Watching Roy Rogers

June 19, 1988

One of the great pleasures of having cable TV is the opportunity it affords to see the great "B" film heroes of one's childhood, and aside from Flash Gordon, Roy Rogers was my favorite.  Born in 1912 as Leonard Slye, Rogers broke into films in 1935, was a star during the late '30's, '40's, '50's and had his own half hour TV show from 1951 to 1956.  He still appears on talk shows, especially "Christian" programs, and at 75 is still easily recognizable, unlike his chunky contemporary, Gene Autry.

The "B" Western was the backbone of many small and medium sized studios from the Silent Era through the '50's and heros such as Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, Autry and Rogers galloped across our young imaginations, shooting at (but never killing) the bad guys with pistols that never rant out of bullets, harmlessly knocking out tough guys with fists that never bruised, and chastely winning the loving admiration of lovely culotte-wearing equestriennes.

"B" grade movies were the second-billed movies in the days of the double features, and were the low-budget training ground for producers, directors, writers and actors.  Many thousands graduated from the "B"s to the "A"s as their careers advanced, but many more stayed and some, Rogers among them, became true stars of the genre.

Rogers' films are contemporary Westerns, Westerns with cattle and rustlers, horse-mounted posses and shootouts, alongside telephones and jeeps, pickup trucks and aircraft.  The movies are essentially remakes of each other, with similar plot and theme:  the bad guy is cheating his fellow citizens, usually for financial gain, and Rogers saves the situation and rescues the girl.  He is usually aided by George (Gabby) Hayes and his backup singing group, The Sons of the Pioneers.

Because, you see, Rogers never mends a fence or punches a cow.  Rogers is a singing cowboy, a phenomenon first popularized by Gene Autry.

The direction of the films is workmanlike, the outdoor scenes are really filmed outdoors, the acting is more then fine for the limited, unimaginative scripts, and all these films are extremely watchable, even late at night on commercial channels whose plethora of ads breaks the continuity of the films but is not fatal to them.

The ads are a wonder themselves, usually trying to sell ghastly  music collections of country or white gospel sung by people nobody's ever heard of, or absurd small appliances.  A nice touch, though, is that Rogers and his wife and sometimes co-star Dale Evans discuss these old movies during the commercial breaks.  They discuss the problems of shooting low budget film, his love for Trigger, his horse and companion for 33 years, and their museum which features, among other things, Trigger stuffed.

The films feature overacted villains, superb bar brawls, ghastly "Irish" singing by Hayes and quite good singing by Rogers and his group.  But the core of these movies is that Rogers himself.  He is handsome, boyish, an athletic moral fellow who makes one recall fondly the all-American hero.

HappyTrails Theatre, which is the program that inclues a movie and Rogers' commentary, is shown at various times on the Nashville Network and other Stations.

Malcolm Rush works in the Composing room of the Bennington Banner.