When he died, the nation mourned. Flags flew at half-staff. Movie screens went dark. Radio broadcasters observed 30 minutes of silence. Under a scorching sun in Glendale, 50,000 people filed past his casket.
In an era of hip-hop and reality TV, it is difficult to grasp the hold this man had on Americans. He was the most beloved person of his day, the country's first multimedia star.
Damon Runyon wrote in tribute that he was "America's most complete human document. One-third humor. One-third humanitarian. One-third heart."
In "a time grown too solemn and somber," President Franklin D. Roosevelt would say, he "showed us all how to laugh."
Today this man is remembered dimly, if at all. But in Pacific Palisades, his descendants and admirers are working with architects and curators to change that. They are restoring the ranch where he spent his final years.
The process, say those involved, is about more than repairing a house and grounds on which time and the elements have taken a toll. It's about resurrecting the largely forgotten legacy of a man whose humor ("I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat") proved a tonic for a nation in the grip of war and depression.
In a peripatetic life, the ranch was the last place Will Rogers called home. And he put his stamp on every inch of it.
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My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.
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William Penn Adair Rogers was born Nov. 4, 1879, near Oologah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), to parents descended from mixed-blood members of the Cherokee Nation.
As a boy, Rogers perfected his roping skills while tending to Texas longhorns on his father's ranch. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade to join a Texas cattle drive.
Disheartened by the dwindling open range and infected with a wanderlust that would prove lifelong, he traveled to Argentina, then South Africa. There, billed as "the Cherokee Kid -- the Man Who Can Lasso the Tail off a Blowfly," he got his first taste of show business doing rope tricks in Texas Jack's Wild West Show.
Appearing on U.S. stages, the "weather-bitten cowpuncher," as one newspaper called him, gained some fame after roping a panicked steer that had leaped into the seats at Madison Square Garden.
He moved to vaudeville, where he displayed a knack for making people laugh even when he wasn't trying. After muffing a two-rope toss in Philadelphia, he said: "I'm handicapped up h'yar, as the manager won't let me swear when I miss!" He earned three curtain calls.
Next he moved to the Ziegfeld Follies and Ziegfeld's midnight Frolic, where his wry observations about politics and international relations made him a headliner.
Rogers' wife, Betty, had suggested that he enliven his act by commenting on the news. If his quips went over an audience's head, he would joke: "I guess I'm a couple editions ahead of you folks."
He twitted the budding temperance movement and its leader, William Jennings Bryan. He tweaked President Wilson's diplomatic maneuverings before the country entered World War I.
He jabbed at industrialist Henry Ford's effort to end the war by chartering a "peace ship" with a cargo of pacifists and feminists. Onstage at the Frolic, Rogers said:
"If Mr. Ford had taken this bunch of girls, in this show, and let 'em wear the same costumes they wear here and marched them down between the trenches, believe me, the boys would have been out before Christmas."
Politicos and dignitaries secretly hoped to be singled out. As novelist John O'Hara wrote: "A big shot, a major industrialist type, was not a confirmed tycoon until he had been kidded by Will Rogers."
After the revolutionary-cum-bandit Pancho Villa raided a New Mexico town in 1916, killing 16 people, Rogers appeared in an all-star touring show in Baltimore. President Wilson, not known for his sense of humor, was there.
"I see where they captured Villa," Rogers told the audience. "Yes, they got him in the morning editions and then the afternoon ones let him get away." Wilson led the audience in laughter.
Rogers made sport of the nation's sorry military preparedness, for which Wilson was facing harsh criticism.
"There is some talk of getting a machine gun if we can borrow one," he said. "The one we have now they are using to train our Army with in Plattsburgh."
At 38, with a wife and three children, Rogers was exempt from the draft, but he appeared at benefits and performed for returning veterans. In May 1917, he pledged 10% of his next year's income -- $5,200 -- to the American Red Cross.
In 1919, the Poet Lariat, as he was dubbed in his Follies days, heeded the invitation of producer Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn) to make silent movies. His first picture, shot in New Jersey, was "Laughing Bill Hyde," about an escaped convict who shows his goodness while on the run in Alaska. Variety welcomed "a new star to filmdom."
