Roy rogers biography photos
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Personal Tragedies and Later Life
Rogers’s success in films, radio, television, on records, and in anställda appearances was dampened bygd a series of tragedies. His second wife, Arlene, the mother of his first three children, died a week after the birth of their third child, Roy Jr., in 1946. Robin, the only child born to Rodgers and Evans, suffered from Down syndrome and died in 1952, shortly before her second birthday.
Rodgers and Evans eventually adopted four children from different ethnic and social backgrounds, only to lose two of them tragically. Debbie, an orphan they adopted from Korea, died in a church bus accident. Their son Sandy, who had suffered brain damage due to physical abuse before his adoption, died while serving in the Army. Each of these losses took a tremendous toll on Rogers, but he and Evans’s religious faith sustained them. Their positive outlook as they confronted life’s challenges only added to the public’
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The story of Roy Rogers, the man behind the ‘King of the Cowboys’
The indelible image of Roy Rogers is as the “King of the Cowboys,” the singing do-gooder in the white Stetson, the idol of millions of kids.
Those old enough watched him on television or went to a Saturday morning picture show to see one of his more than 100 movies. They owned a Roy Rogers lunch pail and read his comic book.
By all accounts, Roy Rogers the king was the same as Roy the man.
“I never tried any fancy trick acting on screen. I was just me. The Roy Rogers way back then was the same as the one sittin’ here today,” Rogers wrote in “Happy Trails: Our Life Story,” his joint autobiography with wife and co-star Dale Evans, published a few years before his death in 1998.
Roy might have had the same upstanding standards as his counterpart on the silver screen, but his life was not spared the hardship and heartache of a Hollywood story.
Early life in Ohio
Despite the false biography pushed by the movie stu
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“He might have been small for those farm chores at Duck Run,” recalled Roy’s pop with a chuckle, “but he was just as ornery as the mules.”
Roy Rogers, known as “The King of the Cowboys,” was the most popular Western star of his era. He was born as Leonard Franklin Slye on November 5, 1911 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and passed away on July 6, 1998.
At twelve years old, Roy won a 4-H competition at the Scioto County Fair with his pet pig, Evangeline, which took him to the state capital in Columbus. “That was the first time I had ever been ten miles off the farm. I had never even seen an elevator before. I spent the whole first day just riding up and down the elevator in the Old Neil House Hotel.”
Roy came west with his family during the Great Depression and was working picking peaches in Southern California. He began singing on the radio with the Sons of the Pioneers, and then on the road where he met Arline Wilkins who won a contest baking Roy’s favorite lemon pie. They married and star