A Legendary Hollywood Screenwriter Gets His Final Byline

 February 6, 2024

   In the summer of 2003 my agent called me to tell me the Westerns Channel wanted to start running True West Moments between movies with me as the host. It was a dream come true, but the odd thing is I didn't have an agent and the guy who was calling me, as my agent, was actually a legendary Hollywood screenwriter who wrote one of my favorite movies, Junior Bonner. As it turns out, Jeb Rosebrook was being facetious about being my agent, but it was an inside joke between us that he never got tired of ribbing me about.

My "agent" Jeb Rosebrook and I

at the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books

   Around this same time, Jeb, and his son Stuart, pitched me on doing a feature for the magazine on "The Day Tom Mix Died." The two of them would bring together all the cultural and current events going on in the world on that fateful day in October of 1940. I immediately told them it was a go and that Jeb was on assignment. As often happens, other projects—and life—got in the way and then Jeb got sick, and he never completed the piece (he passed in 2018). In our next issue, his son Stuart and I have completed the project in his honor and it was a labor of love to do it.

The cover of the March-April issue

going to press this week

   We had some great assistance from Mike Lanning and Bob White, who both know a thing or two about the King of the Cowboys, Tom Mix.

Bob White, who owns the 1937 Supercharged Cord that belonged to Tom Mix, seen here on his '56 Chevy couch in the showroom in the lower level of his house where he has three other cars, including the Mix car on display! The dog's name is Maggie.

Michael Lanning wearing Tom Mix's hat

   As for becoming my agent, here's what happened: back in 2003 Jeb flew to Denver to meet with a Westerns Channel producer, Jeff Hildebrandt, about a documentary series on gunfighters that Jeb pitched to run on the channel. Jeff turned down the offer but asked Jeb to relay to me that he had a gig for me. So, when Jeb got back to Phoenix he called me and told me he was calling as my agent and that was the start of a long running joke that neither one of us ever got tired of.

   Ride on, my good friend.

Jeb, Stuart, Paul Hutton and myself at an Arizona-New Mexico History Conference in Flagstaff

June, 2017

"I'm Bob Boze Bell and this has been a True West Moment."

—My signature signoff on TWMoments