Western Wind Across Urban Plains
LEAD: BY the time Thomas Molesworth opened the Shoshone Furniture Company in 1931, the myth of the American cowboy was laced into the American mindset.
BY the time Thomas Molesworth opened the Shoshone Furniture Company in 1931, the myth of the American cowboy was laced into the American mindset.
Paul Fees, senior curator of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., said the romance with the West in the 1930's was heightened by dude ranches, pulp periodicals and, of course, Hollywood. 'One of the reasons the dude ranch movies were so popular,' he said, 'was because they offered a chance for Eastern women to mix with smooth-talking cowboys.'
Today, Wild West nostalgia is sweeping across the urban plains, a phenomenon that would no doubt amuse Augustus McCrae, the irreverent 'wore-out old ranger' of Larry McMurtry's novel 'Lonesome Dove.'
In New York, for instance, a miniature Cody has sprung up on Hudson Street between Charles and West 10th Streets in Greenwich Village. Last year, Sherry Delamarter, a native of Waco, Tex., opened the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, a restaurant displaying photographs of Vera McGinnis, the first woman to wear pants in a rodeo.
Across the street at Whiskey Dust, Mervin Bendewald sells cowboy boots and bolo ties made from rattlesnake skins. He has been joined recently by Cece and Bob Phillips, who are from Fort Worth and who have opened a nearby store called Dusty Trails. Their establishment specializes in out-of-print song and comic books, and Western souvenirs like rusty horse shoes, which sell for $4.50 apiece.
'We have Little Italy,' Mr. Phillips reasons. 'Why not a Cowtown?'
Two of New York's most passionate buckaroos are Robert Heide and John Gilman, authors of 'Box-Office Buckaroos: The Cowboy Hero from the Wild West Show to the Silver Screen,' just released in paperback by Abbeville Press ($19.95). The book, which depicts Roy Rogers and Trigger flashlights, Lone Ranger posters, revolving Hopalong Cassidy 'mood lamps' and other campy collectibles, is their tribute to the 'lone individuality' of the radio and cinema cowboy.
Their Greenwich Village apartment is a two-room repository of mass-produced images from Hollywood, filled within an inch of its life with artifacts of American consumer culture, from life-size Roy Rogers posters to Hoppy lunch boxes. Mr. Heide and Mr. Gilman, who pursue cowboy collectibles with the fervor of a thirsty horse seeking water, are definitely in the vanguard. The two said they were stunned recently at a flea market to see a Gene Autry lunch box selling for $625.
Such prices are not unknown at Cadillac Jack, a furniture store in Los Angeles specializing in the cowboy look now in vogue among Don Henley, Daryl Hannah and other contemporary Western idols. Don Colclough (a k a Jack) does a brisk business in mass-produced furniture from the 1930's and 40's that bears little resemblance to that ofMolesworth.
Here, chairs and sofas come with horse heads stitched into chartreuse vinyl, with split wagon-wheel sides and, occasionally, even wooden shotgun arms. This was cowboy furniture for family and rumpus rooms in all those ranch houses of the suburban frontier.