Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Rex Allen, Allan (Rocky) Lane. I spent Saturday afternoons with each and every one of them when I was growing up.
Those were the days when I could “go to the show” with two bus tickets and 25 cents, 15 to get in and 10 for a box of popcorn. Those were the days when movie theatres were large and often elegant. There were ushers in uniform at the door, flashlights in hand to show us to our seats and to tell us to be quiet if we got too boisterous.
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They were innocent days, when the hero always wore a white hat (and seldom lost it in a fight), right and wrong were obvious and, at the end of the movie, someone else got the girl while the hero rode off into the sunset on his trusty horse, Trigger, Champion, Koko or Black Jack, as the case may be.
The greatest of the Saturday afternoon cowboy heroes – the King of the Cowboys – was of course Roy Rogers and I felt as if something important had gone out of life when he died recently at 86.
Rogers stood for and practised old-fashioned values. Bill Thompson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught the flavor of Rogers in a recent column: More often than not, he wrote, a celebrity obituary will include something negative. The tributes to Rogers, however, contain “no hint of scandal or bad behavior.”
At our house, we have several Roy Rogers movies on videotape. Under duress, the offspring will watch them, but they find them old-fashioned and corny.
The other day, when it was too hot to work outside, I slipped in one of my favorites, Son of Paleface, which featured not just Roy Rogers but also Bob Hope and Jane Russell.
I was the tender age of eight when the movie was first released. I still remember seeing it and laughing and enjoying it immensely. As an adult, however, I enjoy it more, picking up much of the comedy and asides that as an eight-year-old were far beyond me. While they won’t admit it, even the offspring have been known to chuckle a time or two over some of the lines from this movie.
If Roy Rogers were starting out today, would he receive the same affection and respect he has enjoyed for the past 50 years? Unfortunately, I think not.
Columnist Thompson captured it in a nutshell: “Even those who no longer cherish his values just might suspect that the world was a better place when Roy Rogers reigned as King of the Cowboys.”
