Tex Fletcher

Tex Fletcher was born Geremino Bisceglia in Harrison, New York, the fifth of eight children. His parents, Michael (a stonemason) and Josephine, were Italian immigrants. Tex left home at age 15, joined a circus and traveled across the US and Canada. He settled in South Dakota, where he learned to handle horses and cattle, becoming a "real" cowboy. He returned to New York in the early 1930s, taking a job as a singing cowboy on radio station WFAS in White Plains. He eventually landed a job as the Cowboy Answer Man on WWOR radio in New Jersey. It was the height of the "singing cowboy" craze and Tex was heard by some Hollywood talent scouts. After one screen test, he was signed by Grand National Pictures, a "B" studio, to do a series of lower-budget westerns. However, soon after the completion of the first one, Six-Gun Rhythm (1939), Grand National went belly-up, leaving the only existing prints of the film unreleased. Tex literally "took the bull by the horns" and set out on a one-man promotional tour for the film of the Northeast US. He personally booked and traveled to each movie theater, opening the showing with a couple of songs, showing the film and then signing autographs for fans after the film was over. After this, however, Tex had no taste for Hollywood anymore and turned down all subsequent offers from other production companies to continue the series. During World War II Tex served in the military, reaching the rank of sergeant. At the end of the war he married, and he and his wife eventually had five children: Robert, Jayne, Kathy, George and Michael. He returned to radio, night clubs (Village Barn, Manhattan) and television (ABC, NBC, WOR), and released his last album in 1964, having recorded during his career for London, Decca, Dakota and others.