Roy Rogers

Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye on November 5, 1911, in Cincinnati, Ohio, was an American actor, singer, television host, and rodeo performer who became one of the most recognized Western stars of his era. He died on July 6, 1998. Known by the nickname the King of the Cowboys, Rogers also appeared on Broadway in 1947 in the play Topaze.

Rogers was the son of Mattie and Andrew Slye, and grew up in a family that eventually relocated from Cincinnati to rural Ohio, settling on a farm in Duck Run near Lucasville. On that farm, with no radio available, the family created their own entertainment through Saturday night square dances at which the young Len sang, played mandolin, called dances, and learned to yodel. His father later took factory work in Portsmouth to supplement the farm's income, and a horse given as a gift introduced Rogers to the fundamentals of horsemanship. After the family returned to Cincinnati and Rogers completed two years of high school in McDermott, Ohio, financial necessity led him to leave school and join his father at a shoe factory. By 1929, the family had relocated to California, where Rogers and his father found work driving gravel trucks. He later picked peaches in Tulare, California, living in a labor camp comparable to those depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

Rogers's music career began in August 1931 when he joined a local country group called the Rocky Mountaineers after auditioning for a radio program broadcast over KMCS in Inglewood. He subsequently recruited Bob Nolan, who had answered a classified advertisement seeking a yodeler, and later worked alongside Tim Spencer. After a series of short-lived groups including the International Cowboys and the O-Bar-O Cowboys, Rogers, Nolan, and Spencer formed the Pioneers Trio in early 1933. Fiddle player Hugh Farr joined in early 1934, and later that year a radio announcer renamed the group the Sons of the Pioneers, feeling the members were too young to carry the original name. The group signed with Decca Records and made their first commercial recording on August 8, 1934, a session that included Bob Nolan's composition "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." Over the following two years, the Sons of the Pioneers recorded 32 songs for the label, among them the classic "Cool Water."

Rogers's film career began in 1935, initially under his given name Leonard Slye, with supporting work in Western pictures including a Gene Autry production. In 1938, when Autry sought higher pay and Republic Pictures held a competition to find a replacement singing cowboy, Slye won the role and was given the stage name Roy Rogers by the studio, which combined the western-sounding first name Roy with the surname of entertainer Will Rogers. He was assigned the lead in Under Western Stars and quickly became a matinee idol. He also appeared in a supporting capacity in the John Wayne film Dark Command in 1940, which featured future sidekick George "Gabby" Hayes. Over the course of his career, Rogers appeared in nearly 90 motion pictures. His productions regularly featured sidekicks including Pat Brady, Andy Devine, Hayes, and Smiley Burnette, and many films also starred his wife Dale Evans, his Golden Palomino Trigger, and his German Shepherd Bullet. His signature song, "Happy Trails," became closely associated with his public identity.

Beyond film, Rogers hosted a self-titled radio program for nine years and from 1951 to 1957 hosted The Roy Rogers Show on television. He was inducted twice into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the only country singer to receive that distinction. Alongside Bob Hope, Mickey Rooney, and Tony Martin, he holds four stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the last of which recognized the Sons of the Pioneers. In his later years, Rogers lent his name to the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchise chain.