Happy birthday to Gene Autry, born on this day in 1907! 🤠🎬🤖

Before science fiction and the Western became regular genre-mates, Autry saddled up for something wonderfully strange.

In 1935, The Phantom Empire sent the Singing Cowboy into a futuristic adventure filled with robots, ray guns, television screens, and a technologically advanced civilization hidden thousands of feet beneath his Radio Ranch. The 12-chapter cliffhanger serial is often credited as the first science-fiction Western, and it helped launch Autry as a movie star.

There’s an Oklahoma connection behind the camera, too. Lawton-born William Witney worked on the serial as an assistant director before going on to become one of the great masters of movie serials, Westerns, and action filmmaking.

And we’re lucky to have some pieces of this wonderfully weird chapter of movie history in the OKPOP collection, including signed sheet music, a promotional flyer, a lobby card, and one particularly memorable robot head that our team affectionately calls “Cowbot.” 🤖🤠 (courtesy of Boyd & Donna Magers)

Cowbot has an even earlier Hollywood history. The robots seen in The Phantom Empire were originally created for the 1933 MGM musical Dancing Lady, starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, two stars with Oklahoma ties, before finding new life beneath Autry’s Radio Ranch.

A singing cowboy. An underground empire. Robots. Ray guns. Cliffhangers. And more than a little Oklahoma connection.

That’s pop culture history.

Happy birthday, Gene! 🎂⭐

#GeneAutry #ThePhantomEmpire #OKPOP #western #scifi ...

Happy birthday to Tulsa-born Annie Clark, better known as St. Vincent, an artist who didn’t just rethink what an electric guitar could sound like. She helped rethink what an electric guitar could be.

In 2016, Clark partnered with Ernie Ball Music Man to create the St. Vincent signature guitar, developing a completely new, angular design around her playing style, ergonomics, and life onstage. The collaboration resulted in Ernie Ball’s first mass-produced guitar designed by a woman, an important milestone in an industry where women had rarely been given the opportunity to shape an instrument from the ground up.

And the creativity went all the way down to the color: Clark personally hand-mixed the original custom “Vincent Blue” finish herself.

The result is equal parts musical instrument, industrial design, and creative statement, unmistakably St. Vincent.

That’s the kind of Oklahoma creativity we love: don’t just master the tools you’re given. Imagine a new one.

Happy birthday, St. Vincent. 🎸💙

#StVincent #AnnieClark #Tulsa #GuitarDesign ...

Remembering Will Sampson on his birthday today. ❤️

Born in Okmulgee on September 27, 1933, Sampson was Muscogee (Creek), a gifted visual artist, rodeo competitor, and eventually an unforgettable presence on screen. Before Hollywood knew his name, his family knew him as “Sonny,” an artist who was almost always drawing, painting, or creating.

His first film role became his most iconic: Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He went on to appear in films including The Outlaw Josey Wales, Orca, Fish Hawk, Poltergeist II, and Firewalker.

But Sampson’s legacy reaches far beyond the roles he played. He also worked to create opportunities for other Native performers, helping establish the American Indian Film Institute and later founding the American Indian Registry for the Performing Arts to help connect Native actors with opportunities in the entertainment industry.

As Wes Studi remembered in an OKPOP oral history, Sampson was “an avatar of things to come.”

Will Sampson walked through a door Hollywood had rarely opened to someone like him, and then worked to hold that door open for others.

Today, we remember an Oklahoma artist, actor, trailblazer, and the generations of Native creatives whose paths he helped widen.

Read more about Will Sampson’s remarkable story in our blog post, “From Okmulgee to Hollywood: How Will Sampson Opened Doors for Native Actors,” at OKPOP.org.

#WillSampson #OKPOP #NativeFilm #Muscogee #OklahomaFilm ...

We’re so proud of our friends and neighbors at the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Muskogee! 🎶✨

Today, their newly renovated museum is officially OPEN!

We’re always excited to celebrate the people and organizations across our state who are preserving Oklahoma’s incredible musical legacy, sharing these stories with new generations, and creating places where music, history, and community come together.

Congratulations to the entire Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame team on this exciting new chapter. We can’t wait to come back! 💛

#OklahomaMusic #OklahomaMusicHallOfFame #OklahomaHistory #MusicHistory @okmusichalloffame ...

Some people make the music. Others make sure the world gets to hear it. 🎶

Today, OKPOP remembers Oscar “Ozzie” Cadena, born on this day in 1924 in Oklahoma City.

As a producer and A&R man for Savoy Records and later Prestige Records, Cadena helped document an extraordinary generation of American music, working on recordings by artists including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Charles Mingus, Milt Jackson, Jimmy Scott, John Lee Hooker, Yusef Lateef, and many others.

In 1955, Cadena produced the landmark Bohemia After Dark sessions, featuring some of Cannonball Adderley’s earliest recordings alongside Nat Adderley, Horace Silver, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, and Kenny Clarke.

But Cadena’s impact extended far beyond the recording studio. He established Choice Records, and later became an important champion of the Southern California jazz scene. He helped bring jazz back to the legendary Lighthouse Café, booked musicians there and at other area venues, founded the Hermosa Beach Jazz Alumni, and helped preserve the community’s jazz history for generations to come.

On what would have been his 102nd birthday, we remember an Oklahoma-born creative whose work often happened behind the scenes, but whose fingerprints can still be heard throughout American music.

Happy birthday, Ozzie Cadena. 🎷

#OKPOP #OzzieCadena #Jazz ...

Happy National Comic Book Day! ⚡📚

#DYK Thor once called Oklahoma home?

Beginning in the 2007 Thor series by writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Olivier Coipel, Thor returned following Ragnarok and rebuilt the city of Asgard on Earth, just outside the small town of Broxton, Oklahoma. Suddenly, gods and warriors were sharing the Oklahoma prairie with farmers, neighbors, and small-town life.

The unlikely setting became a major part of modern Thor mythology for years, with Broxton appearing in close to 90 comic issues across Thor and related Marvel titles. The town even found itself caught in the crossfire of major Marvel events, including Siege, when Norman Osborn and his forces attacked Asgard.

And Marvel fans got a pretty great Oklahoma callback in Loki Season 2. In the premiere’s post-credits scene, Sylvie arrives in Broxton, Oklahoma, in 1982, where she walks into a McDonald’s looking for a new start. For longtime Thor readers, the location was a not-so-subtle nod to Asgard’s comic-book home on the plains.

From Asgard to Oklahoma, sometimes the Nine Realms are a little closer than you think. ⚡

#NationalComicBookDay #Thor #Marvel #Oklahoma ...

#TBT to welcoming Derek Drymon to OKPOP for a video interview about his friend and collaborator Stephen Hillenburg and the early days of SpongeBob SquarePants. 🧽

Derek, who served as creative director on the show’s first three seasons, first met Stephen while working on Rocko’s Modern Life. As that series wound down, the two spent months at Stephen’s house talking through ideas and storyboarding scenes that would eventually become SpongeBob’s debut episode, “Help Wanted.”

Derek remembered Stephen as “relentlessly creative,” always finding one more way to make a moment funnier. He also recalled the joy of making the show together: walls covered in Post-its, long hours drawing, and a room full of people making each other laugh.

We’re grateful to Derek for sharing these memories and helping us tell the story of the people and creative friendships behind Bikini Bottom. 💛

#OKPOP #SpongeBobSquarePants #StephenHillenburg #DerekDrymon @derekdrymonart ...

Great to connect with Boddle Learning co-founders Edna Martinson and Clarence Tan and hear how their own creative journeys inspired a global mission: helping children become confident, lifelong learners through the power of play.

Edna and Clarence shared how Tulsa’s entrepreneurial community, local investment, and organizations like 36 Degrees North, Gradient, and ACT Tulsa helped them strengthen and scale Boddle during a pivotal chapter in the company’s growth.

Their story is a powerful reminder that learning should be joyful, mistakes are part of discovery, and the right community can help a creative idea reach far beyond where it began.

As Edna put it, Boddle is “creating the next generation’s nostalgia,” building the kind of experience a child might remember 20 years from now as the thing that first made them excited to learn.

Thank you, Edna and Clarence, for sharing your story with OKPOP and for showing what Oklahoma creativity, entrepreneurship, and play can make possible.

#OKPOP #BoddleLearning #Tulsa #EdTech #PowerOfPlay @boddlelearning ...