The Show Must Go On
Keeping alive a family legacy that pays tribute to the icon who started it all.
By: Charley Engel 08/01/2009
“He just won’t let the dream die. All of us are just so devoted to this man and his dream. It’s a dying art. We come from everywhere just to be in his shows. I hope he can carry it on for another 10 years.”
World record holder, big loop rope spinner Cheryl Bacon, who has been with “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” for 34 years, beamed as she said these words. She is not alone in her sentiment. The other cast members of the show share her intense sense of loyalty and affection to their leader, producer Montie Montana Jr. They all feel they are part of a grand tradition worth preserving.
For more than three decades, Montie Montana Jr. has produced the show, taking it around the world to 26 countries. He is the son of the world-famous Montie Montana, a trick roper and rider, stuntman and actor. Montie Sr. is probably best remembered for roping President Dwight D. Eisenhower during his inaugural parade.
Montie Jr. comes by his show-business instincts naturally. Since his birth on December 28, 1934, he traveled with his father and mother, as they worked their way through rodeo circuits during the 1930s-1940s. By the age of three he was a member of the troupe, and he was a bona fide trick rider by age 11. The family lived out of their horse trailer. Montie Jr. did not live in a real house until he was 10 years old, when his sister Linda was born.
So it was no surprise that Montie Jr., who turns 75 this year, kept his cool demeanor when a show in May 2009, in Prairie City, Oregon, did not come off as one of his smoothest performances.
Behind the Curtain
“The show must go on!” is the rallying cry of every singer, dancer and two-bit thespian who has ever graced a stage. Seasoned performers disguise potential show calamities through quick thinking, honed by years of disaster recovery. It is only when you get to peek behind the curtains that the illusion is revealed.
In Prairie City, the local organizers had set up an “arena” of livestock panels on a beautiful, but slick, grassy meadow that scared the bejezus out of the trick riders. The damp grass was not good for big loop rope tricks either. The place was also devoid of electricity and water, and the “sound system” that needed to reach out to an estimated 500 spectators per show was a puny, battery-operated speaker box.
On top of that were the usual setbacks at any performance involving livestock and horses. Three steers escaped 15 minutes before the show and had to be rounded up. (Between shows the whole bunch was let loose into an unfenced pasture and ended up in downtown Prairie City!) Then an expected wrangler never showed up with his string of horses, forcing the rescue of the settlers in the finale to be performed by the infantry instead of the cavalry.
The topper for the day though, and the true measure of all of the performers’ ability to carry on in the face of adversity, was when longtime collaborator Larry Daylight suffered a heart attack at the arena.
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