Singing cowboy movies were a bizarre phenomenon that seem to have complete disappeared from our consciousness, at least in Australia: they aren't replayed on television, are hard to get on video and DVD, few people would know the songs, there's no real legacy today on our screens(unless you count country music). Yet they were once very popular here -my father in law admits to owning a Roy Rogers outfit when little, the films packed out cinemas in the 40s and 50s, the local film A Funny Thing Happens Down Under features a scene where the romantic hero sings while riding a horse. And even today most people know the name Roy Rogers, and that he was a singing cowboy. It is a very catchy name (not his real one) and for over a decade he was a major star - not the biggest star in the world, as this biography irritatingly claims, but certainly box office, churning out a couple of films a year (the only one which receives much airplay being Son of Paleface, a Bob Hope film) then a long running television series.
Rogers was a singer, a member of the group Sons of Pioneers (who later appeared without him in some John Ford Westerns) who was signed by Republic as a successor to Gene Autrey (who was so popular he was listed among the top ten box office stars in America at one stage); the public liked him,particularly when he combined with Dale Evans, and he had a long career.Like Autrey, Rogers was canny with his finances and ended up making a fortune north of $100 million, much of it due to merchandising; this book argues Rogers was blacklisted by the studios because he successfully sued Republic for the rights to his likeness, but did any studio other than Republic make singing cowboy films? And by the time Rogers left Republic, studios were winding up their B picture units.
However, it wasn't all beer and skittles for Rogers - his first wife died of a brain aneurysm, three of his children died - one, a Down syndrome child, only lasted two years; another choked to death on his own vomit after a drinking binge; another died in an accident. It's enough to make anyone go barmy, but Rogers and Evans found God in the40s.
Evans had a few hard knocks herself, too - she married at 16 and had a child but hubby shot through; she married again but split up after the war took it's toll; she dreamed of finding success away from Westerns but the films flopped (one moment in the book as Herbert Yates talk to Dale Evans about Oklahoma and then the writer goes something like "Dale excitedly thought that Yates had brought the movie rights so she could star in the film" - come on, this is Herbert Yates we're talking about). She married Rogers a year after his wife's death (no eyebrows raised, apparently) and they were married for 52 years, which is a long time in anyone's book. They never stopped working (once TV ended there were always concerts and personal appearances), were good Christians and parents, etc - in short, good Republican role models (not that their politics are ever really discussed here). While Rogers was ac anny businessman, Evans was no passenger - she wrote a number of books (one for each dead child, which sounds a tad ghoulish) and many songs, including 'Happy Trails'.
Evans had a few hard knocks herself, too - she married at 16 and had a child but hubby shot through; she married again but split up after the war took it's toll; she dreamed of finding success away from Westerns but the films flopped (one moment in the book as Herbert Yates talk to Dale Evans about Oklahoma and then the writer goes something like "Dale excitedly thought that Yates had brought the movie rights so she could star in the film" - come on, this is Herbert Yates we're talking about). She married Rogers a year after his wife's death (no eyebrows raised, apparently) and they were married for 52 years, which is a long time in anyone's book. They never stopped working (once TV ended there were always concerts and personal appearances), were good Christians and parents, etc - in short, good Republican role models (not that their politics are ever really discussed here). While Rogers was ac anny businessman, Evans was no passenger - she wrote a number of books (one for each dead child, which sounds a tad ghoulish) and many songs, including 'Happy Trails'.
The topic alone ensures this is a fascinating book, though one wishes it were better - it appears well researched but we don't see enough of this research on the page; there is a lack of hard and fast facts and figures, eg how much did the film's make? How much was Rogers paid?, as well as an absence of contextualisation about how singing cowboy films fitted in to the industry and America at the time (why were they so popular? Why did they disappear?). It feels like a novelised version of a well researched script for a film on Rogers and Evans (according to the blurb, one is on its way) - whereas one is left wishing it were more of a "book" book, with sources and hard facts, etc.It has also been written with one eye very much on the Christian market- Rogers and Evans' religion was important to them, it deserves due consideration, but one can't help feel the very sympathetic depiction of Christianity is more with the potential readership in mind.
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