Studio publicity incorrectly puts his birthplace at Mission, Texas. Ken was a trick rider with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and later with Ringling Brothers and was also a champion rodeo rider. His movie debut, _The Man Who Won . Maynard was the first singing cowboy in the movies. During the 1930s, he dropped out of movies and went back to rodeo work. He did a few more low-budget films in the early 1940s, and then retired for good except for bit parts. His last years were miserable; poor and unremembered, he lived alone in a trailer, an alcoholic who at his death was a victim of serious malnutrition.
Brother of cowboy actor Kermit Maynard.
The Vevay Public Library at 210 Ferry Street, Vevay, Indiana 47043, maintains an archive on him.
His horse was Tarzan , a half-Arabian, half-American Saddle horse. Maynard bought him in the mid-1920s.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk , former ruler of Cambodia, idolized Maynard. He said, "He was my idol as a cowboy dispenser of justice. He had an incomparably beautiful white horse who was as intelligent as a man and behaved like an angel." Sihanouk never missed a Maynard movie in Phnom Penh, and when his father bought him two horses, "I could practice horse riding a la cowboy."
In 1933 he raced follow cowboy star Hoot Gibson in the National Air Race. He flew his J6-7 Stearman biplane. Hoot crashed the plane he was flying.
Maynards saddle, used in his films from about 1935-on sold for $23,000 at the High Noon auction in Mesa, AZ in January, 2003.
Deteriorating finances forced Maynard to work for circuses as his film career waned after 1936, including an attempt that year at his very own "Wild West Circus", also called the Diamond K Wild West Show, which operated out of his California ranch. He completed at least three stints with the Cole Brothers-Clyde Beatty Circus from 1937-1940, and worked the Arthur Brothers Circus and the Biller Brothers Circus.
The exact number of times Maynard was married is unknown. He was married at least three times but the number could be as high as five. He met his last wife Bertha, a high-wire artists, in the late 1930s while the two were employed with the Cole Brothers Circus. Maynard never had any children.
Contrary to his screen image, off-screen Maynard was thoroughly disliked by pretty much everyone he worked with. He was a foul-mouthed, bullying alcoholic who threw his weight around on the set after he achieved stardom and delighted in terrorizing the cast and crews of his pictures. He was variously described as everything from "a bad-tempered drunk" to "downright mean". This behavior, coupled with his constant and heavy drinking, eventually cost him his film career, despite having numerous opportunities to redeem himself. For the last few years of his life he lived in a broken-down house trailer on an empty lot in North Hollywood, CA, and was pretty much kept alive by his brother Kermit Maynard , who visited him regularly, bringing him food and cleaning up both Ken and the trailer, as Ken had gained a tremendous amount of weight, which caused him health problems, and was usually too drunk to take care of himself.
From 1932 through 1940 nearly every character he played was named Ken; from 1943 through 1944 all the characters he played were named either Ken Maynard, Marshal Ken Maynard or U.S. Marshal Ken Maynard.
According to Western film scholar William K. Everson, "Maynards two series at Universal were something else again. Although he was still in good physical shape, he was beginning to use doubles (either his brother Kermit or Cliff Lyons) rather more. His propensity for the bottle was increasingly making him more unreliable in films where he had to deliver dialogue. Since he was apparently a somewhat abrasive and surly character OFF-screen, his ability to project a a friendly and likable ON-screen certainly indicated some acting ability.
Maynard frequently ad-libbed, especially in scenes where he had forgotten his dialogue.
Tom London , an actor who appeared in the Guinness Book of Records as appearing in more films than any other actor, was quoted as saying about working with Maynard: "I did six pictures with him, then refused offers after that. He was mean to his horses and mean to the people he thought he could buffalo. He was often half drunk on a picture and sometimes didnt even show up.".
