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Always defend your name, son. Just like you defend your country when you need to.
Gene Autry
Two 1951 episodes of the The Gene Autry Show were filmed in color to promote CBS' own color process, which wound up not being accepted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The Gene Autry Show
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July 23, 1950
August 7, 1956
The Gene Autry Show was an American western/cowboy television series which aired for 91 episodes on CBS from July 23, 1950 until August 7, 1956, originally sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint chewing gum.
Gene Autry had already established his singing cowboy character on radio and the movies. Now he and his horse Champion were featured in a weekly television series of western adventures. Gene's role changed almost weekly from rancher, to ranch hand, to sheriff, to border agent, etc. Gene's usual comic relief and sidekick, Pat, was played by Pat Buttram, better known to later television viewers as "Mr Haney" on "Green Acres". During the first season, Gene's sidekick was played by Chill Wills twice (as Chill) and by Fuzzy Knight four times (as Sagebrush). These two actors even wore Pat's costume. Alan Hale, Jr. (a.k.a. - "The Skipper" from "Gilligan's Island") played a bad guy in several episodes of Seasons 1 & 2, but he also played Gene's sidekick, Tiny, in two episodes of Season 1.
By this time, Gene Autry had established his own production company, Flying 'A' Productions, and acted as executive director for the series.
The series lasted 5 seasons. The first 4 were in black and white, and the final season (13 episodes) was in color. Color was experimented with in two or three episodes of the first season. The theme song Back In The Saddle Again was written by Gene Autry & Ray Whitley and sung by Gene Autry.
The Gene Autry Show had a 26 episode prime-time spin-off called The Adventures of Champion in 1955-56.
Gene Autry's feature films in the late 1940s and the 1950s often included cast members from his TV show, including Gail Davis, who usually appeared as his leading lady in most of the early episodes before she became Annie Oakley. Character actors Harry Lauter and I. Stanford Jolley appeared on the program sixteen and four times, respectively.
Two-thirds of the way through the first season's production, Pat Buttram was severely injured in an explosion and was hospitalized for several months. In order to complete the production run, his sidekick role was filled in the remaining episodes by Chill Wills, Fuzzy Knight and Alan Hale Jr.. Wills and Knight wore the same costume as Buttram so that long shots of stock footage could be easily used, but there was no disguising Hale's bulk - he wore his own distinctive clothing.
Pat Buttram's sidekick character had a different name in the initial episodes filmed in this series - as had been the practice in the Gene Autry B-westerns in which Buttram co-starred. Due to the TV series' rapid shooting schedule, Autry frequently forgot the name of the character Pat played from episode to episode, resulting in a number of botched takes. Autry finally ordered his writers to call Pat Buttram's sidekick character "Pat Buttram" in all future scripts to eliminate the problem.
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