Lynette Bennett is a one-woman show

 

Will Rogers courted Betty Blake eight years before their marriage. Although hesitant at first to marry the wandering actor, it turned into a storybook romance of letter-writing and visits both in Claremore and in Betty’s hometown of Rogers, Ark.

An award-winning actor-writer returns to stage in “Will Rogers’ Romance with Betty and America,” an original narrative of the years of courtship and marriage, a marriage that ended at his death Aug. 15, 1935, just short of their 27th wedding anniversary.

Written and performed by Lynette Bennett, who earned acclaim on Broadway, film and television, she segues into the role of Will Rogers’ wife Betty and the love they shared for the stage and America.

The one-woman show will be staged Wednesday, Jan. 26, in the Williams Theater of Tulsa Performing Arts Center, 2nd and Cincinnati. General admission seats are available at the Claremore Will Rogers Memorial Museum Store at $11 each or online at www.MyTicketOffice.com.

Lonnie Liggitt, Claremore First Presbyterian Church organist and music director, and one of the founders of Claremore Symphony League, is the music director.

Bennett’s show covers the time of Betty’s meeting Will in Oologah, Indian Territory, through their courtship, their life in New York while he was on stage and where their children were born. She follows them to California, their home the last years of their marriage before his untimely death in an Alaskan plane crash.

Bennett believes Will and Betty Blake Rogers are prime role models in a world that needs life enhancing values. She reveals Betty’s intimate experience of marriage to the world’s first multi-media star and a heart-warming glimpse into the private soul of the woman whose insights helped create the very public Will Rogers.

The show brings laughter at Will’s wit and to tears when Betty, who was with their daughter in the east, learns of Will’s death.

Bennett has had a varied career. She played in “The Woman Chaser” as Patrick Warburton’s eccentric, dancing mom in the prestigious New York Film Festival — and was showcased at Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival. Featured as Brian Brown’s flashback mom in a Nicolas Roeg film with Mimi Rogers, her next film “The Christian Child” runs currently on Lifetime TV. She has appeared on Fox television series “Married with Children” and daytime soap operas “One Life to Live” and “As the World Turns.” She has been a soloist with Tulsa Philharmonic and starred in concert halls such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.

Bennett has played London’s West End, Radio City Music Hall and debuted her story of Betty Rogers at Robson Performing Arts Center in Claremore.

Will Rogers’ also played them all, from Broadway to London, vaudeville and theater to film, radio and lecture circuit.