Yesterday while I was enjoying breakfast with The Ladies, I showed them a copy of the book we just got back from the printer, The Bounty Man and Doe by Dusty Richards. It's got a beautiful cover, by the way, and one of the ladies said, "Oh, I used to like westerns. I remember Lash Larue. He was so handsome." Then the second lady said, "I used to sit through his movies twice at the Saturday Matinee. I loved the way he cocked his hat over to the side. Made him seem so mysterious." Then the first lady said, "Who are you talking about?" Second lady says, "I don't know." I told them we were talking about westerns and Lash Larue. The first lady says, "Oh, I used to love his westerns. I used to sit through them twice at the Saturday Matinee." And on and on it went.
But that little bit of conversation with The Ladies made me curious about Lash Larue. I vaguely remember the name. So this morning I did some research. Wow, what a cowboy. But his real name was Alfred, and as you can imagine that didn't fit a cowboy very well so they called him Lash. And back then some said he looked more like a gangster than a cowboy hero because he wore an all black outfit and had his Stetson cocked slightly to the side. He didn't pull a six gun when faced with a bad guy, his main weapon was an 18-foot bullwhip coiled at his holster. But he had the mandatory sidekick, Fuzzy Q. Jones.
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| Fuzzy Q and Lash Larue Below is a short excerpt from a wonderful site devoted to Lash Larue  Despite the shortcomings of the production values of his films, Lash LaRue himself remains a striking figure among the legends of screen cowboys. Had he been at Republic Pictures under the direction of William Witney, his star would have glistened more brightly. Lash was one of the last of the series Western stars. By the end of 1953, all of the great matinee cowboys had ridden off into the sunset for the last time. |
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