Ask anyone under the age of 40 or 50 if they know who Will Rogers is and you might get the answer, “Oh, sure. You mean the guy who did all those funny skits on Saturday Night Live. I loved his stuff.”
Wrong answer, of course. That was Will Ferrell.
At a recent used book sale, I picked up a book, printed over 35 years ago, dealing with only a small portion of what Rogers wrote or said. Even so, his references to politics could have been written yesterday.
Will Rogers died before most of us were born, in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska. It was piloted by the most famous airman of his day, Wiley Post. Maybe I’ll be able to provide more details about that incident later in this column, if I run out of other significant things to say about Rogers… an unlikely possibility.
Rogers was a true country boy, born to a prominent Cherokee family, in what was then Indian territory and is now the state of Oklahoma. Who would have thought that he would become America’s most beloved comic and most astute commentator on American politics?
In addition, he was one of the world’s most prolific movie stars, appearing in 71 films (50 silent and 21 talkies)…possibly more than Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton combined, although I may have overstated a little bit there. Oh, yes, he also wrote a daily (not weekly) newspaper column as well, even when he traveled around the world… which he did three times.
We’re probably all familiar with his two most often quoted statements: “All I know is what I read in the papers” and “I never met a man I didn’t like.” Let’s face it; he was probably fudging a bit when he said those. He sure met a lot of men (and women) though. The index of the book I acquired lists 640 men and women with whom he came in contact.
I’ll grant you he probably didn’t meet all of them, the rest he merely mentioned in passing. It’s unlikely he ever shook hands with Al Capone, Hirohito, Karl Marx, Hitler, George Washington or Henry VIII, but that still leaves a lot of people he did know or meet.
He was friends with Billy Mitchell, even after Mitchell was reduced in rank, and he shared Mitchell’s belief in the future of air power. Part of Mitchell’s problem was that he made unbelievable statements, such as the ridiculous prediction that Japan might attack American naval facilities on a Sunday morning.
Roger’s own belief that America was missing the boat by neglecting air power’s possibilities was made evident and eloquent in his report on a 1926 visit to an aviation field. There, between 500 and 600 men were receiving flight “training” (my quotation marks) in a total of six WWI aircraft!
As an early member of the NRA, he believed firmly in the organization’s original purpose of promoting the safe handling of firearms and 85 years ago he wrote about the excesses brought about by the appearance of automatic weapons on the private scene. He wrote a tirade against the availability of automatic pistols, decrying the havoc that would ensue if one person could keep firing as long as he or she held the trigger down. He was, of course, mistakenly referring to what we now call “semi-automatic” pistols.
In the opening paragraph, I promised you humor and politics and produced neither. Another column will correct that someday. Soon, I hope.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
