SATURDAY EVENING POST – PART 3

Once signed, Rogers sat around for a few months doing nothing.  Then he sang a song in a dust-storm picture “Under Western Stars.”  The dust-storm sequence was shot on one of the windiest days that California had ever had.  “We had wind machines along, but no wind machine could have equalled what Nature dished up,” said Rogers. “It blew a truck over on its side, and it picked up gravel and dirt and flung them at us until they cut our faces.”  The phenomenal windiness blew the picture into a nomination by the trade journals for the Best Western of the Year.

Roy eyed the crapshooters still clustered around the blanket. “An investment firm, handles my business affairs,” he said. “They also handle the investments of a number of other stars. They allow me twelve and a half a week for spending money. They give my wife fifty dollars a week with which to buy the groceries and things for the kids. They also take care of our household bills.”

His clothing bill is annually around $10,000. His work clothes are made from the finest wool gabardine or sturdy whipcord (these fabrics were still in good condition 50 years later while on display at Dad’s museum) in specially dyed hues ranging from bright yellows and golden browns to electric blues and snowy whites. For the most part, his shirts are brightly embroidered.  He rides a saddle valued at $1,800.  From all his activities, he earns around $200,000. This includes his income from a song-publishing firm, records and a thriving chicken farm business (that was housed at my grandparents place in Van Nuys and Gramps ran it).

I mentioned the fact that Westerns seemed to conform to a highly formalized pattern–as formalized as a burlesque routine or a Dorothy Dix social procedure. Roy thought it was important to abide by the rules of the game. “They tried to put me into a newspaper picture once,” he remarked. “I was supposed to play one of those Pulitzer Prize winners, a character who smoked and drank and kissed dames. You know the type. I put my foot down. I know what my public would think of that kind of goings-on for me.”

He admitted that Westerns tend to fall into the same rigid pattern.  “The heavy is always trying to get the ranch , oil well or mine belonging to the girl or the girl’s bed-ridden dad,” he said. “The hero always helps her. But Republic has got a new idea for the picture I’m working in now. In the picture, I’m playing myself.  According to the script for “Bells of Rosarita”, I’m out on location making a picture when I run into a girl who needs help to keep from being gypped out of the ranch her pappy had left her.  I send out a call for help to Bill Elliott, Don (Red) Barry, Allan Lane, Robert Livingston and Sunset Carson–all of whom work for Republic and star in Western pictures of their own.  Together, we clean up the evildoers and get the ranch back for the girl.  It’s a kind of “Grand Hotel” on saddles.”  Roy described the mopping up of the villains by saying, “We had to ration the crooks. We were allowed one-apiece.”

Bill Elliott, Robert Livingston, Don “Red” Barry, Roy Rogers, Allan Lane, John Wayne

Although Roy didn’t mention it, the problem of casting six cowboy stars in a single picture presented a puzzle in diplomacy.  Just who should ride where and behind whom or in front of whom were matters that had to be adjusted with a jeweler’s-scale delicacy.  In the end, protocol was ironed out amicably enough, but according to the studio, the matter of priority on billings for each one of the six stars’ horses was a complex problem.  The director, producer and assistant director were munching nerve-settling pills like popcorn before they solved things and parceled out the screen credits for the various steeds to the satisfaction of their owners.

Rogers was called for another shot and I was left with his trainer, Glenn Randall, and the company make-up man. Talking to them added to my collection of Rogers lore and Triggeriana.  Republic, it seems, has engaged in a campaign to accomplish what they call “getting Roy Rogers recognized and into better theaters–the kind that ordinarily don’t show Westerns.”  In addition to his regular eight pictures a year, in which he is surrounded by the same cast of supporting players, including heroine Dale Evans and character actor Gabby Hayes, Rogers is being worked into other pictures of a non-Western variety on a guest artist basis.  So far he has appeared briefly in “Hollywood Canteen” (where he sang “Don’t Fence Me In”), then “Lake Placid Serenade” and a picture called “Brazil.”  “The chances are that more people will see him in a year’s time in this way than they will see a star like Greer Garson,” Republic says happily.

That his public is vast and loyal is borne out by the fact that for two consecutive years he has been voted the industry’s No. 1 Western Star by the “Showmen’s Trade Review” poll.  in an overall poll of actors, he is ranked No. 5, being topped only by Betty Grable, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy.  During his last trip to New York, representatives of 700 Roy Rogers Fan Clubs made expeditions to see him.  Members of those clubs came from as far away as Chicago, Maine and Maryland.  In addition to his bobby-sox and male high school following, Rogers appeals to elderly folk, to whom he represents the sterling qualities of a son or grandson they would delight to call their own.  Also, and this is unusual for a cowboy star, he appeals to a sizable number of the sex who are also moved by Charles Boyer’s voice and Ronald Colman’s lifted eyebrow.  He can count upon still a fourth class of fans, quite a lot of his mail is from servicemen to whom he represents home, “America,” and adventure of the peacetime, romantic kind.

I will post the final part of the article next week.