For the first time since the Filmland Horsemen series started in The Western Horseman, I’m going to change trails and write about three stars in one story. The reason is simple. Just as a cattle drive would not be complete with only one man, a story about the big TV show Rawhide would not be rounded out just mentioning one of its principal characters. So, let’s take a look at the backgrounds of the three men who keep this big scale western among the foremost films on the television circuit.

Just as the cattle drive needs a trail boss, Rawhide has Gil Favor, played by 6-foot-4-inch Eric Fleming. Fleming is a man who has seen every state in the 50 — and parts of the rest of the world as well. Born in Santa Paula, Calif., some 30 years ago, he is the son of an itinerant carpenter. After learning his father’s trade at an early age, it wasn’t long before the teenager Fleming, who had inherited the elder Fleming’s yen to travel, had traveled most of the United States, plying his trade. In addition to being a carpenter, he worked also as a miner, seaman, longshoreman, and oil field roustabout. He knocked about the world, too, and during World War II joined the Seabees and served in the South Pacific. Here he had a chance to use the skills in defense of the country he had picked up around this old globe.

How, then, does a big guy with no previous acting experience get into show business? In Fleming’s case, it was through his knowledge of carpentry. After the war, he became a stagehand — doing odd jobs backstage of theaters. He soon noticed that those who were making the big money were on stage, compared to what a person can make working backstage, and made up his mind that he could do as much as the actors — and gather in some of the big loot himself. After a few tries, Fleming discovered he was going to need some training. He then went to an acting school, and, after getting some solid instruction in the business, joined a road company of a Broadway show and toured the country. He returned to New York for a time where he had parts in several other plays before going to Hollywood to launch his motion picture career.

Few people may understand that attending a school for actors is no different than learning to rope calves. If you haven’t been raised with a rope in your hand, you’ve got to be shown by a Toots Mansfield or a Ben Johnson. The same is true of actors. If you don’t know the fundamentals of acting, you’d best get someone who does to show you the ropes.

Fleming made some feature pictures, including The Conquest of Space and I Cast No Shadow, that weren’t westerns, besides the lead role in Rawhide. A bachelor, Fleming lives in an apartment in Hollywood and spends most of his spare time riding, swimming, skiing, and making furniture with his woodworking tools.

Keep your eyes on the trail boss with the batwing chaps in Rawhide — he’s going places.

The Cinderella story among the three stars of Rawhide belongs to handsome Clint Eastwood, who plays the part of Favor’s right hand man, Rowdy Yates. Eastwood’s break came one day while he was standing in an outer office at CBS talking to a story editor. Producer Bob Sparks just happened to come out of his office at that moment and spotted Eastwood. Sparks invited the tall young man to read the part of Yates — and the rest is the kind of history for which Hollywood is famous.

Eastwood’s entire career is made of this kind of luck. For instance, he was taking basic training at Ft. Ord, Calif., after being drafted into the Army, at the same time Universal-International was shooting a film at the base. Eastwood was seen in the chow line by an assistant who introduced him to the director of the film. The director listened to Eastwood reading some lines and told him to get in touch after finishing his Army service. After his discharge, Eastwood called at the studio only to discover that the director was no longer connected with U-I. He decided to try for an appointment anyway, and after a couple of weeks he had so impressed the casting people that he was given a screen test. The test was successful — and Eastwood was signed to a contract.

Eastwood was born in San Francisco 29 years ago. His father is an executive with the Container Corporation in Oakland, California. After graduating from Oakland Technical High School, Eastwood worked for a time in Oregon as a lumberjack. His hitch in the Army followed the lumberjacking. He now lives in Studio City with his wife, Maggie, and enjoys riding and year round swimming as hobbies. And, there are lots of good things in store for Favor’s right hand man.

The best known actor of the Rawhide trio is the rugged, Oklahoma-born-and-raised Sheb Wooley. Today he is known to millions of TV fans as Pete Nolan, Gil Favor’s staunch friend and head cowboy on Rawhide. Millions of teenagers and record fans, however, know him as the man who wrote and recorded the fantastic Purple People Eaters — one of the hottest selling records of all time. Motion picture fans will remember Wooley as one of the three heavies who came gunning for Gary Cooper in the now classic High Noon, too.

Although his fame is now worldwide, the cowboy from Erick, Oklahoma, remains one of the nicest guys in Hollywood. Wooley and his lovely wife, Beverly, live on a 10-acre ranch in Sun Valley, Calif., with their recently adopted daughter.

Wooley can trace his success through his guitar. As a young man, his interest in music developed to the point that he learned to play some chords on the guitar to accompany himself while singing the old western tunes that his section of the country is famed for. Later, he was booked at some of the local clubs around his home. While still in his teens, he went on the rodeo circuit for a time — having learned to ride at the age of 4. After the performances, he would pick the guitar and sing for the cowboys back of the chutes, maybe, playing in a club that same night. His rodeo and club dates took him to many of the towns in Texas and Oklahoma during those early years.

In 1946, Wooley formed his own western band and toured the southwest. He had his own radio show for three years. During that period of his life, he signed with MGM Records, singing, mostly, songs that he himself had written.

In 1951 he went to California and landed a role in a western called Rocky Mountain and starring Errol Flynn at Warner Bros. Since then he has made more than 30 films, in addition to his many TV shows. He has made several features for Charles Marquis Warren, producer of Rawhide.

Wooley now divides his time almost equally between acting, writing, and recording. He actually has enough work cut out for him for three good men, but Wooley manages to take everything in stride and still remain the same swell guy he has always been.

The stars of a series contribute much to the success of such a filming, but, in the case of Rawhide, there is another factor which has contributed generously to its attraction. Producer Warren has made an extensive study of the west, so that the story content will be as factual as possible and yet provide good viewing pleasure. Another thing, the wardrobe men have done a fine job of costuming the players as authentically western as possible. Then, too, Warren cast real cowboys as regulars in the series — men who could really get the job done on a ranch.

Again, Warren took the stars and the cowboys to Nogales, Ariz., and shot thousands of feet of film of a trail drive for the series, using some 2,000 head of rawboned cattle of the type seen in the big trail drives of the early days. Finally, the wranglers of the Fat Jones Stables, which supplies the horses for the series, are to be complimented for outfitting the horses like a cow horse in his working gear — no silver, no frills, just good using outfits on good using horses. These things make up the secret formula that causes Rawhide to explode into action on millions of TV screens every week.