Allan "Rocky" Lane (born Harry Leonard Albershardt; September 22, 1909 – October 27, 1973) was an American actor. He was the star of many cowboyB-movies in the 1940s and 1950s. He appeared in more than 125 films and TV shows in a career lasting from 1929 to 1966. He is best known for his portrayal of Red Ryder and for being the voice of the talking horse on the television series Mister Ed from 1961 to 1966.
Biography
Lane was born Harry Leonard Albershardt or Albershart (sources differ) in Mishawaka, Indiana to Linnie Anne and William H. Albershardt. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Lane had been a photographer, model and stage actor by age 20. He played varsity sports, baseball, football, and basketball at the University of Notre Dame but dropped out to pursue his interests in acting.
Film career
Lane's first film role for Fox was as a romantic lead opposite June Collyer in the 1929 release, Not Quite Decent (now a lost film). He made several other films at Fox but signed with Warner Bros.
While at Warner his career foundered, and after a number of bit parts he left films in the early 1930s. By 1936, Lane returned to films and to 20th Century-Fox, taking highly visible supporting roles in Charlie Chan at the Olympics and the Shirley Temple film Stowaway (both 1936). He kept playing supporting roles at Fox though 1937, but had not yet advanced to starring roles; he took the lead in a Republic Pictures feature, The Duke Comes Back (1937).
After his stopover at Republic he signed with RKO for a two-year stint but, again, he was used in supporting roles as part of the studio's stock company.
When his RKO employment ran out, he returned to Republic, where he auditioned for the lead in a serial. The directors were William Witney and John English. Witney later found Lane to be difficult to deal with, and remembered the interview:
He had worked in a picture at RKO and seemed like a nice person. I asked what he did for a living before he tried acting. He said he'd been a used car salesman. Later Jack and I were mulling over our mistake and Jack said, "When he said 'used car salesman' we should've turned him down." When he turned to leave the office we also noted he had a big fat ass. Later we found the ass part fit the whole man. He rode a horse like the saddle was on backwards and he was sitting on the horn. His expressions were all the same whether he was doing comedy or tragedy.
In 1946 and 1947, Lane portrayed Red Ryder in seven western features, replacing Wild Bill Elliott in that role. The following year, he became "Rocky Lane" in Western films.
Between 1940 and 1966, Lane made 82 film and television series appearances, mostly in westerns. Between 1947 and 1953, he made more than 30 B-movie westerns (as "Rocky" Lane) with his horse "Black Jack".
One of Allan Lane's most familiar television credits is "Lamb to the Slaughter" (1958), a memorable episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lane is a murder victim whose death is investigated by the local police.
His last roles were in voice-over acting, including providing the speech for Mister Ed (1961–1966). He was never credited on-screen for being the voice of the talking horse.
Lane was one of the movie cowboys named in the lyrics of the song “Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott” by The Statler Brothers, which became a hit single in 1974.
Comics
Rocky Lane Western #78 (December 1957), Charlton Comics, art by Rocke Mastroserio.
Allan "Rocky" Lane was often portrayed in the celebrity comics by his nickname, Rocky Lane, primarily during the heyday of Western-themed comics in the 1940s and 1950s.
The actor was featured in the comic book Rocky Lane Western, published in 1949 by Fawcett Comics. The series was published by the company until 1954, when it left the comics market following the lawsuit "National Comics Publications, Inc. v. Fawcett Publications, Inc.." Charlton Comics took over the title that same year, starting with issue #56 and ending with issue #87, published in 1959. The publisher also released a comic series starring his horse, Black Jack, titled Rocky Lane's Black Jack.
In Brazil, the Rocky Lane stories were published by Rio Gráfica Editora (RGE) in the 1960s. Between 1965 and 1968, the publisher even commissioned local stories from Primaggio Mantovi, an Italian cartoonist who became a naturalized Brazilian citizen.
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