Ken Maynard

Biography

Studio publicity incorrectly puts his birthplace at Mission, Texas. Ken was a trick rider with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and later with Ringling Brothers and was also a champion rodeo rider. His movie debut, The Man Who Won (1923), was the first of many for this early cowboy movie superstar. He was famous for the stunts he could enact with his horse Tarzan. Maynard was the first singing cowboy in the movies. During the 1930s, he dropped out of movies and went back to rodeo work. He did a few more low-budget films in the early 1940s, and then retired for good except for bit parts. His last years were miserable; poor and unremembered, he lived alone in a trailer, an alcoholic who at his death was a victim of serious malnutrition.