A Vision of Fact, Fantasy : Executive Director Joanne Hale has mixed the myth and the reality of the Old West at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum

Joanne Hale is no cowpoke.

No more than, say, Billy Crystal.

She was jerked back, however, into the Old West, clean out of her basic black and pearls and into denim and cowboy boots in 1984. Hale was lassoed by her friends, Gene and Jackie Autry, to help realize their longtime dream of opening a museum loaded with the Singing Cowboy’s memorabilia.

“Gene loved Western history,” Hale said. “He wanted to give something back to the public.”

The spirit of lovin’ and givin’--sounds like an old Autry tune--ultimately led to the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park. The museum, which opened in 1988, turned out to be more all-fired comprehensive--and innovative--than even Hale first imagined.

Originally, the Autrys and Hale wanted a small space to display Gene Autry’s personal collection of Western artifacts and Hollywood doodads. Subsequently, the Autry Foundation used funds to buy outside collections that dealt almost entirely with the “real” West. Donations of Western-American art, documents, guns, clothing, saddles and machinery beefed up the Autrys’ inventory--and their ambitions.

As plans for their museum grew, Hale, who had worked on the project from the beginning, was designated the museum’s executive director. She was a curious choice, considering her lack of background in both museum management and Western-American history. She is married to movie cowboy Monte Hale, but that hardly qualifies her as an expert.

“I had to do research on museums,” said Hale, who lives in Studio City. “I had to learn about everything--museum missions, collections, very basic information.”

What she didn’t need to be brought up to speed on was running a business. That she had done for years as a successful entrepreneur. She had also honed skills through years of participating in volunteer organizations. If Hale could make it in the world of office computers--she sold her business in 1980 to Bell & Howell--and PTA and Little League, how hard could it be to organize and administer a nonprofit Western history museum?

Hard enough. She had to, among other tasks, find a suitable home for the museum, develop a support group, hire a staff, determine what would be displayed and stay within the Autry Foundation’s budget.

Hale went to a number of museum administrators, including Craig Black, executive director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. She explained what she was planning and asked basic questions about how to make it work.

“She was building a museum from scratch,” Black said. “She took on a major project, asked a lot of questions, and managed to put it all together.”

Outside advice notwithstanding, the museum’s vision--its mission, as Hale calls it--came mostly from the Autrys and herself. “We had many philosophical thoughts,” she said. “It had to have an educational department, a research center and a library. We wanted the museum to address both the mythical and the real West.”

In fact, most of the museum’s seven galleries deal with authentic Western history, often attempting to separate truths from falsehoods.

Exhibits include notable items such as the painting “Mountain of the Holy Cross” by Thomas Moran, an assortment of clothing, guns, rifles and equipment from the 1800s and furniture designed and created by Thomas Molesworth.

Also featured are traveling exhibits from the Smithsonian Institution and from other Western museums. Since 1988, Hale has brought together nine Western history museums, including the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma and the Buffalo Bill Museum in Wyoming, in a consortium through which they share varying collections.

One of the Autry Museum’s galleries deals solely with Western fantasy--the Old West as it has been portrayed in cowboy movies and television programs. On display are guns and costumes used by Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger, the jacket worn by Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid in the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and the millionth pressing of the song, “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” recorded by, well, you know who.

Despite her desire for the museum to be taken seriously by scholars, Hale doesn’t downplay space devoted to the imaginary West, calling it “terribly important.”

“That makes us different,” she said. “There is great interest in the mythical cowboys of the Old West.”

A few years ago, when Hale attended her first membership conference of the Assn. of American Museums, she said administrators of established arts and history museums looked at her as though she was from Mars. Mention of an institution called the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum conjured up fluffy images of the Singing Cowboy strumming his guitar out on the lonely prairie.

“They asked me if we were going to have Gene’s stuffed horse” on display, Hale said. “And they wondered if the museum would be in the shape of a cowboy boot.”

According to Black, fewer museum administrators are casting condescending glances at the Autry museum now that it draws more than 500,000 visitors a year and is looking toward 1 million annually in coming years.

One of the concepts Hale has stressed is to make the museum entertaining as well as informative. Among other innovations, she hired Walt Disney Imagineering to liven up a number of exhibits and in the future hopes to install computer systems in each of the galleries.

To hear Hale tell it, the crusty old boys in the museum associations around the country initially scoffed at her museum’s whiz-bang, show-biz approach to history. Now, she says, they are doing their best to portray their own exhibits as more than weary catacombs of information.

“Education can be fun,” Hale said. “It’s OK to be entertaining. I can’t tell you how many museum directors have come to see what we are doing here.”

And, Black says, they are taking notes. “Some of our colleagues in this profession tend to be too straight-nosed,” he said. “I’m sure they are taking a look at what Joanne has done and changing their minds. She’s influencing others to do interesting and creative things at their own museums.”

Who knows, they may even put in a few bids for Gene Autry’s 2 1/2-millionth pressing of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Chances are, though, Hale isn’t giving it up.