About the "old" Old Corral website on surfnet ... and the new b-westerns.com website

Beginning in 2006, there were a variety of web server problems and quite often, the "old" Old Corral website was offline for a few hours or longer. And bunches of e-mails arrived complaining about slowness on webpage downloading, can't access the site, etc.

In April-May, 2006, the "old" Old Corral was often out-of-service (missing).

My mood with the website runs from total enthusiam and elation to plain ol' tired and cranky ... and not much in between. As problems occurred, I often thought "not much I can do anymore - I'm just going to let the Old Corral run until it goes belly-up and disappears."

I knew that lots of people would be unhappy if the website ceased to exist. But I have a life too ... and I can't spend 24 hours a day babysitting the website and service and responding to e-mail complaints about the site being unreachable.

In early May, while sipping a cup of coffee, I had an epiphany. It was a simple realization that I couldn't disappoint the many sons, daughters, grandkids, and close friends of ol' B-western performers and production people who had opened their family history to me. And they were happy and proud to provide photos from their family albums. And I guess that makes the Old Corral a good place to visit ... perhaps a unique place to visit.

As of May 10, 2006, I moved the Old Corral to a new domain name and server: http://www.b-westerns.com

So in a wrap, the Old Corral continues on because of folks like: Cynthia Brown Hale (JM Brown's daughter), Dorothy Hack (Herman Hack's daughter), Doris Lauter (Harry Lauter's wife), Marilyn and Harry Carey, Jr. (Marilyn's dad was Paul Fix, and Harry's dad was HC, Sr.), Alice Ball (her dad was Frank Ball), Belinda Kirkhuff (her grandfather was Jack Kirk), Philippe Yaconelli and Ernie Yaconelli (Frank Yaconelli's son and brother), Walt Weed (his dad was Bob Baker), John F. White (his grandfather was Dan White), Tom and Debbie Bahn ("Slim" Whitaker family), Tom Bupp (his father and uncle were child stars Tommy Bupp and Sonny Bupp), Bob Webb and Mark Webb (whose father and grandfather was film director and producer Harry S. Webb of Reliable Pictures), Dave Tansey (whose relatives included Bob, John, Sherry and Emma Tansey), Bill MacCallum (friend and co-worker of stuntman Fred Graham), Melody Waters (her dad was singer/musician Ozie Waters), Mike Hunter, Frank Underwood, Jack Jones, Herb Stokes (relatives of Arizona Wranglers singing group members), Dale Berry (friend to Kenne Duncan), Jim Martin (friend to Rodd Redwing), Sherwood Schwartz (creator of "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch" and friend to Dave O'Brien), Paul Samuels (grandson of heroine Lynne Roberts), Richard Kumler (stepson to Jack Luden), Wes Baker (his father was Silver Tip Baker), Pamela "Brooke" Tucker (her dad was Forrest Tucker and granddad was I. Stanford Jolley) ... and many more.

The "new" Old Corral is running at a large webserver provider named ChiHost.com (located in a suburb of Chicago), and I registered the b-westerns.com domain name. Still won't do advertising, there's no commercial sponsors, and no banner ads, pop-ups, or pop-unders. No one underwwrites the website costs. And no donations required or requested. Annual costs for the new site and domain name amounts to a couple hundred dollars a year - and that's my fair share toward "remembering the B-western".

The service should be better. Most importantly, it will allow me to spend time adding content rather than fixing things.

Chuck Anderson
June 18, 2006



New Jersey, March, 1949 on my 6th birthday.  I got that cowboy hat at Madison Square Garden and it was made out of a paper mache type material.  Got caught in the rain and it dissolved right on my head. I was heart broken.


About Chuck Anderson, the Old Corral Curator and Webmaster


I was born March 4, 1943, and our home was in Cranford, New Jersey.  Around the age of five or six, I vividly recall seeing Gene Autry and Champion at Madison Square Garden.  In late 1949, my father had a job transfer and the family moved to Tucker, Georgia (near Stone Mountain).  Tucker was definitely rural at that time, and we had a couple acres of property, lots of pine trees, a dirt driveway, Bermuda grass, well water, and a fuel oil furnace that didn't put out much heat.  I still chuckle when I think about my Mom, who was an avid gardener, trying to get stuff to grow in that durn Georgia clay.

During the 1950s, I spent many weekends at local movie houses watching a variety of films. The first western that I can recall was SONG OF OLD WYOMING (PRC, 1945), a Cinecolor yarn starring singer Eddie Dean, Al "Lash" LaRue and pretty Jennifer Holt.  It was paired up on a double-feature with one of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan adventures.  Other B-westerns that I enjoyed at the theaters included Jimmy Wakely, Whip Wilson, Rocky Lane, and most all of the Columbia flicks from Gene Autry.  Of course, there were lots of other films and series such as the Bowery Boys, the Lex Barker and Gordon Scott Tarzans, and scores of cheapy 1950s sci-fi movies.  On several of my birthdays, my father took me into Atlanta to the Fox Theater for an A-feature, and on the return drive home, we'd stop for a box of those wunnerful Krispy Kreme donuts.  I also recall going to a drive-in theater with my folks --- I think it was named the 'Scott Drive-In', and we didn't see many westerns there as Mom and Pop just weren't interested in them.  Great memories ... of course, my recollections are based on the tail end of the genre, as B westerns and serials were in a rapid decline during the 1950s.

In the early days of TV, many of the films that were shown on the Atlanta stations were westerns and serials.  I can remember the Tom Tyler series from Victory and Reliable ... most of the Mascot cliffhangers ... Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon ... there were lots of Bob Steele ... and a young John Wayne rode the dusty trail in Lone Star westerns done by producer Paul Malvern.  Also on TV were a bunch of Republic films, such as the excellent Bill Elliott/Red Ryder series.  The Hopalong Cassidy flicks from Paramount were also playing on the little box, and William Boyd became so popular again, that he developed a half-hour Hoppy show specifically for TV.  And I do remember the fuzzy (soft) prints of Tom Keene's RKO oaters that were on the little tube under the C&C Television banner.  Overall, this was pretty exciting viewing for a youngster who played cowboy in his back yard with the neighbor kids.  Even had a Hopalong Cassidy gun/holster set and a genuine Daisy "Red Ryder" BB gun (both of which got lost or tossed during our moves or my growing up).

The first TV set that we had was an Emerson console with a really small picture tube.  It didn't last very long --- it got fried from a lightning strike during a Georgia thunderstorm.  My Dad and I were at an Atlanta "Crackers" baseball game, and when we arrived home, the Emerson was out on the front porch, still smokin'.  I vaguely recall a little terrier pooch that was the logo in the test pattern for one of the Atlanta TV stations (was the station WAGA-TV?).

Another job transfer occurred with my father in 1961 and we moved to Northwest Indiana, about an hour SE of Chicago.  During that move, my comic book collection got lost or thrown away.  It didn't matter at that time, as I was a Senior in High School and more interested in girls, sports and hot rod cars.

After college time at Ball State and Indiana University, I went to work for "Ma Bell", and this included about 25 years in the Illinois Bell and Ameritech offices in the Chicago Loop.  Most of my time was involved in systems development and design, computer operations, computer programming, etc.  For the last ten years or so of my formal career, I had responsibility for sumthin' new (at that time) called "End User Computing".  EUC was (is) personal computers, e-mail, LANs, servers, distributed computing, etc.  I retired in the early 1990s with about thirty years of service.

There was military service time.  in 1966, I was at Fort Knox, Kentucky for Basic Training followed by Advanced Individual Training (AIT) as a Combat Engineer at "Little Korea", Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  In '67, I attended the Jungle Operations Training Center (JOTC) at Fort Sherman, Panama Canal.  I was an M-79 Grenade Launcher instructor, a Combat Engineer squad leader, and NCO Academy instructor.

I had the desire to collect 16mm films, but the costs were prohibitive.  However, I was able to purchase an old Bell & Howell 16mm manual feed projector, and one of the first films that I acquired was Tex Ritter's WESTBOUND STAGE (Monogram, 1939), one of Tex's better films.  I also had a Super8 movie camera for personal use (in those prehistoric days before videotape), as well as a Minolta 8mm/Super8 projector.  I picked up some 8mm/Super8 silent films from companies like Walton and Blackhawk, and these included Ken Maynard, Laurel & Hardy, etc.  I also began collecting posters, lobby cards, and various photos from serials and westerns.  I concentrated on lobby cards, simply because they were less expensive and easier to store vs. posters.  And that's one of the reasons that you'll find many lobby card images on the Old Corral.

When the Beta and VHS videotape machines came out, I was thrilled and eagerly purchased the new technology, a Quasar brand in VHS that weighs about fifty pounds (and I still have it and it works).  The first commercial tape that I bought was from a wonderful company named Nostalgia Merchant --- a double feature of PRC westerns, Eddie Dean in CARAVAN TRAIL (in Cinecolor) and Lash LaRue in CHEYENNE TAKES OVER.  The first serial on tape that I purchased was/is one of my favorites, ZORRO RIDES AGAIN (Republic, 1937) with John Carroll (and Yakima Canutt doing the stuntwork).

In the early 1980s, I began writing about serials and B-westerns.  I had a long run of articles in Norm Kietzer's Favorite Westerns magazine.  I did some articles for Rob Tucker's Memory Lane magazine and for John Hagner at the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame.  And there were dozens of articles under my byline of "The Tape Trail" for a great guy named Sam Rubin who was the editor and boss of the monthly Classic Images newspaper.  I've also done some writing work for Republic expert Jack Mathis (who authored the astounding Valley of the Cliffhangers and other books).

And for those serial fans who might remember, I tried to put together a proposal in the 1980s to get the Allan Lane KING OF THE MOUNTIES and KING OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED cliffhangers onto videotape.  That venture failed because we couldn't obtain enough financial support (though a more recent effort did succeed in bringing these lost serials to videotape for a group of serious cliffhanger fans and collectors --- not to the general public and retail market).

I've been lucky enough to chat with and interview some nice people who were part of western and serial history.  Among them were Buster Crabbe (very cooperative, helpful, a real gentleman) and Ed Finney (director/producer of many of Tex Ritter's westerns).  I also fondly recall many visits and chats with a sweet lady named Alice Ball.  Her father was Frank Ball, a grey-haired, older gentlemen with a great voice.  Frank Ball did a lot of bit parts and supporting roles, primarily in Bob Steele westerns of the late 1930s which were produced by A. W. Hackel, initially at Hackel's Supreme Pictures and later distributed through Republic.  Alice, who passed away a couple years ago, had never seen her Dad in a western, so I made a bunch of videotapes for her and she was really pleased.  As she chatted, I made notes and compiled a bio/history on her dad and family.  Alas, I did this on a Commodore 64 computer which bit the dust a couple decades ago, and I guess I never printed a copy of his bio for my files.

The article that I'm proudest of authoring was a two-parter titled "Galloping Dynamite, the Saga of Kermit Maynard" which I penned for Favorite Westerns twenty years ago.  Research on that included many telephone calls, US mail messages and visits with Edith Maynard, a very nice and gracious lady and the wife of stuntman/supporting actor Kermit (the brother of Ken Maynard).  Among the close friends of Edith were stuntman Yak Canutt and his wife as well as stuntman Cliff Lyons.

After retirement, I wound up doing a lot of PC work for friends, neighbors, relatives.  Those efforts lead to more formal (paid) PC consulting and website development for businesses and schools.

Still loving ol' westerns and serials, I decided to put up a website about those films and the faces that appeared on the flickering screen.  My rationale was simple --- while there are a lot of good and bad books on these old films, when I queried the Internet via Search Engines, there were only a few websites devoted to serials and the B-western.  Having some time available in the Spring/Summer of '98, I fulfilled that goal with a webpage on Chief Thunder Cloud.  Soonafter, I put up pages on the various "Trigger Trios" (Mesquiteers, Range Busters, et al).

Wife Rosemary and I live in Indiana, and in November, 2003, we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.  Daughter Laura is 19 and in her second year at Purdue University.  Thirty-five year old son Craig manages a local airport, graduated from St. Joseph's College in Indiana, and is married to a great gal named Paula --- and Ethan, our first grandchild, arrived on November 7, 2002.  Thirty-three year old son Mike graduated from Purdue, is the manager at a local steel supplier, and was married to Claudia, another great daughter-in-law, in the Summer of 2000.

Time really flies!

Chuck Anderson
Updated: November 27, 2003



Thanks for the recognition from these fine folks and websites:

The 'Memories Museum' has received the Bob Burns Kogar Award
Bob Burns Kogar Award



About the Old Corral website


Some folks have asked for background and details on the Old Corral website.

This is a non-profit, non-commercial fansite, with nothing for sale and no profit in mind. The Old Corral is NOT an online business or 'store' --- we don't sell videos, posters, lobby cards or photos. There are no banner advertisements or link exchange ads, nor are we part of any money-making 'associates' or 'referral' programs with click-thru icons that take you to other websites to purchase books, CDs, videos, etc. In other words, no remuneration of any kind is received in connection with the operation of this site.

The website takes a lot of time and energy, and I do get tired and frustrated working on this thing.  One of the downsides is that I no longer have time to watch old westerns and serials since most of my free time is spent updating and maintaining the Old Corral.  Instead of watching films, I pop one in the VCR and listen to it as I work.

Adding new cowboy heroes takes time and effort.  For example, the section on Allan 'Rocky' Lane consists of five HTM pages.  It took me about 20 hours to create that section, only because Paul Dellinger did the great writeup on Lane.  I did the entire piece on Johnny Mack Brown and it has eleven HTM pages and took about 40 hours to accomplish.

Maintenance takes a bunch of hours.  For those of you who have been with the Old Corral since the beginning in the late 1990s, you might recall that the original backgrounds used on each webpage were dark blue, black or gray, and most had a stagecoach image buried in the background.  Well, a lot of folks had problems viewing white text on dark backgrounds ... and it also created problems for those who print out the pages.  Everything has been converted to the lighter color background with plain ol' black text (just like this page).  This color scheme should also be easier on your printer (and inkjet cartridges).

My personal rules and guidelines for the Old Corral are:

The general routine that I use to put up new stuff is to do an initial draft/test page which has photos, poster art work and text.  That page is put online for review by several of the Old Corral contributors ... and if photos or other material came from a family member or an Old Corral visitor, it's also reviewed by them.  After review and tweaking, the page is then placed online for all Old Corral visitors to view.

Over the past 5+ years, the site has grown to astounding proportions (bloated).  I did a quick check on the image quantities of lobby cards, photos, comic book covers, pressbook ads, etc. (jpg format images). Following are some image quantities and dates:

May, 2000 = 1296 images
Mid December, 2000 = 1690 images
Mid February, 2001 = 1946 images
End of March, 2001 = 2014 images
Beginning of June, 2001 = 2164 images
Middle of August, 2001 = 2245 images
Middle of December, 2001 = 2375 images
Beginning of February, 2002 = 2412 images
Middle of April, 2002 = 2548 images
Late July, 2002 = 2678 images
Late October, 2002 = 2739
Early April, 2003 = 2783
Middle of August, 2003 = 2827
April, 2005 = 3031

As to the written material and "pages" --- as of Summer, 2003, the quantity of htm webpages was about 780.

Some folks have asked for more images of posters on the Old Corral.  There's several reasons that I don't use very many poster images. For those of you with a scanner, think of how many scans it takes to do all of the pieces to a large poster ... and then spend time with a graphics program "stitching" all those pieces together into a single image. The other issue with posters is that most are drawings/paintings (some are very colorful, beautiful). I do have two digital cameras and have experimented with shooting images of posters using both.  While a high resolution camera image of a poster is useable, the lighting is often a problem --- if I take a shot indoors and use a flash, the image often has a reflection, i.e., the center is lighter than the edges. The best choice for lighting is to use outdoor sunlight, but then I have to thumbtack a poster to a board, wait for the correct sunlight, yadda, yadda. The preferred images on the Old Corral are lobby cards and photos.  A lobby card is scanned in two separate pieces --- the right half and the left half --- and then blended together into a single image --- relatively easy since I have done hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more, of these. However, the most important reason for the use of lobby cards is that they contain one or more actual images of the hero ... and may also include the heroine, the sidekick, the brains heavy, the trusty hoss, etc. Some even have images of the star's saddle or gunbelt as well as the supporting players, gang members, etc. Thus a lobby card may be useable in various sections on the Old Corral.

Some have asked why the homepage for the Old Corral is named "trio.htm".  The website got started in the Spring of 1998 when I put up pages on the Range Busters, Three Mesquiteers, Rough Riders, Trail Blazers, et al --- basically the trio westerns.  The "trio.htm" was the homepage and became indexed in all the Search Engines and Movie related websites.  And I left it that way as the Old Corral was born and expanded well beyond the trio series concept.

Others have suggested that I add some kind of message board capability.  I certainly agree this would be a nice feature.  But I just don't have any more time to devote to this website, and having a message board/Q&A/chat area requires management and maintenance --- for example, I would have to preview all messages prior to posting them online to insure they're not spam, or porn site advertisements, or full of profanity or inflammatory language, and to work through message board updates and maintenance releases.  Besides, there are several existing message boards on B films, westerns and serials, and you'll find links to those off the Old Corral homepage.

Some folks have asked (complained) about why the various menu items of names of heroes, villains, henchies, heroines, etc. are NOT in alphabetical order. Easy answer: when I add a new person --- or update an existing profile --- I move that name to the top of the list with a blinking new or update marker. There's an additional reason: some folks had multiple names --- like Jay Wilsey (Buffalo Bill Jr.) and Wally Wales (Hal Taliaferro). And there was George Duryea ... who became Tom Keene ... who became Richard Powers ... and who returned to being Tom Keene.

I have received many requests to expand the Old Corral beyond the B western orientation --- i.e., add TV westerns, A westerns, "spaghetti westerns", etc., and have pages on Randolph Scott, Richard Dix, Joel McCrea, Rory Calhoun, Audie Murphy, John Payne, Richard Arlen, Dick Jones, Guy Madison, James Arness, James Garner, Clint Walker, Dale Robertson, and lots of others.  While I support that idea, it won't be me that does this, as there's a limit to my endurance ... and I do have to sleep occasionally.

The period of time which I've arbitrarily chosen to cover on the Old Corral is roughly 1929-1954, give or take a year or so.  Thus, you will not find heroes who rode the cinema trails of the silent era only --- like William S. Hart, Fred Thomson and Art Acord.  However, stars such as Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Harry Carey and Buck Jones, who were successful in both silent and sound oaters, will be covered since some or a lot of their screen time occurred in "talkies".

Some folks have asked if I could start a mailing list to notify those (who subscribe) of changes and updates.  Since I do updates several times a week (and sometimes daily), I've opted not to do this kind of mailing ... besides, that's why I have the Changes & Updates page for people to view.  The problem with any kind of e-mail group mailing is that it would add to my time because of maintenance --- some recipients will want to change their e-mail addresses while others want to be added or removed. And there will always be undeliverable messages that get bounced back to me (because someone changed their mail address and didn't notify me).  A secondary issue with any form of mass mailing is that it is often labeled as 'spamming'.  Plus, a simple request to be added, removed or changed on the mail list isn't acceptable.  I would need to send a mail message back to the sender requesting verification, confirmation, etc. (to catch those 'crafty' individuals who try to place e-mail addresses of others on the list as a joke or to 'get even' with someone).

In October, 2004, we reached a plateau with over one million "hits" on the Old Corral homepage. I don't have a clue how many hits there have been to the various sections and sub-pages (since some websites link to page or section which bypasses the OC homepage).

Lastly, I need to say a special thanks to my wife Rosemary, who knows I spend too much of my life working on this thing ... but rarely complains.

Chuck Anderson
Updated: December 28, 2004



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