(This piece originally appeared in American Way magazine and is here reprinted with permission of the author.)

(Author Carlton Stowers, like Smith, ran lead-off leg on the Longhorns’ 440-yard relay in the early ’60s. Thereafter, the comparison abruptly ends.)

     WORLD’S FASTEST COWBOY by Carlton Stowers

In younger days, now faded to memory, we had our innocent dreams of growing up to be like those we admired. Some hoped to sing like Elvis; others wanted to become All-American football heroes. A few even dreamed of flying off into the distant skies with the pioneering astronauts of our time. Me, I wanted to become a fast-draw, straight-shooting Western movie star or maybe an Olympic champion. Sparing you the O. Henry ending, be aware that I fell light-years short on both counts.

     Dean Smith, a fellow traveler through my boyhood ’50s, fared much better.

     It’s not likely that you New Generation readers will remember him, but those of us with slightly higher mileage and reasonably good recall do. A University of Texas track standout, Dean came home for the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki with a gold medal earned as a member of the U.S. 400-meter relay and fourth in a blanket finish 200-meter dash. After flirting briefly with professional football as a member of the Los Angeles Rams, he became a familiar face to movie and television watchers for decades.

     Things came naturally to the young West Texan, who was both a high school state sprint champion and gifted rodeo performer during his schoolboy days at Graham High School. It was at the National Theater on Saturday afternoons, watching B-movie westerns that seemed always to have titles like “Gunfight at Black Rock,” when his own dream began to take shape.

     “I was a big fan of the Westerns as a kid,” he once recalled, “and knew that someday that’s what I wanted to be part of..” And, with the help of a friend named James Baumgarner (you know him best by his screen name, James Garner), he got his big break. Garner made some calls, Dean got an audition, and soon he was riding and roping, chasing down runaway stagecoaches, and engaging in more mock fistfights than you could shake a stick at.  Lord only knows how many times he was shot and killed on screen. He quickly became one of Hollywood’s most-wanted stuntmen, stepping in for the big-name stars when the time came for the dangerous dirty work.

     If you were watching him closely, you saw him working alongside John Wayne in 10 of the Duke’s movies. And that was ex-Longhorn Dean doubling for a Who’s Who of Hollywood — Roy Rogers, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Michael Douglas, Ben Johnson, and Bruce Dern. In “McLintock.” it was Dean — red wig and flowing skirt — who stepped in to take a second-story fall for Maureen O’Hara. He was along the defenders of “The Alamo,” portrayed Kit Carson in “Seven Alone” and saved the day in “Stagecoach”, replicating a famous scene in movie history when he climbed on a galloping team of horses to avert certain disaster. And that was just for starters.

While his first love was the Westerns, their popularity ultimately faded, forcing him to seek other roles that required his special talents. The TV reporter in Stephen Spielberg’s  first feature film. “The Sugarland Express”? That was Dean. He was a member of the ship’s crew in “P.T. 109” and even had his moments in Stephen King’s “Christine.” Had the makers of “The Lonely Guy” not made a poor choice to cut the scene, you would have seen Smith, doubling star Steve Martin, as he dangled from a helicopter high above the New York skyline. 

    “But I was never a daredevil,” he always insisted.  During his career, he was injured only once, suffering a broken rib while doubling Redford in “Jeremiah Johnson.” He missed but one day of work on the film.

    And the former Southwest Conference and National AAU 100-yard dash champion, continued to run. When an Orange Bowl crowd was need for a scene in “Black Sunday,” a 50-yard match race was organized between the 44-year-old Olympian and fleet Miami Dolphins receiver Nat Moore, 20 years Smith’s junior. Dean won handily.

     Following his lengthy movie career, Dean returned home to live out his days on his 500-acre ranch where’ he’d grown up, watching over his herd of longhorns and riding his beloved palomino, Yella Fella. There would be inductions into the Longhorn Hall of Honor, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. and of course, the Stuntman’s Hall of Fame. The list of accolades bestowed on him fills an entire page in his autobiography, COWBOY STUNTMAN: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen.

   “When I first got into the movie business, he said before his death in 2023, “it was my hope to be a big cowboy star like Roy Rogers or Gene Autry or John Wayne. But5, it wasn’t to be. My job was to be a stuntman, and it was a wonderful ride.”

     Which is to say Dean Smith came a lot closer to his childhood dream that most  of us.

                                                         

 

 

More information on Dean Smith is at link https://www.texaslsn.org/mens-track-t-ringreflection