William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, and actor.

Portrait of Will Rogers

Beginnings
Will Rogers was born in Indian Territory in what would later become the state of Oklahoma. His father was Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and his mother was Mary America Schrimsher, both of whom had Cherokee heritage. He used to quip that "My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat." He attended Kemper Military School (in Boonville, MO) until the 10th grade.

As a young man, Rogers loved the cowboy ways, yet had not settled into any definite career path. In March 1902, he traveled to England in a round-about way of securing passage for Argentina, where from May 1902 he spent five months seeking a career with the gauchos of the Argentine pampas. Later in 1902, the still-restless Rogers sailed for South Africa, where he took a job breaking in horses for the British Army. While in South Africa, he began his show business career as a trick roper in "Texas Jack's Wild West Circus", billed as "The Cherokee Kid".

Vaudeville and "The Follies"
Returning to the U.S. by continuing to perform as a 'Wild West' show performer and trick roper with the Wirth Brothers Circus, Rogers began to try his roping skills on the American Vaudeville circuits.

Although he began by doing only roping tricks (including roping live horses with 2 or more ropes on stage), his wry comments after missing a trick also found favor with audiences. He began working more jokes into his act while still concentrating on his top-notch roping abilities.

The key event in Rogers' stage career was his securing a one-week engagement in New York, in the fall of 1915, for showman Florenz Ziegfeld's "Midnight Frolic." This variety revue, beginning at midnight in the top-floor night club of Ziegfeld's New Amsterdam Theatre, drew many influential - and regular - customers. This meant that Rogers could not simply repeat his act each night, as he had done for years of 'one-nighters' in different cities. He made use of his appetite for reading the news of the day, by working up comic commentary on news and newsmakers.

Rogers' monologues on the news of the day followed a similar routine every night. He would appear on stage in his cowboy outfit, nonchalantly twirling his lasso, and say, "Well, what shall I talk about? I ain't got anything funny to say. All I know is what I read in the papers." He would then make jokes about what he had read in that day's newspapers. (This line -- "All I know is what I read in the papers." -- is often misquoted as Rogers' most famous punch line. In fact, it was his opening line.)

The one-week spot ran on into 1916, and Rogers' obvious popularity resulted in an offer to be one of the comic acts on the more-famous "Ziegfeld Follies." Ziegfeld saw comedians as mere 'stage-fillers' who entertained the audience while the stage was reset for the next spectacle of beautiful girls in stunning costumes. Rogers managed to not only hold his own, but to achieve star status, with both his roping and his precise satire on the daily news. He did this while competing with fellow "Follies" acts such as W. C. Fields, Bert Williams, and Fanny Brice. Rogers would eventually appear in most of the "Follies" from 1916 to 1925.

Travels
From 1925 to 1928, Rogers traveled the length and breadth of the United States in a "lecture tour". (He would begin his lectures by pointing out that "A humorist entertains, and a lecturer annoys!") During this time he became the first civilian to fly from coast to coast with pilots flying the mail in early air mail flights. The National Press Club of Washington, DC, dubbed him "Ambassador at Large of the United States"; and, in 1927, he visited Mexico City with the transatlantic aviation pioneer Charles A. Lindbergh as a guest of Ambassador Dwight Morrow. In subsequent years, Rogers gave numerous after-dinner speeches; became a popular convention speaker; gave benefits for victims of floods, droughts, or earthquakes. After the Great Depression hit the United States, Rogers gave radio talks on unemployment with ex-President Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States Herbert Hoover, and former Presidential candidate Al Smith.

Middle career
Through Rogers' continuing series of columns between 1922 and 1935, as well as in his personal appearances and radio broadcasts, he won the loving admiration of the American people, poking jibes in witty ways at the issues of the day and prominent people — often politicians. He wrote from a non-partisan point of view and became a friend of presidents and a confidant of the great. Loved for his cool mind and warm heart, he was often considered the successor to such greats as Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Artemus Ward.

He made a trip to the Orient in 1931 and to Central and South America the following year. In 1934, he made a globe-girdling tour and returned to play the lead in Eugene O'Neill's stage play, Ah, Wilderness! He had tentatively agreed to go on loan from Fox to MGM to star in the 1935 movie version of the play; however, his concern over a fan's reaction to the 'facts-of-life' talk between his character and its son caused him to decline the role — and that freed his schedule to allow him to fly with Wiley Post that summer. He often touted the advantages of flying.

From 1930 to 1935, he made radio broadcasts for the Gulf Oil Company. Since he could easily ramble from one subject to another, reacting to his studio audience, he would lose track of the half-hour time limit in his earliest broadcasts, and was cut off in mid-sentence. To correct this, he brought in a wind-up alarm clock, and its on-air buzzing would alert him to begin wrapping up his comments. By 1935, his show was being announced as "Will Rogers and his famous Alarm Clock"!

Writing
At the same time, he also began writing a popular syndicated short item called "Will Rogers Says". Literally a telegram which he composed daily to address each day's news, it often appeared on the front pages of its subscribing papers.

In it, he expressed his disappointment with big government and the effect it had on the nation, particularly during the Depression era. His wit was often caustic: as he explained, "There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you." Nevertheless, he identified with the Democratic Party, saying "I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat," and was a vocal supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At one point, he was even asked to run for governor of Oklahoma, the party hoping to benefit from his immense popularity.

He was often quoted in publications. His most famous quotation was "I never met a man I didn't like." The phrase actually appeared as part of several of his quotations. Another famous quote is "Be thankful we are not getting all the government we are paying for."

Death
An avid booster of aviation, Rogers undertook a sightseeing trip to Alaska with a fellow Oklahoman, world-renowed aviator Wiley Post, in the summer of 1935. Post's plane, an experimental and top-heavy hybrid of Lockheed Explorer and Orion parts, crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska, on 15 August 1935, killing both men.

In 1944 his body was moved from a holding vault in California to the grounds of the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore, Oklahoma. The memorial is built on the site of land overlooking Claremore, which Rogers owned with the idea of living on it in retirement. Later in 1944, Mrs. Rogers was interred beside him.

On November 4, 1948, the United States Post Office commemorated Rogers with a first day cover of a 3-cent stamp with his image — the inscription reads, "In honor of Will Rogers, Humorist, Claremore, Oklahoma." He was also later honored on the centennial of his birth, in 1979, with the issue of a United States Postal Service 15-cent stamp as part of the "Performing Arts" series

Source

Writings of Rogers
Steven K. Gragert and M. Jane Johansson, eds. The Papers of Will Rogers (5 vol 1996-2006)
Steven K. Gragert, ed., Radio Broadcasts of Will Rogers (1983).
Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher On The Peace Conference, 1919
Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher On Prohibition, 1919
Will Rogers's Illiterate Digest, 1923
Letters Of A Self-Made Diplomat To His President, 1926
There's Not A Bathing Suit In Russia, 1927
Ether And Me, or "Just Relax", 1928