The Legend of Roy Rogers
The Legend of Roy Rogers
King of the Cowboys, Master of Motorcycles
WENDY F. BLACK
THE COWBOY MIGHT BE THE MOST CAPTIvating image that America has ever created. He is lonesome, yet gallant. Romantic, yet masculine. Sitting high in the saddle astride his regal-looking steed, he embodies rugged strength, fierce independence, and all that is pure and good in the world. He personifies the spirit of the American West, and thusly America itself.
And nobody, but nobody, gave better cowboy than the late Roy Rogers. Always resplendent in jeweled, fringed designer garb, he often noted that he was the first rhinestone cowboy. But if Roy was the quintessential cowboy, he was also the essence of motorcycling. He started riding bikes in the early 1930s, and never stopped.
Over the years, he owned a number of motorcycles, including Harley-Davidsons, Indians, Triumphs, BMWs, Suzukis and Hondas. He preferred large, cruiser-type bikes, and his last machine was a Honda V45 Magna that he rode almost daily to the Roy Rogers & Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California, until he lost his license shortly before he died of heart failure last year at age 86.
Recalls Roy Rogers Jr., a.k.a. Dusty, “We were glad when they took his license, because he had a stiff neck and could not look over his shoulders. And
* when the helmet law came in, that really upset him because he couldn’t wear his Walkman anymore. The police were always pulling him over in his baseball cap. They’d say, ‘Roy, you know there’s a law...’ ” r——'
Off the bike, Roy always looked \ good, whether he was shooting footage \ for one of his 80-plus Westerns, singing \ for thousands of screaming fans at \ jam
Madison Square Garden or visiting sick ■■ children in the hospital. The latter he did JÊL regularly, even bringing his famous horse Trigger into the hospitals.
The duo was so popular that both have WÊ - L their footprints (hoofprints?) commemorat||| ~‘;j ed in the cement in front of the famed \ ■ Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Roy was also the top money-making Western star V from 1943 to 1954, and was featured on the cover of Life magazine upon a skyward-rearwffâÊ ing Trigger. The same pub surveyed a group fpUH of children and the top three winners of the \ ' '
popularity poll were Abraham Lincoln, -—Douglas MacArthur and Roy Rogers.
But wait, there’s more. Hundreds of cereal boxes bore his likeness, as did thousands of comic books and an apparel line sold through the Sears catalog. To this day, fans gather annually for the Roy Rogers Festival in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Why such overwhelming popularity? Dusty, who runs his father’s museum, has a theory about that. “Dad came along at a time when the world was at war,” he says.
“The fathers were away fighting and the mothers were working. The kids went to the theaters or (later) watched TV, and they adopted Dad as a second dad.”
Dr. David Wrobel, visiting professor at the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, Boulder, agrees: “Looking back at Roy Rogers’ career, you see how such a simplistic, pure and noble character might provide social solace given the trials and tribulations of the era-the Great Depression, World War II and the onset of the Cold War.”
Furthermore, Wrobel points out that in representing American values, Roy was without vice. He didn’t drink, smoke or cuss. He never instigated violence, he only reacted to it.
Adds Dusty on a more personal note, “People really felt comfortable with Dad. He was very personable, he always had that certain smile and twinkle in his eye. He was a hands-on star. He waded into his fans instead of running from them.”
Rogers’ accessibility might stem from his humble upbringing in Duck Run, Ohio. Raised on a small farm, he was the man of the house, as his father worked in the next town and was home infrequently. Eventually, though, the family moved to California.
Recounts Dusty, “He came out to California in ’32, and the first vehicle he was able to likbuy was a 1922 Harley-Davidson, and that was his only mode of transportation for years. He couldn’t afford a car, or the gas for a car. He used to ride out to Knott’s Berry Farm when it was still a berry farm and buy a pie for a nickel. He’d sit there and drink coffee and eat a whole boysenberry pie.”
After a few months on the West Coast with few employment options, Roy realized he was an entertainer at heart. He hooked up with the musicians later called the Sons of the Pioneers. Famous for now-familiar tunes like “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” they performed on radio programs and in Western films.
As his career progressed, Roy continued to rely on that first Harley. Apparently, the original owner didn’t treat the bike with much TLC, and Roy claimed he held it together with bailing wire and tape. He would move on to more dependable machinery.
“When he got his first Indian, an old Indian Four, I think,” says Dusty, “he’d ride it everywhere. He used to go up to Lone Pine near Mammoth, a big location for all the cowboy movies. He and his buddies would ride to Big Bear, and he’d go see his girlfriend in Tulare, which was a long ride back then.”
Speaking of girlfriends, Roy had several. After his first wife’s death, however, he and leading lady Dale Evans became close. Over time, their professional relationship turned personal and the two married. Together, the King of the Cowboys and Queen of the West made movies, performed in rodeos and came into the homes of thousands of television viewers every Sunday night with “The Roy Rogers Show.”
Despite her love for her husband, Dale was not interested in motorcycling. Elaborates Dusty, “She wouldn’t ride
with him because she knew what he was like. She’d sit and get a picture taken, but she wouldn’t go anywhere because he was nutso on a bike.
He would ride it like he was the only one on it.”
Dale says she rode with Roy one time, and one time only. It was on the way to a shoot, “but I was very fearful,” she says now. “He was very adventuresome. Very, very adventuresome. He was willing to try anything.”
Almost as famous as Roy and Dale was the golden palomino Trigger. Roy’s love and fondness for “the smartest horse in the movies” was certainly analogous to his passion for motorcycles. “When he got on a bike, it was like he was riding his horse,” says Dusty. “I never saw a man who could sit a horse better than Roy, and I never saw a man who could sit a motorcycle better. They just fit together, because he loved the speed, and the wind and the freedom of riding and the power.”
Both Dusty and Dale are quick to say that Roy’s love of things two-wheeled was all-encompassing. In fact, he was never without a motorcycle of some sort. Roy was just as happy going full-tilt boogie at the Bonneville Salt Flats on a borrowed bike as he was chasing jackrabbits through the desert with his kids.
“Dad would take his bike anywhere,” Dusty laughs. “He got out in the desert on his BMW streetbike and I mean, he sunk it. Just buried it in the sand. He would just keep revving it and getting it deeper. He finally got a dirtbike because he kept breaking things. He always said a motorcycle is like a Jeep: It should go anywhere.”
As he became more and more famous, manufacturers began offering bikes to Roy because of his celebrity status. It even sounds like Rokon (see test, page 66) got in on the act. “He got some crazy trailbike with huge balloon tires and really low gears, and it would go anywhere as long as you could stay up on it.
That was the trick,” Dusty says. “And he dumped that thing! We’d have to go out and get him out from under it.” Roy was also partial to police motorcycles. There was one instance when Dusty and Roy were shooting a commercial near the then-unfinished Ventura Freeway. But when the cameras were ready to roll, Roy was nowhere to be found. “Turns out, he’d taken one of the copbikes and was riding up and down the empty freeway,” says Dusty. “He just loved motorcycles.”
Roy also loved the museum, and its prime location across the street from Victorville Harley-Davidson-especially during the spring months, when hordes of Harleys thundered through town toward Laughlin, Nevada, for the River Run. One particular day, Dusty remembers, “I came out to the parking lot and he’s sitting in a sidecar, just grinning, with some halter-topped lady on the front. I said,
‘Dad, Mom’s gonna kill you...’ ”
It was this sense of good-hearted mischievousness combined with sincerity that endeared Roy to the public, particularly baby-boomers. Says Professor Wrobel, “The generation that grew up with Roy Rogers experienced the trauma of Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra and more. That’s enough to make any generation cynical and create a
psychological yearning for a simpler time.”
For that generation,
Roy engendered a message that what is most important in life are friends, family and relationships. Dusty sums it up: “Family is important, God and country is important, and nothing else really matters.”
Except, of course, for motorcycles.
