Tex Ritter

Woodward Maurice Ritter, known professionally as Tex Ritter, was born on January 12, 1905, in Murvaul, Texas, to Martha Elizabeth (née Matthews) and James Everett Ritter. He grew up on the family farm in Panola County and attended grade school in Carthage, Texas, before enrolling at South Park High School in Beaumont. After graduating with honors, he entered the University of Texas at Austin in 1922, where he studied pre-law with a focus on government, political science, and economics. His path toward a legal career continued when he traveled to Chicago with a musical troupe and subsequently enrolled at Northwestern Law School, though his interests were shifting toward entertainment.

Ritter's early professional work in show business began in 1928, when he performed a thirty-minute program of cowboy songs on KPRC in Houston. That same year he relocated to New York City, where he secured a place in the men's chorus of the Broadway production The New Moon. His Broadway career continued through the early 1930s, during which he appeared in three plays: Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), The Round Up (1932), and Mother Lode (1934). In Green Grow the Lilacs, the production that would later serve as the basis for the musical Oklahoma!, Ritter played the cowboy Cord Elam. He portrayed Sagebrush Charlie in both The Round Up and Mother Lode.

Alongside his stage work, Ritter built a substantial presence in New York radio. In 1932, he starred in The Lone Star Rangers on WOR, the city's first broadcast Western, in which he sang and narrated stories of the Old West. The following year he wrote and starred in Cowboy Tom's Roundup on WINS, a daily children's program that aired on two additional East Coast stations for three years. He also performed on WHN Barndance, appeared on NBC Radio programs, and took part in several radio dramas, including CBS's Bobby Benson's Adventures.

In 1936, Ritter moved to Los Angeles and made his motion picture debut in Song of the Gringo for Grand National Pictures. He went on to appear as an actor in 70 films and contributed to the soundtracks of 76 others. His most widely recognized film contribution came in 1952, when he recorded "The Ballad of High Noon" for the film High Noon. He performed the song at the first televised Academy Awards ceremony in 1953, and it received the Oscar for Best Original Song that year.

Ritter's recording career produced significant commercial success. He was the first artist signed to the newly formed Capitol Records in 1942. In 1944, his recording of "I'm Wastin' My Tears on You" reached number one on the country chart and number eleven on the pop chart. A Billboard article published fourteen years later noted that the song marked the point at which he had found the style of rhythmic material that would define his musical standing.

As television expanded its audience in the 1950s, Ritter transitioned into the new medium. He began performing on Town Hall Party, a Los Angeles radio and television program, in 1953, and co-hosted Ranch Party, a syndicated version of the show, in 1957. His national television debut came in 1955 on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee, and he served as one of five rotating hosts on the program's 1961 NBC-TV spin-off, Five Star Jubilee.

Ritter was among the founding members of the Country Music Association in Nashville and played a central role in establishing the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, into which he was inducted in 1964. He relocated to Nashville in 1965 and joined radio station WSM and the Grand Ole Opry, earning lifetime membership in the Opry in 1970. That same year, he entered Tennessee's Republican primary for a United States Senate seat but lost the nomination to Representative Bill Brock.

On June 14, 1941, Ritter married actress Dorothy Fay. The couple raised two sons, Tom and John, in Los Angeles before moving to Nashville in 1965. Ritter died of a heart attack in Nashville on January 2, 1974, at the age of 68, survived by his wife and sons. His son John later died at age 54 of an aortic dissection, a condition known to be hereditary, leading the family to conclude that Ritter may have died of the same cause. John Ritter's own sons, Jason Ritter and Tyler Ritter, continued the family's presence in the acting profession.

Among the honors Ritter received, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6631 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1980, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He was part of the charter group of inductees into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage in 1998, and in 1986 he was honored posthumously with a Golden Boot Award for his work in Western films.