COWBOY STAMPS--FROM RICHMOND, INDIANA NEWPAPER

The U.S. Postal Service is today releasing four stamps honoring performers who helped make the American western popular. The stamps honor Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, William S. Hart and Gene Autry. Autry began his career at Richmond’s Gennett Recording Studios, and Mix appeared here with his circus.

Gene Autry’s medallion in the Gennett Walk of Fame. (Palladium-Item file photo by Steve Koger)

New stamps honor 2 cowboys with ties to Wayne CountyTwo of the four cowboy stars of the silver screen issued today in 44-cent Commemorative First Class stamps have Wayne County ties.

By Steve Martin • For The Palladium-Item • April 17, 2010

William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers are being honored by the U.S. Postal Service as extraordinary performers who helped make the American western a popular form of entertainment.Autry and Mix have Wayne County ties. One appeared here at the start of his career and got a boost to stardom. The other appeared at the close of his career as part of a circus.

Autry completed 93 movies and starred in 91 television productions, but it was his early recording sessions at the Gennett Recording Studios in Richmond that helped launch him to stardom.Young Autry was working at a small-time radio station in rural Oklahoma when he wrote Henry Gennett in 1929 and got a recording date.This future entertainment legend arrived in Richmond nervous and insecure, with a portfolio of ballads and yodeling cowboy songs, but he gave it his best and recorded several numbers. These recordings gained the support of a much-needed national audience, a gig at a Chicago radio station and, eventually, access to Hollywood. His star today is immortalized down in Starr Valley's Gennett Walk of Fame.
Autry's singing cowboy immortalized in films got his early start in Richmond, and the image stuck.

Mix, silent screen "King of the Cowboys" and hero to millions, appeared in Richmond down the street from Glen Miller Park. On April 22, 1937, he rode high in his silver-plated saddle astride "Tony the Wonder Horse."Mix was the son of a lumberjack who had joined the Army during the Philippine campaign at the turn of the century. Later he appeared in Wild West shows.While performing at a ranch that supplied movie studios with horses, he was hired as an extra. He eventually appeared in silent films that he later wrote, directed and starred in. At the height of his career he averaged about five films a year.

Sound pictures were not favorable to Mix in the late 1920s, and after making a handful of movies, he retired and toured the country, with what eventually became his own circus, the Tom Mix Circus.The circus appeared in Richmond on April 22, 1937, for two performances at the Twenty-third Street East Main Street show grounds (east of where Test field is) and featured a troupe of bareback riders, a "pretty" young aerial star who excelled in the art of dangling from a rope doing spins, and Tony, Tom's famous silver screen horse.

Mix developed a comical style in silent films that emphasized fast action. He did his own stunts and was "King of the Cowboys" in the 1920s and later remained popular on radio and in comic books.