Performer Information

When we think of the first singing cowboy, we usually think of Gene Autry, Gene was the first to star in a series of musical Westerns beginning with Tumbling Tumbleweeds, released the first week in September 1936. But Dick Foran’s first Western film, Moonlight on the Prairie, was a close second. It came out the first week in November of that year.

Dick Foran was born in Flemington, New Jersey on June 18, 1910. He studied geology and played football at Princeton University, but his interest in the arts attracted him to the theater and his beautiful voice landed him in Leibling Studio in New York where he studied music. He also worked briefly as a railroad investigator in Pennsylvania but in 1934 he forgot about geology and headed for Hollywood where he became a band singer and performed on radio. This led to some minor movie roles.

The following year, Dick Foran was to become Warner Brothers’ first singing cowboy star. His trained voice had an operatic quality, much like some of his contemporaries, e.g. Nelson Eddu, Fred Scott, and Jack Randall, but it was well-received by Western movie goers. Foran’s palomino horse, “Smoke” who was owned by Chief Thunder Cloud, appeared in his first Western film and continued with him in the 12 Westerns he made for Warner and followed him to Universal in 1938. Foran’s athletic ability, along with his interest and experience in geology and detective work, may have been of use in Westerns, but it was his acting skills and musical talent that made him a star for the big studios, allowing him to cross over into bug budget musical productions. He appeared in a variety of roles in over 100 films, including starring in two Western serials at Universal, Winners of the West (1940) and Riders of Death Valley (with Buck Jones and Leo Carrillo in 1941) and in a number of TV series as well, retiring in 1968. He also sang in secondary singing cowboy roles in several Universal pictures in the early 1940s and in John Ford’s Fort Apache in 1948.

The Sons of the Pioneers (then including Len Slye) joined Dick Foran in two Warner Brothers productions in 1936. Song of the Saddle and The California Mail. A few years later, they were reunited on the Ten-Two-Four Ranch radio series where Foran sang a number of Bob Nolan’s compositions, among others, backed by the Pioneers harmony. In his films, he relied heavily on the compositions of the songwriting duo M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl. They wrote the Western standard “My Little Buckaroo,” which Dick Forn introduced in Cherokee Strip in 1937. In 1943 a folio of Western songs was issued with compositions co-credited to Dick Foran and Fleming Allan.

He enjoyed singing but considered his forte to be acting, and he was happy to be regarded as a versatile actor. Indeed, he performed in various roles both before and after becoming a singing cowboy. Perhaps s a result of his focus on acting, which earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he did not pursue a recording career, other than a few sides of Broadway tunes association with one of his acting performances (an original cast LP from A Connecticut Yankee). He recorded only two Western songs commercially, Moonlight Valley and Mexicali Rose, for the Decca label. But he left a legacy of his singing voice on film soundtracks and radio transcriptions which bring back fond memories for his many fans, and which allow modern audiences to appreciate his contribution to Western music and film. Dick Foran passed away at age 69 in Panorama City, California on August 10, 1979.
O.J. Sikes