Peter C. Rollins The Columbia Companion to American History on Film Whorf Orestes Will Rogers

Will Rogers: Symbolic Man and Film Image

[Journal of Popular Culture 2(1973): 323-352.]


By Peter C. Rollins

On August 15, 1935, Will Rogers and his pilot Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash at Point Barrow, Alaska. Exactly one week later, the offices of Twentieth Century-Fox and Universal Studios closed at noon so that office workers could attend a special memorial service at the Hollywood Bowl �where over twenty thousand gathered to pay tribute to the memory of the beloved humorist� (Stone no. 3). That evening, twelve thousand motion picture theaters across the country observed two minutes of respectful silence before beginning their evening programs.

Just before leaving for Alaska, Rogers had completed two films. At least previous to this dilemma, Hollywood had observed �an unwritten law forbidding the release of a picture after the death of a star� (Rogers). But in the case of Will Rogers, there were obviously other factors to be considered. In fact, the rationale behind the release of In Old Kentucky and Steamboat Round the Bend gives us a glimpse of the special relationship between Will Rogers and his American audience. After a long conference, Joseph Schenck (Chairman of the Board of Directors) and Sidney R. Kent (President) of Twentieth Century-Fox determined that the release of these last two pictures would not have the same morbid overtones which might have accompanied a similar posthumous release of films by other actors: �Rogers was totally different from Valentino, Wallace Reid and Lon Chaney, where audiences appreciated their work. Rogers was loved as a man, as a national character, as the greatest of all home philosophers� (Rogers).

Joseph Schenck was right about the unique place of Will Rogers in the hearts of Americans. Although he never held political public office, the popularity of his daily syndicated columns, his books, and finally his movies made him one of the most important influences on American opinion from 1922 until his untimely death in 1935. In ways which this paper will attempt to articulate, Will Rogers as public person, as journalist, and as film star confronted and subdued many of the pressures and anxieties affecting his audience. A typical Will Rogers fan had very special ideas about Rogers� behavior as a private individual; he derived a special pleasure from the style of Rogers� journalism. With these elements in mind, the Will Rogers fan attended and surrendered to the seductive nostalgia of Rogers� late films.

In the last stage of his Hollywood career, Rogers became the film industry�s best paid ($225,000 per film) and most popular male movie attraction. From 1933 until 1935, Will Rogers portrayed a film character who deeply moved his American audience. If correctly interpreted, these nostalgic rural dramas are as relevant as documents of the spirit of the 1930�s as a book like I�ll Take My Stand (1930). Like that famous protest against progress, the city, a declining estimate of man, the late films of Will Rogers portray an alternative society in which the best of traditional elements of the American national character could have free play. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not alone in concluding that the sanity of Americans in the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century had been preserved because of the sympathy and humor of this complex companion of the American people (Memorial no.14, 32).

I. THE TWENTIES: THE PRICE OF THE NEW

Americans in the 1920;s were excited by the rapid changes going on around them, yet at the same time they were uneasy, for assuming the new identity as twentieth century urban Americans entailed a rejection of older modes of life and values. The tension induced by these changes led some Americans to strike out at the new. The infamous Red Scare inspired by A. Mitchell Palmer sought to stamp out the threat of bolshevism. Gathering new members among native stock, rural Americans, the Ku Klux Klan expanded its crusade against change. Its new enemies included �the city, sexual freedom, modern life � [and] � liquor� (Leuchtenberg 213). While militant fundamentalists brought John Scopes to trial, the Daughters of the American Revolution and others who feared the rising political power of the immigrant launched their campaign for 100% Americanism. The majority of Americans attempted to find a place for themselves in this new world, but unquestionably all Americans in the period were curious about the much celebrated juggernaut of progress � was it steaming toward a better society or away from it?

Industrialism had posed increasing challenges since the end of the Civil War. Those Americans who went to the city to profit from the new wealth and social mobility available there were rewarded handsomely. A ready supply of docile immigrant labor assured that quick-witted Americans could rise to the top of the industrial heap. Yet for all their successes, these same newcomers to the good life of industrial America had their anxieties: �For millions of people torn from accustomed rural patterns of culture and thrust into a strange, urban environment, the meaning of industrialism lay in a feeling of uprootedness, in the disintegrations of old ways of life� (Hays 190). Many of those who remained behind believed they were left out, creating paradoxical situation in which the liberated were anxious while the innocent were resentful.

The technique of mass production started what has been called a �second industrial revolution� (Leuchtenberg 178-203).The United States was transformed as this manufacturing technique was pressed into service to turn out large quantities of automobiles, radios, and other new inventions of the era. The advertising industry expanded its efforts to convince Americans that they required the massive number of goods which could now be produced. Americans were urged to consume, to buy on credit, to become part of this new economy of abundance. If they had money left when they finished shopping, Americans were advised to invest in the stock market. If they had no money left, they were assured that they could buy on the margin.

Parallel with these major changes in economic life, a �revolution in morals� was significantly altering the outlook of Americans (158). As the authority of religion declined, the gospel according to Sigmund Freud gained true believers. The family had already lost its economic role; its power as an institution was further lessened by a host of pleas for individual liberation. As a result, many were bothered because new guides of conduct were not being offered to clothe the individual as he stripped off the corset of Puritanism. Perhaps the greatest consternation arose when the new woman appeared. Rather than a socially constructive idealist, like Jane Addams, she turned out to be a flapper and a flirt!

The liberation of writers in elite culture yielded the creative literary work of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. But in popular culture liberation appeared to have unstopped the bottle of cheap-and-nasty: popular songs on the radio were titled �Hot Lips,� �I Need Lovin�,� �Burning Kisses,� while popular magazines such as Paris Nights and Flapper Experiences covered the news-stands. Hollywood concentrated all of these pyrotechnic changes into one half-baked city, Los Angeles, California. Advertisements for the �smart� and �sophisticated� films produced there promised �brilliant men, beautiful jazz babies, champagne baths, midnight revels, petting parties in the purple dawn, all ending in one terrific climax that makes you gasp� (Leuchtenberg 169).

According to Edward Sapir (a contemporary social scientist), industrialism, urbanism, advertising and the unreflective celebration of the individual all had worked to fragment the traditional culture of the West. Much like Will Rogers, Sapir was careful to explain that so-called �progress� in the early twentieth century was more a matter of material improvement than an advance in the quality of �genuine culture.� Even the most well adjusted twentieth century American sensed a certain incompleteness in his life: �Even if he succeeds in making a fairly satisfactory compromise with his new environment, he is apt to retain an uneasy sense of the loss of some vague and great good, some state of mind that he would be hard put to it to define but which give him a courage and joy that latter-day prosperity never quite seems to have regained for him. What has happened is that he has slipped out of the warm embrace of a culture into a cold air of fragmentary existence� (Sapir 97). The price of material conquest of the environment had been paid for by an emotional tax on true happiness: �Here lies the grimmest joke of our present American civilization. The vast majority of us, deprived of any but an insignificant and cruelly abortive share in the satisfaction of the immediate wants of mankind, are further deprived of both opportunity and stimulation to share in the production of non-utilitarian values. Part of the time we are dray horses; the rest of the time we are listless consumers of goods which have received no least impress of our personality. In other words, our spiritual selves go hungry, for the most part, pretty much all the time� (101).

From his elevated position as Professor of Anthropology at Yale, Edward Sapir could see the fragmentation of culture in a historical sweep that went back to the seventeenth century. On the level of popular culture, most Americans sensed the same inadequacies in their lives, but their frame of reference was smaller. Many sought solace in thinking of the 1890�s as a lost Eden from which the America of their own post-war era had departed. At least as nostalgically recalled by these unsettled people, that earlier America had been a face-to-face society, a comprehensible world painted in primary colors:

By 1932, the prewar years had taken on a luminescence that they did not wholly have at the time. In retrospect, the years before World War I seemed like a lost Arcadia. Men remembered county fairs and church socials, spelling bees and sleigh rides, the excitement of the circus train or the wild dash of firehorses from the station house, the cool smell of an ice cream parlor and the warm fragrance of roasted chestnuts. . . . They remembered people: the paper boy with his off-key whistle, the brawny iceman sauntering up the walk with his five-cent cake of ice, the Negro stable boys, the printers and devils in the newspaper offices. They recollected general stores: the bolts of calico and muslin, the jars of cinnamon and gunpowder tea, bins of dried peaches and cornmeal, kegs of mackerel, canisters of striped candy. From the vantage point of 1932, it seemed as though they had danced endlessly at tango teas and strummed mandolins every evening. (Leuchtenberg 4)

Not the realities of the 1890�s, but the anxieties of the 1930�s tempted Americans to reflect nostalgically on that earlier era, proving that people who burn their candles at both ends will frequently be burned by the hot wax.

II. ROGERS THE MAN: LIVING LIFE IN PUBLIC VIEW

Will Rogers was important to Americans in the 1920�s and 1930�s because he addressed his humor to their basic sense of rootlessness and loss. As a cowboy version of Rip Van Winkle, Rogers passed through this era of change, judging new developments by the standards of the 1890�s. And despite the criticism he delivered, he somehow bridged the gap between the old and the new. Because he made the transition without losing his identity, his audience was intensely concerned with his highly publicized �private� life: in a world where divorces were increasing, Rogers remained happily monogamous; while his audience felt itself to be under constant pressure to perform, he seemed somehow to be unruffled. In an era of big government�s delays, Will Rogers stood out as a symbol of ready sympathy and practical help for the distressed, for unlike his uprooted audience, he was still in contact with �The Real Things of Life.�

1. Love and Marriage

From the beginning, Will Rogers was admired as a man who was somehow able to remain simple and pure, even in an age of puff and artificiality. He seemed miraculously unaffected by the erosion of values. His good qualities were highlighted further by his presence in Hollywood: �He became nonetheless dear to us because of the falsity of much that surrounded him: the spurious nature and illegitimacy of much of the screen threw him into relief as someone really genuine� (Stone �Chatting�). Rogers� sexual purity was universally respected. Reviewers of early Rogers films were surprised that he could succeed on the screen without pandering to the usual demands of romance and sex appeal. He was unique as a male film star in �outwitting the sexy fellows� (Sargent).

Many admired Will and Betty Rogers for holding their family together. One reporter, realizing how important this happily monogamous couple was to her audience, breathlessly told her readers the results of a telephone interview �over four thousand miles with a model married man� (Peterson). The readers necessarily understood that Hollywood was the leading edge of sexual liberation, and thus a city where the family was most endangered. In this context of dizzy freedom, �Will Rogers and his wife have been married longer than some stars, several times divorced, have been alive� (Memorial no. 24, 35). Rogers himself encouraged the press to report this eccentricity. He proclaimed proudly (and often) that he was �the only motion picture star who has the same wife he originally started with.� The result of all this interest and self-promotion was that the Rogers household was celebrated as �an ideal home� where (in contrast with much of the rest of American homes) parents spent every free moment teaching the children or playing with them (Memorial �An Ideal Home�).

A review of Rogers� first talkie, They Had To See Paris (1929) clearly shows how intensely concerned his film audience was with this reputation for cleanliness and fidelity. When Pike Peters (Will Rogers) and his wife (Irene Rich) reach Paris, Mrs. Peters immediately begins to dress in the styles of the beau monde. In a bedroom scene, Pike, pleased by the way his wife looks in her new fashions, gives her a very innocent kiss. Rogers� audience was so involved with their public man off the screen, that there was a very intense response to this act on camera: When �he blushingly kissed her, the audience broke into happy applause. They knew it was Will�s first screen kiss, and they realized that he never would have done it had it not been for the years of devoted friendship that had grown up between them in their pilgrimage to the top of the screen ladder. Also knowing Will�s domestic happiness, the roof went off when he admitted that his kiss was almost like �infidelity�� (Memorial �The Movies�). The film audience admired the Rogers� for maintaining �a real house, even in Hollywood� because so many families in their own neighborhoods were disintegrating under the acid of change.

2. Transcending the Pressures of Middle Class Life

Americans were fascinated by Will Rogers� ability to surmount the pressures of his busy life as an entertainer, journalist, and film star. As an admiring newspaperman reported: �Will Rogers probably is the only person alive who can face the Associated Press totally unembarrassed. Big news is but the happenings of a small town to him. To him important personages are but fellers of his acquaintance� (Memorial no. 15, 62). Rogers himself delivers a line in Life Begins at Forty (1934) which summarizes the lesson which his viewers drew: �He solved the problem which all the world has been looking for � how to relax. Just to look at him makes me feel better.�

Rogers� freedom from pressure was communicated in numerous ways. When radio was a new invention which stymied a number of professional performers, Will Rogers made his broadcasts extemporaneously. He conveyed the impression that he was too secure in himself to be worried. As one commentator noted, Rogers was �the only guy in radio who dares to hem and haw away air time� (Memorial no. 24, 152). Rogers� movie fans were aware that he was equally blas� on the movie set. Part of the delight in viewing a Rogers movie was watching Rogers deviate from the script, and seeing the problems which his improvisation caused for his fellow actors. While this horseplay might have been a pleasure for an audience accustomed to being programmed during working hours, it caused some consternation and confusion on the movie set at Twentieth Century-Fox. Rochelle Hudson (who played the young female in Dr. Bull, Mr. Skitch, Judge Priest, Life Begins at Forty) admitted that Rogers� liberties with the script caused her great distress, for she never recognized her cues. As she recalled, Rogers� proclivity for improvisation left her �listening for cues that never came . . . had me ad libbing to myself in my sleep long before my first picture with Bill was finished� (Memorial no.1, 13). A young and ambitious John Ford (forewarned about the insouciance of Will Rogers and Irvin Cobb on the set) began the filming of Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) with the simple but knowing question: �Does either of you two gentlemen have the faintest idea of what this story is about?� (Rogers �His Last�).

Will Rogers� screen audiences were delighted by his improvisations, for his liberty even from the verbal restrictions of a script conveyed the impression that he was a man at ease with himself who (unlike his middle-class audience) was capable of transcending the petty demands of a busy life. One reviewer accurately spoke for millions when he said that �You feel, somehow, that he has captured the secret of being happy, and that if you watch the screen carefully, this secret may be yours� (Memorial �Dr. Bull�). As with the other virtues described in this section, the audience believed that this secret applied to Rogers the man as well as Rogers persona on the screen.

3. The Sympathetic Spirit

Rogers� humanitarian activities were widely followed and admired. When an earthquake destroyed Managua, Nicaragua in 1931, Will Rogers flew south to lend his name to fund raising efforts; after floods ripped through the lower Mississippi Valley in 1927, Will Rogers was on the spot to entertain and to ease the pain of the dispossessed; when Oklahoma and surrounding states became a �dust bowl� during the famous drought of the 1930�s, Rogers stumped Oklahoma and Arkansas for the Red Cross. The itineraries of what were called his �tours of mercy� boggle the mind. His contemporaries found it difficult to believe that a man could do so much for so many without some kind of mission of love inspiring him. One contemporary went so far as to call these tours as representative of Will Rogers� �Christ-like spirit of giving.� When they reported these tours, newsmen did not hesitate to contrast the personal concern demonstrated by Rogers with the foot-dragging and bureaucratic bungling of a big and indifferent government. There is little doubt that by circumventing the red tape and empty debates, Will Rogers gave many forgotten men in the age of Coolidge and Hoover the sense that someone of national stature was personally concerned about their suffering.

A writer for the Jacksonville Journal, Jacksonville, Florida, summed up the profound effect of Rogers� personal charity. Note the emphasis in this response upon Rogers� spiritual use of one of the principal symbols of the age of technology:

Giving wings to most people does not add to their ability to be of benefit to the world . . . though it may increase their economic efficiency. . . . But when a genius such as Will Rogers �got wings,� he becomes a sort of superman, not by reason of a superiority of attitude, but by the multiplication of his contacts with human creatures who need a bit of cheer in their helplessness or weariness or misery. Like St. Francis, he is a lover not of mankind, at large, but men as individuals. St. Francis used the �shabby expedient� of a rope to tie around his waist in his spiritual vocation; Will Rogers used it to humanize his philosophy. And the good he does in this world is increased by his mobility� (Stone �Simple Life�).

As a representative person, Will Rogers embodied a ready sympathy, a freedom from the selfishness which seemed to be the guiding spirit of the materialistic American twenties. In a society where members of the same apartment building did not know each other, Will Rogers seemed to convey the idea that cities and nations (through his example) could be linked by neighborly bonds of affection: �he comes nearer being a Jongleur de Dieu than any modern world personage � a jongleur and a troubador in one � not for a single community, but for thousands of cities and for the remotest cabins. To have wings for such service is not merely to minister to more people directly; but is to carry them the human kindness of others and to bring these people into wider human relationships� (Stone �Simple Life�).

III. WILL ROGERS IN FILM: FROM COWBOY TO UNCLE WILL

In a scene from the (now lost) film, One Day in 365, Will is sitting in the sunroom of his beautiful house in Santa Monica Canyon, reading the newspaper. The headline reads: �REGARDLESS OF DISARMAMENT PLANS, THERE ARE RUMBLINGS OF WAR.� Will looks up from his paper and says to Betty Rogers, �I guess the Republicans want another war, to show how much better they can run it than the Democrats.� When he finishes reading the paper, he throws it down in disgust saying, �Same old junk � murder and divorce � the people who were divorced last year are being murdered this year� (Memorial no. 8). This scene is of interest in our discussion of Rogers on the screen because its relevance to current events is atypical. Rogers played many parts on film, but the common characteristic of all of them was their removal from pressing contemporary issues. And the longer Rogers remained in Hollywood, the farther back into an Arcadian pre-industrial past his characters moved. For this reason, the question immediately poses itself: Why is the persona which Rogers portrays in his films so out of touch with twentieth century America? Are these merely flimsy �entertainment films� which are intentionally irrelevant? Or is it possible that below the surface of Will Rogers� films there is a symbolism and a mood which spoke clearly to the millions who flocked to see them? Is it possible that the problems of the 1920's and 1930�s which Rogers dealt with in his journalism are latent within the films in a coded form, waiting to be decoded by the historian who is both sensitive to the historical issues and the effects of film?

Will Rogers made his first film, Laughing Bill Hyde (1918) while twirling his rope on the stage of Zeigfield�s Follies. Not surprisingly, he was cast as a cowboy in various melodramatic and comic roles. Rogers had real problems with his audience in these first films. New York critics who knew Rogers from the Follies brought an understanding of his humor to the films and this preparation helped them to understand the silent film character. On the other hand, the general public was indifferent because it had not yet been properly exposed to this fresh breeze from the West. Records show that Samuel Goldwyn lost at least $40,000 on these early films (�Series R�).

After a short time as a cowboy, Rogers developed a second film persona. Called �Jubilo,� the figure is a rural clown, a perpetual loafer who floats through society getting himself into trouble and avoiding work whenever possible. Jubilo is an eccentric figure whom we love despite his numerous flaws. He is distinctly unlike the late, philosophical Rogers persona: Jubilo can fall in love, and even has a few (rather athletic) fist fights.

During Rogers� middle film period (1929-1932) he developed still another screen persona, one which would have been readily recognized by his daily readers. In these portraits of an Innocent Abroad, Rogers plays a simple down to earth figure (usually from Claremore, Oklahoma) who is forced to travel outside his provincial world to Washington (Going to Congress), New Orleans (Handy Andy) or Europe (They Had To See Paris). The Innocent is usually forced out of his normal environment by his wife, who aspires to be a sophisticated and �broad minded� citizen of the twentieth-century city. In a few instances, some local political faction accidentally elects the Innocent to Congress. The humor in all of these films about the Innocent Abroad derives from the interplay between the central character and the corrupt people of the urban centers which he is forced to visit. In most cases, Will Rogers overwhelms the corrupted urban men by the sheer force of his ebullient personality.

In playing these roles as the Innocent, Rogers began to show that he was more than merely a good actor. One reviewer discerned that Rogers tapped deeper, national themes. In speaking of Pike Peters (a character portrayed by Rogers in They Had To See Paris, 1929)�the reviewer noted that �Will Rogers has become a national character, infinitely more characteristic of America than the grotesque figure of Uncle Sam. It would be an artistic and patriotic crime to let such a film character [i.e., the Innocent Abroad] die� (Memorial no.8, 204). The reviewer and his public were not disappointed, for So This is London (1930) provided Rogers with the same kind of ironic contrast between solid provincial and an effete society.

America�s new place in the international world determined the strong response to Rogers in this role. While America had refused to enter the League of Nations, the facts of international life could not be denied � the United States was the most powerful nation in the world, but was still unsure of its place and its role. Rogers� Innocent Abroad films gave Americans a confident sense of poise in the international setting. The message of these films is always that older civilizations may have posted their claims to pre-eminence before the United States, but post-war realities obviously showed that the United States was the only country in the world whose spirit had not been broken by the experience of the Great War.

As one discerning reviewer reported, Rogers not only gave Americans confidence inspiring self-image, he also conveyed a better picture of American character and values to the outside world:

There was always the quiet homely voice and the loveable smile to keep us in touch with the things we knew and understood. He was a Westerner talking to Westerners in a language and with an awkward grace readily comprehended. He was the epitome of the spirit of the West: open-handed, free and easy, loquacious, oddly philosophical, genuinely sentimental with a smile ever within reach of one of the boys. And we liked to think that this was the picture of us that he carried to other and far corners of the world, where people, not knowing us too well, were apt to think of us as uncouth and six-shooting (Stone �Chatting�).

The advent of sound films effected a transformation in what Rogers could convey to his audience. Prior to sound, viewers missed much of Rogers� special humor if they were not prepared by a night at the Follies, or exposure to Rogers� daily column. With sound, it was impossible to miss his mysterious, radiating humanity. Speaking of this power to project a loveable personality, a reviewer of Rogers� first talkie, They Had To See Paris, noted that: �This picture changes all [the difficulties of communication in the silent films]. Rogers� shadow is almost a living thing. The wit is spontaneous and droll . . . the disarming humanness of the man envelopes the screen, the orchestra and the auditorium with one surging feeling of brotherhood� (Stone Beverly).

What was now needed in the era of sound was the proper screen �vehicle� for the Rogers personality. Of importance in selecting that role was the awareness that the camera could supply much of the atmosphere for the Rogers persona, that Will Rogers in a film could say less and actually personify the values which had guided his �private� life and his journalistic commentary. The final Rogers films portray him as a small town figure. He is no longer the cowboy, the clown, the satirist, nor even the innocent abroad, but a very different symbol of a harmonious America before the turn of the century. He lives in the mythical world which we have seen Americans nostalgically projecting back into the 1890�s because of the pressures they feel themselves to be under in the 1930�s.

Actually, Rogers had experimented with the small town role during the 1920�s. One critic was extremely impressed by its possibilities, given Rogers personality and style. In a review of Jes Call Me Jim (1920) he noted that the kind of effects which would later be attributed to the Rogers of the later sound films � that he was not merely amusing his audience, but conveying a much needed message of brotherhood and a refreshingly positive perspective on human possibilities. In this way, Rogers was showing that his films performed a social function: �Will Rogers� . . . good natured personality seems to spread throughout the world a sense of happiness and kindness. I suppose a man like this, acting as he does before almost countless millions, does more good to this old earth than scores of preachers and philanthropists; able to reach more hearts than can be reached through any other medium� (Memorial no.20, 37).

In State Fair (1933) Rogers came back to this role. Audiences, executives at Twentieth Century-Fox, and critics all recognized immediately that this was the ideal role for Rogers because it placed him �in a day when American village life was far more isolated than it is today� (Croy no. 24, 90). Celebrating that �Will Rogers Restored Picture Themes to Provincial Subjects,� a reviewer captured the essence of this universally positive response: �State Fair taught Rogers his correct m�tier and it taught the industry that pictures concerning inland provincial characters were more appealing than penthouses and gun-spattered pavements.� The reviewer concluded that Rogers� nostalgic pictures had tapped a �forgotten public� which �had lost interest in crime and so-called �smart� films [and had] stayed away entirely from cinema� (Rosenfield).

At least in the beginning, both the film critics and this �forgotten public� shared a common enthusiasm for these rural films. Some critics thought that they saw a �complete metamorphosis [in Rogers] from amusing philosopher into character actor� (Memorial no. 1, 46). Other critics saw that Rogers after being a cowboy, clown, innocent abroad, had finally stumbled upon the right character for the screen. But after the formula was repeated a few times, critics tired of the rural Rogers �vehicle.� Ironically, while the film critics stopped applauding Rogers� films, the American public swarmed to them in ever-increasing numbers, and film rentals for Fox averaged about $2.5 million per film. The irony of this disaffection of the critics was that Rogers had begun his career as a darling of the critics but a box-office failure; in these late films, Rogers was obviously appealing to real and profound popular emotions, emotions that could easily be overlooked by a critic interested in film as an art form. For the average viewer of these films did not buy his ticket to see art, but for the psychological relief and fatherly support which Rogers seemed to offer.

If we ignore the artistic merits of the late films and keep a clear focus on the response of the viewer, we begin to see why Rogers refrains from commenting directly on current events. The world of the late Will Rogers films is purposefully insulated from contemporary strains and pressures. For this reason the viewer�s psychological �payoff� from these rural dramas was the opportunity to temporarily escape from the world of ethical confusion, depression, and impending war. In David Harum (1934) this place is called �Homeville,� a term which we will use hereafter to describe the nostalgic, pre-industrial world which we find in all of the late films of Will Rogers. Economic breakdown, the separation of a democratic society into rigid classes, the professionalization of knowledge may exist in this world of the later films, but in a special form. In Homeville, all of these threats are reduced to human proportions. They may challenge the wits of Homeville�s citizens, but they never seem to be overwhelming.

Because the challenges to happiness and fulfillment have been reduced, the Will Rogers persona in Homeville can deal with them. (Rogers in these last films will hereafter be called �Uncle Will� because of his avuncular role.) In a few instances, Uncle Will enlists the aid of the threatened, but most often he is capable of solving the problems by himself. He is really more than just an inhabitant of Homeville: he is its superintending consciousness. Uncle Will has a special insight into the human heart. Because of this special power, and because every problem in Homeville has a human face, Uncle Will is a master of this world.

The best metaphor for the perspective given the viewer of the late Rogers films is probably that of a telescope which we look through backwards. The result of looking at the world in this perspective is that everything appears smaller and therefore less challenging to the viewer. The remainder of this essay will look closely at David Harum (1934) and In Old Kentucky (1935) in an attempt to show how this miniaturizing process takes place in two specific cases.

DAVID HARUM (1934)

The first scene of David Harum (1934) could not be more explicit about the function of the late Rogers films to transport the viewer back into a simpler past. Will Rogers plays a rural banker who has come to the big city of New York to visit General Woolsey, a banker on Wall Street. The panic of 1893 has forced the General to close his doors recently. Consequently, the General is very curious to know how Uncle Will can remain open for business during times of �depression, unemployment and starvation.�

David Harum�s answer is hardly an answer at all. Its dramatic purpose is to accentuate the differences between the two worlds which these men inhabit: the General lives in the city which has proven itself to be out of balance; Uncle Will lives in the country where people may not be good, but the proximity of men to each other assures that they are always under control. Harum explains to the General: �Well , General, I go a long way on character, and after I�ve gone a long way on character, I check on collateral. Then I give �em half of what they ask for.�

This statement says something about the volume of business which Uncle Will does up in Homeville. He knows everybody in Homeville, and he also realizes that it is �human nature� for borrowers to pad both their loan requests as well as to overestimate their ability to provide collateral. Fully aware that even his best clients will cheat, Uncle Will gives them half of what they request � which, ironically, is probably what they really need! The point of all this is that the urban banker is a victim of impersonal economic forces which he cannot control. David Harum�s Homeville, on the other hand is never affected by anything as abstract as twenty-one year periodic economic cycles. As David explains, the people of Homeville are not dependent on a fickle outside market for their prosperity. Because they are closer to nature, they are self-sufficient and can therefore �roll their own� in hard times.

The young male figure enters David Harum with troubles not entirely foreign to a 1930 audience. John Lennox�s father recently committed suicide because of his heavy losses on the stock market. To compound John�s problems, his calculating, urban fianc�e has closed out their engagement as she would a savings account � there is no more money in it. John has been searching for a job in a city that has none to offer. But because this is the panic of 1893 (and not the depression of the 1930�s) John has recourse to the country to renew his chances for a good life. General Woolsey cannot help John personally, but he makes arrangements for David Harum to take John into the bank up in Homeville. When John leaves the befuddled city for the stable, self-sufficient countryside, he remarks pointedly: �Thanks, General � I want to get away from the city and get to work.�

Homeville is unlike the impersonal city because it has a superintendent of hearts. Uncle Will is there to assure that a money problem never becomes an obstacle to individual fulfillment. Because of Uncle Will�s ever present concern, the inhabitants of Homeville are rewarded on the basis of personal virtue rather than because of the intelligence, class, or sophistication which the world may have given them.

John Lennox (as an urban man who must learn to get some roots back into �the real things in life�) has severe initial difficulties with the primitive conditions of Homeville. On the stormy night of his arrival, he finds the kitchen of the local hotel closed, and learns that if he wants to use the tub, he must pay extra for such a luxury. Upstairs, he finds that the ceiling of his room leaks, and that the broken pane in his window is not interfering with the play of the rain. The night clerk of the hotel informs John that the town�s only carpenter will fix the window when his rheumatism improves � which will probably be never. The purpose of building up these details of backwardness and inefficiency is to communicate clearly that we are living in a world where work is not the most important part of life where people take their time because they are ignorant of the city�s treadmill of ambition and selfishness. As a result of not being obsessed by the Protestant ethic, the people of Homeville are happy, even if they are unwashed and a little behind on conveniences. Uncle Will (as David Harum) personifies Homeville�s indifference toward work and money. The more we watch Uncle Will in this film, the more we conclude that he is liberated from all material concerns. In order of their priority, his worldly interests seem to be: horse trading; ring toss (played in his office with his pocket knife stabbed into the middle of his papers as a pole); and fishing. Uncle Will even has difficulty making it to his office at all on many days because of the chances for horse trades and conversation along the way.

If considered closely, the six horse trades in David Harum fit into the overall pattern of reduced threats that we find in Homeville. As explained by Uncle Will to his skeptical sister, the golden rule of the horse trade is �Do Unto Others What They Want to Do Unto You.� Translated into the world of the 1920�s and 1930�s as a business ethic, this is precisely the doctrine of the survival of the most aggressive and dishonest which led to disaster. Yet in the setting of Homeville, the false representation and sharping of the horse trades seem quaint and entertaining, for what is destructive in Hooverville can be transformed into humor in Homeville.

David Harum�s business practices as a banker reflect his easygoing attitude, his charity, but also his power to see into the human heart. David Harum�s opening lines taught us that human beings are neither good nor bad, but a little of each. Because they can easily go astray, they cannot be completely trusted; but because they are not completely evil, we should not be completely cynical.

The film also indicates that a small town is an ideal social unit, because in a small town people have an opportunity to study one another over a long period of time. In sum, Rogers communicates to his audience that the small town is an ideal society, not because people act better there, but because in a small town a better watch can be kept over a wayward human nature.

Uncle Will�s behavior as a small town banker reflects this basic philosophy. When an impoverished widow cannot keep up with the payments on her mortgage, Uncle Will discovers a �forgotten� bank account which clears her of debt. This tender act of charity is followed by an entirely different scene which demonstrates that for all his charity, Uncle Will is no sentimentalist who can be outwitted by the worldly. Immediately after his scene with the widow, Uncle Will is confronted by a burly customer who arrogantly refuses to pay his loan on time, claiming that an improper signature of his co-signer makes him exempt from prosecution. Uncle Will looks out of the corner of his eye � he knew that this confrontation would come eventually � and slyly explains to the defaulter that he had obtained the proper signature months earlier in anticipation of this ploy. The note must be paid. This revelation leads to a fist fight, and although no one is hurt in the uproar, a significant message comes through: if you are angry in Homeville, you can actually identify and take a swing at your oppressor. This personalized environment which allows the individual to let off steam contrasts with the frustratingly complex world of Muley Graves in Steinbeck�s Grapes of Wrath. Unlike that impersonal setting of land companies, banks, and distant corporations, the forces that operate in Homeville always have a human face and heart. As noted, the charitable spirit of Uncle Will controls Homeville because he has special powers to see into the human hearts of his small town.

Uncle Will�s inveterate matchmaking in these last films tells much about his concern for particular human hearts. Reviewers tired rather quickly of the Kent-Venable mating that is repeated over and over again in the late films, but the mass audience kept coming back for more. To understand the full effect of these love-matches, we must realize that everyone in the audience understood that Rogers was in no way interested in the young girls he helps to find their man. One reviewer summarized the audience�s sense that Rogers was a �sympathetic and comforting �old man�: If ever a man was a father, it�s Will. When Ann comes up to Will�s bedroom [at the opening of David Harum] while he is dressing, there is no embarrassment. With any other actor, the audience might smirk and think naughty thoughts. But with Will, he is so much the father type, naughtiness occurs to nobody� (�Daddy�). These romances are really of no interest in themselves, but they have a function in the late films. Just as marriages in nineteenth century novels frequently have social and other significances, so the presence of separated young people in the late Rogers films is used to convey a deeper meaning. Simply, the young lovers exist in these films so that Uncle Will can have something loving to do.

It is not difficult to decode the appeal of this element of the late films. Rogers� audience was living in a world which was growing increasingly impersonal. Not only community feeling, but the small loyalty demanded by the nuclear family was becoming exhausted as the result of the intellectual and economic strains. The appeal may have been sentimental, but an image of such a man as Rogers was very much needed by his audience to counterbalance this drift toward depersonalization. In a treacherous world which seemed to be out of control, here stood a sympathetic personality, completely unselfish, concerned with warding off harm rather than amassing power. Viewers of the late films were shown lovers who were separated because of financial differences (David Harum); the laws delays (Steamboat Round the Bend); the dishonesty of a spoiled rich boy (Life Begins at Forty); the covetousness of city folk (In Old Kentucky). Fortunately for the young lovers, in all these cases democratic Uncle Will is present to help. He manipulates the people of Homeville (and even the weather) so that these barriers can be surmounted. The result is that the young people finally recognize that they are just human beings, and that the differences which seemed so insuperable are really artificial and flimsy when weighed against the inner promptings of the heart. As a result of all this matchmaking, Rogers comes to represent a disinterested spirit of brotherhood. And while this message is transmitted in the later films through a flimsy set of conventions, the ultimate effect upon the audience is to demonstrate that we Americans still have the capacity to transcend our materialism and our growing class barriers.

Our superintendent of hearts frequently calls into play some form of deus ex machina to extricate him and his friends from the predicaments in which they find themselves. The most absurd of them all (from In Old Kentucky) is worth relating for its unreality and its appeal. Grandfather hires a rainmaker to slat the clouds so that the track will be wet during the climactic race. When the rainmaker�s standard concoctions fail, he ties a bundle of dynamite to a cluster of balloons and hopes for the best. When the balloons fail to lift the dynamite, the bundle slams into a water tower near the finishing stretch, with the result of completely flooding the track. Because the track is flooded, the Martingale horse, Blueboy, comes from behind at the last moment to win the race. His victory ends all of the personal difficulties and family feuds which the viewer has become familiar with during the film. Only in Homerville, the land of wish-fulfillment, can such dei ex machinii grind out their answers without complaints from the audience!

Here the theme of the use and abuse of power enters in a coded form. We have already indicated that Uncle Will is the benevolent dictator of Homeville. Always a critic of men who aspired to hold power, how does Rogers on the screen avoid the abuses which he found in others? Here the contrived conclusions of the films find their meaningful (and comforting) place. Certainly most of the films achieve their happy endings in this way: in Judge Priest, Uncle Will persuades his Southern jury to acquit his client by playing �Dixie� outside the courtroom window at the right moment; in Steamboat Round the Bend a race, which eventually joins the lovers and saves an innocent man�s life, is won because of an unexpected supply of patent medicine (with a high alcoholic content) is discovered at the last minute to be useful as a high energy fuel; In Old Kentucky ends with a horse race in which the track becomes providentially muddy. In every case cited, Uncle Will sees to it that all the love knots are tied, and that society�s conflicts are resolved � but always without an overt display of power. Uncle Will always gives us the impression that he has somehow transformed bower into love. Unlike political and business leaders outside the theater, he has the gods on his side. In all of the late films, the viewer is encouraged to identify with the young lovers, to experience their (temporary) sense of tension and unfulfillment, but then gradually to be rewarded by the tutelary deity of Homeville, Uncle Will. The viewers who succumbed to these love stories may have been guilty of taking an emotional holiday, but we can understand their deep need for such an escape when we consider the world that awaited them outside the theater. In these hours of escape, the viewers could smile at the pleasing notion that John Lennox and Ann Madison are married at the conclusion of David Harum. The viewers could applaud John and Ann�s decision to remain in Homeville rather than return to the city. Unfortunately, the viewers of David Harum could not lean on the comforting spirit of Uncle Will, nor could they stay in the protected landscape of Homeville; they had to go home when the lights went on.

IN OLD KENTUCKY (1935)

Much of what has been said about Homeville and Uncle Will applies to the Rogers figure and the community portrayed in one of his last two films, In Old Kentucky (1935). The story brings two very different families into conflict: The Martingales are an out-at-elbows rural family whose very special horse, Blueboy, is coveted by a neighboring gentleman farm (1935). The story brings two very different families into conflict: The Martingales are an out-at-elbows rural family whose very special horse, Blueboy, is coveted by a neighboring gentleman farm and his daughter (the Shattocks). Somewhere in the past, a piece of property was added illegally to the Shattock farm, initiating a feud between the two families. Uncle Will in this setting plays a horse trainer, Steve Tapley, who is especially concerned about the boy and girl who are separated by the feud.

The style and behavior of the Shattocks symbolizes that the city is encroaching upon the countryside. Grandpa Martingale becomes the center of controversy, because he is still angry about his stolen piece of land. He aims his shotgun at the Shattock automobile whenever it passes the Martingale house. But Grandpa never fires. Viewers quickly learn that Grandpa is an eccentric old man who is really quite harmless. Nevertheless, because they are city people, the Shattocks know how to call the impersonal force of the law into play. They file a complaint against Grandpa, with the hope that legal pressure will force the Martingales to sell their horse, Blueboy.

As Steve Tapley, Uncle Will is hard pressed to avert a tragedy. After all, he is a mere horse trainer in this film, and therefore lacks the social leverage which was his when he was David Harum, Homeville�s only banker. Nevertheless, Uncle Will lives up to the occasion because in Homeville (unlike Hooverville) character is the source of power, not money or social position. For this reason, a social inferior like Uncle Will who can see into the human heart can gain complete control. With his insight into the darker regions of the human heart, Uncle Will can anticipate the ploys of the Shattocks as they attempt to buy (or steal) Blueboy; with his more tender concern for individuals, Uncle Will can assure that Nancy Martingale and Lee Andrews are eventually matched. As in David Harum, so here, Homeville brings threats to manageable proportions. For example, we note almost immediately that class divisions exist. They Shattocks exhibit the worst characteristics of the American rich: they dress according to the latest fashion; they have an affected accent which has obviously been learned rather than acquired; they have themselves chauffeured around Homeville in an enormous Packard touring car. In distinct contrast, the Martingales are unaffected citizens of Homeville: Grandpa still dresses like a farmer; young Nancy is always in a loose sweater and riding clothes; and when the Martingales travel, they either bounce along on a buckboard or ride one of their fine horses. At their farm, the Shattocks have hordes of retainers, while the Martingales do their own work.

In In Old Kentucky Rogers takes the opportunity to comment on the new woman. Her superficiality and artificiality is contrasted with the virtues of Nancy Martingale, a woman of older America. While Ms. Shattock is identified quickly by her dress, her accent, her snobbery as the bitch that the new woman has become, Nancy Martingale shows herself to have feelings for animals (always a cardinal virtue in Homeville). Nancy also knows enough to rely on Steve because she seems to recognize in him both a confidant and guardian angel.

A scene in which Uncle Will visits a dress shop in the city most effectively contrasts the life styles of the urban Shattocks and the rural Martingales. A kick-off dance at the local country club has been planned for the night preceding the big race. Knowing that Nancy cannot afford a dress for herself, and aware that she must be at the dance to meet her young man, Uncle Will decides to take direct action. In this scene, Rogers tries to develop at some length the distance between the sensibility of an older, rural America and the worldliness of the contemporary American mentality that is reflected in women�s fashions. The store owner who greets Uncle Will speaks and acts more like a madame of a bordello than a saleswoman. From the beginning, she and Uncle Will operate under a misconception: he wants a modest dress for his young employer; the manager of the dress shop thinks that he wants something spicy for a mistress. While Uncle Will is muttering to himself in a corner, the madame parades out six or seven models who line up behind him half dressed (or half undressed) in diaphanous nightgowns and peignoirs. When Uncle Will turns around to see what has been brought out, he is shocked. Averting his eyes, he apologizes profusely for stumbling into the ladies dressing room! When the confusion is finally cleared up, Uncle Will buys a white, high necked, long-sleeved dress which is more consonant with his old-fashioned ideas about women. Predictably, on the night of the dance, Arlene Shattock is wearing one of the low-backed, clinging gowns which made Uncle Will blush.

The lesson is obvious � in her covetousness and in her dress, Arlene has shown herself to be all that is bad about the new woman. On the other hand, Nancy Martingale shows herself to be an old-fashioned girl who knows that she must rely upon the guidance and strength of the men around her.

In Old Kentucky miniaturizes the problem of the professionalization of knowledge, a twentieth-century development which Rogers spoke about frequently in his columns. Rogers was extremely suspicious of professional or school-trained experts, for he suspected that they frequently ascribed expertise to their work when none really existed. Whether bogus or not, the idea of the world becoming to complicated for the average man to understand was very much on the minds of Rogers� audience.

Dr. Lee Andrews enters Homeville as a representative of professional learning. Whereas Uncle Will became a trainer by working with horses, Dr. Andrews has taken copious notes in the classrooms of Kentucky�s new agricultural and mechanical college. Within the setting of Homeville, this symbol of complexity is quickly subdued by Uncle Will. Not only does Lee show complete respect for the old-fashioned trainer, the young doctor is entirely dependent upon Uncle Will in his love match with Nancy Martingale.

In Old Kentucky thus presents (and reduces) the problems of a society breaking down into rigidly isolated classes, of a new morality and a new woman, of the professionalization of knowledge. All of these unsettling developments are presented in such a way that we do not see them as a clear demonstration that our world is becoming increasingly perplexing and violent. Instead, our response (like our response to Will Rogers� �playful� journalism) is one of reassurance � Uncle Will�s presence on the screen has lessened their impact upon us. Throughout, the most important factor is that the environment and the people in Homeville are entirely malleable under the workings of the spirit of Uncle Will. Millions of Rogers� fans must have watched such resolutions of conflict with satisfaction. They must have been impressed by what one contemporary reviewer noted was Rogers� power �to set right all the troubles of the impulsive people around him� (Memorial no. 1, 31). Given a sympathetic understanding of the forces affecting Americans in the 1920�s and 1930�s, it is difficult to vouchsafe them their inner need to love such a symbolic man. He meant so much to his people in a time of change and deprivation because he presented them with an image of what Americans had been told to believe was the best in their national character. In preserving this image of humanity and love, Rogers was making no small contribution to the sanity of Americans in a world rushing toward international violence. A reviewer of In Old Kentucky hit upon some of the essential positive factors of Rogers� contribution as man and as a film image. These late Homeville movies reassured Americans (especially frenzied New Yorkers) �about the solidity and innate common sense of this country.� While the reviewer granted that Rogers was probably playing �himself,� he felt compelled to add that as a representative figure, Rogers supplied welcome reassurance in an era of bad news: �Will Rogers has a curious national quality. He gives the impression somehow that this country is filled with such sages, wise with years, young in humor and life, shrewd, yet gentle.� Most importantly for the reviewer, �He is what Americans think other Americans are like� (Rogers �Rev. of�). After the erosion of values in the twenties, after the economic disaster of the thirties, Americans were indeed fortunate to have such a public person to keep a hopeful image of American values and optimism bright.

Discussion of the Literature about Will Rogers

Most biographers of Will Rogers claim that Rogers was a �failure� in silent films, but a �success� once sound was introduced. In terms of box office receipts this is true, but Rogers biographers also believe that he was a poor actor in these films. New York Times reviews indicated that Rogers� early silent films were much admired by those who understood Rogers� style of humor. The real problem for Rogers was to make the nation aware of that style. This he did from 1922 onward as a public person, public speaker, and syndicated journalist. The thesis of this paper is that Rogers became such a powerful film image precisely because of the associations which viewers brought with them to the theater.

Rogers� �Jubilo� persona, the figure of the rural clown, can be found in such films as Jubilo (1919), Honest Hutch (1920), Boys Will be Boys (1921), The Headless Horseman, Fruits of Faith (1922), Too Busy for Work (1923), Jubilo Jr. and Don�t Park There (1924). Some of Rogers� �Innocent Abroad� persona films include Strolling Through Europe with Will Rogers (episodes) (1926), Going to Congress, A Truthful Liar (1924), A Texas Steer (1927), They Had To See Paris (1929), Lightnin� (1930), So This is London, Young as You Feel, Connecticut Yankee, Ambassador Bill (1931), and Business and Pleasure (1932).

In Rogers� later film roles he is neither the Jubilo, the Innocent Abroad, the Clown, or the Cowboy, but is instead a symbol of the 1930s nostalgia for the 1890s era. In this final persona, Rogers plays a variety of small town figures: in State Fair (1933) he is a farmer anxious to see his pig take first prize; in Dr. Bull (1933) he is a small town doctor who is resistant to new-fangled ways; in David Harum (191934) he is a small town banker who is more interested in fishing and horse trading than gain; in Handy Andy (1934) he is a small town druggist who runs amuck when he tries to become part of the leisure class; in Judge Priest (1934) he is a small town judge in the post-Civil War South; in Country Chairman (1935) he is a frontier politician in Wyoming about the time that Wister�s hero, the Virginian, would have been settling down to make his bundle; in Life Begins at Forty (1935) he plays a small town newspaper editor with his hand on the pulse of the community; in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) he is an avuncular captain of a renovated steamboat, the Claremont Queen; In Old Kentucky (1935) tells the story of the world of the Kentucky Derby before the syndicate moved in. This desire to look back at a simpler time is not new in American thought. In the 1970s people were learning to �groove� on the good-old fifties, forgetting in the process the atomic bomb, air raid drills, the Korean War, and the rampage of Senator Joseph McCarthy. In the 1860s and the 1870s Harriet Beecher Stowe held her inverted telescope up to the religious and social history of New England and discovered the nostalgic and peaceful towns she describes in Oldtown Folks (1869) and Poganuc People (1878). Still earlier, Royall Tyler wrote probably the first work of nostalgia in �The Contrast� (1787), a play about a country squire and his man in the corrupt city of New York.

Most of the contemporary responses to Rogers the man and film image in this paper have been taken from the numerous 2ft by 3ft scrapbooks collected and preserved by Robert and Paula Love of the Will Rogers Memorial. The Fred Stone, Memorial, and Homer Cloy scrapbooks are held at the Will Rogers Memorial and Museum in Claremont, Oklahoma. All of the scrapbooks have been microfilmed and are on deposit at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK.

Works Cited

  • Croy, Homer. Scrapbooks. Will Rogers Memorial and Museum Claremore, OK.
  • Donaldson, Susan R. I�ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. 1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana UP, 2006.
  • Hays, Samuel P. The Response of Industrialism: 1885-1914. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957.
  • Leuchtenberg, William E. The Perils of Prosperity: 1914-1932. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1958.
  • Memorial. Scrapbooks . No.1, 8, 9, 14, 15, 20, 24. Will Rogers Memorial and Museum Claremore, OK.
  • ----. �An Ideal Home.� No. 20: 17.
  • ----. �Daddy of us All.� No. 24: 48.
  • ----. �Dr. Bull.� No.1: 31.
  • ----. �The Movies.� Beverly Hills Script. No. 9: 204.
  • Peterson, Ada. �Via Long Distance.� Memorial no.15:47
  • Rogers, Will. File box 14. Will Rogers Memorial and Museum. Claremore, OK.
  • ----. Rev. of Life Begins at Forty. New York Sun.
  • ----. �His Last Precious Days with Will Rogers Recalled by Irvin Cobb.�
  • Rosenfield, John, Jr. �Screen Loses Star at Peak of Influence.� Memorial no. 53: 27.
  • Sapir, Edward. �Culture, Genuine and Spurious.� Culture,Language, and Personality Ed. David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: U of California P, 1968.
  • Sargent, Thornton. �Will Outwits the Sexy Fellows.� Memorial no 24: 152.
  • �Series R.� Goldwyn Contracts. December 29, 1923.
  • Stone, Fred. Scrapbook. Will Rogers Memorial and Museum Claremore, OK.
  • ----. Beverly Hills Citizen. No.11
  • ----. �Chatting with the Editor.� No. 3
  • ----.�Simple Life and Kindly Manner Marked Life of Will Rogers.� No.11