Lash Larue
Born: June 14, 1916
Died: May 21, 1996
In 1975, B-Western star Lash Larue was arrested for marijuana possesion in Georgia. Larue's signature bull whip was found in his car. The charge was later thrown out on a technicality in a split decision by the Appeals court.
According to Wikipedia:
Lash Larue began acting in films in 1944 as Al La Rue and was given the name Lash because of the 18-foot-long bullwhip he used to help bring down the bad guys. The popularity of his first role as the Cheyenne Kid, a sidekick of singing cowboy hero Eddie Dean, not just brandishing a whip but using it expertly to disarm villains, paved the way for La Rue to be featured in his own series of Western films. He starred in quirky B-westerns from 1947 to 1951, at first for Poverty Row studio PRC, and later for producer Ron Ormond. La Rue developed his image as a cowboy hero dressed all in black and spoke with a "city tough-guy" accent, somewhat like that of Humphrey Bogart, whom he resembled. He had an imitator, Whip Wilson, who starred in his own brief series, and even Roy Rogers started picking up and using a bullwhip in some of his Republic Studios westerns made in the same period.
La Rue also made frequent personal appearances at small-town movie theaters that were showing his films during his heyday of 1948-1951, becoming the only cowboy star most children of the time ever got to see and meet in person. His skillful displays of stunts with his whip, done live on movie theater stages, also convinced young western fans that there was at least one cowboy hero who could do in real life the same things he did on screen.
La Rue was a born-again Christian who was baptized at Shreveport Baptist Tabernacle by pastor Jimmy G. Tharpe. La Rue often returned to his native Louisiana, where he was a regular at the jam sessions at the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans. In his autobiography, Backbeat, drummer Earl Palmer recalls:
"Lots of white people wanted to come to the Dew Drop. Most were turned away, but they let a few in. Every time the cowboy actor Lash La Rue came in town, he came by. He played a hell of a guitar and was a regular guy that people liked."
La Rue was also noted for instructing Harrison Ford in how to use the bullwhip for the Indiana Jones movies. (It's widely reported that Ford is a toker, but he has never publicly admitted it.)
