Contents:

"It's the Durango Kid!"

In the 1940s and 50s, those words were well-known to fans of western movies. The instant recognition also extended to that film series' star. Charles Starrett had a colorful career in pictures which spanned from the late 1920s into the early 1960s. A versatile actor, he was cast in a wide range of films including action-adventures, screwball comedies, historical and "drawing-room" dramas, mystery and thriller films, and even musicals. But Charles Starrett eventually became best known for his westerns, especially those featuring his most enduring and mysterious character, The Durango Kid.

Born in 1904 in Athol, Massachusetts, Charles was the youngest of nine children. Sadly, his father died before Charles was even a year old. His grandfather, industrialist L.S. Starrett, stepped in to help out the family. L.S. sent Charlie and his brother off at a young age to live at their uncle's farm in South China, Maine.

Growing up in the Maine countryside, young Charlie loved to ride his uncle's farm horses, often racing wildly around the boulder-strewn pastures. Charlie also showed an interest in public speaking, and could be seen rehearsing pieces such as "The Wreck of the Hesperus" to his uncle's chickens at feeding time. Another of Charlie's loves was seeing early western movies starring his favorite silent-film idol, William S. Hart. He had a strong interest in sports too, including baseball and football, which he played both in high school and in college.

He was fortunate enough to get into Dartmouth College, and he made the most of it, excelling on the school's championship football team. Then one day, Charles and his football teammates received word that a Richard Dix football movie, "The Quarterback", was about to go into production in New York. On the spur of the moment, the entire team drove down to the film studio and inquired about getting work as extras. They were quickly turned down, but Charles persisted, and he eventually managed to talk his way into a minor role in the film. As a result, he was bitten hard by the acting bug, and began taking acting lessons in earnest.

In "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (1932)

In 1933, Charles became one of the original founding members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). He also served on the Guild's first Board of Directors. At this period of time, the film industry's small group of studio bosses had made working conditions intolerable for many actors, and salaries had suddenly been slashed by as much as 50 perecent. The bosses had also vowed to fire or blacklist those who stood up to them. The upstart group of actors at first had to meet secretly in order to form the organization's charter. Risking their careers, they created the Guild to promote fair treatment for all actors within the film industry. Charles Starrett held membership card number 10 of SAG, which now has over 98,000 members.

Charles signed on with Columbia Pictures in 1935. His athletic ability, rugged good looks, and horse-riding talents made him a natural for western pictures, so he made an ideal replacement for Columbia's main western star, Tim McCoy, who was leaving the studio.

Starrett's arrival at Columbia came at the dawn of the popular "singing western" genre, where the film's main story line would be offset by one or more western swing or country-western tunes as a change of pace. And the western bands in Starrett films were among the very best, most notably the Sons of the Pioneers. That, plus the growing reputation his movies gained for having exciting, fast-paced action, along with an occasional twist of the unusual, helped Charles Starrett become, according to one poll, one of the top three "B" western stars of the day, along with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.

Starrett's most famous film series at Columbia featured the Durango Kid, a mysterious, masked Robin Hood type of hero. The first Durango Kid feature was released in 1940. It found an enthusiastic following among theater-goers, and he reprised the role in numerous sequels for the rest of his career. After 167 movies and a record 17 years at Columbia Pictures, he retired in 1953.

Charles briefly came out of retirement in 1960, playing the role of a detective in "Underworld U.S.A". He spent the rest of his retirement days hunting and fishing near his home in California's High Sierras, and traveling extensively with his wife Mary. In the 1980s he made several appearances at western film conventions, and found that many moviegoers still remembered him and appreciated his film work. He died in 1986 at the age of 83.