Will Rogers

American vaudeville performer and actor

Date of Birth	:	04 Nov, 1879
Date of Death	:	15 Aug, 1935
Place of Birth	:	William Penn Adair Rogers
Profession	:	American Vaudeville Performer, Actor
Nationality	:	American

William Penn Adder Rogers was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma) and was known as "Oklahoma's Beloved Son". As an entertainer and comedian, he has traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), and written more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was widely popular in the United States for his leading political wit and was among the highest paid Hollywood movie stars. He died in 1935 along with aviator Willie Post when their small plane crashed in northern Alaska.

Rogers began his career as a performer in vaudeville. Her string performance led to success in Ziegfeld Follies, which led to her first of many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper columns and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for the expansion of aviation and gave Americans a first-hand account of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allow him to poke fun at gangsters, Prohibition, politicians, government programs and other controversial topics in a way that garners general appreciation from national audiences and no one gets offended. His aphorisms, in humorous terms, were widely quoted, for example, "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a democrat."

Will Rogers caricatures a print ad for the film Down to Earth from The Film Daily, 1932

One of Rogers' most famous quotes is "I never met a man I didn't like" and he also gave an epigram to this famous epigram:

When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those inscriptions on gravestones, is going to read: "I've joked with every distinguished person in my time, but I've never met a person I like [sic] I didn't." I'm so proud of it, I can hardly wait to die so I can carve it.

Early years

The White House on the Verdigris River, Will Rogers' birthplace, near Oologah, Oklahoma

Rogers was born on his parents' Dog Iron Ranch in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, in what is now Rogers County, Oklahoma, to his father, Clement V. Named in honor of Rogers. The house where he was born was built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River". His parents, Clement V. (Clem) Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimscher (1838–1890), both were of mixed-race with Cherokee ancestry and considered themselves Cherokee. Rogers said his ancestors didn't come on the Mayflower, but they "met the boat". His mother was one-quarter Cherokee and born into the Paint tribe.

Unlike her father Clement's people, Mary's Cherokee relatives were expelled from Georgia under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 known as the Trail of Tears. Of the 16,000 Cherokee driven to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), 4,000 died en route. Will died of amoebic dysentery when he was 10 years old. About three years after her death her father remarried.

Rogers was the youngest of eight children. He was named for the Cherokee leader Colonel William Penn Adair. Only three of her siblings, sisters Sally Clementine, Maud Ethel and Mary (May), survived into adulthood.

His father, Clement, was a leader of the Cherokee Nation. An attorney and Cherokee judge, Clement owned two slaves inherited from his father and was a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War. He was promoted to regimental captain under Confederate Colonel Stand Watty and fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge (1862).

Clement served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers County, Oklahoma, is named in his honor. He served several terms in the Cherokee Senate.

Roach (1980) presents a sociological-psychological assessment of the relationship between Will and his father during formative childhood and adolescence. Clement had high expectations of his son and wanted him to be more responsible and business-minded. Will was more easygoing and oriented toward the loving care provided by his mother, Mary, than his father's strictures. The personality conflict escalated after the mother's death when the son was ten years old. Young Will moved from one venture to another with little success. The rift began to heal only after Will gained acclaim in vaudeville. Clement's death in 1911 prevented a full reunion.

Will Rogers attended Indian Territory school in 1895 and 1896 at Willie Halsell College in Vinita and then Kemper Military School in Booneville in 1897-1898. He was a good student and an avid reader of The New York Times, but he dropped out after the 10th grade. Rogers later said that he was a poor student and said that he "studied the Fourth Reader for ten years". He was very interested in cowboys and horses and learned to use ropes and lariats.

First job

In 1899, Rogers appeared at the St. Louis Fair as part of the Mulhall Rodeo. In late 1901, when he was 22 years old, he and a friend, Dick Paris, left home hoping to work as gauchos in Argentina. They arrived in Argentina in May 1902 and spent five months as ranchers in the Pampas. Rogers and his partner lost all their money, and he later said, "I was ashamed to send home any more." The two friends parted ways and Rogers left for South Africa. It is often claimed that he took a job breaking horses for the British Army, but the Boer War had ended three months earlier. Rogers was hired on James Piccione's farm near Mui River Station in the Pietermaritzburg district of Natal.

working life

Rogers began his show business career as a trick roper at "Texas Jack's Wild West Circus" in South Africa:

He [Texas Jack] had a little Wild West conglomerate that visited the camp and did a great business. I did some roping and riding, and Jack, who was one of the smartest showmen I knew, took a great interest in me. He was the one who gave me the idea of my main stage act with my cheese. Learned a lot about show business from him. He could do a bum act with a rope that a normal person couldn't escape and make the audience think it was great, so I studied him for hours and from him I learned the great secrets of the show. Business - knowing when to get off. It is the partner who knows when to quit that leaves the audience wanting more.

Grateful for the guidance but anxious to move on, Rogers left the circus and moved to Australia. Texas Jack gave him a reference letter for the Worth Brothers Circus there, and Rogers continued to perform as a rider and trick roper and work on his pony act. He returned to the United States in 1904, attended the St. Louis World's Fair, and began trying his rope skills on the vaudeville circuits.

Vaudeville

On a trip to New York City, Rogers was in Madison Square Garden on April 27, 1905, when a wild steer broke out of the arena and began climbing the viewing stands. Rogers roped Steer to the crowd's delight. The feat received front-page newspaper attention, giving him valuable publicity and an audience eager to see more. Willie Hammerstein saw his vaudeville act and signed Rodgers to appear on the Victoria Roof - which was literally a roof - with his pony. For the next decade, Rogers estimates he worked 50 weeks a year on the roof and in the city's countless vaudeville theaters.

Rogers later recalled these early years:

I got a job on Hammerstein's roof at $140 a week for myself, my horse, and the man who looked after me. I was on the roof for eight weeks, always getting a two-week extension when Willie Hammerstein would say to me after the Monday matinee, 'You're good for two more weeks'... Marty Shea, Columbia's booking agent, came up to me and asked if I wanted to play burlesque. They could use an extra attraction....I told him I'd think about it, but 'burlesque' seemed like fun to me at the time." Shea and Sam A. Scribner, general managers of the Columbia Amusement Company, visited Rogers a few days later. After. Shea said Scribner said Rogers was getting $150 and would take $175. "'What's he carrying?', Scribner asked Shea. 'Myself, a horse and a man', replied Shea.' Scribner replied, "'Give him eight weeks for $250'".

In the fall of 1915, Rogers began appearing in Florence Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. The top-floor night club of Ziegfeld's New Amsterdam Theater opened at midnight and attracted many influential—and regular—customers. During this period, Rogers refined his acting. His monologue on the news of the day follows a similar routine every night. He appeared on stage in his cowboy outfit, quietly twirling his lasso and saying, "Well, what can I say? I don't have anything interesting to say. I only know what I read in the paper." He used to joke about what he read in the newspaper of the day. The line "All I know is what I read in the papers" is often mistakenly described as Rogers' most famous punch line, when it was his opening line.

His run in New Amsterdam continued in 1916, and Rogers' growing popularity led to an engagement with the more famous Ziegfeld Follies. At this stage, Rogers' work was strictly physical, a silent display of daring horsemanship and clever tricks with his lariat. He discovered that audiences identified the cowboy as the archetypal American—no doubt aided by the image of Theodore Roosevelt as a cowboy. Rogers' cowboy was an unfettered man free from institutional constraints, with no bureaucrats to guide his life. When he returned to the United States and worked on Wild West shows, he gradually began adding the occasional spoken ad lib, such as "Swingin' on a rope is all right... if your neck ain't in it." Audiences responded to his wry but pointed humor and were just as enthralled by his frontier Oklahoma twang. By 1916, Rogers was a featured star in Ziegfeld's Follies on Broadway, as he turned to satire by turning "Ropin' Fool" into "Talkin' Fool." In one performance, with President Woodrow Wilson in the audience, Rogers made a "roast" of the president's policies that Wilson and the entire audience had in stitches, proving his extraordinary skill at witty commentary on current events.

Film

Hollywood discovered Rogers in 1918, as Samuel Goldwyn cast him in the title role in Laughing Bill Hyde.

A three-year contract with Goldwyn, at three times the Broadway salary, took Rodgers west. He bought a farm in Pacific Palisades and set up his own production company. Although Rogers enjoyed acting in films, his presence in silent films suffered from the obvious limitations of silence, as he gained a reputation as a commentator on the stage. He wrote many of the title cards that appear in his films. In 1923, he began working for Hal Roach for a year and produced 12 pictures. Three of the films he made for Roach in 1924 were directed by Rob Wagner: Two Wagons Both Covered, Going to Congress, and Our Congressman. He made two more feature silents and a travelogue series in 1927. After this, he did not return to the screen until 1929 when he started working in 'Talkies'.

Rogers made 48 silent films, but with the arrival of sound in 1929, he became the medium's top star. His first sound film, They Had to See Paris (1929), gave him an opportunity to exercise his verbal wit.

He played a homespun farmer (State Fair) in 1933, an old-fashioned doctor (Dr. Bull) in 1933, a small-town banker (David Harum) in 1934, and a country politician (Judge Priest) in 1934. County Chairman (1935), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935), and In Old Kentucky (1935). His favorite director was John Ford.

Rogers starred in 21 feature films alongside notable actors such as Lew Ayres, Billy Burke, Richard Cromwell, Jane Darwell, Andy Devine, Janet Gaynor, Rachel Hudson, Boris Karloff, Myrna Loy, Joel McCree, Hattie McDaniel, Ray Milland, Maureen O' did Sullivan, Jasu Pitts, Dick Powell, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Mickey Rooney and Peggy Wood. He was directed by John Ford three times. He starred in four films with his friend Stepin Fetchit (aka Lincoln T. Perry): David Harum (1934), Judge Priest (1934), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) and The County Chairman (1935).

As his voice became increasingly familiar to audiences, Rogers essentially played himself in each film, without film makeup, directing ad-libs and sometimes working in his familiar commentary on politics. The clean moral tone of his films led to various public schools taking their classes to attend special screenings during school days. His most unusual role may be in the first spoken word version of Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. His popularity reached new heights with films such as Young As You Feel, Judge Priest, and Life Begins at 40, with Richard Cromwell and Rochelle Hudson.

Newspapers and magazines

Rogers was an indomitable worker. He toured the lecture circuit. The New York Times syndicated his weekly newspaper column from 1922 to 1935. Going daily in 1926, his short column "Will Rogers Says" reached 40 million newspaper readers. He writes frequently for the mass-circulation upscale magazine The Saturday Evening Post. Rogers advised Americans to embrace the boundless values of neighborliness and democracy on the domestic front, while staying clear of foreign trappings. He took a strong, highly popular position in favor of aviation, including the kind of military air force that his flying friend, General Billy Mitchell, advocated.

Rogers began a weekly column titled "Sleeping the Lariat Over" in late 1922. He had already published a book of wisecracks and started a steady stream of humor books. Through columns for the McNutt Syndicate between 1922 and 1935, as well as his personal appearances and radio broadcasts, he won the loving admiration of the American public, poking fun at the issues of the day and prominent figures—often politicians. He wrote from a non-partisan perspective and became a friend of presidents and a confidant of greats. Beloved for his cool mind and warm heart, he was often considered a successor to greats like Artemas Ward and Mark Twain. Rogers was not the first entertainer to use political humor in front of his audience. Others, such as Broadway comedian Raymond Hitchcock and Britain's Sir Harry Lauder, preceded him by several years. Bob Hope is the best-known political humorist to follow Rogers' example.

Radio

Radio was the exciting new medium, and Rogers became a star there as well, broadcasting his newspaper pieces. From 1929 to 1935, he made radio broadcasts for the Gulf Oil Company. This weekly Sunday evening show, The Gulf Headliners, ranked among the top radio programs in the country.[40] Since Rogers easily rambled from one subject to another, reacting to his studio audience, he often lost track of the half-hour time limit in his earliest broadcasts, and was cut off in mid-sentence. To correct this, he brought in a wind-up alarm clock, and its on-air buzzing alerted him to begin wrapping up his comments. By 1935, his show was being announced as "Will Rogers and his Famous Alarm Clock"

personal life

In 1908, Rogers married Betty Blake (1879–1944), and the couple had four children: Will Rogers Jr., Mary Amelia, James Blake, and Fred Stone. Will Jr. became a World War II hero, played his father in two films, and was elected to Congress. Mary became a Broadway actress, and James "Jim" was a newspaper owner and rancher; Fred died of diphtheria at age two. The family lived in New York, but spent summers in Oklahoma. In 1911, Rogers purchased a 20-acre (8.1 ha) farm near Claremore, Oklahoma, which he intended to use as his retirement home. That's US$500 per acre, equivalent to $15,704 per acre today.

From about 1925 to 1928, Rogers traveled the length and breadth of the United States on a "lecturing tour." (He began his speech saying "A humorist entertains, and an orator annoys.") During this time he was the first civilian to fly from coast to coast, and pilots flew the mail on the first airmail flights. The National Press Club called him "Ambassador at Large of the United States". He accompanied Charles Lindbergh to Mexico City as a guest of US Ambassador Dwight Morrow. Rogers gave numerous after-dinner speeches, became a popular convention speaker, and gave dozens of benefits for victims of floods, droughts, or earthquakes.

Rogers traveled to Asia to perform in 1931 and the following year to Central and South America. In 1934, he went on a globe-girdling tour and appeared in Eugene O'Neill's stage play Ah, Wilderness! He agreed to go on temporary loan from Fox to MGM to star in the 1935 film version of the play. But, worried about a fan's reaction to the "realities of life" discussion between her character and the latter's son, she turned down the role. He and Willie Post planned to visit Alaska that summer.

Politics

Around 1935, Seattle Mayor Charles L. Rogers (right) with Smith.

Rogers was a Democrat but historically known as apolitical. He befriended every president since Theodore Roosevelt, and he notably in 1924 met with John W. Supported Republican Calvin Coolidge against Davis. During the 1928 Republican Convention, while criticizing the party platform, Rogers welcomed the nomination of Cow Citizen Charles. Curtis as vice president, though he felt the leadership deliberately kept him out of the presidency: "The Republican Party owed him something, but I didn't think they would be so low as to pay him that way." Four years later, when the Republican leadership tried to remove the more conservative Curtis from the Hoover ticket, Rogers defended him, and took credit for keeping him on the ticket: "I saved my 'injun' Charlie Curtis for the vice presidency. We caught them stabbing him when ready to do."

In 1932 Rogers Democrat Franklin D. supported Roosevelt, who was his favorite president and politician. Although he supported Roosevelt's New Deal, he could easily joke about it: "Lord, it's not one bit better than the money we spend on government and a third of the money we got twenty years ago."

Rogers served as a goodwill ambassador to Mexico and served a brief stint as mayor of Beverly Hills, a largely ceremonial post that allowed Rogers to poke fun at politicians like himself. During the depths of the Great Depression, angered by Washington's inability to feed its people, he embarked on a cross-country fundraising tour for the Red Cross.

Philosophy and style

After Rogers gained recognition as a comic-philosopher in vaudeville, he gained a national audience during his acting and literary career from 1915 to 1935. During these years, Rogers increasingly expressed the views of the "common man" in America. He downplays academic credentials, noting, "Everyone is ignorant, just about different things." Moreover, Rogers praised hard work in order to succeed, and such expressions confirm American theories about how to realize personal success. Rogers epitomized the self-made man, the common man, who believed in America, in progress, and in the American dream of upward mobility. His humor did not offend even those who were aimed at it.

During the 1920s, the United States was in many ways happy and prosperous[48] (nicknamed the Roaring Twenties), but it was also subject to rapid change and social unrest. Some people were disillusioned and alienated by the outside world. Many ordinary people believed that World War I had resulted in mass and largely senseless killing and supported isolationism for the United States. According to scholar Peter Rollins (1976), Rogers seemed to be an anchor of stability; Her conventional domestic life and traditional moral code are reminiscent of the recent past. His newspaper columns, which ran from 1922 to 1935, expressed his traditional morality and his belief that political problems were not as serious as they sounded. In his films, Rogers began playing a typical cowboy; His characters evolved to explore the meaning of innocence in ordinary life. In his last movie, Rogers explores a society divided into competing classes from economic pressures. Throughout his career, Rogers had a link to a better, more understandable past.

In 1926, the high-circulation weekly magazine The Saturday Evening Post financed a European tour for Rogers in exchange for publishing his articles. Rogers visited many European capitals on a whirlwind tour and met with international figures and ordinary people. His articles reflected a fear that Europeans would go to war again. He advocated isolationism for the United States. He argued that for the moment, American needs could be best served by concentrating on domestic questions and avoiding foreign entanglements. He commented:

Aviation and death

Will Rogers became an advocate for aviation after noticing advances in Europe and befriending Charles Lindbergh, the era's most famous American aviator. During his 1926 European trip, Rogers witnessed European advances in commercial air service and compared them to the almost nonexistent facilities in the United States. Rogers' newspaper columns often emphasized the safety record, speed, and convenience of these modes of transportation, and he helped shape public opinion on the matter.

In 1935, famous aviator Willie Post, an Oklahoman, became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast to Russia. He attached a Lockheed Explorer wing to a Lockheed Orion fuselage, floating fittings for landing on lakes in Alaska and Siberia. Rogers often visited the post at the airport in Burbank, California, while he was repairing the aircraft. He asked the Post to fly him through Alaska in search of new material for his newspaper column.

After a test flight in July, Post and Rogers left Lake Washington in Renton, Washington, in the Lockheed Orion-Explorer in early August and then made several stops in Alaska. While flying the Post, Rogers wrote his column on his typewriter. Before they left Fairbanks, they signed and mailed a flag burgey belonging to the South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club. The signed barge is on display at the South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, California. On August 15, they left Fairbanks for Point Barrow.

About 20 miles southwest of Point Barrow, bad weather making it difficult to determine their position, they landed in a lagoon to ask for directions. During takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude, and the aircraft plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing and overturning in the shallow waters of the lagoon. Both died on the spot. Rogers was buried on August 21, 1935 at Forest Lawn Park in Glendale, California; it was a temporary interment and was reinterred at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Experts have studied the causes of the crash and still disagree about it. Bobby H. Johnson and R. Stanley Mohler argued in a 1971 article that Post ordered floats that did not arrive in Seattle in time for the planned trip. He used a set designed for a larger type of aircraft, making the already nose-heavy hybrid aircraft even more nose-heavy. But, Brian and Frances Sterling maintained in their 2001 book Forgotten Eagle: Willie Post: America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer that their research showed that the floats were the correct type for the aircraft,[57] thereby pointing to another cause of the crash.

legacy

In 1962, the town of Higgins, Texas (near a ranch where Rogers worked in 1922), started an annual celebration of Will Rogers Day in honor of the cowboy philosopher, who was a close friend of his son, Frank Ewing. old employer.

Rogers was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.

Oklahoma honor

Before his death, the state of Oklahoma erected a statue of Rogers, one of two to be displayed in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall collection. Rogers agreed on the condition that his portrait be placed facing the House chamber, so that he could "keep an eye on Congress". Of the statues in this part of the Capitol, the Rogers sculpture is the only one facing the entrance to the chamber — a stakeout position for camera crews to capture House members during and after voting. It's also a common background for journalists and lawmakers, with staffers often instructing the media to be on a "Will Rogers stakeout" at a certain time. According to some Capitol guides, each US president rubs the left shoe of the Rogers statue for good luck before entering the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union address.

A state grant given for work. It was sculpted in clay by Joe Davidson. He was a close friend of Rogers. Davidson worked in bronze in Brussels, Belgium. The statue faces the floor entrance to the House of Representatives chamber next to National Statuary Hall before a crowd of more than 2,000 people on June 6, 1939. Architect of the Capitol, David Lynn, said the Capitol had never had such a large event or crowd before.

The Doug Iron Ranch is located two miles east of Oologah, Oklahoma, where he was born. When the Verdigris River valley was flooded to create Oologah Lake as part of a large dam project, the Rogers house was saved by being moved 3⁄4 miles (1.2 km) to its present location, overlooking the original site.

The family mausoleum is in the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, built in nearby Claremore in 1911 on the site Rogers purchased for his retirement home. On May 19, 1944, [60] Rogers' body was moved from a holding vault in Glendale, California, [60] to a mausoleum. After his wife Betty died later that year, he was also buried there. A cast of Davidson's sculpture that stands in National Statuary Hall, paid for by Davidson, was installed in the museum. Both the birthplace and the museum are open to the public.

Several landmarks were named in Rogers' honor: Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport, where recent expansion and renovations include a statue of Rogers on horseback in front of the terminal; The Will Rogers Turnpike is the section of Interstate 44 between Tulsa and Joplin, Missouri. Near Vinita, Oklahoma, a statue of Rogers was erected in a service plaza spanning the interstate.

Thirteen public schools in Oklahoma are named for Rogers, including Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. The University of Oklahoma named the large Will Rogers Room in the student union for him. The Boy Scouts of America honored him with the Will Rogers Council and the Will Rogers Scout Reservation near Cleveland.

In 1947, a college football bowl game was named in his honor, but the event folded after the first year.

The Academy of Western Artists, based in Gene Autry, Oklahoma, awards an annual Will Rogers Medallion Award for excellence in Western literature.

Texas Memorial

The Will Rogers Memorial Center was built in 1936 in Fort Worth, Texas. It includes a mural, a bust, and a life-size statue of Will Rogers on soapsuds, titled Riding Into the Sunset, sculpted by Electra Wagner Biggs.

Rogers is shown riding his horse Soapsuds into the sunset on the campus of Texas Tech University.

A casting of Riding into the Sunset at the entrance to the main campus quad at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. The memorial was dedicated on February 16, 1950 by Amon G. Carter, a longtime friend of Rogers. Another casting is held at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore and a casting is located at the entrance to the Hilton Anatole in Dallas.

Washington State and Alaska Memorials

Before moving to Alaska, Rogers played polo at a field in Seattle. It was his "last ride" on a horse, so a monument was erected next to the field in 1938. A small monument at the Renton airport commemorates the starting point of the fatal 1935 Post-Rogers flight. A memorial is also located in the town of Utkiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska.