The story of Roy Rogers, the man behind the ‘King of the Cowboys’

The indelible image of Roy Rogers is as the “King of the Cowboys,” the singing do-gooder in the white Stetson, the idol of millions of kids.

Those old enough watched him on television or went to a Saturday morning picture show to see one of his more than 100 movies. They owned a Roy Rogers lunch pail and read his comic book.

By all accounts, Roy Rogers the king was the same as Roy the man.

“I never tried any fancy trick acting on screen. I was just me. The Roy Rogers way back then was the same as the one sittin’ here today,” Rogers wrote in “Happy Trails: Our Life Story,” his joint autobiography with wife and co-star Dale Evans, published a few years before his death in 1998.

Roy might have had the same upstanding standards as his counterpart on the silver screen, but his life was not spared the hardship and heartache of a Hollywood story.

Early life in Ohio

Despite the false biography pushed by the movie studio, Rogers was not born a cowboy. He wasn’t even really Roy Rogers.

He was Leonard Franklin Slye, born on Nov. 5, 1911, in Cincinnati at 412 E. Second St., a four-story red-brick tenement building. “When they built Riverfront Stadium, they bulldozed my birthplace,” Rogers used to say. “I’m claiming second base as my birthplace.”

Before he turned one, the family moved to Portsmouth, Ohio, to live on a houseboat that his father, Andy, and uncle built. The family later settled on Duck Run, near Lucasville, 12 miles north of Portsmouth in Scioto County.  “We lived far away from everything that you had to pipe in sunlight,” Rogers wrote. While his father worked in Portsmouth, young Leonard learned farming and hunting as well as playing mandolin and calling square dances.

At age 17, he quit school and the family moved back to Cincinnati, living at 1913 Ohio Ave. in Over-the-Rhine. “I took night courses at Hughes High School while I worked for the U.S. Shoe Co. which was then on Spring Grove Avenue,” Rogers told The Enquirer in 1952. He worked with his father in the insole department, but both hated the dreary factory work.

In 1930, the family drove out to visit his married sister in California, and they decided to stay there. Rogers was a truck driver and fruit picker. He remembered John Steinbeck visiting the migrant worker camp doing research to write “The Grapes of Wrath.” “He sure did get it down right,” Rogers wrote.

‘King of the Cowboys’

Rogers traded a bushel for a guitar and started singing with country-western groups. He co-founded the Sons of the Pioneers, whose signature song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” helped get them cameos singing in a few films.

He heard that Republic Pictures was auditioning for a new singing cowboy because its star, Gene Autry, was in a contract dispute over money. The studio guard turned him away, so he snuck in with some Western extras, then felt a hand on his shoulder. Caught! Not the guard but a producer who remembered him from the Sons of the Pioneers and told him to get his guitar. He won the audition.

He needed a more heroic name. He was Len Slye with the Sons of the Pioneers, and went by Dick Weston for bit movie parts. The producers chose Roy Rogers: the last name a tribute to humorist Will Rogers, one of Roy’s heroes, and the first name an American variation of the French word for “king.”

Rogers replaced Autry in the 1938 film “Under Western Stars,” and won over critics and audiences. Just as big a star was his golden palomino stallion, Trigger. The two were inseparable, and Trigger was billed on posters alongside him as the “Smartest Horse in the Movies.”

Rogers was the No. 1 Western star at the box office for 12 years (1943-1954) and had more merchandise than anyone but Walt Disney.

“I feel like I was a kind of babysitter for mothers in those days,” he told The Enquirer in 1992. “They could drop their kids off and then come back and pick them up about 5 in the evening, and they’d be happy and full of candy and popcorn.”

Family life

Rogers always made time to visit orphanages and children’s hospitals, performing tricks with Trigger. He loved children, but he and his first wife, Arleen, struggled to start a family.

They adopted a baby girl, Cheryl, in 1942, then Arlene gave birth to Linda Lou in 1943 and Roy Rogers Jr., whom they called Dusty, in 1946. A few days after Dusty was born, Arlene suffered a massive brain embolism from a blood clot and died.

Rogers was devastated, a widower with three young children.

He grew closer to his longtime co-star, Dale Evans. One day before a rodeo show, he asked her, “Why don’t we get married?” Then he galloped into the arena on Trigger. When she joined him in the spotlight, she mouthed the word “yes.”

The “King of the Cowboys” and the “Queen of the West” were married on New Year’s Eve, 1947.

In 1950, Roy and Dale had their own child, Robin, who was born with Down syndrome. In those days, doctors advised them to place her in an institution, but Roy said, “No. We are going home.”

“That little baby gave us a perspective we might never have found without her,” Dale wrote. “We needed her, more than we ever knew when she was with us. She brought a wonderful peace to our lives.”

Robin contracted mumps, which turned to mumps encephalitis and died days after her second birthday. Seeing their child in her coffin, Rogers remarked, “She looks like a small-size sleeping angel.”

Dale wrote a book about Robin, “Angel Unaware,” which was credited with helping to change public perception of children with developmental disabilities.

Adoption in Covington

In October 1952, Roy and Dale came to the Queen City to perform at Cincinnati Gardens and appeared on Ruth Lyons’ show “The 50 Club” on WLWT. Trigger was equipped with special rubber shoes to climb the steps to Crosley Square (located at the northeast corner of Ninth and Elm streets downtown) and into the elevator to Lyons’ studio.

They told the audience they were adopting another little girl, Mary Little Doe, known as Dodie, who was part Choctaw. “I’m part Choctaw myself,” Rogers said. “I’m one-64th.”

During the visit to Cincinnati, a woman from a home for disabled children in Covington contacted Rogers about bringing a few of the children to meet him. Dressed in his full cowboy getup, he met a six-year-old boy backstage who had been abused by alcoholic parents and abandoned. The boy shook his hand and in a loud voice said, “Howdy, pardner!”

“I could tell that his eyes had seen a lot of things that scared him; they looked like they held secrets too dreadful for any little boy to know,” Rogers wrote. They adopted John David, whom they called Sandy.

The family added a 13-year-old girl, Mimi from Scotland, as their ward, and in 1955 adopted Lu-Ai Lee, a three-year-old orphan from the Korean War. They named her Debbie Lee.

On Aug. 17, 1964, days after her 12th birthday, Debbie was on a church bus trip to deliver food and clothing to an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico, when a tire blew and the bus crashed. Debbie and her friend were killed.

In 1965, 18-year-old Sandy was serving in an Army tank corps in Germany. One night he was goaded into drinking heavily and died in the night.

“If you don’t have tough times in your life, it’s hard to appreciate the good times,” Rogers told The Enquirer’s John Kiesewetter in 1992. “Life is what you get out of it. You can help make misery, or you can help make happiness.”

A Cincinnati homecoming

Rogers returned to Cincinnati in July 1988 for the Famous Greater Cincinnatians Homecoming, part of the city’s bicentennial. He met fans at Fountain Square and at Roy Rogers restaurants in Florence and Springdale.

He bent over to speak to a young boy. “At your age, you probably never heard of Roy Rogers,” he said.

“Oh yes I have,” the boy answered quickly.

The homecoming coincided with the Major League Baseball All-Star Game held at Riverfront Stadium. The two events brought 80 stars to town, with sports greats like Muhammad Ali and Willie Mays and local celebrities from Andy Williams to Neil Armstrong. The one who got the most attention was Roy Rogers.