The "Wise County Cowboy". Yep, believe it or not we Guinn "Big Boy" Williams made over 200 Hollywood films . 200? Really?? He starred along side Jimmy Cagney, John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, Janet Gaynor, Edgar Kennedy, Alan Hale and many more. He was born in Decatur on April 26, 1899.
He was known as the "Babe Ruth of Polo".
SEE!!! I told you we were ripe for polo around here!!!
He was discovered by none other than Will Rogers and started out as a stuntman then worked his way up thru the ranks.
Read his complete bio at IMDB.
3 comments:
Kinda looks like W.
I'm not from WC, wasn't aware of western film stars from there. I was surprised, several years ago, doing a real estate inspection for a bank to find a relic of a real "old west" bad guy. The proposed property was east of Salt Creek/Gentry's Road, south of Hallelujah Hills (?) (Faith, Hope, Love, Joy), about a five acre tract if memory serves.
I had driven out to check out the unimproved property. Since it was a nice day, I got out to walk around and see if I could find the property boundaries, as the north and west parts were covered in scrub oaks.
About 20 or 30 yards into the woods, I came across a crude gravesite marker, made of plate steel with stick welded lettering. I don't remember the exact wording, but it said at least "Here lies Arkansaw Johnson, d. 6/12/1878". It wasn't in a public area, of course, and didn't look like much care had been given to it.
When I got back home, in Tarrant Co., I consulted "Wild and Wooly - An Encyclopedia of the Old West", and found out that sure enough, a John Huckston, a/k/a Arkansaw (sic) Johnson, who had been kicked out of Sam Bass' outlaw gang for being despicable, had had his career permanently ended there by the Texas Rangers. A little more research revealed that it was also probably before the rail lines were built through current-day Boyd, and certainly before the crash landing of Aurora's version of ET.
Wow, great story!
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