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

Rex Elvie Allen was born on Dec. 31, 1920 and was known as the Arizona Cowboy, he was an American film and television actor, singer and songwriter and was also the narrator for many Disney nature and Western productions. 

Allen was born to Horace E. Allen and Luella Faye Clark on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, forty miles from Willcox in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, United States.

As a boy he played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle-playing father, until high-school graduation when he toured the Southwest as a rodeo rider. He got his start in show business on the East Coast. 

Allen began his singing career on radio station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, after which he became better known as a performer on the National Barn Dance on WLS in Chicago.

In 1940, Allen married Doris Windsor, with whom he had one child which was Rexine Allen until the two divorced in 1999. 

The actor’s second marriage was in 1946 to Bonnie Linder with whom he shared four children with, according to officials. 

When singing cowboys such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were very much in vogue in American film, in 1949 Republic Pictures in Hollywood gave him a screen test and put him under contract. 

 Beginning in 1950, Allen starred as himself in 19 of Hollywood’s Western movies, according to officials.

One of the top-ten box office draws of the day, whose character was soon depicted in comic books, on screen Allen personified the clean cut, God-fearing American hero of theWild West, who wore a white Stetson hat, loved his faithful horse Koko, and had a loyal buddy who shared his adventures. 

Allen’s comic-relief sidekick in his first few pictures was first Buddy Ebsen and then character actor Slim Pickens. 

Allen wrote and recorded many songs, a number of which were featured in his own films, added officials.  

Late in coming to the industry, his film career was relatively short as the popularity of series westerns faded by the mid 1950s. 

But Allen starred in a number of B-Westerns during the 1950s, according to officials. 

As other cowboy stars made the transition to television, Allen tried too, cast as Dr. Bill Baxter for the half-hour weekly syndicated series Frontier Doctor.  

In 1961, he was one of five rotating hosts for NBC-TV’s Five Star Jubilee, added officials. 

Allen had a rich, pleasant voice, ideally suited for narration, and was able to find considerable work as a narrator in a variety of films, especially for Walt Disney Pictures wildlife films and television shows and the work earned him the nickname, “The Voice of the West.” 

Allen narrated The Legend of Lobo, The Incredible Journey, Yellowstone Cubs, Run, Appaloosa, Run, and Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar. 

The actor  also was the voice of the father on Walt Disney Carousel of Progress, first presented at the 1964 World’s Fair and now at Disney World. 

A 1993 renovation replaced Allen with Jean Shepherd as the voice of the father, but Allen was given a cameo as the grandfather in the final scene.

Allen provided the narration for the 1973 Hanna-Barbera animated film Charlotte’s Web and was also the voice behind Purina Dog Chow commercials for many years. 

After moving to Sonoita, Arizona, in the early 1990s, he was a viable voice talent almost until his death, recording hundreds of national advertising voice tracks at his favorite Tucson studio, Porter Sound. 

In his later years he also performed frequently with actor Pedro-Gonzalez and wrote and sang the theme song for the early 1980s sitcom Best of the West.  

Allen’s third and final marriage was to Virginia Hudson, on November 25, 1992, until the couple divorced a few years later. 

Allen died on December 17, 1999, in Tucson, Arizona when he had collapsed in his driveway after suffering a heart attack and was then accidentally run over by his caregiver.

 The actor was cremated and his ashes were scattered at Railroad Park in Willcox.

Where is Rex Allen’sPlaque on the Walk of Western Stars? 

In 1982, Rex Allen was honored with a plaque on the Walk of Western Stars. The plaque is on the west side of Main Street in front of Mixed by Design. 

Click here to view last week’s feature. 

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