Champion the Wonder Horse series; he was one of several horses that Autry rode in that production. After learning about the horse through stunt man and movie horse wrangler Tracey Layne, Autry paid $75 for the original Champion, whose sire was a Morgan trotting horse from Ardmore, Oklahoma. Trained to perform numerous tricks, Champion could untie knots, fall, roll over and play dead, come at Autry's whistle, bow, and shake his head yes and no. In one film he pushes Autry into the arms of his leading lady June Storey. By 1939 his reported worth was $25,000. The original Champion died in 1943, at
Wild Horse Stampede Wild Horse Stampede Wild Horse Stampede is a 1943 American Western film, directed by Alan James and starring Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson playing marshals with their own names in the manner of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. It was the first of eight Monogram Pictures "The Trail Blazers" film series, replacing the studio's Range Busters series. With many actors called up for World War II, Monogram Pictures began a series starring two older but still popular Western stars, Hoot Gibson and Ken Maynard. Maynard recalled Monogram offered each of them $600 per film. When Maynard remarked to Gibson that