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THE GRASS IS BROWN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE FENCE

THE STALL AND KEN MAYNARD.

I had opened a stall in the Chapel Street Bazaar in Melbourne selling old movie memorabilia. It was a small sideline interest that I enjoyed and required nothing from me and hardly any presence. I priced the stuff, put it in locked showcases, and for a ten percent fee, Bazaar attendants who had the keys would handle the sales.

I could pay for a trip to Los Angeles by spending an hour in the junk shops on Hollywood Boulevard. In those days, you could buy in Australia an air pass for $600 that would entitle you to fly anywhere in mainland America for 21 days. When you showed that pass to Americans they couldn’t believe it. When in Los Angeles I would usually stay with Loretta Crawford and Michael Rymer. I was never a burden to them because I was hardly ever there. Their place was a base for me to store stuff. With my air pass I would fly to El Paso, Santa Fe, Amarillo and anywhere that had charity opportunity shops. These stores are universal and full of, for the most part, the same sorts of wares. I’ve never known anyone who subscribed to the Readers Digest Book Club. But someone must because those Readers Digest abridged volumes are in every op shop I have ever been in and that’s a lot. But America’s had something unique. Second hand, well-worn cowboy boots. No longer good enough for a cowpuncher but still good for a few thousand miles on the disco floors of Australia.

You could pick up a pair of these authentic shit kickers for about $12. By the time they had a price ticket on them in my stall it was around $200 and they would soon walk out the door. That cowboy phase would pass. I’ve still got about two dozen pairs in a trunk at my place as we speak. Well-worn untold stories etched into every pair of them. My imagination runs wild every time I look at them, on how they got to look the way they do.
When my bags were full I’d head back to LA, empty them at Loretta’s and Michael’s, before going back to the airport.

When I was out there searching I never stayed in motels I’d just get on a plane going somewhere and scoff their food and sleep. I collected boots, old film posters, old out of copyright cliff-hanger serials, anything that I could never get my hands on when I was kid. The stuff I sold was proof that I wasn’t the only one who had felt deprived. I had one customer who was a brain surgeon and he collected Hopalong Cassidy comics and film posters

Then I started to turn up memorabilia in Australia that was sought after in America.
The one item that springs to mind was a poster that I bought for $100. A punter came into my stall with a huge long roll of tattered paper over his shoulder. I was busy with another customer at the time. The roll of paper that resembled a roll of linoleum, was dumped on the floor and its owner said to me, ‘I haven’t unrolled it, all I know about it is it’s a cowboy poster. I want 100 bucks for it’.

As I was busy I took a punt because it seemed interestingly large and unusual. I gave the guy 100 bucks and would investigate what the paper had to say for itself later in the day. At this time, I had just sold one house and had moved the furniture from it into the other. Perfect timing as the deserted lounge room was the only place I knew big enough to lay the poster out flat. The paper was brittle and it was like an exciting, gigantic jigsaw puzzle.
One panel revealed a flared horse’s nostril and a large terrified eye. It was quite scary to be so close to. I was getting quite excited and hoping that the poster would be there in its entirety. It was, and what it was, was a Billboard sized Western Film Poster from 1933.

Its title was The Glorious Trail starring Ken Maynard. Maynard was a popular cowboy star of the period. But had it been Tom Mix or Buck Jones it would have been worth a fortune. But it had something going for it as my research revealed it to be the last silent western ever made. I rang a contact on posters that I knew in LA, told him of my find and asked what would it be worth. He said he had no idea as he had never heard of such a thing surfacing. As to worth - cowboy poster buyers were notorious for being known as tight fisted. Had it been Casablanca it would have been worth a fortune. But a cowboy poster - who knows. Anyway, I would investigate that further as I was going to be in LA for the American Film Market. One of the advantages was if you had a film showing there, because of your involvement in it, you got to attend as a tax deduction. As one usually lost over half your earnings to the taxation department, this was a good way to get some back

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