By Stephen Zimmer
From the time Will Rogers was a boy, he had two consuming interests: horses and roping. In a celebrated career that included stage, radio, movies and Wild West shows, America’s most loved cowboy always had horses no matter where his trail took him.
William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers was born on the Cherokee Indian reservation near Oologah in northeastern Indian Territory (Oklahoma) on Nov. 4, 1879. Like ranch kids everywhere, he rode from an early age, most often with a rope in his hand. At age six he reportedly roped a neighbor’s turkey. After the turkey’s neck broke trying to escape, Will admitted the deed to the bird’s owner and promised not to commit the transgression again. Despite what he had done, Will unashamedly said he would stay until the bird was ready for dinner.
Although Will had his pick of horses, his favorite was a dun called Comanche that his father gave him when he was 10 years old. The horse was five years old at the time and stood 14 hands. Will later wrote that Comanche was so fast that he “put you so close to a steer that you didn’t rope him, you just reached over and put a hackamore on him.”
When Will was 13 his father took him to see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the Chicago World’s Fair. Although Will enjoyed watching the hard-riding cowboys and Indians, he was most impressed with the Mexican rope artist, Vincente Cropeza. When he returned home, he began duplicating as many of the roper’s tricks as he could.
Will attended several schools as a young man but seemed more interested in roping steers than studying. Because his father thought Will required more discipline, he enrolled the 17-year-old in Kemper Military Academy in Missouri. Always the cowboy, Will arrived for admission dressed in a red shirt and bandana with his pants tucked inside his red-topped boots. His lariat ropes were coiled around his suitcase.
Unsurprisingly, the regimentation of military school did not suit Will. He quit after a year and left for Texas to punch cows. He traveled by train to Higgins, Texas, and got a job east of town on Little Robe Ranch. After helping with spring branding, he went with a trail herd to Kansas and then rode to Amarillo where he got another job trailing steers.
Later he went to California with a trainload of cattle but soon got homesick and returned to Indian Territory. His father bought him a herd to manage, but Will spent more time in contests roping steers and riding broncs than tending to the ranch.
On July 4, 1899, he won first place at a Claremore roping. In those days, Oklahoma had not yet become a state, and Claremore was a small town in Indian Territory. After his success at home, Will took his horse to St. Louis by train to perform in Colonel Zack Mulhall’s Wild West Show. Then he and Comanche toured with Mulhall’s cowboy band and played at shows throughout the Midwest. Although Will didn’t play an instrument, he pretended to play a trombone at each performance until Mulhall called him out of the stands to ride a bronc or rope a steer.
Cowboying in Other Countries
As time drew on Will became progressively bored with life on the ranch, feeling that it was tame compared to punching cows in Texas, going to ropings or performing in Wild West Shows. He heard talk among his friends about Argentina, a place with big ranches and wide-open country. Will decided to see for himself. His father was reluctant to let him go but later agreed and bought his son’s cattle so the cowboy would have money to travel.
Before Will left for Argentina, he went to see Jim Rider, a friend who had a carved California saddle that Will liked. He asked Rider to sell it to him. After much negotiation, Rider agreed and traded the saddle not only for Will’s saddle but also for $50 and several Navajo saddle blankets.
Packing his new saddle, Will left with Dick Parris and traveled to New Orleans before sailing to New York, London, and finally Buenos Aires. They toured the country but were disillusioned with what they saw. In a letter to his father, Will wrote that “the work and cattle business here is nothing like it is at home…. They drive the cattle in a run…. In cutting out, there are from two to three men to each animal. They would not begin to believe that a horse knew enough to cut out a cow without guiding.”
Will found few Americans working cattle in Argentina and wrote in a patriotic vein that “as for roping and riding …, (the Argentines) can’t teach the punchers in America anything.” He proudly remarked that “my saddle and all have been a big show ever since they seen it.” Always concerned about his horses, Will asked his father to “please see that they take care of my ponies and don’t let anyone use them. Papa, don’t let old Comanche be touched till I come home.”
When Parris decided to return home, Will paid his passage, a gesture that left him broke. He had to leave his hotel and live off money he earned roping mules until he heard of a job tending stock on a ship headed for South Africa. Although he was not enthusiastic about feeding cattle, horses, and mules on a boat for two months, he hired on thinking it was a way to get back to the United States.
When the ship arrived in South Africa, Will helped drive the stock 200 miles to a farm where he stayed and worked for two months. Then he took a train to the coast only to find that his prized saddle had been stolen. Undeterred, he got a job helping drive mules 250 miles to the town of Ladysmith, where he met Texas Jack touring the country with a Wild West show. When the showman discovered Will could rope, he gave him a job, paid him $20 a week and billed him as “The Cherokee Kid, The Champion Lasso Thrower of the World.”
Will wrote his father that he “was hired to do roping in the ring, but the man who rides the pitching horses is laid off and I have been riding (for him) ever since I have been with the show…. I have learned to do quite a bit of fancy roping, and it takes fine over here where they know nothing whatever about it.”
The problem with being a trick roper in South Africa was the difficulty in obtaining suitable ropes. In a letter dated March 27, 1903, Will wrote his father asking him to send “some rope. I want 100 feet of the best kind of hard twist rope. You can get it there. Any of the boys will show you what I used to use. Pretty small, but hard twist. I can’t get a thing here that we use. Some nights I rope with old tie ropes or any old thing.”
Will spent nine months with Texas Jack, and they became close friends. He later said their friendship was one of the most important relationships of his life because of what Jack taught him about showmanship and performing before an audience. Will assured his father that life in the show was reputable because “Jack don’t drink a drop or smoke or gamble and likes his men to be the same.”
Despite his success with the show, Will still wanted to go home. He heard about a Wild West Circus touring Australia, so he left Texas Jack and sailed to Australia in the hope of making enough money to get back to the United States. After touring Australia and New Zealand for several months, he booked passage to San Francisco.
From Cowboy to Showman
Back in Indian Territory, Will joined Colonel Mulhall’s Wild West Show at the St. Louis World’s Fair in the summer of 1904. When the engagement was over, Will acted on a suggestion by Texas Jack and worked up a roping act to perform on the vaudeville stage. He traveled to Chicago and got work in several theaters. He soon decided to expand his act by adding horse catches. No one had ever roped a running horse on stage.
Will knew that Colonel Mulhall’s wife in Indian Territory had the perfect horse for the act, so he took a train to their ranch and bought the horse for $100, named him Teddy after President Roosevelt and began training Teddy for a stage routine.
In April of 1905, Will shipped Teddy and Comanche to New York to perform with Colonel Mulhall’s show at Madison Square Garden. A steer jumped out of the arena during one performance, ran loose among the crowd and scattered the audience in panic. Will followed the steer and roped him, a feat that brought cheers from the crowd. The next morning an account of his heroics appeared on the front page of The New York Times.
Will’s purpose for going to New York was to put his act with Teddy on stage, so he left Mulhall and made his New York stage debut on June 11, 1905. Wearing either a red or blue flannel shirt, chaps and a small Stetson hat, Will began his act by riding Teddy on stage and performing several tricks in the saddle. Afterward, he dismounted and gave the horse an affectionate pat on the rump to send him off stage.
With Teddy waiting in the wings, Will did a series of solo tricks and then called for Teddy. On cue, the horse dashed on stage with rider Buck McKee, and Will roped the horse by four feet. On the next pass, Will threw two ropes and caught Buck with one and Teddy with the other.
One newspaper called Will the “King of the Lariat,” reporting that “with the horse and rider traveling across the stage, (he) caught (Teddy) about the neck by throwing the lasso with his foot. One of the most interesting feats was shown when the horse and rider were on one end of the stage, and Rogers, standing at the other twirled the rope in such a way that he put a double noose about the man’s wrists, then he bound the wrists to the saddle (horn) and put nooses about the horse’s neck and nose without approaching it. His last feat was letting out a lasso 82 feet long and swinging it about his head while on horseback.”
Before Will started his act in New York, he sold Comanche and explained to his sister that “I sold old Comanche to a man in New York, and Mulhall sneakingly bought him from him for little Mildred (Mulhall’s daughter). He bought him when he found out I was going to stay east…. He thought I would follow him as he was mad because I quit….”
A few years later Mulhall told Will that Comanche was never used in the show but was instead turned out in a pasture in Florida. When Will learned of Comanche’s whereabouts, he made plans to ship his old friend home, but Comanche died too soon.
Fame and Family
Will Rogers Jr. said his father admired Western artist Charles Russell “almost more than any other public figure.” They first met in 1904 when neither one was famous or had money. By the time this photo was taken in 1926, both men were known throughout the nation but Russell, according to Rogers, “went up the ladder of fame faster than I did.”
For several years Will had a relationship with a girl from home by the name of Betty Blake. Theirs was an on-again, off-again relationship due primarily to Will’s show business career, but in 1908 Betty finally accepted his marriage proposal. They married in November and moved to a house on Long Island that had stables for Will’s horses.
Will, Buck and Teddy performed in cities all over the East and in Europe until 1910 when Will decided to retire Teddy because of the expense of travel. He shipped Teddy home to Oklahoma and had him turned out on the ranch. Later Teddy turned up missing and was not located for several months before Will found him pulling a plow for one of Will’s fellow Cherokee tribesmen. The equine star was brought back to the ranch where he placidly lived the rest of his life.
Will and Betty Rogers had four children while living in New York: Will Jr., 1911; Mary, 1913; Jim, 1915; and Fred, 1918. The month Jimmy was born, Will bought a round-bodied black horse with glass eyes and named him Dopey. He described the horse as being “the gentlest and greatest pony for grownups or children anyone ever saw. I don’t know why we called him Dopey. I guess it was because he was always so gentle and just the least bit lazy. Anyhow, we meant no disrespect to him.
“He helped raise the children. During his lifetime he never did a wrong thing to throw one of them off, or a wrong thing after they had fallen off. He couldn’t pick ‘em up, but he would stand there and look at ‘em with a disgusted look for being so clumsy as to fall off. I used to sit on him by the hour and try new rope tricks, and he never batted an eye.”
While living on Long Island, Will learned to play polo, a natural game for him because it required riding a horse. He was taught by a cowboy friend from Texas, Jim Minnick, who was in New York training polo ponies. When Will first started playing polo, he rode his roping horses. His favorite was Bootlegger, who was undersized but fast and quick. Later he bought a string of trained polo mounts.
After playing the game for some time and learning how strenuous polo was on both horse and rider, Will said that “the people that think riding a horse is all there is to polo are the same people who think that anybody that can walk makes a good golfer or anybody who looks good in a bathing suit makes a good swimmer…. They call it a gentleman’s game for the same reason that they call a tall man, ‘Shorty.’”
In the early years of performing on stage, Will rarely spoke to his audience. Later he began making natural, off-the-cuff remarks either about other performers or the rope tricks. When he found that his observations made the audience laugh, he incorporated them as a part of his routine. After completing a particularly difficult trick, for example, he would say, “Worked that pretty good, made my joke and trick come out even.” When a trick did not go well, he might remark, “I’ve only got jokes enough for one miss. I’ve either got to practice roping or learn more jokes.” One of his favorite quips was to tell the audience that “swinging a rope is all right when your neck ain’t in it.”
In 1915 Florence Ziegfield hired Will to rope between dance productions of his Ziegfield Follies show and substantially increased Will’s salary. Will performed two shows a day and added home-spun commentary about national affairs he read about in the daily newspapers.
Because of Will’s notoriety with the Follies, filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn hired him to make movies in California in 1918. Will and Betty moved to a home in Beverly Hills and added a stable, barn, and riding ring. Will planted so many trees around the house that he quipped, “You could conduct a real nice hanging in my front yard.”
Will appeared in a dozen silent pictures, often doing his own stunt riding on a horse named Chapel. Afterward, he produced three films of his own, the most notable being “A Roping Fool,” which showcased the tricks he performed on stage. Dopey starred in the equine role doing what Teddy had done previously. Will used white ropes and filmed many of the tricks in slow motion so the audience could better follow them. “I don’t think you (can) consider it art, but there is 30 years of hard practice in it,” Will said after the film was finished.
Will eventually went back to the Follies, where he became in demand as an after-dinner speaker. This allowed him to expand on the political and social commentary of his Follies act. In addition, he began writing a newspaper column for The New York Times titled, “Will Rogers Says.” The column was later syndicated to papers throughout the United States.
Will bought ranch land in the Santa Monica Mountains west of Los Angeles in 1925 and built a headquarters complete with a house, stables, roping corral and polo field. He cut trails in the mountains so he, his family and friends could ride through them and added a four-hole golf course for his guests. Even though he did not play golf, Will enjoyed following the players around horseback explaining that “I’d play golf if a fellow could (do) it on a horse.”
The ranch was Will’s refuge when he was not making movies or traveling. Betty wrote that every time he came home, he spent time horseback, either roping calves, playing polo or riding mountain trails. “I think he would have been satisfied to spend his entire life astride a horse,” she said. “He used to say, ‘There is something the matter with a man who don’t like a horse.’”
Of all his diversions, Will probably enjoyed roping calves the most. He rarely saddled a horse without tying a rope to the horn, and he always had fresh calves to turn into the roping corral. He even practiced indoors where he had a stuffed calf mounted on wheels and declared himself the best dead-calf roper in the world. “But when I try it on a live one,” he said, “it don’t work. But I am death on dead ones.”
The Last Ride
On August 15, 1935, in a plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska, Will Rogers perished alongside his friend, famed aviator Wiley Post. With the exception of Charles Lindbergh, no American aviator of the time was as celebrated as Post, while Rogers was widely considered the nation’s most gifted commentator on American society.
His favorite mount on the Santa Monica ranch was a flaky roan he called Soapsuds that he had gotten from rancher friends in West Texas. Betty remembered that their children laughed at the horse’s looks when Will first brought him home and had to be reminded by their father that it was not what a horse looked liked that was important but what he could do. Will used Soapsuds for everything from roping and trail riding to practicing rope tricks. The horse was later immortalized with Will in a heroic-sized statue by Electra Waggoner titled, “Riding Into the Sunset.”
Will also was devoted to airplane travel, taking his first flight in 1915. He frequently flew with a fellow Oklahoman named Wiley Post, who planned a long-distance flight across Alaska, the Bering Sea and Siberia. Will took a break from movie work to fly with him in August 1935.
Prior to meeting Post in Seattle, Will spent a pleasant day on the ranch riding in the mountains with Betty. Once in Alaska, he and Post spent several days flying over the wilderness before heading to Point Barrow on August 15 to meet a friend. Before they reached their destination, Post set the plane down on an inlet to gain his bearings in the fog. When he took to the air again, the plane inexplicably stalled and crashed, killing both men instantly.
Will Rogers’ death sent shock waves across the United States. Americans had lost a great friend, but he was not forgotten. Airports, highways, rodeo grounds, schools, and parks commemorate his name. The Will Rogers Memorial Museum was established in his honor in 1938 by the state of Oklahoma in Claremore where visitors can view art and artifacts pertaining to his life. Similarly, his Santa Monica Ranch is preserved by the state of California as the Will Rogers State Historic Park. Will Rogers Jr. played his father in the 1952 motion picture, The Story of Will Rogers.
One of Rogers’ closest friends was Amon G. Carter, the first chairman of the Texas Tech board of regents. Carter flew to Alaska to retrieve Rogers’ body after the tragic 1935 plane crash. He commissioned Electra Waggoner Biggs in 1937 to create a bronze sculpture depicting Will Rogers and his horse, Soapsuds. Only three castings of Riding into the Sunset were made: one for the Texas Tech campus, one for the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth and one for the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Okla.
STEPHEN ZIMMER and his wife Shari have lived for more than 40 years on the Double Z Bar Ranch 25 miles from Cimarron, N.M. He has two degrees in history from the University of New Mexico and worked for 25 years at the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch as director of the Philmont museums. Zimmer retired to his ranch to devote himself to his family and write about the West.
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