Howdy folks, it’s the third week of September 2026, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.
There may never have been a cowboy like Ben Johnson.
Except maybe Ben Johnson.
Confused? Don’t be. The father-and-son story we tell today is about a pair of Oklahomans who carved their names into three different corners of cowboy life: ranching, rodeo and Hollywood Westerns.
We remember them this week in honor of Ben Johnson Sr.’s death on September 15, 1952.
Born in Arkansas, Francis Benjamin Johnson Senior grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and, as a young man, cowboyed around Osage County.
He excelled at the work and was soon drawn to the rodeo arena.
Johnson developed into one of the top rodeo hands of his era, particularly in steer roping.
His career was interrupted by service in the United States Army during World War One, but when he returned home, Johnson resumed competing.
He roped at some of the biggest venues in the country — Cheyenne, Pendleton and even Madison Square Garden. At Cheyenne Frontier Days, Johnson won the steer roping championship three times: in 1922, 1923 and 1926.
At the Pendleton Round-Up in 1927, he improved on that, roping three steers in an average of just 18 seconds, a world record.
A fellow rodeo cowboy remembered just how hard it was to compete against Johnson: “You couldn’t beat him at anything. He could have roped off a mule and still beat nearly everybody.”
Johnson retired from rodeo competition in 1935, but he certainly didn’t retire from being a cowboy.
He managed the Chapman-Barnard ranches, with operations in Oklahoma and New Mexico, while also raising horses and cattle on his own ranch in Osage County.
It was there in northern Oklahoma that the next Ben Johnson learned the cowboy trade.
Ben Johnson Junior was born near Foraker, Oklahoma, on June 13, 1918.
He cowboyed on the Chapman-Barnard Ranch and grew up around rodeo legends like Ike Rude, Everett Shaw and Clark McIntire.
And just like his father, young Ben could rope.
He wanted to grow up to be a rodeo champion and might have spent his entire career in the arena. But Hollywood asked for his help and he answered.
It was around 1940, and the eccentric billionaire turned movie mogul Howard Hughes was preparing the movie The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell.
The production purchased a load of horses from Oklahoma and needed someone to deliver them to a filming location near Flagstaff, Arizona.
Young Ben Johnson got the job.
At the time, he was earning about 30 dollars a month cowboying, but the movie company offered him 300 dollars to deliver the horses.
Johnson eventually took the horses on to Hollywood—and stayed.
As Johnson later explained, the movie people discovered that he could “ride a horse pretty good.”
Johnson became a wrangler and stuntman. He doubled for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including John Wayne, Joel McCrea and Jimmy Stewart.
His horsemanship eventually attracted the attention of legendary director John Ford.
While working on Ford’s Fort Apache, Johnson stopped a runaway wagon carrying three men during filming.
Ford rewarded him with something Johnson probably wasn’t expecting: A seven-year acting contract.
Johnson later recalled reading the contract until he reached the part offering him as much as $5,000 a week. He stopped right there and signed the deal before Ford could change his mind.
Soon Johnson was appearing in films including Mighty Joe Young, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Wagon Master and Rio Grande.
In Rio Grande, Johnson was part of a remarkable Roman-riding sequence — standing across galloping horses in a stunt that remains impressive decades later.
But Hollywood success still left Johnson with something to prove. He wanted a world championship.
So in 1953, he stepped away from the movie business and hit the rodeo circuit.
He competed in team roping and, by the end of the season, Ben Johnson Junior had accomplished something his father would certainly have understood.
He was a world champion.
Johnson joked that the championship wasn’t exactly a financial success, saying, “I came home with a championship, and I didn’t have three dollars. All I had was a wore-out automobile and a mad wife.”
Fortunately, Hollywood took him back.
And over the following decades, Johnson appeared in scores of movies, including Shane, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Chisum, Junior Bonner, The Getaway and The Train Robbers.
In 1971, he won a role in Peter Bogdanovich’s film The Last Picture Show.
Johnson played Sam the Lion, an aging cowboy who owns a pool hall and movie theater in a fading Texas town.
The performance was quiet, restrained and deeply human, and it earned Ben Johnson the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 1972 Oscars.
It was a career pinnacle, but Johnson still appreciated his rodeo accolades even more.
He said, “I’ve won a rodeo world championship. And I’m prouder of that than anything else I’ve ever done.”
Later in life, he complained that too many actors in Westerns didn’t really understand horses or cowboy culture.
He joked, “They’re about as western as my poodle.”
But Johnson also believed the cowboy life carried responsibilities beyond riding and roping. He devoted considerable time to charity rodeos benefiting children and other causes. As we learned in a recent podcast, he also raised funds for injured rodeo cowboys like Cotton Rosser.
Ben Johnson Senior died of cancer in 1952, just one year before his son won his world championship. His legacy continues through the Ben Johnson Memorial Steer Roping event.
Ben Johnson Junior died in 1996 and was buried back home in Pawhuska.
The father-and-son legacy lives on here at The Cowboy. Each year, as part of our celebration of the National Rodeo Hall of Fame, we present the Ben Johnson Memorial Award to a living person who has contributed to the growth and betterment of pro rodeo, served youth or the community and, like Ben Johnson Jr., created a positive image for rodeo and the Western lifestyle.
Ben Johnson Sr. was inducted into the National Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1961.
Ben Johnson Jr. was inducted in our Hall of Great Western Performers in 1982.
And with that, we’ll call it a wrap and a good ride for another episode of this “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler.
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We leave you today with the words of Ben Johnson Jr.: “I can’t handle phony people, and there are a lot of them in Hollywood. I’ve built my life around the principles of honesty, realism and respect, and if the people in Hollywood are so pumped up on themselves they can’t deal with that, I say the hell with ’em. I think I’ve won the respect of some people over there, and I think I managed to stay real.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
