Will Rogers Follies Roper Dead at 56

Vince Bruce was an unlikely trick roper and perhaps even more unlikely to have a Broadway role as a trick roper.

Keith Carradine, and later Mack Davis and Larry Gatlin, were center stage as Will Rogers. But when the Palace Theater stage went dark and the rope glowed in a small circle, the man on the other end of the rope — doing tricks first conceived by Will Rogers — was Brighton, Sussex-born Vince Bruce.

Bruce, who may have revived the art of trick roping to the world in the long-playing Follies, died Sept. 27, 2011 after battling cancer. He is survived by his wife, Annie Dubata, a singer based in Manhattan he met while working in New York.

When the stage lights came on, the stick-thin man weaving ropes as if extensions to his hands, was Vince Bruce, who learned to rope in England from Tex McLeod, who performed with Buffalo Bill and appeared in silent Western films before moving to England where he was famous on the variety circuit. McLeod told him stories of Will Rogers trick roping skills and antics.

When he retired McLeod ran a boarding house for homeless men down the street from the Bruce family. It was under his guidance Bruce began performing every Friday night.

This led to a stint with a French circus, western-themed amusement park outside Paris, eventually presenting his trick rope act all over the world. In 1983 he came to the United States to perform with the Harlem Globetrotters and that same year he won the International Trick and Fancy Roping Association Championship in Ft. Worth. He decided to settle in America and performed in rodeos, circuses and state fairs and in 1989-90 in The Big Apple Circus .

Even before the Follies had a name, Bruce wrote to Peter Stone, who wrote the book on the play. “I thought of Will Rogers being a roper and ‘maybe I can do something,” he said in an interview when he made a cameo appearance in Claremore for the Will Rogers International Wild West Arts Club competition and show.

He sent Stone a video and tickets to the circus. It was Tommy Tune, who choreographed the show, who called Bruce. And the rest is history. For 1,000 performances he was on the stage of the Palace.

After the show closed, he appeared in many venues including rodeos, stage shows, casinos and night clubs and in 1993 completed 4,011 Texas skips on the steps of the Empire State Building and was listed in the Guinness Book of Records. For a time he held the world record for biggest loop.