Calling the Fort Home

Everyone has to be from somewhere and it's very easy to believe that famous people came from magic places like Paris, Rome, New York, Los Angeles... anywhere exciting, but never from here. Here, being Fort Smith, Arkansas USA. But surprise! Below, in no particular order  is a growing list of people who once turned left on Grand Avenue, tried to find a parking place on Garrison and cooled their heels in Creekmore Park before taking off and finding fame and fortune in another part of the world. Who knows if they are proud of their Fort Smith roots, but we are sure proud of them!

Katharine Alexander

  Katharine Alexander was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas on September 22, 1898. All of the children in her family received a college education, something that was unusual in Arkansas at the time. Her mother was a Duncan and was 1/8 part Cherokee, which she was proud of. 

  She was a part of Mrs. Von Stell's?? Stock Company in Detroit along with Katharine Cornell and Helen Hayes. All three went on to conquer Broadway. In the scramble to find actors with good voices with the coming of "talkies," Miss Alexander moved to Hollywood with her mother and her small daughter Barbara Alexander Brady at the end of the 20s. 

  Miss Alexander had been married to William A. Brady Junior, whose father William A. Brady (1863-1950) had produced some of the great shows on Broadway at the turn of the Century. Brady Junior was the brother of Academy Award winning actress Alice Brady (1892-1939). The whole Brady family was responcibile for starting Brady Junior's boyhood friend Humphrey DeForest Bogart off in show business, giving him work in plays that Senior and Junior were producing and directing on Broadway. 

  Junior who eventually lost his fight with the bottle and died in a tragic fire in 1935, was a producer of radical stage productions, the most famous being Street Scenes, a play by Elmer Rice. Her daughter Barbara Alexander Brady had a brief stage career before tragically dying around the age of 30.

  Katharine Alexander was never the lead in a film, but always delivered a solid performance in a supporting role. She told her niece that she never liked making films and missed Broadway, but the money was too constant and good and she was the sole provider for her mother and child after her divorce from Brady. She appeared in dozens of movies throughout the 30s and 40s and finished up her career in the original British production of Death of a Salesman on the London stage in the 1950s. She returned to Fort Smith, content with the management of her sister's businesses.
   Miss Alexander was a very warm person despite the fact that her personal life was filled with loss. She carried on like the trooper she was, dying January 10, 1981, at the home of her other sister in Tryon, North Carolina.

  Miss Alexander was the maternal aunt of Miss Gordon Kelley who graciously contributed to her biography.

Laurence Luckinbill                       

  Larry Luckinbill, like the rest of us, probably grew up watching I Love Lucy on Fort Smith's one TV station, first Channel 22 and then KFSA Channel 5. Little did he know that one day he would leave the Fort and love the real Lucy. He didn't have a choice, he married her daughter Lucie Arnaz in 1980. 

But marrying Lucie is not the whole story. Anyone who has seen Larry Luckinbill act knows talent is what keep him working decade after decade. Following his birth in Fort Smith in 1940 (or 1934, depending on who you believe) and a childhood on Dodson Avenue, he started in TV in the old soap opera The Secret Storm in 1954. Larry Luckinbill quietly kept working becoming a favorite on the New York stage too. His big film break came in 1970 with his role of Hank in The Boys in the Band. He is a cult icon to Trekkies everywhere since he starred as Spock's spacey half-brother Sybok in the 1989 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Larry has specialized in one man shows such as his sensitive portrayal of Lyndon Johnson, Clarence Darrow and Teddy Roosevelt. He displayed his talents in last year's Dash and Lilly on TV and is currently riding high as Herr Schultz in the Broadway revival of Cabaret.  He wrote and co-produced the Emmy winning Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, a special 2 hour NBC movie. In 1997, through his company, Education Through Entertainment Larry and Lucie produced two CD-ROMs, Lucy & Desi: The Scrapbooks, and How to Save Your Family History, a 10-Step Guide by Lucie Arnaz.

Probably because of his very busy career, Laurence Luckinbill has never received the home town honor that he so richly deserves, but maybe one day he will slow down enough that we can give him the proper respect that he so richly deserves.

Jerry Keller

Jerry Keller was born in Fort Smith on June 20th 1937.  He had a run away hit in 1959 with the song Here Comes Summer. He later on appeared in the movie You Light Up My Life and was last seen as Steve Warner in the movie If Ever I See You Again in 1978. Please contact us at editor@efortsmith.com if you have further information on Jerry Keller.

Rudy Ray Moore                             (warning! Some of the links in this bio are not suitable for kids)

The word Dolemite may not mean much at the top of Fianna Hills, but it's legendary on the north side of town.  Rudy Ray Moore was born in Fort Smith around 1937 and moved to Cleveland in the 1950s after a stint in the Army. There he honed his comedy skills while watching Caldonia Young or Cal Donia as she was sometimes called. Rudy Ray moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and starting working as a standup comedian. Many credit Redd Foxx with being the first to do "blue" material, but actually Fort Smith's own Rudy Ray Moore was the first to do "four letter" comedy. 

While his material  is so XXX rated as to slick the whiskers off your chin, it is really based in the age old "toast" form of African American entertainment, which is best known today in the form of "Your Mama's so ugly..." taunts that can be heard while driving past most junior high schools. For a couple of centuries, a "toast" also would include memorized rhymes, telling a story usually for the purpose of glorifying male bragging rights concerning women, fighting, drinking, and sexual prowess.

Rudy Ray's party record Eat Out More Often, made in the early 1970s was a landmark album, the first with those XXX rated 4 letter words. Not only did it pave the way for Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock, but costing only $249.00 to make (in the living room of Rudy Ray's house) it provided Moore with enough money to move into the movie business.

In 1970 Rudy Ray was working in a record store in Los Angeles, that later burned down in the riots. A wino named Rico would come in and for a little change to buy soup, tell Moore stories of the baddest of the bad, a character named Dolemite, named after a vitamin. Moore took these stories and worked them into his standup routine and some of his 18 comedy albums. But with the success of Eat Out More Often, he decided to put all his money into a movie, Dolemite, starring himself in the title role as Dolemite the karate fighting, story telling, woman loving pimp that was brought in to clean out the drug dealer that had framed him and sent him to prison years earlier. This 1974, low, low, low budget Blaxploitation movie hit the ground running and is considered today as a corner stone of African American film making. Audiences lined up around the block to see this R rated movie, so crudely filmed that the boom microphone can be seen hanging over the actors in most scenes. Made for $140,000 and filmed in and around Rudy Ray's house, Rudy Ray wrote, produced, directed, starred, cooked the meals, decorated the sets and took out the trash at the end of the day. 

Dolemite was quickly followed by a sequel, Human Tornado, Petey Wheatstraw - The Devil's Son-in-Law, The Avenging Godfather (Also known as The Disco Godfather and The Avenging Disco Godfather), Monkey Hustle, and Rude (Also known as The Gospel According to Rudy Ray Moore). This was the end of  the era of Blaxploitation movies, mostly due to the closing of many black neighborhood theaters all over the country.

Today, Rudy Ray Moore is known as The Godfather of Rap, King of the Party Record, and The Master of the Pimpin' Lifestyle. He still crisscrosses the country doing standup and appears in the new movie Big Money Hustlas. He often appears with modern rappers who acknowledge that his "toast" rhymes were the forerunners of rap. At 63 Rudy Ray shows no signs of slowing down and it's clear the honors for his pioneering work are just beginning to accumulate since in his own words he says, "I call myself great, Not near-great. I am great. People don't believe it until they see me. I always give them more than they come for."

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