Lloyd "Arkansas Slim" Andrews was best known for film roles as a sidekick to Western stars in the 1940s through the early 1950s and , after that, as a host of children's television programs. Before his move to Hollywood, he had been a comedian and musician in tent shows traveling throughout the mid-South. In his later years, he was a featured guest at film festivals. He was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and a lifetime member of Musicians Local 47 of Hollywood. Lloyd Andrews, also known as "Arkansas Slim" was born on December 8, 1906, the seventh son of Norma Blaus and George Willis Andrews, who had a farm on Spavinaw Creek in rural Benton County seven miles from the town of Gravette. The elder Andrews' passion for music was passed on to their children, and the youngest son learned to play fiddle from his father and picked up the rudiments of guitar from his mother. He had a few lessons on the pump organ but never learned to read music. He taught himself to play piano. The father and sons performed as a family band for local events such as pie suppers, literaries, and similar occasions. Andrews received his formal education at Meadow Brook School, a country school near Gravette, where he completed the eighth grade. He married Lucille Kinsey of Pineville, Izard Co., in 1929. The couple had one son, John, who was also an actor. Lucille worked as the leading lady with her husband when they were on the tent show circuit. In 1924, at the age of seventeen, Andrews, who at a slender 6'8" was now called Slim, had caught the attention of Watso the Musical Wizard, a traveling showman. With money earned from raising strawberries, Andrews had purchased a 1923 Model T Ford and customized the car by lengthening the body and adding ten horns and eleven lights. The horns were rigged to play "Pretty Little Blue-Eyed Sally", a popular song of the time. Watso needed transportation as well as an assistant and envisioned Andrews` unique car as a way to promote his shows. Watso developed Andrews` comedic talents into a Toby country boy act, also teaching him to play handsaw, banjo, and how to be a one man band. Leaving Watso after two years, Andrews had a successful solo touring act, which he gave up to accept an offer to be the Toby comedian with one fo the larger itinerant tent shows. These shows where a form of rural vaudeville in the early decades of the twentieth century and were centered around the figure of Toby, a slapstick comedian costumed with red wig, freckles, blacked out teeth, bare feet,and baggy clothes. Slim was proficient at a number of conventional musical instruments, but what distinguished him from his fellow musicians was the ability to make music on funnels, tire pumps, rubber gloves, fishing poles, and many other such objects. In his first Hollywood film, Rhythm of The Rio Grande , starring Tex Ritter, Slim played four instruments at the same time. Ritter had discovered Andrews during a 1939 tour when the two were playing in competing shows in Monticello, AR. Tex having no audience, asked where everyone was, and was told that they were all down at the tent show to see "Toby". So naturally Tex went to see Toby's show also. This meeting resulted in an invitation to Hollywood. Slim was in ten Ritter Westerns in 1940 and 1941. Here he joined up with Josephine his "trusty" mule, and rode the Western film range in 34 films. Co- starring with Tex, Tom Keene, Red Barry, and Gene Autry. He then became host to children's television shows in California and later Pittsburg Kansas. Slim also toured with Bob Wills in 1947. Slim and Lucille returned to Gravette in 1970. Slim and Lucille thought so much of Tex Ritter, and would tell everyone that Tex was a wonderful person. Slim said that the movies were "hard work", but that he really enjoyed making them. I am so glad that he did! Thank you Slim and Lucille for all the happy memories. Oh yes, and you too Josephine. "Well I'll be a boll weevil's adenoids"!