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Roy Rogers and Dale Evans

Roy Rogers Biography
The baby who would become famous as Roy Rogers was born to Andrew ("Andy") and Mattie (Womack) Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his family lived in a tenement building on 2nd Street. (Riverfront Stadium was constructed at this location in 1970 and Rogers would later joke that he had been born at second base.) Dissatisfied with his job and city life, Andy Slye and his brother Will built a 12-by-50-foot houseboat from salvage lumber, and, in July 1912, the Slye family floated on the Ohio River towards Portsmouth, Ohio. Desiring a more stable existence in Portsmouth, the Slyes purchased land on which to build a home, but the flood of 1911 allowed them to move the houseboat to their property and continue living in it on dry land.

In 1919 the Slyes purchased a farm about 12 miles north of Portsmouth, at Duck Run, near Lucasville, Ohio. They there built a six-room home. Leonard's father soon realized that the farm alone would provide insufficient income for his family and he took a job at a shoe factory in Portsmouth, living there during the week and returning home on the weekends, bearing gifts for the family following paydays, one of which was a horse on which Leonard learned the basics of horsemanship.

After completing the 8th Grade, Leonard Slye attended high school at McDermott, Ohio. When he was 17 his family returned to Cincinnati, where his father began work at a shoe factory. He soon decided on the necessity to help his family financially, so he quit high school, joined his father at the shoe factory, and began attending night school. After being ridiculed for falling asleep in class, however, he quit school and never returned.

Leonard and his father felt imprisoned by their factory jobs. In 1929, his older sister Mary was living at Lawndale, California with her husband. Father and son decided to quit their shoe factory jobs. The family packed their 1923 Dodge for a visit with Mary and stayed four months before returning to Ohio. Almost immediately, Leonard had the opportunity to travel to California with Mary's father-in-law, and the rest of the family followed in the spring of 1930.

The Slyes rented a small house near Mary. Leonard and his father immediately found employment as truck drivers for a highway construction project. They reported to work one morning, however, to learn their employer had gone bankrupt. The economic hardship of the Great Depression had followed them west, and the Slyes soon found themselves among the economic refugees traveling from job to job picking fruit and living in worker campsites. (He would later read John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and marvel at its accuracy.) One day Andy Slye heard of a shoe factory hiring in Los Angeles and asked Leonard to join him in applying there for work. Leonard, having seen the joy that his guitar and singing had brought to the destitute around the campfires, hesitantly told his father that he was going to pursue a living in music. With his father's blessing, he and cousin Stanley Slye went to Los Angeles and sought musical engagements as The Slye Brothers.

In 1933, Leonard married Lucile Ascolese, but they were divorced just three years later. Lucile had apparently been pregnant with his child, but according to papers filed in the divorce case, she and her mother arranged to have an abortion.

Leonard remarried in 1936 to Grace Arline Wilkins. In 1941 the couple adopted a girl, Cheryl Darlene. In 1942, they legally changed their names to Roy and Grace Arline Rogers. The following year, Arline bore a daughter, Linda Lou. A son, Roy Jr. ("Dusty"), followed in 1946, but Arline died of complications from the birth a few days afterward.

Leonard Slye moved to California at 18 to become a singer. After four years of little success, he formed Sons of the Pioneers, a western cowboy music group, in 1934. The group hit it big with songs like "Cool Water" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds".

From his first film appearance in 1935, he worked steadily in western films, including a large supporting role as a singing cowboy while still billed as "Leonard Slye" in a Gene Autry movie. In 1938 when Autry temporarily walked out on his movie contract, Slye was immediately rechristened "Roy Rogers" and assigned the lead in Under Western Stars. Rogers became a matinee idol and American legend. A competitor for Gene Autry was suddenly born. In addition to his own movies, Rogers played a supporting role in the John Wayne classic Dark Command (1940), a harrowing fictionalization of Quantrill's Raiders directed by Raoul Walsh, who had discovered Wayne in 1929 and changed his name while casting him in The Big Trail, Wayne's first leading role. Rogers became a major box office attraction, and future wife Dale Evans was cast in a movie with him in 1945. Roy's wife, Arline, died the following year.

Roy and Dale fell in love, and Roy proposed to her during a rodeo at Chicago Stadium. They married on New Years Eve in 1947 at the Flying L Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma, where a few months earlier they had filmed Home In Oklahoma. Roy and Dale remained married until Roy's death in 1998.

Rogers was an idol for many children through his films and television shows. Most of his films were in color in an era when almost all other B-movies were black-and-white. There were Roy Rogers action figures, cowboy adventure novels, a comic strip, a long-lived Dell Comics comic book series (Roy Rogers Comics) written by Gaylord Du Bois, and a variety of marketing successes. Some of his movies would segue into animal adventures, in which Roy's horse Trigger would go off on his own for a while, with the camera following him.

The Sons of the Pioneers continued their popularity through the 1950s. Although Rogers was no longer a member, they often appeared as Rogers' backup group in films, radio, and television.

In August 1950, Dale and Roy had a daughter, Robin Elizabeth, who died of complications of Down Syndrome shortly before her second birthday. Evans wrote about losing their daughter in her book Angel Unaware.

Rogers and Evans were also well known as advocates for adoption and as founders and operators of children's charities. They adopted several children. Both were outspoken Christians. In Apple Valley, California, where they made their home, numerous streets and highways as well as civic buildings have been named after them in recognition of their efforts on behalf of homeless and handicapped children. Roy was an active Freemason and a Shriner, and was noted for his support of their charities.

Roy and Dale's famous theme song, which Dale wrote and they sang as a duet to sign off their television show, was "Happy trails to you, Until we meet again..."

In the fall of 1962, the couple co-hosted a comedy-western-variety program, The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, aired on ABC. It was cancelled after three months, losing in the ratings to The Jackie Gleason Show on CBS.

Rogers also owned a Hollywood production company which handled his own series. It also filmed other undertakings, including the 1955-1956 CBS western series Brave Eagle starring Keith Larsen as a young peaceful Cheyenne chief, Kim Winona as Morning Star, his romantic interest, and the Hopi Indian Anthony Numkena as Keena, Brave Eagle's foster son, Keena.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Roy Rogers has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1752 Vine Street, a second star at 1733 Vine Street for his contribution to radio, and a third star at 1620 Vine Street for his contribution to the television industry.

Roy and Dale were inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1976 and Roy was inducted again as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers in 1995. Roy was also twice elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, first as a member of The Sons of the Pioneers in 1980 and as a soloist in 1988.

Rogers also owned a Thoroughbred racehorse named Triggairo who won 13 career races including the 1975 El Encino Stakes at Santa Anita Park.

Rogers died of congestive heart failure on July 6, 1998. Rogers was residing in Apple Valley, California at the time of his death. Rogers was buried at Sunset Hills cemetery in Apple Valley, CA.