In 1943, Republic Studios dubbed Roy Rogers as “King of the Cowboys,” doing so as part of the promotion for its film of the same name in which he was then starring.
It was pretty heady stuff for the man born Leonard Franklin Slye in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Nov. 5, 1911. His parents, Andy and Mattie Slye, were living frugally in a four-story red brick tenement at the time.
His father Andy worked in a shoe factory. Tired of being poor in the big city and in search of a better life, he and his brother built a houseboat out of scrap lumber and whatever else they could find. The plan was to sail it back down the Ohio River to Portsmouth, a smaller city where Andy had grown up.
It worked. They made it to Portsmouth eventually. At the end of the journey, they were carried by the floodwaters of a mammoth storm right to the site Andy had picked out for them to live. When the floodwaters receded, they continued to live on the houseboat on dry land.
Disillusioned with Portsmouth – he felt the city had grown too large and was filled with danger – the elder Slye eventually moved the family to a house in Duck Run, Ohio, a tiny rural settlement. It was here that young Leonard, who everyone knew as “Len,” lived in a proper house until his late teens, helping his father run the farm they started on the property.
In addition to his farm chores, Len learned to shoot and ride horses. He also learned how to sing and play traditional country music during family singalongs, and even learned square dance calling at local barn dances in the area.
When he was 17, he quit school in order to help the struggling family financially. He ended up working with his father back at the shoe factory in Cincinnati when times grew really tough and the family had to move back there.
His sister, Mary, had moved to California with her husband a couple years earlier, and her letters back home were filled with positive descriptions of her new life in the South Bay city of Lawndale. One day in 1929, Len suggested to his dad that they pool their resources – Roy recalled later that he himself had saved $90 – and move to California.
They packed up their battered 1923 Dodge truck and piled it high with all their possessions, and, like thousands of others during that era, began the trek west along the two-lane highway, Route 66.
They stayed with Mary at her home on Freeman Avenue in Lawndale for four months. (Sadly, the exact address is lost to posterity.) They then returned to Cincinnati, but soon after their return, an anxious-to-return Len offered to help Mary’s father-in-law drive on his trip out to stay with his daughter-in-law in Lawndale.
The rest of the family eventually returned to Lawndale as well, and stayed in a rented house not far from Mary’s. Len and Andy got jobs driving trucks for a gravel company. It soon went bankrupt, though, leaving Len and his father to try and find work as crop pickers in the Central Valley along with thousands of others.
If that sounds like John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, it’s no coincidence. In his biography, Roy recalls seeing Steinbeck at one of the numerous farmworker camps, where the author was researching his new book.
About this time, Len was pretty fed up with trying to make a living. Despite his inherent shyness, he turned to music, pairing with his cousin Stanley to form the short-live Slye Brothers. He then played with Uncle Tom Murray’s Hollywood Hillbillies, but quit when he got no pay.
His sister Mary encouraged him to keep trying, and pointed him toward nearby Inglewood, where the small radio station KMCS aired an amateur talent show called “The Midnight Frolic.” In 1931, he forced himself to perform on the air, and it led to a break: A phone call from local group the Rocky Mountaineers, who were in search of a vocalist.
He joined them. They weren’t paid much either, but through the group, he met Bob Nolan, with whom he would eventually form the Sons of the Pioneers. Nolan wrote “Cool Water” and “Tumbling Tumbleweds,” among other cowboy classics.
After a couple more years of scuffling with other touring bands, Len contacted his friend Nolan, and together with Tim Spencer, they formed the Sons of the Pioneers, originally named the Pioneers Trio, in 1933. The group landed an unpaid spot on KFWB radio, where they were allowed to advertise for gigs.
The Sons of the Pioneers used to practice during this era at the former Shriners dance hall building at 4335 W. 147th St. in Lawndale. Built in 1923, the building, which still stands, also has been a Marine radar battalion headquarters and is the former home of Mac’s Old Time Radio Museum. It’s currently the home of an antique store and a karate studio.
The Sons of the Pioneers began to take off in 1934, after a positive review ran in the Los Angeles Examiner. This led to them cutting their first songs, including “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” for Decca Records in 1934. Soon they were making cameo appearances in films, including Charles Starrett and Gene Autry westerns.
Len left the group in 1937, determined to find a permanent place in the film industry. One day, he made an unsuccessful attempt to get past the studio guards at Republic Pictures so he could audition for a new singing cowboy feature.
As Len was leaving, dejected, film producer Sol Siegel called him back to the gate. He recognized him from the Sons of the Pioneers, and took him in to the audition. Len won the role in 1938’s “Under Western Stars,” and would go on to become, along with his horse, Trigger, one of America’s top-grossing film, and, later, television stars for the next couple of decades.
He became Roy Rogers: Roy from “roi,” the French word for king, and Rogers from Will Rogers, whom he greatly admired. He married one of his female co-stars, Dale Evans, in 1947, and they acted together in films and on television for years.
He died on July 6, 1998, at 86. Evans, who wrote the couple’s television show theme song “Happy Trails,” died three years later at 88 on Feb. 7, 2001.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Happy Trails: Our Life Story, by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans with Jane and Michael Stern, Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Wikipedia.
Note: Thanks to reader David Matson for providing the street name on Lawndale where Roy Rogers’ sister lived.
