but the venture failed.  Fred returned to ranching and Walt went to Hollywood, where Fred's brother Hugh became an animator at Walt Disney Studios. 

In the fall of 1924 Fred Harman got an invite to work as an illustrator at Artcrafts Engraving Company in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he became a catalog illustrator for the Olathe Boot Company.  Fred did promotional art, book illustrations, and costume design for a film about the Pony Express.  Artcrafts was then on the fifth floor of the Jenkins Music Building and Fred met and married musician Lola Andrews who worked on the first floor.  They were married in 1926.  They had a son born on May 27, 1927, the day that Lindbergh landed in Paris.  Harman couldn't pay the hospital bill for his son's birth so his boss at Artcrafts bought an oil painting of Fred's for the exact amount to cover the bill.  Fred and his family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where he was a partner in an ad agency, which failed, and then he moved back to Pagosa Springs.  He bought a 1200 acre ranch and built a large cabin on the grounds, then set out to market his own comic strip.  His original comic strip was called "Bronc Peeler" which Fred drew from 1934-1938.  It was based upon his own experiences as a cowboy busting broncos.  His wife Lola persuaded him to make a bid for the juvenile audience by including an appealing, youthful character.  So Fred created Little Beaver, modeled after a Navajo youngster he had befriended in Colorado.

In 1938 Fred reworked the strip to include a two-fisted, redheaded cowboy and his faithful Indian boy companion.  The new strip was titled "Red Ryder" and he sold it to the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate that distributed the strip all across the country.  Red Ryder debuted on Sunday, November 6, 1938.  Astride his mighty steed Thunder, Red Ryder lived on the Painted Valley Ranch in 1890s Colorado with his aunt, The Duchess, and his juvenile Navajo sidekick Little Beaver.  By today's standards Little Beaver would be considered an offensive caricature of native Americans.  The young boy spoke in pigdin English saying things like "You betchum, Red Ryder!"  Red had a sweetheart named Beth Wilder, and together they fought for law and order, usually against the evil Ace Hanlon.  Each of these characters was based on actual people that Fred Harman knew.  Red Ryder was based on Bill Flaugh, a cowboy that Fred grew up with who became his mentor.  Flaugh taught Fred how to shoot, rope and brand horses and cattle, and other tricks of the trail and ranch.  Flaugh was 6'2" and 190 pounds of tough muscle, possessing the square-jawed handsomeness that often led to the trouble that dogged the footsteps of the big, he-man type.  Flaugh was the two-fisted type who spoke in salty, cussing terms, but was soft-spoken and clumsily gentle with women and children.  He once saved young Harman's life in a shooting that neither he nor Harman would ever talk about.  Flaugh's only comment on the subject was to say, "Young bulls sometimes git mighty frisky."

Red's only family was his aunt known as the Duchess, a spunky, outspoken old gal with a 14-karat heart.  The Duchess was equally at home with a gun, lariat, or bull whip.  She could run a ranch, brand a steer, or outsmart the wiliest villain.  The real life Duchess was Mrs. Gertrude Larsen, a neighbor of Fred Harman.  When most pioneer women went into the frontier at their husband's side, Mrs. Larsen pioneered completely on her own.  She came to Pagosa Springs in her own wagon, bull whipping her own oxen.  She staked out a homestead, built her own cabin, and made her own ranch.  The prototype of Beth Wilder, the raven-haired heroine of the strip, was Myrtle Jones Headlee, a boyhood sweetheart of Fred's.  They grew up on adjoining ranches.  Myrtle Jones found her way to Hollywood and western movies of the early 1920s.  She reentered Fred's life in the 1930s when he was working on the strip, settling down with her husband, one of Colorado's largest ranchers, near Fred's homestead.  The Harman's and the Headlee's became close friends.  Ace Hanlon, the villain of the comic strip, was based on a dead gambler that Fred knew and whose name he never revealed out of deference to relatives still living in the basin.  Ace was the typical black-hatted, black-booted, black-hearted gambler with a fancy embroidered waistcoat.  He was not a killer but Harman made him a murderous character in the interest of melodrama.

Fred Harman was the traditional tall, lanky, bow-legged figure of a cowhand with gnarled hands and a shy smile.  When he said, "Doggone it" it seemed natural coming from him.  Fred's studio on his ranch was on a slope looking up the towering San Juan Range with the Continental Divide a short distance to the east.  His windows looked out over the union of the San Juan and Navajo Rivers and the rimrock and tall pines of the upper ranch country.  The Red Ryder Ranch, as Fred named it, was strictly designed for profit and not comfort.  Electricity wasn't introduced until 1947 when a war-surplus generator replaced their kerosene lanterns.  And Mrs. Harman didn't stop hauling her own water until 1945 when running water and a bathroom were installed in the main house.  Other buildings on the ranch consisted of a cookhouse, food cellar, two barns, and a foreman's house.  Fred had no assistants, unusual among cartoonists, doing all the drawing, inking and lettering himself.  The NEA syndicate took a rather jaundiced view of his ranch life - he broke his right elbow in a 1946 mishap, had his arm set in a right-angle cast, and was back at his drawing board two days later.

Red Ryder was soon being published in Big Little Books, and the first comic book was by Hawley Publications in September 1940.  Dell launched a series in August 1941, changing the title in 1949 to Red Ryder Ranch Comics.  The early comic books were reprints of old newspaper comic strips but began original material after issue #47.  12 million comic books were sold yearly, including a million annually of Little Beaver's own title.  The series ran until 1957 with a total of 151 issues.  A radio series began on February 3, 1942 on the Blue Network airing three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 pm.  When Blue acquired the Lone Ranger radio broadcast from Mutual, Mutual bought Red Ryder and aired it in the same time period as The Lone Ranger, and Red Ryder won in the ratings.  Red Ryder aired on the Mutual Broadcast System from May 20 to September 9 until it was sold to a regional sponsor, Langendorf Bread, at which point it was no longer carried by Mutual on the east coast.  Reed Hadley portrayed Red Ryder on radio and the show opened with the themesong "The Dying Cowboy" (Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie).  The Red Ryder Victory Patrol was a club formed to encourage listeners in conservation practices that would help in the war effort.  The final episode was aired in 1951.  In 1940 Republic Pictures released a 12-chapter serial "The Adventures of Red Ryder" that starred Don "Red" Barry and Tommy Cook as Little Beaver.  Barry got his nickname "Red" from the role.  Republic then went on to produce 23 Red Ryder movies from 1944-1947.  Wild Bill Elliott appeared as Red Ryder in 16 of the films, Allan Rocky Lane in 7 of them, and Bobby Blake was Little Beaver in all 23.  Of course, Bobby Blake grew up to become Robert Blake of "In Cold Blood" and "Baretta" fame.  Four more Red Ryder movies were released by Eagle-Lion, filmed in color and starring Jim Bannon.  Both Bannon and Rocky Lane filmed pilots for a Red Ryder TV series but neither project was picked up.  A 1963 episode of "Gunsmoke" was an authorized test for a new Red Ryder series that was never realized.  It was an adaptation of how Red Ryder and Little Beaver met and became companions.  It was estimated that the 27 Red Ryder films were shown in 8000 movie theaters and seen by 65 million people.

By 1948 the newspaper strip was in 750 daily and Sunday papers with a readership of 45 million in the US, Canada, Australia, Central and South America.  The merchandising of Red Ryder was amazing, probably second only to Walt Disney.  There were school supplies, camping supplies, toys, games, puzzles, craft kits, leather kits, wallets, watches, and camping cookware.  An exclusive Red Ryder Corral at J. C. Penny's offered Red Ryder cowboy themed clothing, hats, suspenders, underwear, accessories, housewares, and rugged Red Ryder Ranch brand clothing for work and play.  Around the country there were Red Ryder Rodeos, Little Beaver Powwows, Red Ryder sponsored family events, and outdoor youth programs.  And there was the licensing of the Daisy Red Ryder BB-gun.  In the 1983 film "A Christmas Story" based on the Jean Shepherd short story, the story centers around the childhood memories of a boy trying to get a "Red Ryder carbine-action 200 shot range model air rifle BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time" for Christmas.  This modern day yuletide favorite is probably enough to ensure the legendary status of Red Ryder.  Fred Harman retired from the strip in 1964 and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where he maintained an art studio.  The last Red Ryder newspaper strip appeared on September 30, 1965, the same year that Harman became one of the original members of the Cowboy Artists of America.  He became as well known for his realistic oil paintings of cowboys and Indians as his iconic comic strip.  His paintings were included in the first annual exhibition at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City in 1966, and he was one of only 75 white men to be adopted by the Navajo Nation.  Fred Harman died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1982, one year before "A Christmas Story" was released in theaters.