On December 15, 1982, Clint Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man opened in Los Angeles, then spread to 677 screens that weekend. In the film, a singer dying of tuberculosis can’t get through his own song in a recording studio, and a session guitarist steps in to finish it. The guitarist was played by Marty Robbins. He had died seven days earlier, at 57.
The Scene in Honkytonk Man
Eastwood directed the film and starred as Red Stovall, a hard-living Western singer in the Great Depression. His young nephew Whit, played by Eastwood’s real son Kyle, rides along as Red heads to Nashville for a shot at the Grand Ole Opry.
The audition goes wrong. A coughing fit ruins Red’s chance. But talent scouts from a record company have heard enough, and knowing he has only days left, they set up a recording session for his song, “Honkytonk Man.”
At that session, the tuberculosis wins. Red’s coughing gets so bad he can’t keep singing. A side guitarist named Smoky picks up Red’s lines and carries the song to the end. Smoky was Marty Robbins, in what turned out to be his final screen appearance. The song itself was written by Dewayne Blackwell.
Red Stovall’s story was loosely based on Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music. Rodgers had tuberculosis too. At his final sessions in New York in May 1933, he came to the studio with a nurse and rested on a cot between takes. He died two days after the last one. He was 35.
Eight Busy Weeks
Marty Robbins did not spend the fall of 1982 slowing down. In October, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. On November 7, he raced in the Atlanta Journal 500 in a Buick Regal built by Junior Johnson. On December 1, he performed in Cincinnati.
His heart had warned him before. He had his first heart attack in 1969 and underwent bypass surgery in 1970, when the operation was still new. A second, milder attack came in 1981. Each time, he went back to the stage.
Six Days at St. Thomas
On the morning of Thursday, December 2, Marty Robbins woke at home with severe chest pains. At St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, tests showed a massive heart attack caused by a blood clot in a major coronary artery.
Surgeons went in that same day. Over eight hours, they repaired the three bypasses from 1970 and added a fourth. Afterward, he was able to smile and squeeze a nurse’s hand, and doctors gave him a 50-50 chance. They pointed to his “incredible will to live.”
Then his condition turned. He grew worse through the evening of December 8 and died at 11:15 p.m. His wife Marizona and their children, Ronny and Janet, were at the hospital.
The Song Kept Going
One week later, Honkytonk Man reached theaters, and audiences watched Marty Robbins finish a song for a man who couldn’t.
His own studio recording of “Honkytonk Man” climbed the country chart after his death and peaked at No. 10. It became the last Top 10 hit of his career.
On screen, the singer who could not finish the song was the one who was dying. Off screen, it was the man who finished it.