By Hilary Chigro
The restored 19th-century ballroom above Pizza Madness in Cañon City was lit by powerful spotlights. In front of a set made to look like an Old West trading post stood three men and one woman decked out in blue checked gingham with brown leather vests. The woman started singing in a rich full voice that filled the room.
Then two men came running out of the “trading post.” The first one began talking and I strained to hear what he was saying about a band called the “Rockin’ M Wranglers.” A woman in the corner of the room held up a sign reading “WILD APPLAUSE.” The audience of about fifty people—men, women and a fair amount of children—began whooping and hollering. I wasn’t sure what I was applauding—and neither was the audience.
We were watching the taping of the pilot episode of Cowboy, a variety show hosted by Cañon City writer and producer Don Bendell, together with his onstage sidekick Buck Taylor, and C&W singer Rex Allen, Jr. But only the sound engineer could hear Bendell, Allen, and Taylor as they recorded their show for Think B.I.G., Bendell Intermedia Group. “[‘Cowboy’] will be “like Hee-Haw on steroids,” Bendell told me, after the tape stopped rolling.
According to his frequent news releases and Web site, www.donbendell.com, Bendell is the author of numerous war and Western novels as well as the director of a low-budget, straight-to-video martial arts movie, The Instructor (screenplay by Don Bendell, starring Don Bendell, stunts by Don Bendell). He is also a former Green Beret officer, master karate instructor, tracker of lost persons, and a poet.
How does he juggle it all? “Be like a postage stamp,” he says: “Stick with it until the job is done.”
Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, Bendell says he started drinking alcohol at age 12, when he was already smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. He smoked his first joint of marijuana at age 13. By the time he reached 15, he was a full-fledged alcoholic. He flunked out of ninth grade and had to repeat it. During his youth, he broke into houses and stole cars. After graduating, somehow, from Tallmadge High School in 1966, he joined the Army, where his sometimes reckless, sometimes courageous “try-anything-once” attitude moved him to volunteer for everything that he could.
Leaving the Army in 1970 as a captain, he worked as a disc jockey, store detective, and planning coordinator for a community action agency. He also began freelancing articles for martial arts magazines.
In 1980, after his 11-year marriage to his first wife, Linda, ended, Bendell completed The Instructor. Shortly after, in 1981, he married his current wife, Shirley, the movie’s associate producer, negative cutter, stunt woman, and supporting actress, and adopted her three children to add to his three from his previous marriage.
Don and Shirley moved to Cañon City where he
could live out his Old
West dreams. He continued to teach martial arts and work on his film projects.
In 1989, he decided to leave the film industry and start writing books.
Both of the Bendells are involved with the martial arts, but Don Bendell said at a recent reading of his work that he was three “secret” sayings for a good marriage:
1. “Yes, dear,”
2. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault—I should have been more sensitive.”
3. “Let’s go to bed, hon. I just want to cuddle.”
Bendell jokes that he often wakes his wife from a deep sleep just to read her his latest passage that he has written, thinking it is excellent. She will respond that she looks forward to hearing it after he cleans it up and it sounds better. He feels that only people who love you will tell you the truth—even if it isn’t what you want to hear. He advises that a person should marry someone who believes in them—that it can be the most important factor in a relationship.
