William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was a Native American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma), and is known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son". As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States for his leading political wit and was the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.
Rogers began his career as a performer on vaudeville. His rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that found general acclaim from a national audience with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted, for example, "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."
One of Rogers's most famous sayings was "I never met a man I didn't like" and he even provided an epigram on this famous epigram:
Early years
Rogers was born on his parents' Dog Iron Ranch in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma, now in Rogers County, named in honor of his father, Clem Vann Rogers. The house in which he was born had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River". His parents, Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838–1890), were both of mixed race and Cherokee ancestry, and identified as Cherokee. Rogers quipped that his ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower, but they "met the boat". His mother was one quarter-Cherokee and born into the Paint Clan.
Unlike his father Clements’ people, Mary’s Cherokee relatives had been expelled from Georgia under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 in an exodus known as The Trail of Tears. Of the 16,000 Cherokees driven to Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), 4,000 perished en route. She died of amoebic dysentery when Will was 10 years of age. His father remarried less than three years after her death.
Rogers was the youngest of eight children. He was named for the Cherokee leader Col. William Penn Adair. Only three of his siblings, sisters Sallie Clementine, Maude Ethel, and May (Mary), survived into adulthood.
His father, Clement, was a leader in the Cherokee Nation. An attorney and Cherokee judge, Clement owned two slaves he had acquired from his father, and was a Confederate combat veteran of the American Civil War. He was promoted to regimental captain under Confederate colonel Stand Watie and fought at the Battle of Pea Ridge (1862).
Clement served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers County, Oklahoma, is named in honor of him. He served several terms in the Cherokee Senate.
Roach (1980) presents a sociological-psychological assessment of the relationship between Will and his father during the formative boyhood and teenage years. Clement had high expectations for his son and wanted him to be more responsible and business-minded. Will was more easygoing and oriented toward the loving affection offered by his mother, Mary, rather than the harshness of his father. The personality clash increased after his mother's death when the boy was ten. Young Will went from one venture to another with little success. Only after Will won acclaim in vaudeville did the rift begin to heal. Clement's death in 1911 precluded a full reconciliation.
Will Rogers attended school in Indian Territory, at the Willie Halsel College at Vinita in 1895 and 1896, and then the Kemper Military School at Boonville over the 1897-1898 year. He was a good student and an avid reader of The New York Times, but he dropped out of school after the 10th grade. Rogers later said that he was a poor student, saying that he "studied the Fourth Reader for ten years". He was much more interested in cowboys and horses, and learned to rope and use a lariat.