Malcolm Hutton '47
In answer to the call for our own biographies to put on the Express and since it fit in with the picture of the ice wagon, here it is.

I was born in Sheridan in November of 1928. My parents were Ruth and Bruce Hutton.

In the early 30's my dad developed a bad case of asthma which was to last his lifetime with very little relief. The doctors suggested that he move to Arizona where the weather is hot and dry. He moved there but it didn't do much good. He decided to move on to California where the weather was much nicer. Jobs were scarce during the big depression and my mother was bored. She met a lady who had a young daughter about my age and was in the movies. She helped my mom get me into the movies.

I was just an extra, once in a while in costumes, and not many talking parts. In 1937 I was in a movie with Carol Lombard and Fredrick March. I rode a bicycle between them and threw ice chips at Frederic March from the ice wagon. I was going through some old pictures and found the ice wagon and sent it with the ice company stories. It is not a Sheridan ice wagon but rather what Hollywood thought they looked like.

I was in a lot of movies but they rarely told us the name or they changed the name so we didn't get to see many of them. I was in the original Tom Sawyer, and I played sand lot football in Knute Rockne, staring Pat O'Brien and Ronald Reagan as the Gipper. I was in The Three Stooges At the Circus. I was in one of the many Roy Rogers films. I finally got my big chance with a staring role in a 1941 movie called Reg'lar Fellers. Alfalfa Switzer was the only known star in it and it was a "take off" on the old Our Gang Comedies (Little Rascals.) The movie "bombed" and that was pretty much the end of my movie career.

We left Hollywood in 1945 when I was a sophomore in high school. I graduated from Sheridan High School in 1947. I went to the University of Wyoming and got a BS in agriculture in 1951. I went home to Sheridan to work on the folks' sheep ranch northeast of Sheridan. We lived on Lower Prairie Dog for seven years and moved to town when Gary, the oldest of our four sons, started school. Our other children were Randall, Craig, and Charles. We ran sheep and changed over to cattle in the 60's.

We moved back to Lower Prairie Dog in 1968 and lived there for 20 years. In the fall of 1970, our son Randy was critically injured in an auto accident near the ranch. A neighbor, Trembath, had run over his son in a tractor accident and on the premise that he might still be alive, he put him in the truck and drove as fast as he could to town. But when he got to our place, Randy pulled out on he road and was hit nearly head on. Randy had a brainstem injury and has been in a wheelchair ever since. After many months in hospitals, we finally brought him home and cared for him for 10 years.

He couldn't talk and needed 24/7 care. In the early 80's, after the other children had left home, we took Randy to a nursing home for young people in Denver. The care was not too good but there were a hundred kids there who were trying to survive MS, Muscular Distrophy, drug overdoses, auto accidents, sports accidents, and suicide attempts. It was a fun atmosphere for Randy as they smuggled in beer and marijuana and ran it like a fraternity house. They went broke three times, and when they finally turned it into a rehab facility, we had to move Randy. He is now at a nursing home in Lakewood near west Colfax. He likes it there and is doing as well as possible. We spend so much time in Denver that we finally bought a condo so we can come and go.

We are still running cattle on the ranches northeast of Sheridan. We do not run sheep anymore. We have good help and some of the best commercial cattle around. Matt Yalowizer runs the ranch for us. We sold the house on the ranch but kept the land and moved to town to the old Burns family home at 334 South Main Street. It is an old three story home, built in 1902, and we remodeled it in 1999 so it is comfortable for us to live in even though it is too big for just two people. Our oldest son Gary is an executive with UPS in Denver and Craig and Charles are partners in the Pony Bar and Grill.

We have 3 grandchildren in college and the fourth will start college next year.

Malcolm '47