ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 30, 1997 TAG: 9701300014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
It was April when John Rutherford, a faculty member at Radford University for 37 years, rode into the sunset.
Now he is riding high as a scholar of cowboy movies.
First, he hooked up with Bob Amick for a weekend booth at Happy's Flea Market on Williamson Road in Roanoke, where Amick sells vintage movie memorabilia and Rutherford sells videotapes of all varieties of Western films.
Second, he completed a long-standing publishing venture on the film career of Johnny Mack Brown, a University of Alabama football star who became one of the longest-running cowboy heroes in film history.
"From Pigskin to Saddle Leather: The Films of Johnny Mack Brown" is a lavishly illustrated 212-page, 10 3/4-by-8 1/2-inch paperback. The company, operated by Ron and Linda Downey, is also one of the foremost publishers of speciality magazines on old movies such as "Cliffhanger," about film serials, and "Under Western Skies" on Westerns.
The Downeys published many articles by Rutherford while he was a professor of education. He had also been chairman and dean of Radford's Department of Education at different times.
Rutherford and another film scholar, Richard B. Smith III, are also the authors of "Cowboy Shooting Stars," which came out in paperback in 1989 and was expanded as "More Cowboy Shooting Stars" in hardback in 1993 by Empire Publications.
That book lists the Westerns made by 240 sound era stars from John Agar to Robert Young, with dates, studios, running times and minibios on each actor. It quickly became a best seller among Western film and video collectors, who constantly consult it in annual film convention dealers' rooms at places like Knoxville, Tenn., and Charlotte, N.C., checking the pedigree of a particular title before deciding whether to buy it.
It was at a film festival where Rutherford met Amick, who lives in Roanoke. Amick wanted them to share a booth at Happy's even before Rutherford retired.
Rutherford has also been published in shorter-lived national magazines like "The Paper Channel," where he was a regular reviewer of children's films on cable television. But his first love has been Westerns, since he saw his first one in Staunton at about age 6 and his first double feature after moving to Roanoke at age 10.
His interest revived in the 1970s when Mack Houston, a Methodist minister then at a church in Wytheville, and Craig Allison began hosting monthly film showings at the Wytheville Community Center.
Rutherford went with film collector Ed Hartnett of Christiansburg. When Hartnett died, he left some of his films to Rutherford. That is how Rutherford started collecting.
By the time the Wytheville gatherings ended, Rutherford helped organize similar showings in the New River Valley. He and a few others formed Nickelodeon Films, which has been sponsoring showings at 7 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month at Radford University for 18 years, and on the third Saturday at the Christiansburg library for 10 years.
It was Houston who put Rutherford in touch with Ron and Linda Downey in the 1970s. "Actually, Ron asked me to write this book," Rutherford recalled. "I started it 10 years ago."
The Downeys came up with many of its some 190 photographs, some of which are rare - like one showing future Olympian and actor Bruce Bennett (then known as Herman Brix) chasing Brown in a football game, and a group shot of Hollywood football players in uniform including Brown, John Wayne (with whom he co-starred in "Hell Town") and Andy Devine.
Not many teachers at Radford University knew of Rutherford's cinema scholarship. "Just when I needed to get a little publishing credit for my career, I let my chairman know," he said. "He kind of looked at me on those Western articles."
He had been telling his department chairman, Robert Lockwood, now assistant dean at the university's College of Education, about the Johnny Mack Brown book for years. When it finally came out, he took it by Lockwood's office to prove he had not been making it up.
The first half of the book chronicles Brown's life as a football star; his silent films at MGM opposite such leading ladies as Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford and Norma Shearer; his first big starring Western as "Billy the Kid" (1930); and his Western serials and movies at Mascot, Paramount, Universal, Supreme, Republic and Monogram studios (he churned out 66 Westerns at Monogram alone from 1943 to 1952). Other chapters cover his co-stars such as Tex Ritter, Fuzzy Knight, and character actor Raymond ("Don't call me 'Old-timer!'") Hatton who had co-starred with Buck Jones and Tim McCoy in Monogram's "Rough Riders" series before joining Brown.
Brown had competed with Clark Gable to become MGM's young romantic lead, Rutherford said. When sound came in, Brown's distinctive Southern drawl did him in. But that did not hurt him in Westerns.
The second half of the book details each of Brown's films, complete with cast, credits and usually a photograph. Brown was still appearing in Westerns in the 1960s.
Rutherford enjoys his Saturdays at Happy's selling videotapes, but is often perplexed at what people buy.
Buyers will pass up the classic John Wayne-John Ford production of "Stagecoach" and instead buy the tepid remake with Willie Nelson, he said. They will overlook Cecil B. De Mille's "The Plainsman" or Wayne's "The Searchers" and go for oldies with Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson and Tom Mix. He said he has sold five copies of Maynard's "Strawberry Roan."
But he enjoys meeting other fans of the genre, whatever their preferences. "The nice thing about this is I just like to talk about it all day long," he said.
"From Pigskin to Saddle Leather: The Films of Johnny Mack Brown," may be ordered from World of Yesterday Publications ($19.95 postpaid from WOY, 104 Chestnut Wood Dr., Waynesville, N.C. 28786).
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF. Retired Radford Universityby CNBprofessor John Rutherford shares a booth at Happy's Flea Market in
Roanoke featuring Western movie video tapes and memorabilia. He
wrote a book on Western actor Johnny Mack Brown. color.