Gene Autry and Red Shirt

Decorative matt unclipped dustjacket is illustrated on the front with Gene Autry, Red Shirt and Champion the Wonder Horse, and on the rear with a list of other books in the Sandpiper series. Dustjacket has an approximate 1" tear at the top and bottom of the front as it folds to the jacket flap but is less visible as all pieces are intact, wear along the top, bottom, and rear edges. Pale grey cloth boards have an illustration and text in dark navy-blue blind stamped to front board. The back strip has only the name Gene Autry and minimal wear at the top and bottom but otherwise spine, boards and corners are in excellent condition. All corners are sharp with no bumping. Spine is straight with no cracking to the decorative endpapers that include "book belongs to" template and "the end" on rear. Text block is solid with all pages firmly attached to the stitch binding. Age tanning throughout. The title page has wrinkling and a crease across the right 1/3of the page but otherwise the interior pages are in perfect condition - clean, with no tears, cracks, or previous owner marks.

Every page has full color with intext and full-page illustrations, the "Sandpiper Series" was intended for young readers who had out grown the Little Golden Books. It was the young school age readers that were kept in mind when choosing subjects and for them to read the books to themselves.

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.

Elizabeth Beecher (1898 – 1973) was an American screenwriter best known for her work on Western-themed movies and television shows in the 1940s and 1950s but outside of film also wrote comic and children's books (including seven Little Golden Books and four Big Golden Books). She also rewrote or ghost wrote more than 100 manuscripts.

Jesse Marsh (1907 – 1966) was the first artist to produce original Tarzan comic books as up to that time all Tarzan comics were reprints from the newspaper strips. He also worked on the early Tarzan and related books for Western Publishing that saw print through Dell Comics and later Gold Key Comics. In addition, he also worked on the Gene Autry comic book for many years and prior to working for Western he did animation work for the Walt Disney Company.