inside cover of the record album was white so those with no projector and screen could simply shine a flashlight through the slides and view them on the cover. He also devised more than a dozen clever uses for a common wire clothes hanger and demonstrated several of them during a TV show guest appearance. Publicity and promotion Hollywood stars usually left their publicity and promotion to the studios that employed them, but Smiley Burnette took charge of his promotion personally. He was highly aware of his box-office value and shrewdly merchandised his name and likeness. He organized a national Smiley Burnette Fan Club, aimed mostly at the juvenile audience, and sold autographed photos and souvenirs to club members. He made additional money by making personal appearances at theaters showing his films. Burnette's base of operations was Springfield, Missouri, where he produced and hosted a nationally syndicated 15-minute radio program, The Smiley Burnette Show, through RadiOzark Enterprises. He also made regular appearances on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee from Springfield. Gene Autry retired from motion pictures in 1953, and other cowboy stars had either left the movies or were winding down their screen careers. With the studios no longer interested in making B Westerns, Burnette turned to broadcasting and made guest appearances on many country music radio and TV shows, including Louisiana Hayride, the Grand Ole Opry, and Ranch Party. In early 1957, when quiz shows were popular, he filmed a pilot for a proposed ABC-TV series to originate from Springfield called Pig 'N Poke, a quiz show with a country theme, although ABC did not buy the show. Burnette enjoyed cooking, and in the 1950s, he opened a restaurant chain called The Checkered Shirt, the first of the A-frame drive-ins. The first location was in Orlando, Florida, and two locations still exist in California (Redding and Escondido), though they are no longer owned by the Burnette family. As the 1960s began, Burnette continued to make personal appearances at drive-ins, fairs, hospitals, town squares, and rodeos. Among other venues, he once appeared with Dewey Brown and the Oklahoma Playboys at a Friday-night dance at Jump's Roller Rink in Fairfax, Oklahoma. In the mid 1960s, he portrayed railway engineer Charley Pratt on the CBS-TV programs Petticoat Junction (106 episodes) and Green Acres (seven episodes). Death Just after filming wrapped for the fourth season of Petticoat Junction, Burnette became ill. On February 16, 1967,