Only Angels Can Grant Autry’s Fondest Wish : Profile: The 84-year-old ‘Singing Cowboy’ has amassed fame and fortune, but what’s missing from his fairy-tale Western is a baseball pennant.

When the man they called “the Singing Cowboy” finished a movie, he always hit the road to meet his fans.

When he needed to record a quick song to fulfill a contract, he dashed off in one run-through a throwaway tune called “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

When he sought the broadcast rights for a new baseball team’s games for his radio station, he ended up owning the Angels.

That’s the kind of moxie--and luck--that has made Gene Autry one of the richest men in the world, with a fortune of well over $100 million. He has been a success in all his careers: singer, movie star, broadcaster. Like Walt Disney, his arrival in Anaheim helped put Orange County on the map.

But as the Angels open spring training, owner Autry--84 years old and having health problems--again stares at the one thing luck hasn’t brought him and money hasn’t been able to buy: a baseball pennant.

The Angels’ pitchers and catchers are already working out; full-scale spring training starts in Arizona this week. The season begins in six weeks. Autry admits that his team is weak in a few places, yet insists: “I think we’ve got a pretty good chance to have a pretty good team.”

Others doubt it. Wally Joyner, a power-hitting first baseman, decided to play for Kansas City. Star outfielder Bobby Bonilla decided to stay in the East. Dave Winfield is gone.

A losing team can mean fewer fans and less money for an owner, the last thing Autry wants. Last year the Angels lost more than $3 million, says Jackie Autry, the former banker who became Autry’s second wife after his first, Ina Mae, died in 1980. Jackie Autry, 49, plays a major role with the team and expects it to lose even more money this year.

Then there’s KMPC, the stronger of the two Los Angeles radio stations that Autry owns (the other being KLIT-FM). Jackie Autry says it has been losing money, “as have most stations in this country, for the last two years,” as the recession cut into advertising budgets.

“We’re in three very bad industries,” she says. There’s the hotel business, with Autry owning the Gene Autry Hotel in Palm Springs. There’s broadcasting. And there’s baseball. “It does not look in the near term as if it’s going to get better.”

Sitting in his office at the KMPC studio in Hollywood--surrounded by Old West mementos, a cigar store Indian with a war bonnet and souvenir baseballs--Autry is equally glum.

“Right now I think that we’re pretty close to a depression,” he says. Still, he’s not about to go broke. He concedes that an estimate of his fortune at $115 million to $200 million is “a pretty good guess.”

And he smiles when he says the reason he won’t specify exactly how much he’s worth is “because you can lose it all overnight.”

Top Western Star in 1941--but No Olivier or Sinatra

That smile lights up a room the way it did a movie screen. He couldn’t sing like Caruso or act like Olivier. No one ever confused “The Big Sombrero” with “Casablanca.” Yet in 1941, Autry was the top Western star at the movie box office, and fourth male star overall, trailing only Mickey Rooney (then playing Andy Hardy), Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy.

Johnny Grant, the “honorary mayor of Hollywood” and the man who presides over the laying of the stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, says Autry hasn’t gone high hat in the 50 years he has known him.

Even as a movie, TV and recording star, Grant says, “he never tried to kid anybody. He never claimed to be the greatest actor in the world or the greatest singer. He was just honest.”

The cowboy’s road to Anaheim started in Tioga, Tex., a town 30 miles northwest of Dallas where Autry was born in 1907 and grew up on a farm.

In 1927, he was working as a relief telegraph operator “on the Frisco Line” railroad in Chelsea, Okla., one summer night. Strumming and singing on the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift, he stopped when a customer walked in. But the man told him to keep playing and said if he kept it up, “with some hard work, young man, you might have something.” The customer was Will Rogers, Autry says.

In his autobiography, he says it took him a year to gain enough courage to quit the railroad in favor of recording and performing in small towns across the country. In 1931, he wrote “That Silver-haired Daddy of Mine,” and it sold 30,000 copies within a month, a huge amount for that time.

Two years later, with half a million copies of the song sold, Autry’s press agent and a record company executive came up with a commemorative gimmick: a gold record. When a million copies sold, they gave him another gold record.

“I’m sure there were other records that sold a million,” Autry says, “but no one thought of giving the artist a gold record.” He had about 10 gold records in all, he figures, including songs heard every December: “Rudolph” and “Here Comes Santa Claus,” which he co-wrote.

“After ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ passed 10 million they gave me, oh heck, not silver but . . .”

A platinum record?

“Yes! Platinum!”

Autry made his first movie, “In Old Santa Fe,” in 1934. That one and his next effort starred Ken Maynard. The next year he made a 13-episode serial, “The Phantom Empire.” In the serial Autry plays a radio entertainer on a dude ranch who discovers an underground kingdom, reached through a cave at the ranch. He uses flamethrowers and laser beams to battle foes in the scientifically advanced civilization of Murania.

Nowadays he calls his next film, “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds,” the first singing Western. He made it in 1935, and from then on he always played a character named Gene Autry. Not a Smith, Jones or Young, just Gene Autry, singing his songs, taking care of his horse, Champion, and aw-shucks-ing the womenfolk.

As his movie career kicked into gear, Autry started making $5,000 per film. In some years during the Depression he made five films. By 1937 he was making $10,000 per movie, then $20,000. He made personal appearances too, sometimes five shows a day. In 1941 he earned more than $600,000 (more than $6 million in 1992 dollars).

On July 4, 1942, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, and his pay dropped to $135 a month for flying transport planes.

Except for his baseball team, Autry was never known for throwing money around. He says he would consider “colorizing” some of his movies--all but two of the 94 are black and white--but only when “they get the cost down a little cheaper.” For now he thinks the old prints look fine.

In his heyday, Autry raked in upward of 20,000 fan letters a week. From 1937 to 1942, he was the top moneymaking Western star. From 1940 to 1942, he ranked in the top 10 box office favorites.

“Why was he so popular?” muses Grant, a longtime Autry friend. “More than anyone else in the movie business at the time, people had the chance to see him in person because he traveled this country so much that you wouldn’t believe it.

“The minute he finished a movie he was on the road, appearing in a show in this city or that one, or the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. Fans related to that. He was accessible. You could see him on the screen, and the next week he’d be in your neighborhood, and you could drive and see him.”

Autry holds the record for the most stars on the Walk of Fame: five. He has been honored for singing, movies, radio, TV and live performances.

Autry’s return from the war coincided with the advent of TV. He began producing and starring in programs for the new medium. A whole new audience was watching his movies and listening to his records.

But by 1960 he had left the movies and recording studios behind and was concentrating on his main radio station, KMPC, which he bought in 1952.

The station broadcast Dodger National League games, but when the Dodgers moved to another station, Autry looked for a substitute. He tried to sew up broadcast rights to whatever expansion team wound up also playing in Southern California. When a group of potential owners couldn’t put a deal together, Autry wound up buying not just the radio rights but the whole team, the American League Angels.

At first, the team played in Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, then in Dodger Stadium. Finally Anaheim Stadium was built, and the team came to play there in 1965, changing name from the Los Angeles Angels to the California Angels.

In his autobiography, Autry calls Anaheim a “fresh and delightful place.” But there have been quarrels over the years. Autry is still suing the city over its plan to let the National Football League’s Rams develop part of the stadium parking lot.

“We had our differences,” says Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth, who was mayor of Anaheim when the suit was filed. “But at the end we walked out, shook hands and have remained friends.”

Indeed, last year Anaheim named a street running into the stadium “Gene Autry Way.”

Fred Hunter, Anaheim’s current mayor, calls Autry “one of my heroes from when I was a kid” and says, “I like to think I have a very good relationship with him.”

Hunter says he occasionally lunches with Autry and sometimes sits in the owner’s box during baseball season. Although they discuss things, “the only time you talk to him is when it’s between innings. Otherwise, he’s there with the TV monitor and a score card. He keeps score every ballgame.”

Despite his age, Autry is “alert,” Hunter says, and “looks just as good now as he looked three or four years ago.”

But Autry’s health has again become a concern. He underwent cataract operations a dozen years ago, broke a hip five years back and earlier this month had a retina repaired, forcing him to remain at home and restrict his movements to keep pressure off the eye.

Autry achieved a longtime dream three years ago, with the opening of the $34-million Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park, across from the Los Angeles Zoo. Over objections from environmentalists, the city leased the land to the museum for $1 a year.

Autry has long been a devotee of the Old West; the museum includes many of the statues, paintings and mementos he acquired over the years, plus collections bought from other museums. There are also extensive displays of Hollywood’s portrayal of cowboys, including Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and, of course, Autry.

Autry says he spends a fair amount of time at the museum, attending board meetings, viewing the exhibits and occasionally squiring around free-agent baseball players the Angels hope to sign.

“I spend a lot of time” in Orange County as well, he says, although his homes are in Studio City and Palm Springs.

“I attend all the baseball games” in Anaheim, 81 a year, he says, and “invariably it seems there’s always something going on down there that I try to be a part of.”

In Baseball, Friendships Balance the Frustration

Although some big-league clubs are money-spinners--such as the Mets, A’s, Yankees and Dodgers--others are lackluster financially. Autry admits: “I made my money by real hard work, records, movies, personal appearances and everything else. I made all my money out of all those things and not baseball.”

Jackie Autry says that “from time to time” her husband has “considered” selling the team. But that’s because of a “sense of frustration” when the team is not doing well, she says.

“Gene is a fan, and I am a fan,” so it makes it even tougher when things don’t go well, Jackie Autry says. “When you become frustrated with difficult aspects--not only financial, but the press and the beating you take in the press--you say it’s not worth this aggravation.

“But then you look at the fun times, the winning, going to the games, the friends you meet, one outbalances the other.”

And every spring brings optimism for baseball fans. Jackie Autry says despite “the pessimism of the press” over the Angels’ chances, “I think with the players we’ve added . . . you’re going to have some pleasant surprises.”

And Autry says while he’d like to “come up with another outstanding right-hander” and a few other good players, the Angels already have “four good pitchers” for starters.

Arthur E. (Red) Patterson worked for Autry for 17 years, until his death at age 83 earlier this month. In an interview shortly before he died, Patterson, who was once president of the Angels, said it was “a crime” that Autry “hasn’t been able to win a championship.”

Patterson remembered sitting in Autry’s box in 1986, with the Angels one strike away from winning the American League pennant and going to the World Series--only to see the Boston Red Sox come back and win it. “Very sad,” Patterson recalled.

Patterson’s wish for Autry’s Angels? “I hope he can win one (championship) before he dies.”