Why Hollywood Cowboy Tim McCoy Went to War Twice
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, before Tim McCoy became one of Hollywood’s biggest Western movie stars and the face on the Wheaties box, he was a real Wyoming cowboy, rancher, cavalry officer, and friend of Buffalo Bill Cody. McCoy appeared in nearly 100 Western films during Hollywood’s golden age and later served in both World War I and World War II as a U.S. Army officer. For our ongoing Hollywood Goes to War series, Historian Roger McGrath shares the remarkable story of the cowboy actor who lived the life most movie stars only pretended to live.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.6 | And we continue with our American stories, |
| 0:17.4 | and it's time for another Hollywood Goes to War story from Roger McGrath. |
| 0:21.9 | Tim McCoy was a major film star most noted for his roles in American westerns. |
| 0:27.0 | He was so popular with youngsters as a cowboy star that he appeared on the cover of Wheaties |
| 0:32.0 | cereal boxes. Roger McGrath is the author of Gunfighters, Holland, and Vigilantes, |
| 0:37.0 | violence on the frontier, a U.Se, and Vigilantees, Violence on the Frontier, |
| 0:38.4 | a U.S. Marine and former history professor at UCLA. |
| 0:41.9 | Dr. McGrath has appeared on numerous History Channel documentaries, and he's a regular |
| 0:46.1 | contributor for us here at our American stories. |
| 0:49.0 | Here's McGrath with the story of Tim McCoy. |
| 0:53.1 | From the late 1920s and through the 1930s, |
| 0:57.0 | Tim McCoy was not only one of the top cowboy actors, |
| 1:00.0 | he actually was a cowboy. |
| 1:02.0 | He appeared in his first movie, The Thundering Herd in 1925, |
| 1:06.0 | and his last Requiem for a Gunfighter in 1965. |
| 1:12.4 | All together, he appeared in 93 movies. |
| 1:15.2 | In 1973, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame |
| 1:20.6 | at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. |
| 1:25.9 | It was also in 1973 that he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. |
| 1:31.5 | What is less known about Tim McCoy is a service in the U.S. Army in both World War I and World War II. |
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