Bronze Western Heritage Wrangler Award To Ben Johnson

NATIONAL COWBOY & WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM

Publication: National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1985, Oklahoma City

Wrangler bronze 13" x 9 1/2" x 4 3/4" overall on a 1 3/4" wood base complete with a 1 3/4" x 5 1/2" brass plague. The bronze is signed by "R. Muno" and weighs almost ten pounds. The brass plague is inscribed: "Western Heritage Wrangler Award / National Cowboy Hall Of Fame and Western Heritage Center / Ben Johnson, Narrator / 'THE DREAM' / Outstanding Special Short Feature Award, 1985." The Bronze Wrangler is an award presented annually by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum at the Western Heritage Awards to honor the top works in Western music, film, television and literature. Provenance: Ben Johnson estate. Francis Benjamin Johnson Jr. (June 13, 1918 – April 8, 1996) was an American film and television actor, stuntman, and world-champion rodeo cowboy. Tall and laconic, Johnson brought authenticity to many roles in Westerns with his droll manner and expert horsemanship. The son of a rancher, Johnson arrived in Hollywood to deliver a consignment of horses for a film. He did stunt-double work for several years before breaking into acting with the help of John Ford. An elegiac portrayal of a former cowboy theater owner in the 1950s coming-of-age drama The Last Picture Show won Johnson the 1971 Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Johnson also operated a horse-breeding ranch throughout his career. Although he said he had succeeded by sticking to what he knew, shrewd real estate investments made Johnson worth an estimated $100 million by his later years. He was an actor from 1939 until 1996 and is the only true cowboy to have won an Acadeny Award. The film, The Dream, was directed by Joe Pytka (born November 4, 1938), an American film, television, commercial and music video director born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He holds the record for the most nominations for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing - Commercials. Pytka gets a call from a new agency in Minneapolis to do a short film for U.S. West, a telephone company, and the idea was a 'teaser' film of cowboys saddling their horses at predawn. The art director was Pat Burnham and the writer was Bill Miller. Pytka asks whether or not they have the account. Told no, simply the current assignment, Pytka says, “Let’s do something big!” Pytka had been filming Busch Beer commercials for a number of years and was familiar with locations and cowboys. He also knew that the number of convincing cowboy (actors) in Hollywood was extremely limited. He needed to get away from Los Angeles where he knew a great cowboy that had a great hat. “Cowboys are defined by their hats and boots ... The thing should be realistic. Real cowboys. Real horses ... There are horses and there are horses. For example, a cowboy wouldn’t be caught dead on a paint horse.” The short film was shot mostly in Monument Valley with a select few real cowboys, as that is their home. Most amazing to Pytka was how the cowboys and their horses are completely as one. The film was shot and almost everything done in a single day. By some stroke of good fortune, the agency has gotten the great cowboy actor Ben Johnson to record the narration. In the session, Johnson remarked that we’d gotten some real cowboys there, a huge compliment since he was a real wrangler before he discovered that he could make more money in Hollywood than in Oklahoma.

Inventory Number: 50746