Saddle up for a trip through entertainment history with a weekly highlight from Santa Clarita’s Walk of Western Stars! This week, actor and singer Eddie Dean.

Eddie Dean was born on July 9, 1907, and was an American Western singer who was considered to have a smooth baritone voice, which impressed Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, who considered Dean the best cowboy singer of all time. 

Dean’s show-business career began in 1937, as a radio singer, and within the year, Republic Pictures, a producer of low-budget western and action feature films, hired him to play incidental roles.

The singer also joined the Hopalong Cassidy production team in 1938 and appeared in many Paramount westerns. 

Beginning in 1941, producers took notice of Dean’s singing voice and gave him specialty numbers.

In 1944, producer Walt Mattox hired Eddie Dean to support cowboy star Ken Maynard in the low-budget feature Harmony Trail. 

This led to producer Robert Emmet Tansey approaching Dean to star in a radically new series of westerns to be released by PRC.

These would be the first budget westerns to be filmed in then-unusual Cinecolor, according to officials. 

The Eddie Dean series was immediately successful, with the added novelty of color attracting much attention among theater owners. 

Dean’s first three starring roles featured Lash LaRue, who soon graduated to his own series, according to officials. 

In 1947, the PRC studio was absorbed by Eagle-Lion Films, which continued to use the PRC brand name for its westerns. 

Under Eagle-Lion, the budgets became smaller and smaller: color film was forsaken in favor of ordinary black-and-white film, and many of the action scenes were lifted from older pictures, with Dean appearing in much fewer new scenes.

 The series limped to its conclusion with The Tioga Kid (1948), with Dean and some of the supporting cast members dressed to match their appearances in an older film. 

The Tioga Kid used so much old, out-of-context footage of Eddie Dean that the script explained it away as being Dean’s twin brother. Despite the economies, the singer remained a popular western personality, starring in 20 features. 

Attempts to further his screen career were unsuccessful when in 1950 he starred in two half-hour experiments for an early TV series, The Marshal of Gunsight Pass; these were unusual in that they were broadcast live, and any mistakes went out over the air.

Movie producer Ron Ormond gave Dean a specialty number in his vaudeville revue Varieties on Parade in 1951, but no further work was forthcoming.

Like many singing cowboys no longer working in pictures, Eddie Dean became a recording artist. He scored three hits on the US Country charts. 

“One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)” peaked at number 11 in 1948, and “I Dreamed of a Hill-Billy Heaven” peaked at number 10 in 1955. 

Dean co-wrote both songs and hit the charts again with the song “Way Out Yonder” in 1955, added officials. 

Eddie Dean had an exceptionally long marriage and wed Lorene Donnelly in 1930 and they remained married for almost 69 years.

Dean died of heart failure on March 4, 1999.

Where is Dean’s Plaque on the Walk of Western Stars? 

In 1982, Eddie Dean was honored with a plaque on the Walk of Western Stars. The plaque is on the west side of Main Street in front of the Old Town Junction. 

Click here to view last week’s feature. 

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