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Smiley Burnette. Actor. Born March 18, 1911 in Summum, Illinois, USA. Smiley worked on a local radio station and in Vaudeville after high school. Always interested in music, he was friends with Gene Autry and worked with him on the radio show "The National Barn Dance". When Westerns became a big draw with sound, the studios were always on the ...
16 February 1967 (aged 55) Lester Alvin Burnett (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967), better known as Smiley Burnette, was a popular American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who could play as ...
Smiley played a major role in films such as “ Larceny on the Air ” and in the serials “ Dick Tracy ” and “ The Adventures of Rex and Rinty ”. Smiley’s beloved character “Frog Millhouse” grew as Smiley himself grew in prominence. “Frog Millhouse” appeared in 65 films done between 1935 and 1944 for Mascot and Republic Studios.
Based on his record sales, Smiley Burnette wasn't more than a footnote in the annals of recorded country music. However, thanks to his appearances as a sidekick to Gene Autry in dozens of Republic Pictures Westerns before World War II, and with Charles Starrett and Roy Rogers later on, he was one of the most familiar country & western performers in movies, and a beloved performer on stage and ...
Smiley Burnette, said his longtime partner and boss Gene Autry, "couldn't read a note of music but wrote 350 songs and I never saw him take longer than an hour to compose one." Arguably the most beloved of all the B-Western sidekicks and certainly one of the more prolific and enduring, Burnette had been a disc jockey at a small radio station in ...
Smiley Burnette worked in a variety of genres and built up a diverse and reputable career. Burnette began his acting career with roles in such films as the western "In Old Santa Fe" (1934) with Ken Maynard, "Melody Trail" (1935) and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" (1935). He also appeared in "Waterfront Lady" (1935), the western "The Phantom Empire" (1935) with Gene Autry...
