Gene Autry Goes to the Circus

Decorative matt front board has a photograph of Gene Autry and the rear board has a list of other titles in the Tell-a-Tale series. Boards are in very good condition with only some edge wear along all sides of the rear board. There is wear and bumping to the top and bottom of the spine and all four corners. The spine and hinges are firmly attached, straight with no slanting and no cracking at decorative endpapers. Text block is firm with all pages neatly attached to the staple binding. Age tanning throughout and some darkening along the page edges. The interior pages are in very good condition with no tears, chips, cracks, or previous owner markings. Every page has an intext or full-page color illustration. Unpaginated but approximately 28 pages

Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (1907 – 1998) gained fame by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades, beginning in the early 1930's but he was also an actor, musician, singer, composer, rodeo performer and baseball team owner. While he was a major celebrity at the start of World War II, he still served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. At the time (1942) Republic Pictures held his contract and threatened to promote Roy Rogers in Gene's absence if he enlisted, which it did, but he enlisted anyway. He became a tech sergeant and holding a private pilot certificate he was determined to become a military pilot and earned his Service Pilot rating in June 1944, serving as a C-109 transport pilot with the rank of flight officer. He was assigned to a unit of the Air Transport Command, flying as part of the dangerous airlift operation over the Himalayas between India and China, nicknamed the Hump. His years of military service did nothing to stop the continual rise of his career when the war was over.

John Ushler was an artist of adventure and western strips for Dell/Western publishing from 1952 to 1962. He then went to work for the Disney Comic Strip Department until 1972.