ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 11, 1996 TAG: 9606110022
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
A segment of us of a certain age lost an icon last month. The man Johnny Cash referred to as "the original man in black," Lash LaRue, passed away in a California hospital.
Lash came along in the final years of low-budget Western movies, starring in 20 of them between 1947 and 1952 when the genre pretty well gave way to TV. Aside from his name, he is remembered for reversing the movie cliches. Instead of wearing a white hat, for example, he dressed entirely in black (even his horse was entirely black). While his screen character used fists and pistols with the best of them, he was best known for whipping weapons from outlaw hands with a bullwhip.
The Louisiana native experienced some personal problems, including alcoholism, when his acting career rode off into the sunset. He found religion and ended up doing a lot of evangelizing about the evils of substance abuse. In recent years, he made frequent appearances at film conventions including gatherings in Roanoke and Wytheville, where he continued as a hit with his fans - but in a different way.
He never showed a sense of humor in his screen persona, but he did in person. One author of a book on Westerns wrote that even his most sincere smile made you think of a gangster who just learned that his cross-town rival had turned up in cement overshoes. In truth, he did bear a resemblance in speech and manner to Humphrey Bogart. He said a character actress in one of his pictures once asked him if he was related to Bogart.
Not as far as he knew, he said.
After a moment's thought, she asked : "Did your mother ever meet Humphrey Bogart?"
"Now, just a minute, madam ... "
Lash's real name was Alfred LaRue. He confessed that he had always hated that name. "Even my mother calls me 'Lash,'" he said.
In fight scenes, he would often finish an opponent by jumping into the air and swinging downward with what appeared to be one dive-bomber of a punch. In real life, he confessed, such a blow would have been ineffective "but it looked good."
His comic sidekick, former Keystone Kop Al "Fuzzy Q. Jones" St. John, also had problems with the bottle. Lash said he never understood why Fuzzy drank so much. "Then I met his wife," he said. "And I understood."
Lash and one of his frequent movie antagonists, the late Terry Frost, both turned to composing poetry in their retirement, and would recite it at the slightest invitation, sometimes interminably. One could imagine them dueling with couplets instead of six-shooters. At one of the conventions, while watching one of their old pictures in which they were slugging it out, Frost was heard to whisper: "Did we actually do that fight?"
"D--- right we did that fight," LaRue snapped back. "They were too cheap to hire stuntmen."
In the 1970s, when Lash was running a hotel in Nevada, some independent filmmakers asked him to be in their picture. He agreed, for old time's sake, so long as he could play the villain for a change of pace. He did, and his part consisted mainly of sitting in his office issuing orders to his gang. Then, when the movie came out, he was horrified to find out that it was an X-rated picture full of nudity and other things old-time Western fans don't talk about. He asked to be cut out of it but, instead, he got top billing.
"You made a porno?" asked Kirby "Sky King" Grant, overhearing Lash's explanation for the film at a convention in Charlotte.
"Yeah," Lash replied. "But they didn't use my talent!"
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: File. Lash LaRue sells autographed photos at a recentby CNBfilm convention.