Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Claremore
Opening: All 13 Jo Mora Dioramas in new location,
2-5 p.m. Saturday, June 27
Program: 2 p.m., followed by reception and opening of the gallery to visitors until 5 p.m.
(Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore and Oologah Birthplace Ranch open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,365 days a year. Visit the website www.willrogers.com, 918-341-0719)
Popular Will Rogers dioramas in one location
WILL ROGERS MEMORIAL — The 13 dioramas depicting Will Rogers’ life from birth in Oologah. Indian Territory, to his death in an Alaskan plane crash are in one central location at the Claremore Will Rogers Memorial Museum. “A View Through the Life of Will Rogers” gallery of Jo Mora creations will open to the public Saturday, June 27, a 2 p.m.
Peter Hiller, curator of the Jo Mora Trust Collection, will be guest speaker for the opening program in the Memorial Theatre. Steve Gragert, Will Rogers Memorial Museums executive director, will highlight the relocation for the various sites.
Sharing in a ribbon cutting ceremony will be staff members, led by Curator Jennifer Holt, who have been responsible for the relocation. A reception will follow.
The gallery will be open for viewing after the ribbon cutting until 5 p.m.
Done to scale, one-inch to a foot, the miniature reproductions are of still life, each with its own central theme or representative period.
Initial work took more than a year with subjects chosen by Betty Rogers, Will Rogers Jr., oilman Lew Wentz and cattleman Ewing Halsell. More than 200 figures are in the first nine.
The first nine in the series became a permanent part of the museum collection in 1941. Interrupted by World War II, the remaining four were started in 1945 and completed in June 1947 before Mora’s death in October. The final installation was completed by his son Jo Mora Jr. before a public opening July 4, 1947.
Popularity of the dioramas has been increasingly evident as guests return to the Memorial where they visited as a child and vividly remembered the dioramas.
Gragert said the museum staff joins the public in the excitement of “together again all 13 of Joe Mora‘s superb, three dimensional scenes from Will Rogers life.”
Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Mora was the son of a sculpture from Spain and Frenchwoman from Alsace Lorraine. The family immigrated to New York in 1882. He developed a talent as a sketch artist and worked as a newspaper illustrator and illustrated children’s classics. Like Will Rogers, he was a cowboy as a young man, a horse enthusiast and fine roper. He had a brief encounter in theatre.
Mora produced four monumental bronzes for E.W. Marland, Oklahoma oilman and governor when the Will Rogers Memorial was built. The bronzes, which were at the Marland home in Ponca City, are now a Woolaroc Museum outside of Bartlesville.
The 13 diorama subjects are:
• Boyhood Ranch – Will riding alongside his father while his mother and three sisters wait at the gate. What would become his Dog Iron Ranch remains open today as a living history museum, just as Jo Mora reflected in his diorama.
Oologah, Indian Territory – 1888
• School Days — Will roping a girl’s leg, a playful skill he later made famous. Willie Halsell College in Vinita, was one of five schools he attended until he obtained a 10th grade education.
Vinita, Indian Territory — 1892-1895
• Claremore 1895 — Riding his favorite horse “Comanche” down Main Street.
Claremore, Indian Territory — 1895
• Branding Calves — Will, a champion roper, dragging a calf to waiting flankers. Will’s job was to separate the calf from the mother, then loop its neck for the Perry Ewing brand.
Little Robe Creek, Texas — 1898
• Cattle Drive — A herd of Texas longhorns crossing the dry Panhandle plains from Texas to Kansas with Will as a horse wrangler.
Texas Panhandle — 1898
• Steer Roping — Steer roping was a tough open field sport that entertained cattlemen and fans on the frontier range and in the rodeo arena.
Oologah, Indian Territory — 1900
• Ziegfeld Follies — A humorous cowboy with a lariat as a stage prop, Will was the toast of Broadway’s Ziegfeld Follies.
Broadway, New York City — 1916
• First Radio Broadcast — Will took his brand of humor to the airwaves in 1922 at KDKA, Pittsburgh.
KDKA Studio, Pittsburgh, Pa. — 1922
• Newspaper Columnist — Pounding a portable typewriter, Will wrote 4,000 syndicated newspaper columns between 1922-1935.
Pacific Palisades, Calif. — 1930
• Family Man — Quiet hours with his wife and children at home on the ranch in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains with a view of the Pacific Ocean, the ranch is now Will Rogers Historical Park.
Pacific Palisades, Calif.— 1930
• Connecticut Yankee — The Mark Twin movie was among 21 talkies, starring Will Rogers, who also held 50 silent movie credits.
Hollywood, Calif. — 1931
• Nicaragua Earthquake — Will’s passion for distressed people and stricken areas is dramatized in the diorama showing his arrival in a Ford Tri-Motor plane to aid earthquake-stricken Managua. Flying from one disaster to another, he raised millions for the stricken, needy and downtrodden.
Managua, Nicaragua — 1931
• Final Scene — Clair Okpeaha calls toward a wreckage near Point Barrow, Alaska, where the “red bird” carrying Will and Wiley Post to their death fell in the inlet to the Chukchi Sea and Arctic Ocean.
Walakpa Lagoon, Alaska Territory —August 15, 1935