Roy Rogers, America's singing cowboy who epitomised wholesomeness, died yesterday at his Apple Valley home near Los Angeles after suffering from congestive heart failure. He was aged 86.
Rogers found fame and fortune during the 1940s and 1950s with his guitar as much as his six-gun. In a shootout, Rogers would knock a gun out of the villain's hand rather than drill him full of holes, a notion that seems unbelievably quaint in later Westerns. Rogers would criticise the rougher, bloodier Westerns that followed.
"When I was a boy, our parents taught us that hitting below the belt was a cowardly thing," he once said. "I don't believe this kind of thing is `entertainment' no matter how you look at it." Although never publicised, Rogers' father was a full-blooded Cherokee.
Rogers was a Depression-era truck driver and peach picker, then a successful country singer with the Sons of the Pioneers, before he became a singing cowboy in 1935 at Hollywood's Republic Studio for $75 a week. His first role came in Tumbling Tumbleweeds, a vehicle for Gene Autry, the biggest cowboy star at the time. When Autry walked off the lot in a contract dispute in 1938, Rogers began his ascent to stardom.
His first leading role came in Under Western Stars as a singing cowpoke turned Washington congressman, a combination of Davy Crockett lore and Mr Smith Goes to Washington that defends the myth of the independent American westerner. Rogers was an instant hit, soon nicknamed King of the Cowboys. For 12 years - 1943 to 1954 - Rogers was the number one Western star at the box office.
In 1944, he met Dale Evans in The Cowboy and the Senorita. They married and went on to make more than 20 films together as well as making the transition to television successfully.
From 1951 to 1967, they starred in the Roy Rogers show, with Rogers riding his horse Trigger while Evans rode hers, Buttermilk.
Each week, Rogers would save the West from some evil character and Evans would sing Happy Trails to You, the song she wrote for the show. The couple became well known for their Christian beliefs and spoke at many religious gatherings, including some of evangelist Billy Graham's. Evans also wrote several inspirational books.
In June 1967, he and Evans opened an 18,000-square foot museum in Victorville, near their Apple Valley home some 90 miles east of Los Angeles. On display are a variety of Rogers memorabilia - including Trigger, stuffed and mounted in a rearing posture after his death in 1965.
Film critic Leonard Maltin said: "He portrayed himself as a good, honest man and that's what he was."