Tex Ritter

Generations of young Americans idolized singing cowboys. From the mid-1930s until after World War II, folk minstrels on horseback such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Tom Mix enthralled moviegoers. Even among this storied group, however, few film wranglers rivaled Tex Ritter in popularity.

Maurice Woodward "Tex" Ritter was born in Panola County, near the settlement of Murvaul, in 1905, to a farm family. As a teenager, Woodward-the name he grew up with--and his family moved to Beaumont, where his father took a job in the oilfields. He attended high school in Beaumont and then enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin, where he planned to study law.

While in Austin Ritter became acquainted with folklorists J. Frank Dobie and John Lomax, both of whom were authorities on western folk music. Enamored of the genre, Ritter left school in 1928 and began a musical career that spanned nearly five decades.

Ritter soon traveled to New York with a touring company, where in 1930 he won a part playing the character Cord Elam in Green Grow the Lilacs-later reworked into the musical Oklahoma-which opened on Broadway in January 1931. While acting and singing in the show, Woodward acquired the nickname Tex. He also worked as a radio actor, singing cowboy songs and telling western tales and gaining a loyal following. In 1936, when executives of Grand National Pictures decided that the company needed a singing cowboy for its movies, Tex Ritter was the natural choice.

Ritter flew to Hollywood and within weeks had completed shooting the first of some eighty-five films over the next nine years. In 1941he married Dorothy Fay Southworth; they had two sons, Thomas and John, and remained together throughout Ritter's life. While making movies, Tex and his horse, White Flash, also performed in touring shows and recorded for Decca and Capital records. In 1945 and 1946 he recorded seven consecutive Top 5 hits, and in 1952 he recorded the title song for the Gary Cooper film "High Noon." Then, with the cowboy movie genre fading, Ritter migrated to the new medium of television, starring in the variety show Town Hall Party until 1961.

Westerns migrated from film to television during the 1960s, and Ritter recorded some of the most famous television theme songs of the day, including the title song for Gunsmoke. In 1963 he was a founding member of the Country Music Association and the next year became the first singing cowboy inducted into the newly-established Country Music Hall of Fame. A life member of the Grand Ole Opry, Ritter moved to Nashville in 1965 and performed regularly on stage there while continuing to travel and play to appreciative audiences all across the world. In January 1974, while completing plans for another tour, Tex Ritter died of a heart attack in Nashville.

Tex Ritter's body was returned to Texas for burial in Oak Bluff Memorial Park in Port Neches. To get there, follow Hwy. 347 south out of Beaumont, then head east on Port Neches Avenue. You will jog north, then back east on Port Neches Ave.; follow the signs to Oak Bluff Memorial Park.

For more information about Tex Ritter, see Bill O'Neal, Tex Ritter: America's Most Beloved Cowboy (Eakin Press, 1998), or contact the Tex Ritter Museum in Carthage at 903-693-6634, To learn more about East Texas history, contact the East Texas Historical Association at Stephen F. Austin State University or visit the ETHA web site at http://leonardo.sfasu.edu/etha/.