Rogers, Willy

Rogers, Willy (1879–1935), humorist and performer.Will Rogers, one‐quarter Cherokee, mounted the vaudeville stage in 1904, performing the rope tricks he had learned in his youth in the Indian Territory (later Oklahoma). Some offhand remarks elicited unexpected laughter and over time the talk in his act crowded out the roping; when he joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1918, it was as a monologist. With the Follies, Rogers became known for his political commentary (usually preceded by his slogan, “All I know is just what I read in the papers”). In the 1920s, he was successively popular as a widely syndicated newspaper columnist, on the lecture circuit, as a radio performer, and as the star of more than twenty films for Fox pictures. He died in a 1935 plane crash over Point Barrow, Alaska, that also killed the aviator Wiley Post.

Rogers enjoyed an unprecedented popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s. While another of his famous sayings—“I never met a man I didn't like”—was clear hyperbole, it was difficult to find anyone who didn't like him. Among national politicians—most of whom he knew and some of whom were his friends—to be kidded by Rogers was a badge of high status. He combined an inherent amiability and decency, a lightning‐fast wit, and shrewd and opportunistic appreciation of the emerging media of his era, with a canny awareness of how far satire could go without giving offense.
See also Cowboys; Film; Humor; New Deal Era, The; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

The Writings of Will Rogers, 21 vols., 1973–1983.
Ben Yagoda , Will Rogers: A Biography, 1993.

Ben Yagoda