Medford mail tribune., April 12, 1936, Page 21, Image 21

Cowboy Artist Creates New Art Technic With Paintings on Leather
Old Gun Wound That
Kept Him Out of Saddle
. Started Unusual Career
By Oren Arnold
i' you've ever spent an hour among the in-
delicacies of any stockyard, you would never
think of looking there for a significant develop
ment in the fine arts or imagine that a S1000
beautiful combination of leather tooling and color
ing, notwithstanding the fact that his dad once
licked him for "messing up the barn door!"
Bill was a convalescent in Whipple Barracks, a
United States veterans' hospital, nursing a ma
chine gun wound from the World War. Bill's life,
was in danger, but as he expressed it "my mind
was worse off than my body, lying there wishing
I was in a saddle." He was "plumb miserable" in
doors. One day he got hold of a lady friend's purse,
took an old screwdriver and tooled a ranch scene
on the plain leather back, just for fun. Experi-
How Movie Trainer Taught Buck To Steal Live Baby
i 4
... fit
wr &&nf' t . lot my I; m.v h t j
Creator of a new technic In painting is Bill Lee, Arizona cowboy, shown above with one of his unusual works.
oil painting could be done on the hide of a range
calf.
But Bill Lee, long and lanky Arizona cowboy,
upset tradition and confounded the critics, using
a small metal tool and a paint brush to create a
new technic.
When Bill Lee was a boy on a northern Arizona
cattle ranch, he learned the' process of tooling
simple ornaments on leather saddles and chaps. At
odd times, too, he drew Indians and landscapes on
the side of the barn, using colored crayons snitched
from school.
Twenty-five years later, Bill evolved a novel and
menting further, he begged some paints and col
ored the scene.
"Bill, it's marvelous!" the young lady exclaimed,
when she saw it.
The-boys say that raw-boned, bow-legged Bill
Lee from the range turned redder than an Ariroia
sunset. But the lady begged him to try his tooling
and painting again.
"It ain't nothin'," Bill tried to tell her.
But she disagreed and he went in to develop
the idea. Hospital authorities o'-txincd some real
tools and good leather for him?
After a year or two of it. h;s reputation was
Here is another of the interesting aid instruct
ive articles telling how the famous movie dog
trainer, Carl Spitz, teaches animals to perform
before the cameras. Explanations of other stunts
.will appear regularly in this magazine. Watch for
them. Editor.
THIS stunt is known as the "baby stealing trick."
It rates as one of the cleverest ever pulled by
a trained dog, anywhere or at any time.
Buck, the giant St. Bernard, was required to
sneak into a room, pick up a basket with a live baby
in it and then slink away with it.
Buck had to be careful not to spill the baby and
yet he had to crawl, sneakingly along, not in his us
ual happy dog trot, but as it he were actually steal
ing the child.
His job was to achieve burglar-like movements.
This could only be done by his bodily actions and
the expression on his intelligent, broad, brown and
white face.
Burglar-like, too, he had to walk quietly, but with
shifty tread until he got the basket full of baby
behind the barn, the designated hiding place.
THIS is how Carl Spitz, owner and trainer, taught
Buck to carry out the stunt:
"To begin with," said Spitz, "Buck had the ad
vantage of my grammar course, which was ex
plained in a previous article.
"He had already learned to hold objects in his
made. The popularity of his productions have given
him a new financial standing and a great new hap
piness all of which is aiding the physical cure.
Bill can take the hide of a calf, a hide care
fully made into velvety, flexible leather, and in a
week make it into a thing of surpassing beauty.
His "masterpiece" to date is such a production
a calf skin still showing thj form of the beast,
with . a view of the Grand Canyon . tooled and
painted on it. v
Still unaware of the high degree of artistry iiir
volvedi Bill made a couple of these, and when tour
ists saw them they grabbed them up at once. Bill
raised the price materially, on the next one but
it made no difference. Now, apparently, his price
is commensurate only with his nerve!
For variety, he takes square pieces of leather,
or rectangular pieces and docs paintinTS about the
size of the average framed picture in a living rcom
on them. Usually thsy are sold before they are
finished. ,
mouth. It was no trouble at all to get him to pick
up the basket. But the live baby did disconcert him.
Buck, who loves children, could not figure out what
that live baby was doing so close to his nose.
"Therefore, we practiced with a big doll. Each
Lis V. av.,..M',7. I
It was some Job teaching Buck, the shamefaced St.
Bernard shown above, to steal a live baby for movie
purposes, of course. But Trainer Carl Spitz finally accom
plished the trick and even taught Buck to look guilty!
time we went through the business, I ran alongside
of him to the hiding place behind the barn. We had
to be careful to keep within camera range, for this
was a movie stunt. At the barn I called, 'Drop it.'
"We repeated this three times. I saw Buck was
catching on, and the next time we substituted the
live baby for the doll. Buck still didn't like the idea
of the live baby. He is kindness itself. So he, of his
own accord, licked the baby's face. It was his way
of making friends with the child. Fortunately, the
baby did not cry, but laughed. This made Back feel
better and the next time we tried it, Buck stole the
baby in fine shape.
"That was not the end of the trick, however. The
sequence called for Buck to be 'discovered' with his
theft.
'How to make him get that guilty look upon his
face? With the basket in his mouth, I ordered, 'Put
your head down. Shame on you. The very idea, stealing-a
baby! Shame!'
,-.-'!Arid because a St. Bernard is an emotional crea
ture, it was no time until Euck was feeling heartily
adhamed of himself. Consequently, we achieved a
very fine shamefaced look for the camera!"
STILL WINNING WORLD TITLES r7 fTN rT3 ' " '
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HIS FATHER. 1936, R. J. Reynolds Tob. Co.
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