How a Cowboy Standoff Gave Hollywood s Gower Gulch Its Name

At the corner of Sunset and Gower, there's a strip mall that looks like it might have been a Western set in a past life. Signs for Baskin Robbins, Starbucks, and Super Cuts hover benath a larger one emblazoned in Western lettering with the words Gower Gulch. Other signs falsely advertise such frontier businesses as Livery Forge & Stable, Assayer, and Cartwrights.

The Gower Gulch was never a Western set; it was the hangout of real cowboys, waiting to be hired as working extras in Hollywood westerns.

But the Gower Gulch was never a Western set; it was the hangout of real cowboys, waiting to be hired as working extras in Hollywood westerns. The Gower Gulch earned its name in 1940, after a couple of these Hollywood cowboys riled each other up in an unscripted standoff, putting one in the ground and sending the other to a trial on homicide charges.

The intersection became headquarters for a cluster of former cowboys in the mid-1930s, when the Columbia Drugstore stood at its southeast corner. Here, at almost any time of day, one could find 25 to 50 of [the cowboys] loitering between picture jobs, explains Diana Serra Cary, whose father was one of these so-called drugstore cowboys, in her book, The Hollywood Posse :[1]

They dressed off screen pretty much as they did on. Levis or whipcord straight-legged riding pants, checkered shirts, leather or wool vests, and, of course, Stetsons and steep-heel boots, comprised their daily costume. A cowboy's hat and boots were something far more than either a necessity or a luxury - they were the hallmark of his pride in his profession .When a cowboy walked onto the average Western set from the street, all the wardrobe department had to provide was a cartridge belt and guns.

The drug store had become a congregating point for a practical reason: it had a phone booth that the manager would allow the cowboy extras to use in order to dial up Central Casting's switchboard at all hours, checking on what studios or gigs were calling out.

Drugstore cowboys awaited movieland employment at the corner of Sunset and Gower, where the manager of the Columbia Drug Co. let would-be extras use the phone booth. By the time of this photograph, in 1977, Sunset-Gower news had set up shop. Courtesy of the Roy Hankey Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.

Jerome B. Blackjack Ward was one of these cowboys, and he came with a reputation for being a seasoned rawhide from the nineteen-teens, when he had supposedly been Pancho Villa's right hand man. Since then, he'd taken up working as a horse opera actor beside other filmland cowpokes.

On one afternoon in 1940, Blackjack encountered his archenemy, John Ainsworth Tyacke - Johnny Tyke - outside the Columbia Drugstore. Cary relays the story:[2]

You've been fooling around my girl again, the short and wiry Ward said accusingly as he swaggered up to the tall, powerfully built Tyke.

What makes you so sure she's yours? Johnny countered contemptuously. Appears like she cottons up to me.

The babble of conversation among the cowboys died as suddenly as though an assistant director had just yelled, Quiet on the set! On a silent cue they formed a circle around the two men, for it was apparent to everyone there was going to be a fight and one of the two contestants was going to have his hide hung up' in defeat.

Julie's mine and I'm going to see things stay that way, Ward said icily.

You better go easy, Ward, Tyke snarled. You're grabbin' the branding iron by the hot end -

Johnny Tyke, Ward responded in a voice as cold as the .45 he suddenly produced from out of nowhere, there's six steps to hell, and according to what I know of your lousy record, you've taken all six of them!

At that, Tyke let out a roar of rage and lunged fearlessly for the gun, but Blackjack fired his first shot, catching him in the shoulder and knocking him to the ground.

That was for the first step - lying, Ward informed the fallen Tyke. And then in a loud, clear voice that every man present could hear, he proceeded to recite his six steps to hell, punctuating each one with a shot. Two - horse-stealing, three - woman-stealing, four - cowardice, five - double-crossing a friend, and six - MURDER!

Blackjack had shot Tyke in broad daylight in the middle of Hollywood, and in front of a crowd of witnesses. Blackjack had dry-gulched Johnny Tyke, said Cary's father: an old frontier term that originally meant to kill a man in cold blood and then throw his body in a dry-gulch to conceal the evidence of the murder. [3]

Cowboy extra Jerome B. Blackjack Ward pleaded not guilty - in both self-defense and insanity - after he pulled a gun on his archenemy Johnny Tyke (framed in a photograph), in February 1940. The movie cowboys of the Gower Gulch testified that Tyke was pizen mean and that somebody had to shoot him. Courtesy of the Herald-Examiner Collection - Los Angeles Public Library.

Ward talks to police during a re-enactment of his confrontation with fellow extra Johnny Tyke, February 24, 1940. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Daily News Negatives, UCLA Library.

Cowboy film extras Joe Phillips and Harry Willingham at Wards hearing on February 27, 1940. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Daily News Negatives, UCLA Library.

In the trial that followed, the witness stand and the courtroom were filled with hundreds of picturesque characters from Gower Gulch,' according to the Los Angeles Times' coverage. [4] Cauliflower-eared, Burly Yukon Jake Jackson, who came out of the Northern woods from a b'ar hunt took the witness stand in Superior Court Judge A.A. Scott's courtroom, in a dramatic scene:

Scores of Ward's colleagues of the Hollywood rangers surged into the courtroom swishing their 10-gallon hats and clanking their spurs - each determined to help their pard when th

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