Tucumcari Tonite! by Stratton David H.;

Author:Stratton, David H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

USS Tucumcari. This US Navy hydrofoil vessel was supposed to serve in the same role as the famous World War II PT boat, but it had relatively brief prominence. Ajax News & Feature Service / Alamy Stock Photo (Image ID: PEKP4M).

A longer encounter with celebrities came in the late 1950s with the filming around Tucumcari of the long-running CBS television Western series Rawhide, starring a budding actor named Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates. The highly popular series, filmed in black-and-white, aired for eight seasons, beginning in January 1959. It featured a band of cowboys on the fabled Long Drive of the 1860s, taking a herd of cattle from San Antonio, Texas, to the railhead at Sedalia, Missouri. In a supporting role, bearded Paul Brinegar, who was born in Tucumcari but left after high school graduation, played cranky drover cook George Washington Wishbone.68 Five complete episodes and stock film of enough for a sixth—all shown the first year of the series in 1959—were shot on the Spade Ranch north of town. Ranch cowhands sometimes got in the action as extras, with one playing a cowboy in an episode and an Indian in another. The cast and crew of sixty-five were in town for six weeks, staying in local motels and the Conchas Hotel and frequenting Del’s Restaurant.69 Famous for his jukebox hit “The Purple People-Eater,” Sheb Wooley, who played scout Pete Nolan, visited with an old family friend who had known the Wooleys back in Erick, Oklahoma. It was rumored that so many smitten local damsels tried to interrupt the sleep of Clint Eastwood, in his big break as an actor, that he had to call the police for relief.

During the year 1959, Tucumcari fairly buzzed with Hollywood filming activity. For several days in February, the thirty-member cast and crew of the drug-trafficking movie Switchblade, starring Robert Hutton, shot scenes in and around Tucumcari. In addition, the song “Tucumcari” was recorded as a single by the popular young singer Jimmie Rogers, who in his career had thirteen number one hits and sold over sixty million records. “Tucumcari” made Billboard’s Hot 100 list in September, staying there for nine weeks. Rogers did a TV guest appearance on the Jimmy Durante Show, and with simulated desert scenery in the background as he walked along on a treadmill, sang his way to “Tucumcari.”70

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