An "explanation" offered by my local newspaper, probably sometime arond the mid 40s(?), for the "cross-draw" was that the frame rate of movie cameras will miss a barely competent "fast draw" completely, and that some cowboys, possibly "Red"?, started using the cross-draw to slow things down for the cameras - because they dropped their pistols too often when they tried to do it slowly enough for the cameras.

Note: I had my doubts about this theory when I read it in the Wichita Eagle; but the elders assured me I could believe anything if I read it in the newspaper. That it appeared after I started reading something beyond the "funnies" (~age 4, 1943?) and before I figured out that "elders could lie" (maybe age 9, 1948? - I was gullible) gives a possible time range for when I saw it - maybe.

The real question is whether it was Red Ryder who was the one described, although the explanation would work even if the article talked up another star. Was there an earlier cross-draw exemplar that anyone remembers?

And does anyone else remember the 2 or 3 movies in which Roy Rogers was a "member of the outlaw gang" before he made it as "the good guy." I recall fragments of one, but don't remember the name of the movie (memorable as they all were). The one I recall was a re-run after Roy was somewhat known, and I recall my dad's description that Roy's "face stuck out in the gang like a baby's butt in a whorehouse." I was old enough then to wonder how my daddy knew what happens in a ... (oh well).

John