Ten years must have seemed like a lifetime for a young married couple who spent the first 10 years together "on the road," traveling from town to town, performing and entertaining tent-show audiences with their musical and comedy routine.
It was thus for Lloyd "Slim" Andrews and his wife Lucille. The couple married in 1929 when "Slim" (who grew up on the banks of Spavinaw Creek south of Gravette), after five years on the tent-show circuit, was home and met Lucille Kinsey, a young lady from Siloam Springs. She was a native of another small Arkansas town, Calico Rock.
Slim, who played the piano by ear and made music on some of the most unusual "instruments" while cracking a joke routine, was joined by his new "leading lady" on the circuit.
It wasn't an easy life but "they were happy times," Slim related to me during one of my visits with him. Ten years after their marriage, while performing in Monticello, Ark., their paths crossed with Tex Ritter, star of B-western movies which were popular during those depression days. Ritter was also in Monticello, promoting his latest movie at a theatre. But his crowd was slim (pun intended) while "Slim" and his leading lady were drawing crowds in a tent show a few blocks away.
"Tex sent word for me to come and see him," Slim related. "He said he needed a new sidekick for his movies." But a trip to Hollywood was not to be, Slim said. The couple continued their traveling circuit.
But a couple of months later, just before Christmas, while enduring a snowstorm in Iowa, Slim and his 10-year bride decided to load up their Ford (a 1938 with "pretty bare tires") and head west. They arrived in Hollywood on New Year's Day, 1940.
It would be easy to say "the rest is history," but history has its own timetable. Fortunately, Tex had given Slim his phone number and a phone call set up a meeting with his producer. Slim remembered he played a tire pump and a hand saw, but the performance must have been a fiasco of tent-show comedy and homemade musical instruments.
Slim managed to get a job in a theatre where he and Lucille "brought the house down" with their act. The Arkansas-born boy, now a 30-plus-year-old man, was not to be denied. He called Ritter again and asked him to bring his producer to see the show in person.
"I didn't expect him to come," Slim admitted. But the unexpected visit resulted in a seven-year movie contract. He went to work right away.
There wasn't much money in those days and, for his small part in Ritter's "Rhythm of the Rio Grande" movie, Slim got his first paycheck, $25. But, as the weeks passed, his sidekick act expanded during the eight westerns filmed in 1940. His pay increased to $50, $75 and eventually went up to $250. "That's the most I ever made," Slim said.
Slim said he made 15 westerns with Ritter, sometimes playing himself as Arkansas Slim or as a character named Slim Hunkapillar, or Hunkafeller or just plain Slim. The films took about a week to make. The days, and nights, were long.
"It was hard work," Slim declared.
He worked with Ritter 10 years and, during that time, the Andrews' only child, son John, was born in 1941 in Los Angeles. Slim also had minor roles in other films, one even with Bela Lugosi in a horror flick ... and he remembered being in a film with Lum and Abner, a well-known comedy team.
There wasn't even a pause when asked about his favorite film.
"My favorite was 'Take Me Back to Oklahoma,' a film with Tex Ritter, made in 1940. I had a good part in it."
He said all his movies with Ritter had pretty good parts where Slim was able to display his musical and comedy talents to their fullest. Always a fall guy, but always a comedian, Slim added a life and a lift to the movies that brought laughs and claps from movie goers.
Slim remembered playing at military camps during World War II. He played for a time with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and he even did a stint in England.
"No one laughed at my jokes," he chuckled. "English humor is different."
In the early 1950s, when B-grade westerns bit the dust in the movie business, Slim left to ply his talent, which included the ability to play almost a hundred, sometimes weird, instruments. Slim became a natural for a new home entertainment craze, television. It was there he incorporated his love for children and entertaining them, using a puppet that replaced the donkey which had been his transportation in movies. The new Josephine was born. That and Slim had a new title, "The Forty-Niner."
Next time we'll tell about Slim's memories with television and his travels that took him and Lucille east. In the meantime, the "Slim" display in city hall has been removed and will be set up in its Gravette Museum home where it can be viewed during the upcoming Gravette Day. 'Til the 'cuff next time.
Dodie Evans is the owner and long-time editor of the Gravette News Herald. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Editorial on 08/03/2016