Lester Alvin Burnett, better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys.
25 Facts About Smiley Burnette
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Smiley Burnette was a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously.
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Smiley Burnette's career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's Petticoat Junction in the 1960s.
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Smiley Burnette began singing as a child and learned to play a wide variety of instruments by ear, yet never learned to read or write music.
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Smiley Burnette was reading Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" at the time, which included a character named Jim Smiley.
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Smiley Burnette named the radio character Mr Smiley and soon adopted the moniker as his own, dropping the title.
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Smiley Burnette's break came in December 1933, when he was hired by Gene Autry to play accordion on National Barn Dance on Chicago's WLS-AM, on which Autry was the major star.
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Smiley Burnette sang and played accordion, and the film included two of his compositions.
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Smiley Burnette had other small parts until a secondary, but more prominent role in the 1935 serial The Adventures of Rex and Rinty.
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That same year, Levine gave Autry his first starring role in the 12-part serial The Phantom Empire, with Smiley Burnette playing Oscar, a comic-relief role.
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In each of the films, Smiley Burnette played Autry's comic sidekick, Frog Millhouse, with his trademark floppy black hat and trick voice.
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Starrett and Smiley Burnette were paired in 56 films, from 1945 to 1952.
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When Starrett retired, Smiley Burnette was still under contract, so Columbia teamed him with Jock Mahoney for a new series of Westerns.
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Smiley Burnette wrote more than 400 songs and sang a significant number of them on screen.
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Smiley Burnette's songs were recorded by a wide range of singers, including Bing Crosby, Ferlin Husky, and Leon Russell.
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Smiley Burnette devised and built some of his unusual musical instruments in his home workshop.
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Smiley Burnette devised more than a dozen clever uses for a common wire clothes hanger and demonstrated several of them during a TV show guest appearance.
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Hollywood stars usually left their publicity and promotion to the studios that employed them, but Smiley Burnette took charge of his promotion personally.
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Smiley Burnette was highly aware of his box-office value and shrewdly merchandised his name and likeness.
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Smiley Burnette organized a national Smiley Burnette Fan Club, aimed mostly at the juvenile audience, and sold autographed photos and souvenirs to club members.
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Smiley Burnette made additional money by making personal appearances at theaters showing his films.
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Burnette's base of operations was Springfield, Missouri, where he produced and hosted a nationally syndicated 15-minute radio program, The Smiley Burnette Show, through RadiOzark Enterprises.
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Smiley Burnette made regular appearances on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee from Springfield.
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Smiley Burnette enjoyed cooking, and in the 1950s, he opened a restaurant chain called The Checkered Shirt, the first of the A-frame drive-ins.
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Smiley Burnette donated his original hat and shirt to the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1962.