Was 60th Rose Parade Montie Montana’s Last? He’s Not Sure

There he was again, doing rope tricks and smiling.

Montie Montana was riding in his 60th Rose Bowl Parade.

But his 1994 appearance riding and roping his way down Colorado Boulevard may have been the last one for this 83-year-old movie cowboy.

“Well, it’s getting hard, at my age, to keep on doing it,” said the genial Montana, who learned to do rope tricks from his dad, Edgar Owen, as a boy in The Treasure State.

Father, son and his mother, Mary Edna Harlan, were billed as the Montana Cowboys as they performed on the rodeo circuit in the early 1920s.

By the 1930s, Montana was on his own with his new last name, honoring his home state.

He came to Los Angeles where he says a lot of real cowboys were heading hoping to get into the movies. “Times were tough and Hollywood was where the money was,” he said.

“Cowboys used to hang out by Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard waiting for one of the film people to come by and pick some of us up for day wages or to do tricks in one of the Tom Mix or Hoot Gibson movies. We’d get maybe $50 to $100 for a good stunt.”

Montana says he was grateful he’d learned to be good at roping. It kept him afloat during those hard times.

He says it was not easy, but it was a way cowboys could make a living.

“I remember Roy Rogers saying he’d give anything to make a steady $75 a week.

“Most of the cowboys in the films were real cowboys. Only Gene Autry and Roy were originally singers and had to be taught. But once they got the hang of things, they got to be real cowboys. Those were pretty good times for all of us,” he said.

Montana says many of those cowboys are still getting together.

“We like to go to the Pickwick Bowl in Burbank or the Beverly Garland Hotel in North Hollywood and sit around and see who can tell the biggest lies,” he said.

“Gene Autry and Roy and Dick Farnsworth and a bunch of us like to drink coffee and get windy,” added Montana, who says Farnsworth hasn’t gotten a big head since becoming a big movie star.

“I’ve known Dick for a long time and he’s a real cowboy, but he was so shy no one ever knew he could act. Then someone asked him to do a small speaking part in one of those big movies and he’s been doing real well at acting ever since,” Montana said.

Montana has always made his way as a showman, not an actor or singer. “I learned early that you had to have a little showmanship to stand out from the rest. Once I got that in my head, I used to practice smiling in the mirror so I could smile to the audience, and I took to wearing fancy clothes,” he said.

He did a lot of exhibitions, shows and personal appearances for the next 60 years, give or take a couple. “I used to go to elementary school and perform,” he said. He added that he knew he was getting up in years recently when he went to a senior citizens gathering and several people remembered those appearances from when they were kids.

Some may remember that Montana roped the newly elected President Eisenhower in 1953 during his inaugural parade.

“I was lucky the Secret Service didn’t ventilate me,” he recalled.

He has also roped so many people during the Rose Parade that their children and grandchildren now call out to him to rope them like he did their parent or grandparent when they were kids.

Montana has spent most of his adult life in the San Fernando Valley. He lived in North Hollywood and Van Nuys before moving to a magnificent horse ranch in Northridge in the early 1940s.

By the 1970s, the people, encroaching buildings and taxes had gotten too much for him and he bought his current ranch across from Velasquez Rocks in Agua Dulce.

When he married his second wife, Marilee, in 1987 the hitching was a blowout at the Calabasas Inn in Calabasas.

“I rode my horse in and Marilee and the bridal party came in a stagecoach,” Montana said.

For once, what may be the most famous roper in the world couldn’t hit his target.

“When it came time for me to lasso Marilee and lead her down the aisle, I was so nervous I didn’t do it on the first try, and had to try again.”

He said many of his cowboy friends were in attendance and that when Roy Rogers saw his goof, he just sat back and laughed.

The preacher was from the First Baptist Church of Burbank.

“He married me the first time, and even though that didn’t work out, he seems like a good person, so I thought I would give him a second chance,” Montana said.

Montana is also waffling as to whether he’s going to stop riding in the Tournament of Roses Parade.

Will he really be a no-show at the 1995 extravaganza?

“Aw, well I’m not positive. Well, maybe I could have my arm twisted,” he said with a laugh.

Free Parking? Hey, Let’s Do Lunch at CityWalk

The folks who have brought you CityWalk in Universal City are now trying to get some of you to take a lunch there.

CityWalk has 10 eateries that are doing a booming evening business, but you could shoot a cannon through some restaurants and not hit anyone at lunch.

This is just a one-time observation of a group of people who had deserted their office buildings for a long lunch hour.

Maybe, said one of the group, it has something to do with the fact that each of us paid $6 to park our wheels in something that resembles our worst UCLA-parking-structure nightmares.

Well, 20,000 lucky folks are about to get a mailer that offers incentives to spoon at noon at CityWalk.

Under the promotion, they get free valet parking and a guarantee that the food hits the table within 15 minutes.

“The 20,000 people should be getting their notices in the mail any day,” says Ron Herman, marketing director of MCA Development. “We hope it will encourage people in the surrounding areas to come over for lunch.”

According to Herman, the 20,000 who receive the mailers will be office workers in North Hollywood, Universal City, Burbank’s Media Center and Studio City.

“We want to encourage them to come over and give our restaurants a try,” he says.

He said that, yes, the mailer was going out to people at other studios, such as Disney.

Yes, he said, maybe Disney’s Michael Eisner might get one.

It’s such a relief to know that Eisner may be able to save the $6 for parking. After all, he didn’t get a bonus this year.

Self Censor Not Singing a Certain Song Anymore

Ten years ago Rena LeBlanc of Woodland Hills began Opera Encores, in which professionals sing operatic music in private homes, many in the Valley.

She also offers Yiddish music and show tunes in other in-home events.

But the program that may be nearest and dearest to her is one in which professional singers perform at local nursing and retirement homes for free.

LeBlanc likes to honor residents who have had recent birthdays by having one of the singers perform a song in which the punch line is, “I hope you live to be 100.”

That song is not sung anymore.

LeBlanc said one woman recently complained she didn’t like that song when it was performed at her senior center.

Why not? asked LeBlanc, somewhat startled.

“I’m 103,” the woman said.

Overheard

“He’s not politically correct, or physically or sexually attractive, but he wears a cologne that drives me crazy and his ex-wife has remarried so he doesn’t have to pay alimony.”

Woman, explaining her attraction to a new male friend, to another woman in Studio City home.