Republic Tries to Draw Kids to the Matinee

To promote 1950’s Singing Guns, Republic Pictures had crooning star Vaughn “Old Leather Tonsils” Monroe pitch cereal in an ad that ran in Sunday Comics sections and urged theater managers to hold coloring contests for kids with art that prominently featured Sedona’s red rocks. Prior to taming the celluloid West, Monroe scored Hit Parade smashes with “Mule Train,” “Riders in the Sky,” and the traditional campfire ditty “Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!”––Joe McNeill