Actors - Alfred St. John

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	Actors - Alfred St. John

Alfred St. John (September 10, 1893 - January 21, 1963) in his persona of Fuzzy Q. Jones basically defined the role and concept of "comical sidekick" to cowboy heroes from 1930 to 1951. St. John also created a character, "Stoney," in the first of a continuing Western film series, The Three Mesquiteers, that was later played (at a low point in his own career) by John Wayne.

St. John entered silent films in about 1913 and soon rose to co-starring and starring roles in short comic films from a variety of studios. His uncle, Fatty Arbuckle, may have helped him in his early days at Mack Sennett Studios, but talent kept him working. He was slender, sandy-haired, handsome and a remarkable acrobat.

During the sound era St. John was mainly seen as an increasingly scruffy and bearded comical sidekick. He seems to have begun supporting Fred Scott and later Jack Randall, but most of his films were made for Poverty Row studio Producers' Releasing Corporation (PRC). He played "Fuzzy Q. Jones" in the Billy the Kid series starring Bob Steele, the Lone Rider series starring former opera singer George Houston and later Bob Livingston, and the Billy the Kid aka Billy Carson series starring Buster Crabbe. The Fuzzy character was the main box-office draw in these films when shown in England and Europe. In fact, in Germany the film titles always featured Fuzzy, rather than whatever cowboy hero he was paired with. These ultra-low-budget Westerns took only a bit more than a week to film, so that Crabbe and St. John made 36 films together in a surprisingly short time.

In each of his films from circa 1940 to 1951, a bit of time was set aside for St. John to do a sort of solo comedy act, emphasizing amazing pratfalls and acrobatics. He might "find" a bicycle on a fairground set, and do an astonishing sequence of acrobatic stunts on the cycle, or he might try to capture a rat, bat, skunk, gopher or bug with hilarious and chaotic consequences. Another stunt which he used in nearly every Western was virtually his trademark: he would mount his horse in apparently the standard manner, but somehow wind up sitting facing backward, and often would ride off with the hero in this unusual orientation.

When Crabbe left PRC (according to interviews, in disgust at their increasingly low budgets) St. John was paired with new star Lash LaRue. Ultimately, St. John made more than 80 Westerns as Fuzzy. His last film was released in 1951. From that time on until his death in 1963 in Lyons, Georgia, he made personal appearances at fairs and rodeos, and travelled with the Tommy Scott Wild West Show.

Reference:

Those Great Cowboy Sidekicks, by David Rothel (WOY Publishing, NC, 1984, 2001) ISBN 0810817071.

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