Roy Rogers
Country Singer — born 1911
Roy Rogers was an American singer and cowboy actor who was also known as the ‘King of the Cowboys’.
Roy Rogers was an American singer, actor, and TV personality whose four-decade career as the "King of the Cowboys" — across Republic Pictures Westerns of the 1930s and 1940s and NBC's The Roy Rogers Show (1951–1957) — made him one of the most-iconic American Western entertainment figures of the mid-20th century. He was born Leonard Franklin Slye on November 5, 1911, in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a working-class family. He worked in Ohio shoe factories through his teens before moving to Southern California in 1930 to pursue music.
His career-launching music breakthrough came in 1933 when he co-founded the Sons of the Pioneers — the Western-music vocal group whose 1934 single "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" became one of the American Western-music hits of the 1930s. The Sons of the Pioneers's continuous radio-and-recording work through the 1930s established Rogers (then performing under the stage name Dick Weston) as one of the American Western-music vocalists of the era.
His 1937 Republic Pictures contract launched the film career under the stage name Roy Rogers. He starred in over 80 Republic Pictures Westerns through the 1930s and 1940s, alongside his palomino horse Trigger. The Roy Rogers-Trigger combination became one of the American Western-cinema partnerships of the era. His 1947 marriage to actress Dale Evans — his third marriage — produced one of the American showbiz couples of the late 1940s and 1950s.
The NBC TV series The Roy Rogers Show (1951–1957) — which featured Rogers, Evans, Trigger, Bullet (the German Shepherd dog), and the comic-relief sidekick Pat Brady — ran for six seasons across 100 episodes. The show's theme song "Happy Trails" (sung by Rogers and Evans) became one of the American Western TV-show theme songs. Rogers continued to perform Western music and to host American TV specials through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He died on July 6, 1998, at age 86, in Apple Valley, California.
His name Roy is from the Old French roi meaning "king," with an alternate Scottish-Gaelic etymology connecting to ruadh meaning "red." Roy has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.