Will Rodgers

Rogers was born on his parents’ Dog Iron Ranch in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma, now in Rogers County, named in honor of his father, Clem Vann Rogers. The house in which he was born had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River". His parents, Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838–1890), were both of mixed-race and Cherokee ancestry, and identified as Cherokee. Rogers was 9/32 (just over 1/4) Cherokee, with the remainder European American. Rogers quipped that his ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower, but they "met the boat". His mother was one quarter-Cherokee and born into the Paint Clan. She died when Will was 11. His father remarried less than two years after her death. The house in which he was born had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River".

On November 4, 2019, Google celebrated his 140th birthday with a Google Doodle.

He [Texas Jack] had a little Wild West aggregation that visited the camps and did a tremendous business. I did some roping and riding, and Jack, who was one of the smartest showmen I ever knew, took a great interest in me. It was he who gave me the idea for my original stage act with my pony. I learned a lot about the show business from him. He could do a bum act with a rope that an ordinary man couldn't get away with, and make the audience think it was great, so I used to study him by the hour, and from him I learned the great secret of the show business—knowing when to get off. It's the fellow who knows when to quit that the audience wants more of.

Asked if there should be presidential debates? Yes: "Joint debate—in any joint you name" (August 9).

Before his death, the state of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of Rogers, to be displayed as one of the two it has in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the United States Capitol. Rogers agreed on the condition that his image would be placed facing the House Chamber, supposedly so 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 Chamber entrance—a stakeout location for camera crews looking to catch House members during voting. It is also a common background for reporters and lawmakers, with staff often directing the media to be at the “Will Rogers stakeout” at a certain time. According to Capitol guides, each US president rubs the left shoe of the Rogers statue for good luck before entering the House Chamber to give the State of the Union address.

The Barrow, Alaska airport (BRW), located about 16 miles (26 km) from the location of the fatal airplane crash, is known as the Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport.

Rogers was the youngest of eight children. He was named for the Cherokee leader Col. William Penn Adair. Only three of his siblings, sisters Sallie Clementine, Maude Ethel, and May (Mary), survived into adulthood.

His father, Clement, was a leader in the Cherokee Nation. An attorney and Cherokee judge, he was a Confederate veteran. He served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers County, Oklahoma, is named in honor of him. He served several terms in the Cherokee Senate. Clement Rogers achieved financial success as a rancher and used his influence to help soften the negative effects of white acculturation on his people.

Will Rogers attended school in Missouri, at the Willow Hassel School at Neosho, and Kemper Military School at Boonville. He was a good student and an avid reader of The New York Times, but he dropped out of school after the 10th grade. Rogers later said that he was a poor student, saying that he "studied the Fourth Reader for ten years". He was much more interested in cowboys and horses, and learned to rope and use a lariat.

Rogers worked at the Dog Iron Ranch for a few years. Near the end of 1901, when he was 22 years old, he and a friend left home hoping to work as gauchos in Argentina. They arrived in Argentina in May 1902, and spent five months trying to make it as ranch owners in the Pampas. Rogers and his partner lost all their money, and he later said, “I was ashamed to send home for more.” The two friends separated and Rogers sailed for South Africa. It is often claimed he took a job breaking in horses for the British Army, but the Boer War had ended three months earlier. Rogers was hired at James Piccione's ranch near Mooi River Station in the Pietermaritzburg district of Natal.

The Tony Award-winning musical The Will Rogers Follies, produced on Broadway in 1991, starred Keith Carradine in the lead role. Carradine also played Rogers in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle.

Roach (1980) presents a sociological-psychological assessment of the relationship between Will and his father during the formative boyhood and teenage years. Clement had high expectations for his son and wanted him to be more responsible and business-minded. Will was more easygoing and oriented toward the loving affection offered by his mother, Mary, rather than the harshness of his father. The personality clash increased after his mother's death when the boy was 11. Young Will went from one venture to another with little success. Only after Will won acclaim in vaudeville did the rift begin to heal. Clement’s death in 1911 precluded a full reconciliation.

Brown (1979) argues that Rogers held up a "magic mirror" that reflected iconic American values. Rogers was the archetypical "American Democrat" thanks to his knack of moving freely among all social classes, his stance above political parties, and his passion for fair play. He represented the "American Adam" with his independence and self-made record. Rogers furthermore represented the "American Prometheus" through his commitment to utilitarian methods and his ever-optimistic faith in future progress.

Experts have studied the factors in the accident, and still disagree about it. Bobby H. Johnson and R. Stanley Mohler argued in a 1971 article that Post had ordered floats that did not reach Seattle in time for the planned trip. He used a set that was designed for a larger type of plane, making the already nose-heavy hybrid aircraft still more nose-heavy. But, Bryan and Frances Sterling maintain in their 2001 book Forgotten Eagle: Wiley Post: America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer that their research showed the floats were the correct type for the aircraft, thereby suggesting another cause for the crash.

James Whitmore portrayed Rogers in eight runs of the one-man play Will Rogers' USA between 1970 and 2000, including a limited run on Broadway in 1974, and as a television film in 1972. Whitmore changed the monologue each time he performed it, using quotations from Rogers as commentary on events current at the time of the performance.

The final ship of the Benjamin Franklin-class ballistic missile submarines, USS Will Rogers (SSBN-659) was launched in 1966 and commissioned the following year.

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

A casting of Into the Sunset stands at the entrance to the main campus quad at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. This memorial was dedicated on February 16, 1950, by Rogers' longtime friend, Amon G. Carter. Another casting is held at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Rogers was portrayed by his son, Will Rogers, Jr., in a cameo in the 1949 film Look for the Silver Lining, and as the star of the 1952 film The Story of Will Rogers.

On November 4, 1948, the United States Post Office commemorated Rogers with a three-cent postage stamp. In 1979, it issued a United States Postal Service 15-cent stamp of him as part of the "Performing Arts" series.

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

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

Rogers's California home, stables, and polo fields are preserved today for public enjoyment as Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades. His widow, Betty, willed the property to the state of California upon her death in 1944, under the condition that polo be played on the field every year; it is home to the Will Rogers Polo Club.

A state appropriation paid for the work. It was sculpted in clay by Jo Davidson. He had been a close friend of Rogers. Davidson had the work cast in bronze in Brussels, Belgium. Dedicated on June 6, 1939, before a crowd of more than 2,000 people, the statue faces the floor entrance of the House of Representatives Chamber next to National Statuary Hall. The Architect of the Capitol, David Lynn, said there had never been such a large ceremony or crowd in the Capitol.

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

In 1936, the NVA Hospital located in Saranac Lake, New York was renamed as the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital by the National Vaudeville Artists association.

Rogers was portrayed by A.A. Trimble in cameos in both the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld, and the 1937 film You're a Sweetheart.

In 1935 the famed aviator Wiley 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, fitting floats for landing in the lakes of Alaska and Siberia. Rogers visited Post often at the airport in Burbank, California, while he was modifying the aircraft. He asked Post to fly him through Alaska in search of new material for his newspaper column.

About 20 miles southwest of Point Barrow, having difficulty figuring their position due to bad weather, they landed in a lagoon to ask directions. On takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude, and the aircraft plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing, and ended up inverted in the shallow water of the lagoon. Both men died instantly. Rogers was buried August 21, 1935, in Forest Lawn Park in Glendale, California; it was a temporary interment. He was reinterred at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

A small monument at the Renton airport commemorates the starting point of the fatal 1935 Post-Rogers flight.

Rogers appeared in 21 feature films alongside such noted performers as Lew Ayres, Billie Burke, Richard Cromwell, Jane Darwell, Andy Devine, Janet Gaynor, Rochelle Hudson, Boris Karloff, Myrna Loy, Joel McCrea, Hattie McDaniel, Ray Milland, Maureen O'Sullivan, Zasu Pitts, Dick Powell, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Mickey Rooney, and Peggy Wood. He was directed three times by John Ford. He appeared 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).

Rogers traveled to Asia to perform in 1931, and to Central and South America the following year. In 1934, he made a globe-girdling tour and returned to play the lead in Eugene O'Neill's stage play Ah, Wilderness!. He had tentatively agreed to go on loan from Fox to MGM to star in the 1935 movie version of the play. But, concerned about a fan's reaction to the "facts-of-life" talk between his character and the latter's son, he declined the role. He and Wiley Post made plans to fly to Alaska that summer.

By the mid-1930s Rogers was hugely popular in the United States, its leading political wit and the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.

Rogers made 48 silent movies, but with the arrival of sound in 1929, he became a top star in that medium. His first sound film, They Had to See Paris (1929), gave him the chance 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 rustic politician (Judge Priest) in 1934. He was also in County Chairman (1935), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935), and In Old Kentucky (1935). His favorite director was John Ford.

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. 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".

Rogers thought all campaigning was bunk. To prove the point, he mounted a mock campaign in 1928 for the presidency. His only vehicle was the pages of Life, a weekly humor magazine. Rogers ran as the "bunkless candidate" of the Anti-Bunk Party. His campaign promise was that, if elected, he would resign. Every week, from Memorial Day through Election Day, Rogers caricatured the farcical humors of grave campaign politics. On election day he declared victory and resigned.

In 1926, the high-circulation weekly magazine The Saturday Evening Post financed a European tour for Rogers, in return for publication of his articles. Rogers made whirlwind visits to numerous European capitals and met with both international figures and common people. His articles reflected a fear that Europeans would go to war again. He recommended isolationism for the United States. He reasoned that for the moment, American needs could best be served by concentrating on domestic questions and avoiding foreign entanglements. He commented:

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

From about 1925 to 1928, Rogers traveled the length and breadth of the United States in a "lecture tour". (He began his lectures by pointing out that "A humorist entertains, and a lecturer annoys.") During this time he became the first civilian to fly from coast to coast with pilots flying the mail in early air mail flights. The National Press Club dubbed him "Ambassador at Large of the United States". He visited Mexico City, along with Charles Lindbergh, as a guest of U.S. 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.

A 1922 editorial in The New York Times said that "Will Rogers in the Follies is carrying on the tradition of Aristophanes, and not unworthily." Rogers branched into silent films too, for Samuel Goldwyn's company Goldwyn Pictures. He made his first silent movie, Laughing Bill Hyde (1918), which was filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Many early films were filmed and produced in the New York area in those years. Rogers could make a film, yet easily still rehearse and perform in the Follies. He eventually appeared in most of the Follies, from 1916 to 1925.

Rogers was an indefatigable 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 also wrote frequently for the mass-circulation upscale magazine The Saturday Evening Post. Rogers advised Americans to embrace the frontier values of neighborliness and democracy on the domestic front, while remaining clear of foreign entanglements. He took a strong, highly popular stand in favor of aviation, including a military air force of the sort his flying buddy General Billy Mitchell advocated.

Rogers began a weekly column, titled "Slipping the Lariat Over", at the end of 1922. He had already published a book of wisecracks and had begun a steady stream of humor books. Through the columns for the McNaught Syndicate between 1922 and 1935, as well as his personal appearances and radio broadcasts, he won the loving admiration of the American people, poking jibes in witty ways at the issues of the day and prominent people—often politicians. He wrote from a nonpartisan point of view and became a friend of presidents and a confidant of the great. Loved for his cool mind and warm heart, he was often considered the successor to such greats as Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. Rogers was not the first entertainer to use political humor before 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's example.

Rogers's vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that found general acclaim from a national audience with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

In the 1920s, the United States was happy and prosperous in various ways (leading to the nickname Roaring Twenties), but it also suffered from rapid change and social tensions. Some people were disenchanted by, and alienated from, the outside world. Many common people believed that World War I had resulted in extensive and largely senseless carnage, and they supported isolationism for the US. According to scholar Peter Rollins (1976), Rogers appeared to be an anchor of stability; his conventional home life and traditional moral code reminded people of a recent past. His newspaper column, 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 by playing a simple cowboy; his characters evolved to explore the meaning of innocence in ordinary life. In his last movies, Rogers explores a society fracturing into competing classes from economic pressures. Throughout his career, Rogers was a link to a better, more comprehensible past.

Hollywood discovered Rogers in 1918, as Samuel Goldwyn gave him the title role in Laughing Bill Hyde. A three-year contract with Goldwyn, at triple the Broadway salary, moved Rogers west. He bought a ranch in Pacific Palisades and set up his own production company. While Rogers enjoyed film acting, his appearances in silent movies suffered from the obvious restrictions of silence, as he had gained his fame as a commentator on stage. He wrote many of the title cards appearing in his films. In 1923, he began a one-year stint for Hal Roach and made 12 pictures. Among the films he made for Roach in 1924 were three directed by Rob Wagner: Two Wagons Both Covered, Going to Congress, and Our Congressman. He made two other feature silents and a travelogue series in 1927. After that, he did not return to the screen until beginning work in the 'talkies' in 1929.

His run at the New Amsterdam ran into 1916, and Rogers's growing popularity led to an engagement on the more famous Ziegfeld Follies. At this stage, Rogers's act was strictly physical, a silent display of daring riding and clever tricks with his lariat. He discovered that audiences identified the cowboy as the archetypical American—doubtless aided by Theodore Roosevelt's image as a cowboy. Rogers's cowboy showed an unfettered man free of institutional restraints, with no bureaucrats to order his life. When he came back to the United States and worked in Wild West shows, he slowly began adding the occasional spoken ad lib, such as "Swingin' a rope's all right... if your neck ain't in it." Audiences responded to his laconic but pointed humor, and were just as fascinated by his frontier Oklahoma twang. By 1916, Rogers was a featured star in Ziegfeld's Follies on Broadway, as he moved into satire by transforming the "Ropin' Fool" to the "Talkin' Fool". At one performance, with President Woodrow Wilson in the audience, Rogers improvised a "roast" of presidential policies that had Wilson, and the entire audience, in stitches and proved his remarkable skill at off-the-cuff, witty commentary on current events. He built the rest of his career around that skill.

In the fall of 1915, Rogers began to appear in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic. The variety revue began at midnight in the top-floor night club of Ziegfeld's New Amsterdam Theatre, and drew many influential—and regular—customers. By this time, Rogers had refined his act. His monologues on the news of the day followed a similar routine every night. He appeared on stage in his cowboy outfit, nonchalantly twirling his lasso, and said, "Well, what shall I talk about? I ain't got anything funny to say. All I know is what I read in the papers." He would make jokes about what he had read in that day's newspapers. The line "All I know is what I read in the papers" is often incorrectly described as Rogers's most famous punch line, when it was his opening line.

After Rogers gained recognition as a humorist-philosopher in vaudeville, he gained a national audience in acting and literary careers from 1915 to 1935. In these years, Rogers increasingly expressed the views of the "common man" in America. He downplayed academic credentials, noting, "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." Americans of all walks admired his individualism, his appreciation for democratic ideas, and his liberal philosophies on most issues. Moreover, Rogers extolled hard work in order to succeed, and such expressions affirmed American theories about how to realize individual success. Rogers symbolized the self-made man, the common man, who believed in America, in progress, and in the American Dream of upward mobility. His humor never offended even those who were the targets of it.

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 Jim was a newspaperman and rancher; Fred died of diphtheria at age two. The family lived in New York, but they spent summers in Oklahoma. In 1911, Rogers bought a 20-acre (8.1 ha) ranch near Claremore, Oklahoma, which he intended to use as his retirement home. He paid US$500 an acre, equal to $13,720 today.

On a trip to New York City, Rogers was at Madison Square Garden, on April 27, 1905, when a wild steer broke out of the arena and began to climb into the viewing stands. Rogers roped the steer to the delight of the crowd. The feat got front page attention from the newspapers, giving him valuable publicity and an audience eager to see more. Willie Hammerstein saw his vaudeville act, and signed Rogers to appear on the Victoria Roof—which was literally on a rooftop—with his pony. For the next decade, Rogers estimated he worked for 50 weeks a year at the Roof and at the city's myriad vaudeville theaters.

Grateful for the guidance but anxious to move on, Rogers quit the circus and went to Australia. Texas Jack gave him a reference letter for the Wirth Brothers Circus there, and Rogers continued to perform as a rider and trick roper, and worked on his pony act. He returned to the United States in 1904, appeared at the St. Louis World's Fair, and began to try his roping skills on the vaudeville circuits.

William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American stage and film actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, and social commentator from Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.