Trigger (horse)
Trigger (born in San Diego in the 1930s ; † July 3, 1965 ) was a palomino who has appeared in numerous films.
Life
The colt, later named Trigger, was probably born in 1932 or July 4, 1934 on a ranch in San Diego operated by Roy F. Cloud. His father was a racehorse named Tarzan, his mother's name was Apac. The breeder was Captain Larry Good. The horse was initially called the Golden Cloud. His father is said to have been a thoroughbred animal, his mother an unregistered mare. Roy F. Cloud had it registered with the Palomino Horse Association in 1937. Golden Cloud received the registration number 214 there.
When he was about three years old, the stallion was sold to the Hudkins Stables in Hollywood . Animals were kept there and loaned out to the film industry. The horse first appeared on screen in 1938: Olivia de Havilland rode the Palomino in The Adventures of Robin Hood .
In the same year Roy Rogers received his first leading role. He was supposed to play a cowboy in the b-western Under Western Stars . He was offered several horses to choose from for the role, and he chose Golden Cloud. At the suggestion of his colleague Smiley Burnette , he renamed the fast stallion Trigger. He was enthusiastic about the animal and also found time and again on a promotional tour for Under Western Stars that a large part of the film's success was due to the horse, which appeared to be very attractive to the audience. So he decided to buy the palomino and keep riding in movies. Clyde Hudkins charged $ 2,500 for the horse - an enormous sum for the actor who, even after the success of the western, was only making $ 75 a week. Nevertheless, Roy Rogers signed the purchase agreement and agreed to pay Trigger in installments. When exactly this happened is controversial: While in the Rogers biography Happy Trails. Our Life Story claims that the purchase was made in 1938 or 1939, royrogersworld.com relies on two copies of payment receipts from 1943. Roy Rogers paid $ 500 for the horse in September of that year and $ 2,000 in December .
Trigger, who mastered numerous tricks, appeared in a total of 88 Roy Rogers films - provided it was the same horse in each case - and also in a three-digit number of episodes of the Roy Rogers Show , which NBC broadcast from 1951 to 1957. Together with Rogers, the animal also had an appearance in the music film Hollywood Canteen in 1944 . He was also seen at numerous public appearances by his owner, including visits that Rogers paid sick children in the hospital. He mostly wore Edward H. Bohlin saddles, adorned with silver and gold , which weighed up to 150 pounds.
Roy Rogers always played the "good cowboy" in his westerns. He turned down another role, in which he would also have had to smoke and drink, as he did not want to disappoint his regular audience. As a result, Herbert Yates, the director of the film studio Rogers worked for, threatened to cut him further roles in his preferred genre and let another actor ride Trigger. Apparently, Yates didn't realize at this point that Rogers had bought Trigger, or the purchase was about that time. After Rogers had told Yates that the horse was his property, Yates was careful not to want to influence Rogers in his choice of roles in order not to lose the palomino.
Trigger rarely appeared in films without Roy Rogers. He was seen under Gilbert Roland in the black and white film Juarez from 1939 and in Shut my Big Mouth from 1942.
He won the PATSY Award in 1953 and the Craven Award in 1958 . At times there was also a trigger fan club that had members worldwide.
Trigger as a museum exhibit
Rogers used trigger until he quit the Roy Rogers Show in 1957. Thereafter, the horse received the bread of grace in Hidden Valley until it died in 1965. After his death, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC asked if they could preserve the body for its collection. Roy Rogers' wife Dale Evans, however, wanted to have the animal buried. Both proposals did not meet with Roy Rogers' approval. Instead, he had the trigger prepared at Bischoff's Taxidermy, which was then based in Los Angeles . From 1967 the stuffed stallion was exhibited in the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Apple Valley. This museum moved to near Victorville in 1976 and to Branson, Missouri in 2003. Trigger could be seen there until the museum closed in December 2009. The exhibits were then sold.
More triggers
To relieve the original trigger, Roy Rogers bought at least two more palominos, which he used as doubles for the movie horse: Little Trigger was an animal without a pedigree, which was mainly used for public appearances in the 1940s and 1950s, but was also seen in some films, such as Son of Paleface from 1952. One can only speculate about his life data.
Trigger Jr. was born in 1941, was actually called Allen's Gold Zephyr, and was a Tennessee Walking Horse . Roy Rogers bought it in 1948. In contrast to Little Trigger, Trigger Jr. was also prepared after his death in 1969 and was taken to the museum.
In public, Rogers tried to hide the fact that he owned at least three Triggers, and at least tried to maintain the fiction among his young fans that there was only one horse of that name and appearance. However, the differences can be seen on some recordings. The original trigger had a white mark on its face that covered its entire right nostril but only the top half of the left. He only had a white badge on the left hind leg, while the two replacement triggers had badges on all four legs.
Trigger was never neutered but did not father any offspring.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c data on happytrailsforever.com
- ↑ a b Triggers Papers: Entry with the Palomino Horse Association from 1937 ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on happytrailshighway.com
- ↑ Film clips from youtube
- ↑ a b Roy Rogers' Horse Trigger (1932? –1965) ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on royrogersworld.com
- ↑ a b Roy Rogers and his Triggers on b-westerns.com.
- ↑ Roy Rogers' legendary horse Trigger to go under hammer on horsetalk.co.nz (announcement of the auction at Christie's)
- ↑ Information on Little Trigger
- ↑ The fates of the other horses ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on happytrailshighway.com
