Water Rails & Oil - Historic Mid & South Jefferson County

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“Western singing star Woodward
Maurice “Tex” Ritter was born in
Panola County, Texas. As a teenager
he moved to Nederland to live with
his sister and graduated from South
Park High School. His most famous
song was High Noon, the 1952
Academy Award winner as best song
of the year. He sang the title song in
the classic western that starred Gary
Cooper and Grace Kelly.
COURTESY OF THE MUSEUM OF THE GULF COAST,
PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS.
T EX
R ITTER
Tex Ritter, born Maurice Woodward Ritter on January 12, 1905, in Murvaul, Panola County,
moved to Nederland and was graduated from South Park High School in 1922. He attended law
school at the University of Texas for one year, but, influenced by folklorists J. Frank Dobie and
John Lomax, Ritter became more interested in Western music.
Ritter began singing on Radio Station KPRC in Houston in 1929, and by 1931 had joined the
Theatre Guild in New York, where he played a role in Green Grow The Lilacs, which later became
the musical Oklahoma! He starred in a Western musical radio program titled The Lone Star Rangers,
one of the first to be broadcast in New York, then moved to Hollywood in 1936 to perform in
Western movies. For six years Ritter was one of Hollywood’s top ten moneymaking stars.
Ritter’s best-known musical recordings were High Noon, released in 1952 in conjunction with a
major motion picture of the same name, and The Wayward Wind, released in 1956. He appeared
on the Grand Ole Opry and became the fifth inductee in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1964.
Ritter married Dorothy Fay Southworth in 1941 and they were the parents of two sons,
including John Ritter, star of television series and movies.
Ritter died in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 1, 1974. Funeral services were held in
Nederland, and he was interred in Oak Bluff Memorial Park in Port Neches.
just barely hung on to community status; others,
such as Nederland, Port Neches, and Groves,
were younger but strong and growing; some,
such as Port Acres and Griffing, became part of
Port Arthur when residents of Griffing Park and
Port Arthur voted approval. Their cumulative
population easily exceeded one hundred
thousand people and territorial boundaries, and
actual settlement patterns had become busy
streets; residents of what some considered
Nederland actually lived in Port Arthur’s
jurisdiction. Modern hospitals and professionals
provided advanced medical services, and
churches by the score attempted to address
42 ✦ WATER, RAILS & OIL