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By Ben Jones
Rappahannock News
Contributing Writer
Just after World War II, my
brothers and I would catch a bus to downtown Portsmouth to watch the double feature Saturday matinee at the Virginia Theatre on High Street. Admission was fifteen cents, but we got our money’s worth. Besides a cartoon, a newsreel, a serial episode, and the previews of coming attractions, we each got a free Armed Service patch along with the popcorn. Then we watched two fulllength movies featuring the cowboy stars of the day.
At the Virginia Theatre, the Durango Kid seemed to get alot of screen time. Red Ryder, Lash LaRue, Monte Hale, Hopalong Cassidy, Rex Allen and Bob Steele were also in the thick of things. But standing above them all were the creme de la creme, those two giants of the West and the silver screen, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.
Autry was my favorite. He had an easy, genial way and an earnest round face.-And Smiley Burnette, his sidekick in those years, could make you laugh just looking at him. Roy Rogers seemed to me to be a bit too serious, and too flashy. The debate over who was truly King of the Cowboys, Rogers or Autry, raged among us kids with the same intensity as did that over who was stronger, Superman or Captain Marvel. I was, and still am, an Autry man. But it is a closer call now.
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