Biography for
Rex Allen More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

31 December 1920, Willcox, Arizona, USA

Date of Death

17 December 1999, Tucson, Arizona, USA (run over by car)

Birth Name

Elvie Rex Allen

Nickname

The Arizona Cowboy
The Voice of the West

Mini Biography

Rex Allen started out as a singer in vaudeville, and sang on numerous radio shows before hooking up with a traveling rodeo show. He signed with Republic Pictures and became a popular singing cowboy, and was often paired with sidekick Slim Pickens. He starred in his own western TV series, "Frontier Doctor" (1958) and in the 1960s was the narrator on many nature documentaries for Walt Disney.

IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Spouse

Virginia Hudson	(25 November 1992 - 1999) (divorced)
Bonnie Linder	(25 August 1946 - ?) (divorced) 4 children
Doris Winsor	(? - ?) (divorced) 1 daughter, Rexine.

Trivia

Has one son, Rex Allen Jr., a former country music star who also spent time as a regular on The Statler Brothers' syndicated show.

His horse was named Koko "The Miracle Horse of the Movies."

During WWII, he lived in New Jersey. He sang on radio station WTNJ in Trenton under the name "Cactus Rex". He went from there to the National Barn Dance in Chicago, and from there to Hollywood.

Cousin of actor Cactus Mack and Glenn Strange.

Had a heart attack and fell down behind his caretaker's car, which was parked in the driveway of his home, and which ran over him later. Apparently the car actually killed him.

He narrated more than 80 Walt Disney films.

He was the original voice of the "father" character in Walt Disney's "Carousel of Progress" attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1983.

Personal Quotes

My dad was a fiddle player. He used to play for all the dances and stuff, and I learned to play guitar when there was nobody to accompany him. And then I sang in all the church choirs and glee clubs in the school. Basically, all I ever wanted to do was try to be a singer and make a living at that. And then, went into radio and the recording field, and had a few hit records. Roy Rogers was getting ready to leave Republic Pictures and get into television, and they were looking around for another poobah in a white hat, so I got my foot in the door there.

Yeah, I rode bulls and buckin' horses for about two years when I first got out of high school, but I got tired of pickin' myself up off the arena floor, and I found that a guitar never kicked me, never hurt me a bit, so I decided I better stick with that.

I didn't want anybody to say, "Well, he's copying Roy Rogers" or "He's copying Gene Autry" or "He's copying Hoppy". So I purposely looked for a horse that was different, that no cowboy had used -- I turned my guns around backwards, and didn't know for two years that Bill Elliott did it, too. I just didn't want to be accused of copying anybody else, so I tried to go in as opposite a direction in everything that I could.

You strap two guns on, they're heavy, and it's like wearin' a girdle. And then they say, "Run, jump on that horse, go do so-and-so and so-and-so", and you got all that gear and it's in your way, and I was happy to go with just one gun, just so you could get off and on a horse.

[about his first film, The Arizona Cowboy (1950)] I'd like to find the damn negative of that thing and burn it. It was the most horrible thing ever made. Boy, was it bad.

[on Republic Pictures boss Herbert J. Yates and why the studio finally went out of business in 1959] He absolutely would not recognize that television was the wave of the future. He thought the studios could destroy TV.

[in 1982] Now I'm not for gun control, but the week that Martin Luther King was killed, I decided I just didn't feel right about appearing with guns. And I haven't since.

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