Gene Autry height - How tall is Gene Autry?

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 19-22. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1980.

Inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1979 as a stock contractor.

Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1972.

Autry was the first owner of the Los Angeles Angels American League baseball club, subsequently renamed the California Angels when the team was relocated to Anaheim in 1966. (The team has been renamed twice: the Anaheim Angels, and now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.) A radio station owner, Autry was interested in acquiring the broadcasting rights to the Angels games when he found out the team, part of the American League's first expansion, was for sale. He bought it. Autry owned the team in its entirety from its first year of play, 1961, until 1997, when he sold part of the franchise to Disney, who renamed the team the Anaheim Angels. Autry's widow sold the rest of the team to Disney after his death the next year at the age of 91.

On 8 February 1960, he was awarded 4 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: for Motion Pictures at 6644 Hollywood Boulevard; Radio at 6520 Hollywood Boulevard; Recording at 6384 Hollywood Boulevard; and Television at 6667 Hollywood Boulevard. On 6 April 1987, he received a fifth star for Live Performance (rodeo) at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. He is the only person with 5 stars on the Walk of Fame.

In 1952 he bought the Monogram Ranch which had been used in Western films since 1915 and went onto be used in the film High Noon and the television series Gunsmoke.

After his military service he returned to making movies, this time with Columbia Pictures, and finally with his own company, Flying A Productions, which, during the 1950s, produced his TV series The Gene Autry Show (1950), The Adventures of Champion (1955), and Annie Oakley (1954). He wrote over 200 songs.

Of his 92 starring features, only The Strawberry Roan (1948) and The Big Sombrero (1949) were filmed and released in color. Additionally, only the last season, 1955-56, of his long running TV series, "The Gene Autry Show"(1950) was filmed and broadcast in color.

During World War II he enlisted in the US Army and was assigned as a flight officer from 1942-46 with the Air Transport Command.

In 1940, the National Association of Theater Owners voted him the fourth biggest box office attraction, behind Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy.

There was an alternate version of Gene's first starring film, "The Phantom Empire"(1935), a 12 chapter serial. Though the plot and end result were the same, Gene's character(himself) is missing towards the end of the film, with not even a reference to his earlier presence. The film continues with the other cast members. Gene was temporarily unavailable and the film was almost shelved, but Gene finally returned to complete the film. That alternate version was last aired, locally in in NYC, in the early 1950s, perhaps by mistake, on a local feature program, titled "Time For Adventure"(TV). The shows' host, Rex Marshall,possibly unaware, made no mention of Gene's sudden absence from the film. There appear to be no reported sightings of that version since.

Three years after that he made his film debut in Ken Maynard's In Old Santa Fe (1934) and starred in a 13-part serial the following year for Mascot Pictures, The Phantom Empire (1935). The next year he signed a contract with Republic Pictures and began making westerns.

His first hit record was "That Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine" in 1932.

Autry--for better or worse--pretty much ushered in the era of the "singing cowboy" westerns of the 1930s and 1940s (in spite of the presence in his oaters of automobiles, radios and airplanes). These films often grossed ten times their average $50,000 production costs.

After high school Gene Autry worked as a laborer for the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad in Oklahoma. Next he was a telegrapher. In 1928 he began singing on a local radio station, and three years later he had his own show and was making his first recordings.