Mohave County, Arizona
Biographies
ANDY DEVINE
There must be somebody who hasn't
heard of Andy Devine, but that person sure doesn't live in
Kingman where Andy is becoming somewhat of a folk hero. Who would
have thought on November 16,1906, when Amy Devine, Mae, her
stepdaughter, and Tom, Jr., her son, stepped from the train in Kingman,
that the year old boy she was carrying in her arms would turn out to be
Kingman's favorite son. Amy's husband, Tom, had been a railroad
employee in Flagstaff until a terrible accident had taken his
leg. Unable to continue his work for the railroad, he took the
settlement they offered and purchased the Beale Hotel.
Tom Devine was 36 years old
when he
came to Kingman, an affable and likable irish Catholic, who was a
second generation American. Although not as well educated as his
wife Amy, and it has been said that she schooled him, he was educated
enough to be elected Treasurer of Coconino County, He later served as
Mohave County's Treasurer for many years and was a successful and
respected businessman in this community. Tom Devine was also a
community minded man. One of the more interesting endeavors that
he was involved with was the Good Roads Association, a group of
Northern Arizona citizens who were successful in having the National
Old Trails Highway take the northern route rather than the southern
route through Phoenix. This highway became the famous Route 66.
Amy Devine, Andy's mother, was
probably a greater influence in his life than his father. She had
been a teacher and tutor and had tutored the children of the Governor
of Nevada before her marriage to Tom. It was Amy who patiently helped
Andy recover his speech after the accident that damaged his throat and
who strove to curb the exceptional energy that got him into many
scrapes and accidents as a child. Amy was also a community-minded
woman. She was a member of the Red Cross Relief Corp., was
confirmed and became active in the Catholic Church and, at one time,
tried to start an Elks' ladies group called the Does. That
particular endeavor was not successful
If there is one thing that Andy's old
Kingman friends agree on it is that Andy had one heck of a lot of
exuberance. This trait frequently got him hurt. As
early as February 29, 1908, the Mohave Miner was reporting that
"Andrew, the three year old child of Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Devine, fell
from the rear porch of the Beale Hotel to the ground, a distance of
about 13 feet sustaining a fracture of the left arm and sundry cuts and
bruises. The little fellow is getting along nicely.' It may have
been the last time anyone called Andy "a little fellow," but it was not
the last time he made the papers for a broken bone. On May
23,1914, the Miner again reported that "Andrew... fell from the rear
porch of the Hogan residence and fractured an arm." And, according to
Andy's wife, he broke another bone when he fell out of a tree while
military school.
The stories about the mischievous
young boy abound, both in Kingman and within Andy's family. Glenn
Johnson, long time friend, said he always remembered two particular
incidents about Andy. One was that in a greased pig contest Andy
caught the pig because he tripped and fell on it. Even as a boy
he was large and he just flattened the pig. Glenn also remembered
that toward the end of WWI there was a Liberty Bond drive, and the army
brought in a M1917 two man tank with a 30 caliber machine gun.
Andy climbed on the back and rode all over town much to the amusement
of the townsfolk and the dismay of the tank driver who could not get
him off and drive the tank at the same time.
Dorothy Devine says the various
versions of the "cat incident" make Andy sound awful, but she says the
incident did indeed occur. What actually happened was that one of
the local judges offered Andy and a friend 50 cents to get rid of a
mangy old cat for him. He emphasized that they do so in
humane manner. Fifty cents was a princely sum in those days, so
Andy and his friend undertook this assignment.. They knew where some
dynamite was, so took cat, dynamite and a long, long fuse to the dump
where they proceeded to carefully wrap the cat in dynamite. What
could be more humane than instant destruction, they reasoned.
They lit the fuse and ran like crazy. They looked around and much
to their dismay found the cat following them fuse burning
vigorously. The boys ran by the Van Marter house and the cat ran
under the house. Andy said he was terrified that the dynamite
would blow up the house, but the cat ran out from under the house and
into the woodshed. The woodshed blew sky high. No one ever
knew what happened until years later Andy, in a personal appearance in
Kingman, confessed to the crime.
There is one more Andy Devine
"mischievous boy " story, and it is a favorite. Andy and his brother
Tom both worked in the Beale Hotel for their father. Among the
clientele were many salesmen, or drummers, as they were called in those
days. They used to pack their satchels, park them near the front
door and then play pool in the pool room while waiting for the train.
One time Andy took hammer and nails, nailed the satchels to the floor
and then shouted, "Train's a leavin'!" into the pool room.
The drummers made a dash for the door, grabbed their satchels, but left
the bottoms plus contents on the floor when they hurriedly jerked up on
the handles. It worked better than Andy dreamed, but Dorothy says
he wasn't able to sit down for a week.
According to Irma Lang, daughter of
the theater owner in Kingman, Andy was a rascal, but more important he
always told the truth, and he was always polite. He was also
something of a ladies' man, but treated them politely as well.
Andy didn't get in many fights, but Johnny Adams, a professional boxer
from 1919-1931, was a real slugger. Johnny didn't lose many
fights, but he lost his first one (in the fourth grade) to Andy Devine.
"He started in on me because I swore in front of my sister .. my
sister, who was older, stepped in, hit Andy a couple of times and broke
it up." Andy must have been confused to be attacked by the girl he was
defending.
Andy Devine was a small town boy, and
he retained all his life those qualities which we associate with
growing up in a small town. He never "went Hollywood" but instead
went through life with a good sense of what was important.
In a place where divorce was the name of the game, Andy and Dorothy
were happily married for over forty years. They were
introduced by Will Rogers, who kidded Andy about robbing the cradle and
being a dirty old man, because Dorothy was only 19 and Andy was 29 when
they were married, in 1933. Dorothy says they spent one night of their
honeymoon in the Beale HoteL Andy told her they would stay in the new
part, but she remembers a room so small that one of them had to go out
in the corridor to give the other room to dress.
They raised their boys on a ranch
away from the false glitter of the movie industry and kept their
life separate from the movie colony. Andy and the boys were
active in scouting and 4-H. They raised pigeons and horses,
hunted and fished, and got interested in ham radios. Andy told
his boys that he would try to live his life not to embarrass them, if
they would do the same for him. After appearing with Andy in Canyon
Passage in 1946, the boys decided movie acting wasn't for them. Tad and
Dennis both graduated from college and from that time on were
independent of their parents' wealth. Both Dorothy and Andy can
take pride in a job well done in child raising.
Although Andy Devine's acting career
started out as an accidental happening - he was standing on a street
corner in Hollywood when "discovered" - he had to struggle to make his
career successful. Andy's first picture was a silent film and, as
a bit player, he made several such films in the mid-to-late
1920's. But the talkies came on the scene and Devine's film
career appeared to be over, primarily because of his voice which was
high, squeaky and had a timorous catch to it. The dramatic parts
were out, but, with the popularity of the "rah-rah" college movies,
Andy's voice became as asset. They put him in a bearskin coat and
he became the friendly sophomore cheerleader. The "voice" which
almost cost him his career, eventually became the key to Andy's success
and popularity in films, stage, radio and television. Once heard,
those raspy, squeaky tones are never forgotten. That voice, plus his
bulky frame led inevitably to the comedic roles for which he is well
known. The "steam calliope with the broken key" was the voice he
grew up with although not the one he was born with. According to
his wife, Dorothy, Andy was jumping up and down on the couch with
a curtain rod in his mouth when be was a small boy. He fell and
was seriously injured in the throat and vocal cords. For two
years after the accident he could not speak without stuttering and the
characteristic "break" was a direct result of that accident. A
common rumor was that he had nodes on his vocal cords. He did
not, but joked that he had the same "nodes" as Bing Crosby, but
Crosby's were in tune. Once persuaded to see a doctor, Andy was
told that it was his voice and he was stuck with it. Lucky
Andy. Imagine being stuck with a voice that was insured by Lloyds
of London for a "half a million"
It was not only the voice that made
Andy "an original," as his friend Guy Madison called him. He had
a fine sense of the comic relief character so important to the western
morality play.. Although in his first western, Law and order (1932), he
played a dull-witted young man who is hanged after an accidental
killing, that type of role soon gave way to the "sidekick." He played
Cookie Bullfincher in nine movies, replacing Gabby Hayes in the Roy
Rogers' movies, and continued throughout his career playing the comic
relief roles in musicals, westerns, and even a couple of gangster
pictures.
Most of those films were Class B
pictures, but Andy was one of those actors who could and did cross the
line frequently into the Class A movies. His first class A movie,
Stagecoach (1939) in which he played the stage driver, was a tremendous
boost to his career. The making of the movie also brought him a
friendship with John Wayne that lasted until Andy's death. Andy
made more Class A movies than any other western sidekick except for
Walter Brennan.
The rumor that Andy played
Shakespeare is true. In Romeo and Juliet (1937) - with Norma
Shearer, Andy donned tights and played Peter, the manservant, to
excellent reviews. He also played in the original "A Star is
born" one of his favorite films.
Andy made film after film until the
mid 50's when he decided to be more selective. Some of those
selections include Island in the Sky, Around The World in 80 Days, and
a return to westerns with his roles of Marshal Link Appleyard in The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, with his old friend John Wayne.
Devine was also a very successful
television star, with the role of Jingles in Wild Bill Hickok
being the most famous. In 1974, 20 years after the series, Andy
was boarding a plane in Miami when a bomb was reported. All the
passengers had to open their luggage so everything could be
inspected. When the FBI agent came to Andy, he passed him through
saying, "If you Can't trust Jingles, who can you trust."
His stage career was also an
important part of his later acting years. He played the
Captain in Showboat (1957) and went on to play in Anything Goes (1961),
My Three Angels and Never Too Late. Andy was a delight to work
with. He believed that he was only as good as the best actor on the
stage and went out of his way to help newcomers. Live theater was
different than movie acting. The stage requires a lot of
publicity, but interviewers found themselves being interviewed
instead. Andy was interested in people and wanted to know all
about them. Dorothy traveled with Andy in his stage work. She
laughingly calls her job "his wardrobe mistress," but she was
much more than that. She was in fact the one who took care of all
the details of which there were many.
He retired once, but it drove both
Andy and Dorothy crazy so he went back to work and was still acting
until shortly before his death, in 1977. In all, Andy made over
400 films and more radio, stage and television appearances than anyone
cared to count. He was in the first pictures that Hollywood
greats Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne made.
There is no doubt that Andy Devine is
well loved by his peers, his fans and his hometown. He remained
true to himself and his upbringing to the end, retaining his
good-natured, unassuming personality despite his illness with
leukemia. Andy died of cardiac arrest in 1977. Andy was
buried at the Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona Del Mar, CA.
His brother, Tom, followed, early in 1986. Andy's funeral reduced
John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart to tears and Guy Madison praised him
because to Andy "each Man's time is important, no matter his station in
life.", We, in Kingman, celebrate Andy Devine Days, partly
because he was a famous movie star, but primarily because he was one of
our own, a decent, caring man who took what gifts he had and built a
life to be proud of, if we listen carefully on Andy Devine Days we may
hear, above the hoopla and fanfare, a squeaky, raspy voice, saying,
"I've got the best seat in the house".
(by Karin Goudy
September
1986 Source: Mohave County Museum)
