For the Melody Ranch movie ranch

Movie ranch

A movie ranch is a ranch that is at least partially dedicated to being used as a site for the creation and production of motion pictures, and television productions...

 see: Monogram—Melody Ranch.

Melody Ranch (also known as Gene Autry's Melody Ranch) is a 1940 Western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 film which tells the story of a singing cowboy

Singing cowboy

A singing cowboy was a subtype of the archetypal cowboy hero of early Western films, popularized by many of the B-movies of the 1930s and 1940s...

 who returns to his hometown to restore order when his former childhood enemies take over the frontier town.

Movie

It stars Gene Autry

Gene Autry

Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...

, Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Durante

James Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...

, Ann Miller

Ann Miller

Johnnie Lucille Collier, better known as Ann Miller was an American singer, dancer and actress.-Early life:...

, Barton MacLane

Barton MacLane

Barton MacLane was an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Although he has appeared in many classic films from the 1930s through the 1960s, he was known for his role as Gen...

, Barbara Jo Allen

Barbara Jo Allen

Barbara Jo Allen was an actress also known as Vera Vague, the spinster character she created and portrayed on radio and in films during the 1940s and 1950s. She based the character on a woman she had seen delivering a PTA literature lecture in a confused manner...

, George 'Gabby' Hayes

George 'Gabby' Hayes

George Francis "Gabby" Hayes was an American radio, film, and television actor. He was best known for his numerous appearances in Western movies as the colorful sidekick to the leading man.-Early years:...

 and William 'Billy' Benedict.

The movie was written by Ray Golden, F. Hugh Herbert

F. Hugh Herbert

Frederick Hugh Herbert was a playwright, screenwriter, novelist, short story writer, and infrequent film director....

, Sid Kuller

Sid Kuller

Sid Kuller was an American comedy writer, producer and lyricist/composer, who concentrated on special musical material, gags and sketches for leading comics...

 and Jack Moffitt

Jack Moffitt

Jack Moffitt is a computer scientist, software developer and entrepreneur. He is co-author of the GNU GPL licensed streaming media server Icecast and often works on software using XMPP, JavaScript and Erlang. He also worked as executive director of Xiph.Org Foundation and developer of Ogg Vorbis...

. It was directed by Joseph Santley

Joseph Santley

Joseph Santley was an American actor, singer, dancer, writer, director, and producer of musical theatrical plays and motion pictures....

. In 2002, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry

National Film Registry

The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...

 by the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Television

In 1950, Gene Autry brought his singing cowboy

Singing cowboy

A singing cowboy was a subtype of the archetypal cowboy hero of early Western films, popularized by many of the B-movies of the 1930s and 1940s...

 persona to television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 in a series which was alternately called The Gene Autry Show

The Gene Autry Show

The Gene Autry Show is an American western/cowboy television series which aired for 91 episodes on CBS from July 23, 1950 until August 7, 1956, originally sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint chewing gum.-Overview:...

and Melody Ranch.

Ranch

Autry purchased the 110 acre (0.4451546 km²) movie ranch

Movie ranch

A movie ranch is a ranch that is at least partially dedicated to being used as a site for the creation and production of motion pictures, and television productions...

, the 'Monogram Pictures Ranch

Monogram Pictures

Monogram Pictures Corporation is a Hollywood studio that produced and released films, most on low budgets, between 1931 and 1953, when the firm completed a transition to the name Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. Monogram is considered a leader among the smaller studios sometimes referred to...

' property in Placerita Canyon

Placerita Canyon State Park

Placerita Canyon State Park is a California State Park in the San Gabriel Mountains, in an unincorporated rural area of Los Angeles County, north of Los Angeles near Santa Clarita, California.-Cultural History:...

 near Newhall, California

Newhall, California

Newhall is the southernmost and oldest district of Santa Clarita, California. Prior to the 1987 consolidation of Valencia, Canyon Country, Saugus, Newhall, and other geographically proximate settlements into the conglomerate city of Santa Clarita, it was an independent but unincorporated town...

, in 1953 and renamed it the Melody Ranch after this film.

See also

• Western films
• Western (genre) film actors
• Western (genre)

External links

• Melody Ranch at the Internet Movie Database (historical photos, text, media)