Roy Stewart — A Blue-Ribbon Baby (1918) 🇺🇸

When a man can look you calmly in the eye and tell you that the happiest moment of his life was when he saw the cactus looming up out of the desert on his return home after his first journey in far countries, you can make up your mind that man is a dyed-in-the-world Westerner. None but a Westerner loves cactus.

by Adela Rogers St. Johns

"I'd been taking my first look at the northern country," remarked Roy Stewart, the Triangle western star, dusting his high boots with the brim of the wide hat he had removed, "and I reckon I hadn't seen any cactus in quite a spell. When I looked out of that Pullman car window and saw a great, big ugly old fellow reaching out his prickly arms to me, my heart swelled right up inside me, 'cause I knew I was home."

There is no camouflage about Roy Stewart's westernism. He doesn't don his character with his chaps and spurs He doesn't have to fake atmosphere, manner, ability or knowledge.

Roy Stewart is the first western star of the moving pictures who is really of the West.

So when you see Stewart riding bronchoes, rounding up cattle, looking over five cards or getting familiar with a six-shooter, you may settle back in your seat with the comfortable assurance that he is on his native heath, doing the things he's been doing ever since he won the first western baby show down in San Diego a few — well, some — years ago, and that at last you're gazing at a real western hero.

"I've never been interviewed before," Stewart stated in that cool, impersonal way of his, "except once. That was when they had me in jail down in Mexico.

"Oh, it didn't just happen," he went on hurriedly. "They did it on purpose, all right. Just didn't know what else to do with me, I reckon. You see, ma'am" (a war correspondent who spent a week with the royal family at Windsor once told me that the Prince of Wales always addresses Her Majesty as "ma'am." After hearing Roy Stewart use the term I can imagine it very appropriate) — "I owned the El Tully ranch and a nice little bunch of cattle down in Mexico under Diaz. But when the show opened up down there and Madero came in, they did a lot of things to me. I got out with all members intact, but I didn't have even a Mexican dollar sticking to me. That's when I decided to go into moving pictures."

"When did you first learn to shoot and ride?" I asked.

He looked at me in bewilderment. "Gee, I don't know." He shoved the nose of his inquisitive pony out of the pocket of his coat. "Hey, you Sunshine, you keep out of there. That horse does love sugar," he confided. Then returning to my question, "I suppose I rode about the same time I walked. I don't seem to remember ever learning, but I always could ride. About the first thing I remember riding, though, was a goat. Yes, ma'am, a goat. That was down in San Diego. We kids used to have goat races round the little wooden court house and dad and the other men would come to the windows and bet on us.

"My father, you know, was the second white man in San Diego. He was the first sheriff of Hangtown, too. It took a pretty good man to be sheriff of that burg, in those days, because Hangtown sort of prided herself on making Bowdie look like a Sunday school picnic. It took a real, live, he-man to be sheriff, you know.

"Dad was a pioneer — the real thing. He came to California in '50, on shoe leather, with "Bonanza" Johnson, after fighting Indians all the way out from Kansas City. He helped to make California history. Father taught me to shoot. He could shoot some himself, father could. They tell me that he was about a sixteenth of a second faster with his gun than any other man in Hangtown. Reckon that's why they made him sheriff."

"He taught me to shoot, and he told me why. 'If you ever want to tell a guy to go to hell, live so you can do it,' he said. 'But he may not like it so you'd better learn to shoot a little, too.'"

I interrupted him to ask a question and he favored me with a cool stare. "Oh, I went to the University of California. An education's a good thing, no matter what a man means to do.

"Yes, I learned a lot on that ranch. For one thing I learned that I wasn't the best poker player in the world. That's a good thing to learn, right off. O'Neill took my clothes away from me one day — and that's no mere figure of speech, either. I had to earn 'em back hoeing corn. We're going up there to do my next picture, 'The Fighting Gringo,' — the one I wrote myself, you know.

"The pioneer blood is in me, too. I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't been for moving pictures. I love to be outdoors."

He's a very modest person, this Roy Stewart. Yet, somehow, I gathered the impression of a self-respecting appreciation of himself — a sort of "when you call me that, smile" expression that spoke hands off to many things.

I mentioned the Baby Show. (Some one had told on him.) The whole, supple, graceful six-feet-two of him drooped with embarrassment.

"Who told you about that?" he demanded wrathfully. "Oh, yes I won the gold cup, but I always figured it was because I had an Indian nurse maid and the contrast was so great it fooled the judges." But then our talk was over. From across the sunny hill of the beautiful Triangle ranch. Cliff Smith, his director, called to Roy. And as he walked away, I noticed that the hand free of his bridle reins was busy rolling a pisano cigarette. Just as though I would have objected!

After all, east or west, a gentleman is always a man.

Roy Stewart is the first western star of moving pictures who is really of the West. He's been riding bronchoes and getting familiar with a six-shooter ever since he won the first western baby show down in San Diego some years ago.

Riding a goat produces thorough acclimation to any other vehicle. Therefore Roy Stewart — who first rode on a goat — has "Sunshine," his favorite mount, thoroughly cowed.

Roy Stewart, with Jack Gilbert in the Triangle picture, "The Devil Dodger."

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, September 1918