Gene Gray, King of the Silver Cowboys and Dixie Gray, Queen of the Silver Saddle

Gene Gray and Don Joaquin

Many Americans of A Certain Age remember that Roy Rogers was "the King of the Cowboys." Southern California horse lovers during the post-World War II years may have also known that Gene Gray was called "the King of the Silver Cowboys."

Silver, as in the over-the-top silver-and-gold-mounted saddle and bridle on his Palomino horse, Don Joaquin.

Eugene Gray (1899-1950) was born in Pennsylvania, but was living in Los Angeles by the time of the 1940 Census. After World War II, he often rode in parades with his wife Dixie, in a similarly ornate silver saddle and trappings. Dixie was promoted as "the Queen of the Silver Saddle."

Dixie's horse is not identified in this photo,
but about the same time other newspaper stories
called her Palomino mount "Silver." (That would make sense.)

And what saddles they were. A local newspaper described them:

"The costumes of  the Grays and trappings of their horses have cost $70,000 and $35,000 each. Each outfit contains 4,200 pieces of hand engraved sterling silver and is ruby- studded. It is reported that no such elaborate outfits were were made for other riders, not even during the elaborate pageantry during the days of knighthood."  [A different newspaper report inflated the value of Gene's saddle set to $120,000.]

San Bernardino County Sun, 12 October 1949

"Dixie Gray...has won thousands of first place trophies stretching all the way from Madison Square Garden in New York to Hollywood's Christmas Tree parade. She has appeared in over 3,400 parades and rodeos. Only last month she won first and overall first in the world championship sheriff's rodeo at Los Angeles, the first woman in history to take this honor."

The Grays rode in several Tournament of Roses Parades in Pasadena, alongside the likes of trick roper Montie Montana, "Wild Bill" Elliott (one of the actors who portrayed Red Ryder in the movies), Monrovia/Duarte horse rancher Merle Little; Ernest, Emelie, and Anna Specht on their stunning Palominos King Cortez, Golden Son Cortez, and Golden Don Cortez; actor and horseman Leo Carrillo, and others. 

When the nature of the event required less bling, Gray and Don Joaquin could appear with "regular" cowboy outfits.

Gray was a regular in local parades and rodeos, with Gene directing several grand entry parades at equestrian events. The Internet Movie Database credits Gene with an appearance as himself in Spade Cooley singing Western "The Silver Bandit," released in 1950.

Gene seems to have been very community-minded. Materials on Ancestry.com show that he and Dixie were somehow involved in the Rancho Sanitarium in Culver City. Gene would donate the services of an ambulance with a horse trailer hitch at regional horse shows. And he supported a short-lived plan to establish the development of an "old-fashioned Western town" called "Rawhide" in the San Fernando Valley, that would have included a non-profit hospital and sanitarium and a Western art museum.

When Gene Gray died suddenly on February 10, 1950, many of his fellow equestrians attended the funeral. Film star and rodeo legend Hoot Gibson served as a pallbearer. Bill "Hopalong Casssidy" Boyd, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Los Angeles County Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz were among the honorary pallbearers. 

The funeral services included his faithful Palomino, Don Joaquin, wearing his full silver tack draped with a black blanket. Noted baritone Stephen Kamalyan sang the Western classic "Empty Saddles."

It was a fitting tribute to a man who spent so much of his time in the saddle. After Gene's passing, Dixie kept riding Don Joaquin in parades for several years. 

The subject of silver-mounted Western saddles deserves its own blog post, so I'll address it in greater depth soon.

***

Bing Crosby sings "Empty Saddles (in the Old Corral)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRRDcPm478E

Horse Show Ambulance at the 1947 Bar-O National Horse Show, San Diego

After World War II, horse shows seemed to proliferate in Southern California. At the estate sale of horsewoman Maggi McHugh, I found several horse show programs that she and her late husband, Mac McHugh, had treasured, from the Annual Bar-O National Horse Shows at the Polo Grounds in San Diego.

The program from the Sixth Annual show, in 1947, featured a photo of something I had not seen before: a specialized horse show ambulance.

Ambulance service is furnished to the Bar-O National Horse Show through the courtesy of Gray's Hospital and Sanitarium, 110 West 59th Place, Los Angeles.

The ambulance is equipped to do minor surgery. A registered nurse is on duty to assist the doctor and to administer first aid. It is equipped with fire extinguishing tanks which spray snow upon the fire. The temperature in the tanks is 135 degrees below zero. It is equipped to pull your horse and trailer to any emergency call. It has eight ply, rayon, airplane tires for speed and safety. This service is offered free of charge to all horse shows and rodeos within a radius of two hundred miles. Just telephone Pleasant 2-7200. 

Emergency Medical Services with trained professional staff were not generally available before the 1970s, so this hospital on wheels with a horse trailer hitch seems to have been a case of a horseman with a hospital finding a need and meeting it. 

Gene Gray, the man who operated the hospital in the San Fernando Valley, was well known in the Southern California equestrian community as the "Silver King of the Cowboys." His wife, Dixie Gray, was known as the "Queen of the Silver Saddle." Here's more information on them:

https://californiahorsehistory.blogspot.com/2024/04/gene-gray-king-of-silver-cowboys-and.html

The Three *Raswans

*Raswan 607 (Skowronek x Rim)

With this post, I hope to shed a little more light on the story of the Arabian stallion *Raswan, who sadly died before he could realize his full potential. It turns out that a young sculptor visited *Raswan at the Kellogg Ranch in April 1926, and captured the horse's image for a  public display. It appears that there are only a few photographs of the sculptures, and as far as I have been able to tell, the sculptures and any sketches or smaller models of the images of *Raswan made by the artist are no longer with us.

In January 1926, cereal magnate W. K. Kellogg sent his stable manager, Carl Schmidt, to the renowned Crabbet Stud in England. Schmidt's mission was to purchase Arabian horses for Kellogg's ranch in Pomona, California. In April, Schmidt returned on the ship Minnewaska with fourteen Arabians and a Welsh Pony stallion. They were transferred from the ship to a Union Pacific train headed for Southern California, arriving in Pomona on April 10.

To indicate they were imported to the US, the horses' registered names included an asterisk ( * ); their American registration numbers follow their names.

The imported herd included four stallions foaled in England and two that arrived in utero and were foaled at the Kellogg Ranch. The four adult horses were:

*Nasik 604 (Rijm x Narghileh), an 18 year old bay 

*Raswan 607 (Skowronek x Rim), a five year old gray 

*Raseyn 597 (Skowronek x Rayya), a three year old gray half-brother to *Raswan

*Rimal 599 (Hazzam x Rim), a bay yearling

*Raseyn and *Nasik became internationally famous sires;*Rimal was gelded and sold. But at the time of the importation, the stallion who showed the most promise for Mr. Kellogg's breeding program was *Raswan. (He had already sired three purebred Arabians in England.)

Equine historian Carol Woodbridge Mulder observed:

A very high quality, beautiful horse of outstanding classic type, he was the better of  the two Skowronek sons....

*Raswan, with Carl Schmidt in "desert garb"

But that promise was never realized. Schmidt and Kellogg had a bitter dispute over who really owned *Raswan. On May 7, 1926, Schmidt rode the horse off the Kellogg property across the hills to an isolated house in Walnut, tying him by his bridle to a fence. *Raswan broke loose and ran into a hay mowing machine in a field, grievously injuring one hind foot. Veterinarians tried to save him, but they ended up having to put *Raswan down on June 12, 1926. (For details of this complex story, please see Mary Jane Parkinson's detailed description in her book Romance of the Kellogg Ranch. Mulder does a good job of summarizing the story in her article "The W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Ranch, Part VI -- 1926 Crabbet Purchase Males" in The Crabbet Influence, November-December 1987.)

Sadly, there are very few known photographs of *Raswan, and only one, very short, film clip of him that I could find on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Pa6qWvq31JU

*Raswan, in a screen grab from Lonny Hitchens' film clip on YouTube

But that isn't the whole story of *Raswan in California. It turns out that, a couple of weeks after *Raswan arrived at the Kellogg Ranch in April 1926, a young artist sketched him and created three sculptures of *Raswan. And thanks to the resources of Cal Poly Pomona Special Collections' W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library, we can connect the art and the artist to the horse. 

The artist was the renowned California sculptor L. P. (Lorraine Preston) Prescott, later known as Preston L. Prescott (1898-1988). Born in Iowa, Prescott studied art in Minnesota, New York, and Los Angeles. After serving in World War I, Prescott lived at an American Legion post in Southern California for disabled veterans for a few years. Prescott worked in the film industry creating components for movie sets, and creating wax portraits of celebrities. In the 1930s he moved to Ojai, in Ventura County, where he had a well-known art studio, and in 1945 he moved to Ben Lomond, near Santa Cruz in Northern California. Prescott went on to have a distinguished career as an artist and arts educator. 

What's less well-known is Prescott's work creating components for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce's massive displays of citrus fruit for local agricultural exhibitions in the 1920s. And that's where the Arabian stallion *Raswan comes in.

In April 1926, the LA Chamber had reached out to the Kellogg Ranch, asking permission for their sculptor to visit the Ranch and make sketches of one of the horses. W. K.'s son, Dr. Karl H. Kellogg, gave his permission for the artist to sketch one of the recent imports: *Raswan.

From the collection of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library,
Cal Poly Pomona

April 23, 1926

Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce

Los Angeles, Calif.

Gentlemen:

    I am giving Mr. L. P. Prescott permission to go ahead and make sketch of Arabian horse Raswan, to be used in Grecian exhibit at Anaheim Orange Show.

    Yours respectfully,

    [KHK]

Sometime between April 23 and April 26, Prescott came to the Kellogg Ranch to sketch and model *Raswan.  On the 26th, Chamber Secretary and General Manager Arthur G. Arnoll wrote his thanks to Mr. Kellogg:

From the collection of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library,
Cal Poly Pomona

April 26, 1926

Mr. W. K. Kellogg

Box 207, Pomona, California

My dear Mr. Kellogg:

    I want to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for your kindness in allowing our sculptor to make drawings and models of one of your fine Arabian stallions.

    I presume he has told you that the finished product will be used in the Anaheim Orange Show where our exhibit will consist of three white horses hitched to a chariot.

    Again expressing our appreciation, I am

        Yours very truly,

            LOS ANGELES CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 

                (signed) A. G. Arnoll

            Secretary and General Manager

The "Anaheim Orange Show" in the letters was formally known as the Sixth Annual California Valencia Orange Show. It was held in Anaheim from May 13 to 23, 1926.

 I haven't been able to find any evidence that Prescott's drawings and models of *Raswan survived, but there are a few photos of the final result of the artist's time with the stallion. These images show three larger-than-life-sized horses pulling a chariot driven by a mannequin, atop a display of fresh ripe citrus fruit, forming a sort of "orange brick road" for the chariot. 

The next photo shows us the scale of the sculpture. Ruth Henle, a secretary at a local medical clinic and member of the Anaheim Business and Professional Women's Club, posed next to the three *Raswans in a photo that appeared in a number of Southern California newspapers. (In reality she was Mrs., not Miss, Henle, meaning that she continued to work after her marriage, which was not all that common in the 1920s.)

A full page spread in the 23 May 1926 Los Angeles Times showed just how over-the-top the display entries at the Orange Show were.

Prescott's work, featuring the three *Raswans pulling the chariot, won a major award.

Anaheim Gazette, 20 May 1926

Prescott had to turn around his finished work rather quickly; I haven't found any mention of what medium/media he may have used. The 27 May 1926 issue of  the Anaheim Gazette reported that the three horses were dapple gray (as was *Raswan).

Prescott did another, perhaps more realistic, horse statue for the Chamber; it appeared in the 1928 Valencia Orange Festival in San Bernardino, above an even more impressive display of oranges. But the horse wasn't an Arabian this time. There are two photos of the statue in the Los Angeles Public Library collection. You can see the photos here:  

https://calisphere.org/item/ceaded88f2d4fe0d4ddbc07b69476399/

The caption reads: "L.P. Prescott is sculpting "Joan of Arc" on the Ambassador Hotel grounds.  His model is Mrs. Mildred Perlee ("Aarai"), a dancer, who is posing on Dexter, a light cavalry jumping horse owned by Maj. A.L.P. Sands of the 82nd Field Artillery, Ft. Bliss, Texas."

https://calisphere.org/item/ecfc219fe479c826f5f959965703b551/

Here's the near-life-size version of the statue at the San Bernardino Orange Festival display.

Seeing these images gives us insight into the way Prescott worked in the 1920s. Because the final version of the Chamber's 1926 entry in the Orange Show in Anaheim shows three horses in action, I surmise that Prescott saw *Raswan running at liberty in a paddock or field at the Kellogg Ranch in April 1926, and made "sketches and models" of him on site, as noted in the Chamber's thank-you letter to Mr. Kellogg.

Preston L. Prescott is probably best known today for his statue of the Hugo Reid family. It's currently located on the grounds of the Gilb Museum in Arcadia.

Los Angeles Times, 27 July 1937

Photo by the author

Prescott died in Santa Cruz in 1988. I reached out to the artist's family through an online ancestry site, but they are not aware of any of his papers or drawings that would show us his impressions of *Raswan. (If only...!) 

*Raswan's story is indeed tragic, but I find some solace in knowing that, for the brief period of time when the young artist visited the Kellogg Ranch, *Raswan personified the beauty and grace of the Arabian horse.

___________________________________________________

*Raswan's half-brother *Raseyn was the subject of several works of art. Here's a film clip of sculptor Annette St. Gaudens with *Raseyn at the Kellogg Ranch in 1929.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyZhqxVdSnI

This smallish headstudy of *Raseyn was created in 1934 by Lawrence Tenney Stevens. It's part of the collection of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library.

The young Gladys Brown (later Edwards) painted *Raseyn, also in 1934.

* * * 

A print of the photograph of Ruth Henle next to the chariot is in the UCLA Library, Special Collections department: 

https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz002cxbkc

* * * 

In 1927, Carl Schmidt had his name legally changed to Carl Raswan.

Los Angeles Times, 8 February 1927

As always, thanks to Tobi Lopez Taylor for her editorial assistance in preparing and editing this post. Her own blog is here: 

https://musingsfromthemaresnest.blogspot.com/

Many thanks to the staffs of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona: 

https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/wkkahl

and the Gilb Museum of Arcadia History: 

https://www.arcadiaca.gov/enrich/arcadia_public_library/gilb_museum_of_arcadia_heritage/index.php

for providing materials I reviewed for this post. 

Snow White's Handsome King: the Kellogg Arabian stallion King John

One of the great things about equine history is that it crosses the border into other aspects of history, the humanities, the arts, and sometimes pop culture.

A good example of this is the story of the Arabian stallion KING JOHN (desert-bred, foaled 1922), who spent most of his life at W. K. Kellogg's Arabian Horse Ranch in Pomona, California.

Here's a blog post I wrote about King John at The Estate Sale Chronicles in 2016, with a bit more information I've discovered about the Kellogg Arabians in subsequent visits to the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library at Cal Poly Pomona.

When you think about Walt Disney's classic animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, what images come to mind?

Snow White. Check.
Dwarfs. Check.
Evil Queen. Check.
Huntsman. Check.
Cute Animals. Check.
Handsome Prince. Check.
Handsome King.

Pause. What "handsome king"?

Many months ago, I wrote a blog post about finding a vintage original program from the 1937 premiere of Snow White in Los Angeles. On the cover was a montage of all the main characters, including the Handsome King.

Do you see him?

No?

Okay, scroll down a little bit. 

There he is. The horse who served as the model for the Prince's steed was the Arabian stallion King John.

King John was one of a number of Arabian horses owned by cereal magnate W.K. Kellogg in the 1930s. Kellogg kept his large herd of Arabians at his ranch outside Los Angeles. Hollywood celebrities visited often and had their pictures taken at the stables. King John was one of several Kellogg horses that ended up in the movies. 

Actually, King John's life story sounds not unlike the plot of a film. Foaled in the desert, King John was taken to Cairo where he was a polo pony and later a race horse. He was imported to the U.S. in 1929, where he had a career as a show horse.

The W.K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library's Facebook page notes:

[King John] was sold to the W.K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Ranch in 1931. King John appeared in many Hollywood films, such as "The Scarlett Empress" (1934), "Lives of a Bengal Lancer" (1935), "The Garden of Allah" (1936), and "Suez" (1938), alongside famous actors and actresses like Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, and Loretta Young. 

King John and Marlene Dietrich.

As well-known and well-loved as he was, King John sometimes took a publicity back seat to other horses from the Kellogg Ranch. The most famous of the Kellogg Ranch movie horses was Jadaan, ridden by silent film icon Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik.  King John was listed as the stablemate of another Kellogg Arabian, Pep, in this April 1932 clipping from the Chino Champion newspaper. 

You may have noticed that the artist's rendition of King John and the other characters from Snow White don't look quite like the ones in the animated film. That's because they were drawn by concept artist and children's book illustrator Gustaf Tenggren. The website Filmic Light, source of All Things Snow White, tells Tenggren's story:

http://filmic-light.blogspot.com/2011/02/closer-look-at-tenggrens-snow-white.html

A YouTube user has cobbled together several classic film scenes that show Arabian horses. Some of the film clips are from The Garden of Allah, Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and Son of the Sheik.  (The latter features another Kellogg Arabian of the same era, Jadaan, ridden by Rudolph Valentino.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aO-o2uoA5s

King John spent many years at the Kellogg Ranch. Like the other Kellogg Arabian stallions, he was bred to both registered Arabian mares and other mares whose real names and bloodlines we will probably never know, as illustrated in this hand-written record from 1935:

This ledger is fascinating to researchers who are looking for details of the lives of famous Arabian horses in the era between the two World Wars. We tend to focus on offspring of horses who were registered as purebred or part-bred Arabians, because that's the information we usually have at hand. 

The ledger from the old Kellogg Ranch shows that many, many members of the general public brought their mares to the Kellogg Ranch in the hopes of having a half-Arabian foal that would be both handsome and useful. Most of these mares were, as far as we can tell, not Arabians. Kellogg himself had said that one of his goals in establishing his Arabian horse empire was "helping to improve the saddle horse stock of the nation." He considered it "a contribution to the entire United States." 

So it isn't surprising to see that the ledger shows the breeding of "Old lady mare to King John" on March 28, 1935, and "Old lady bay mare to King John" on April 16, 1935.  (The ledger didn't always make note of the name of the mare's owner.) Other entries in the book show King John being bred to "Savage mare" on March 15, 1935;  "Josefho gray" on May 7, 1935; "J. E. Goodell mare" on May 11, 1935; and "Lady Godiva" on June 24, 1935. There are many more examples of this, and yes, I need to write a blog post (or a book!) on these little-known records of half- and purebred Arabians in Southern California. 

Whether as a movie horse, as a sire, or as a representative of the Arabian horse, King John's reputation was firmly established during the 1930s. And in October 1941, the city of Redlands, California, presented him with an appreciative resolution. The San Bernardino County Sun noted:

Now 19 years old, King John once was acclaimed the fastest horse in Egypt, where he was bred by desert tribesmen... His beauty and intelligence have earned great prominence....

King John died in 1946 at age 24. He's buried near the Rose Garden on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona.

http://www.cpp.edu/~library/specialcollections/history/rosegarden.html

And I have donated my copy of the original Snow White program to the W.K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library, to complement their archive of printed and photographic materials on King John, his travels and his career.

https://www.cpp.edu/~library/kellogg-arabian-horse-library/index.shtml

_______________________________________

Sidebar: You may not think you've ever seen Tenggren's art before, but you probably have, if you were born after about 1942. After he left Disney, Gustaf Tenggren illustrated many more children's books, including The Poky Little Puppy.

Here's a copy of my original blog post about the 1937 Snow White premiere program:

http://estatesalechronicles.blogspot.com/2014/12/repostingoriginal-1937-snow-white.html