Will Rogers
Net Worth 2024, Height, Wiki, Age, Bio

Ancestry - Rogers was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.
Known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son", Rogers was born to a Cherokee family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma).

Family - His parents, Clement Vann Rogers and Mary America Schrimsher, were both of mixed-race and Cherokee ancestry, and identified as Cherokee.
His mother died when Will was eleven. 
His father remarried less than two years after her death. 
Rogers was the youngest of eight children.
Only three of his siblings survived into adulthood.
His father, Clement, was a leader, an attorney and Cherokee judge, and also a Confederate veteran.
He served several terms in the Cherokee Senate, also achieving financial success as a rancher and using his influence to help soften the negative effects of white acculturation on his people.

First jobs - Rogers worked at the Dog Iron Ranch for a few years. 
Near the end of 1901, when he was 22 years old, he and a friend left home hoping to work as gauchos in Argentina.
They spent five months trying to make it as ranch owners in the Pampas. 
After losing all their money, the two friends separated and Rogers sailed for South Africa.

Circus - Rogers began his show business career as a trick roper in "Texas Jack's Wild West Circus" in South Africa.
Rogers then went to Australia to work for the Wirth Brothers Circus there, continuing to perform as a rider and trick roper, and working on his pony act.
He returned to the United States in 1904, appeared at the St. Louis World's Fair, and began to try his roping skills on the vaudeville circuits.

Vaudeville - Rogers was signed to appear on the Victoria Roof—which was literally on a rooftop—with his pony.
For the next decade, Rogers estimated he worked for 50 weeks a year at the Roof and at the city's myriad vaudeville theaters.
In the fall of 1915, Rogers began to appear in Florenz Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic.
By 1916, Rogers was a featured star in Ziegfeld's Follies on Broadway, as he moved into satire by transforming the "Ropin' Fool" to the "Talkin' Fool".
He eventually appeared in most of the Follies, from 1916 to 1925.

Film career - Rogers's vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts.
Hollywood discovered him in 1918, as Samuel Goldwyn gave him the title role in Laughing Bill Hyde.
A three-year contract with Goldwyn, at triple the Broadway salary, moved him west.
Rogers made 48 silent movies, but with the arrival of sound in 1929, he became a top star in that medium.
He appeared in 21 feature films alongside many noted performers of that time.
His popularity soared to new heights with films including Young As You Feel, Judge Priest, and Life Begins at 40.

Writing for the media and radio appearances - 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.

Lecturing and public speaking - From about 1925 to 1928, Rogers traveled the length and breadth of the United States in a "lecture tour".
He became a popular convention speaker, and gave dozens of benefits for victims of floods, droughts, or earthquakes.

Theater - In 1934, Rogers played the lead in Eugene O'Neill's stage play Ah, Wilderness!.

Politics - Rogers was a Democrat, but has historically been known as apolitical.
Rogers served as a goodwill ambassador to Mexico, and had a brief stint as mayor of Beverly Hills.

Activism - During the depths of the Great Depression, angered by Washington's inability to feed the people, he embarked on a cross country fundraising tour for the Red Cross.

Humorous style - 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.

Achievements - 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.

Personal life - In 1908, Rogers married Betty Blake, and the couple had four children.

Death - He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.

Honors - In 1962, the town of Higgins, Texas (near a ranch where Rogers had worked in 1922), began an annual observance of Will Rogers Day.
Before his death, the state of Oklahoma commissioned a statue of Rogers, to be displayed as one of the two it has in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the United States Capitol. Rogers agreed on the condition that his image would be placed facing the House Chamber, supposedly so he could "keep an eye on Congress". 
The Will Rogers Memorial Center was built in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1936.