SESQUI SAGAS Dallas’s Really Big Show in 1936

We’re only halfway through 1986 and already the Sesquicen-tennial celebration seems in danger of pooping out. While state pols squabble over budgets, oil and gas prices plummet, and rumors of bank failures circle like vultures in the clear blue skies of West Texas, it’s hard to keep one’s attention focused on the glories of the past.

Things were different back in 1936. Right in the midst of the Depression, Texans went all out to celebrate their state’s history. They did most of the celebrating in Dallas, at the fairgrounds built to honor a hundred years of Anglo history. Texans poured into Dallas to wander around Fair Park gazing at the futuristic buildings and drinking in the sights and sounds of a robust frontier state. The Texas-sized party lasted four months.

If you want to know what the Centennial was really like, you’ll need to watch an old Gene Autry movie. The Big Show. This little musical B Western, part of it filmed on location at the fairgrounds, is the most vivid documentary record of the Centennial experience that we have. Autry and the Republic Studio technicians came to Dallas in September to film background shots, among them a parade featuring the SMU Marching Band. Trivia buffs know that the pretty, blonde young woman marching sassi-ly with the band was Sally Rand, the flamboyant exotic dancer who gave thousands of farm boys their first glimpse of urban sin.

Two musical groups well known to Texans also appeared in the film: the Lightcrust Dough-Boys and the Sons of the Pioneers. Among the members of this legendary vocal group, visible in several scenes, was a slender, slant-eyed wrangler who in just a few years would challenge Autry for the title of King of the Cowboys: Roy Rogers. One of the best scenes comes when Autry and his famous horse Champion take part in a bit of kitsch. Champion falls, and it looks as if Gene is going to have to put him out of his misery. But before he does, he sings a mournful song about “Old Faithful, we rode the range together.” Then. just in the nick of time. Champion recovers, Gene embraces him, and the audience bursts into applause. The audience was made up of real Texans. These men, women, and children, all dressed up in their Sunday best, had come to Dallas to see the big show that was Texas history in 1936. We’ll never see its like again.