Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore and the Birthplace Ranch in Oologah will be open as usual Christmas and New Year’s Days. Regular hours — 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. — will be observed at both museums that depict the life of Will Rogers; trick roper, performer, radio commentator, newspaper columnist, author and philosopher.
Visiting the nine galleries and children’s museum is a good way to entertain out-of-town guests or trade the bustle of the holiday for a lesson in hometown humor. The Claremore museum is filled with arts, artifacts, inter-active TV, memorabilia, saddles, photographs and manuscripts.
The birthplace ranch, where longhorn cattle and other livestock roam, the house built in 1859 with the long-walled room where Will was born in 1879, is furnished in period pieces. The era-correct barn and outbuildings are home to burros, goats, horses and chickens.
Feature films made in 1930, five years be before Will was killed in an Alaskan plane crash will be showing in the Claremore museum mini-theatre on both holidays.
The Christmas feature “So This is London” with co-stars Irene Rich and Maureen O’Sullivan finds Will as a rich cotton farmer who detests anything British, forced to take a business trip to London. Born in Indian Territory it starts with trouble providing his birthplace when trying to obtain a passport.
On this trip, Will’s son falls in love with the lovely Maureen and the movie ends with Will and the bride’s father singing “My Country ’Tis of Thee” and “God Save the King,” but with different lyrics.
Filmed in Lake Tahoe, Will is “Lightnin’ Bill Jones’ in “Lightnin,” so nicknamed for his lack of speed. Showing on New Year’s Day, it was in this movie Joel McCrea first met Will when he was cast as the lawyer advising him on the sale of a hotel, half in Nevada, half in California. That friendship was to last a lifetime and many times McCrea visited the Claremore museum before his death in 1990.
Although Will didn’t spend Christmas in Oklahoma after he had his own family, he and his wife always made the holiday special for his sisters and their children and grandchildren back home.
It was because of Will that Chelsea had their first electric Christmas tree lights. Doris “Coke” Meyer, granddaughter of Maude Rogers Lane, remembers the lights sent from New York to light a tree on the lane leading to his sister’s home on Chelsea’s west side. Will had sent his ailing sister a mechanical hospital bed, relocating her to the “tower room” of the stately house so she could see the trees. (Mrs. Lane died five months later.)
Coke and her cousins remember the generous check sent for the family Christmas.
His wife, Betty, wrote that Will was like a child on Christmas, doing his own shopping — usually the day before Christmas and coming home with “mountains of toys and clothes.”
Often on Christmas day the family retreated to the little cabin on their ranch, where they spent the day in seclusion.
The museum gift shop will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Christmas Eve, then close until Jan. 1 for inventory.
(Admission to the Claremore Memorial and birthplace ranch is by donation. For information call 918-341-0719)