Roy Rogers (born Leonard Franklin Slye) was an American cowboy-actor-singer-restaurant owner. He started singing on the radio in the early 1930s. After that, he acted in movies, had his own TV show and made record albums right up to the early 1990s. He died on July 6, 1998 at the age of 86.
Roy Rogers was the canonical good guy, wearing a white cowboy hat and shooting the guns out of the bad guys’ hands rather than killing them.
In 1938 he starred in “Under Western Stars” which was the first movie to feature his Palomino horse, Trigger (born Trigger). The two appeared together from then on and Trigger died in 1965 at the age of 33.
Contrary to popular thought, Trigger was not stuffed after he died. I suspect that Roy Rogers was too sensitive for that. Instead, the horse was mounted — his hide was stretched over a plaster likeness and put on display rearing up on his hind legs. He can be seen in the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans Museum in Branson, MO., along with Bullet (Roy Rogers’ German Shepherd) and Buttermilk (Dale Evans’ horse) — both mounted.
I loved Zorro as a kid. My familiarity with the Zorro character was from reruns of the Disney TV show starring Guy Williams (born Armando Catalano) as Don Diega de la Vega. (There were earlier Zorro movies; one with Douglas Fairbanks and another with Tyrone Power.) In the Disney productions, Zorro had a black horse, Tornado. I don’t know if he was mounted or stuffed.
The pathetic Zorro costume depicted here was typical of my childhood Halloweens. (I once dressed up as the color grey.) My goal was not the costume, but rather the accumulation of candy. And to get stuffed.
(Thanks to Donald L. Ladd for sending me updated information about the Roy Rogers' Museum.)