Two veteran movie horses with long careers increased the popularity of silver screen cowboys, according to writer Steve Hulett.
Jimmy Stewart explained his love for his four-legged co-star named Pie.
“I rode Pie for 22 years,” Stewart said. “I never was able to buy him because he was owned by a little girl by the name of Stevie Myers, who is the daughter of an old wrangler who worked for Tom Mix and W.S. Hart.”
“When Hart retired, he gave this horse to Stevie. Pie was a sort of a maverick and hurt a couple of people,” Stewart said. “Pie nearly killed Glenn Ford, ran right into a tree.”
“But I liked this darned little horse. He was a bit small Quarter Horse and Arabian. I got to know him like a friend,” Stewart continued. “Pie understood about making pictures. I ran at a full gallop, straight towards the camera, pulled him up, did a lot of dialogue, and Pie stood still.
“Pie never moved. He knew when the camera would start rolling and his ears came up,” Stewart said.
Petrine Mitchum Day, Robert Mitchum’s daughter, horse enthusiast and author of “Hollywood Hoofbeats,” said Jimmy Stewart rode Pie in 17 Westerns.
“They just became so attuned to each other that in one film, ‘The Far Country,’ Stewart was able to get the horse to perform at liberty when the trainer was not around.
“Jimmy Stewart just went up to Pie, whispered in his ear, told him what he needed done, and the horse did it. Everyone on the set was absolutely amazed.”
Beyond the work Pie did with Stewart, on film, he was also ridden by Kirk Douglas, Audie Murphy, and more than likely a number of other actors. There is no exact count of the number of films in which the horse appeared.
Hudkins Stables in Hollywood supplied horses to Golden Age film studios. In 1937, they purchased a five-year-old Palomino born on a ranch near San Diego named Golden Cloud.
Hudkins rented the horse to Republic Pictures for a low-budget movie “Under Western Stars.” The lead star in the film was the up-and-coming singing cowboy Roy Rogers, (originally Leonard Slye) and he bonded with Golden Cloud.
Like Jimmy Stewart with Pie, Rogers wanted to buy the horse, and Hudkins Stables was happy to comply.
But the stables drove a hard bargain. They charged the actor a then-steep $2,500 which would be $53,818.84 today for ownership of the Palomino that Roy Rogers renamed Trigger.
All told, Trigger had an entertainment career that spanned 20-plus years, encompassing 88 feature films and 104 TV episodes. There were also numerous personal appearances.
When the horse died in 1965, his earthly remains were mounted and put on display at the Roy Rogers Museum in Apple Valley, California, remaining there 45 years.
After the death of Roy Rogers, the museum was moved to Branson, Missouri. The museum closed in 2010, and Trigger sold for $266,500 to RFD-TV. He is now displayed at the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District.
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