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Will Rogers: Serious Side Explored

Editor's Note: This is the first of two newsfeature reviews
of a book by Dr. Lary May revealing fresh insight into
the impact Will Rogers had on the "politics of the American Way."
The reviewer is a Will Rogers biographer and president of
Will Rogers Heritage, Inc., a non-profit unit that raises
funds to keep alive the memory, philosophy, humor and role
model of Will Rogers.

By Joseph H. Carter

With compelling evidence from historic studies and unique analyses, University of Minnesota Professor Lary May credited Oklahoma humorist Will Rogers with leading a group of movie stars who transformed public opinion during the 1930s depression era.       May's extraordinary scholarship pivoted on Will Rogers while examining the impact of several stars and movie directors who dramatized revisionist views through the media of "talking" films to convey concepts of equality among all people and to attack elitism.       Sublimely, it renews the question about "why" the vast majority of Will Rogers movies have not been released for more than fifty years. Only five of twenty-one are generally available.       Dr. May's text, The Big Tomorrow : Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2000, says Will Rogers "promoted calls to reshape wealth and power" for a "broad-based more just" community.       Publishers Weekly praised the book for presenting a "startling revisionist" history of Hollywood and its impact on politics and American culture. It raises "such questions as whether FDR or Will Rogers was a more influential proponent of the New Deal."       Will Rogers employed "Cherokee trickster" methods practiced by his Indian ancestors to promote through both radio and screen a "`republican' creed hostile to monopoly capitalism and class inequality," May wrote, and in "reshaping national life." May held that "Will Rogers formula" movies portrayed equalized classes, countered racism and recognized equal status for women, a Cherokee Indian tradition. Their dogma appealed to the masses who rocketed Will Rogers atop 1930s box offices.       A Will Rogers movie poster show, exhibited in museums throughout the country and presently at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, includes lobby cards that exclusively list Will Rogers in larger letters and above the title of each film.       The stock market crash of 1929 and sound-on-film arrived in near tandem. Until his death in 1935, Will Rogers starred in twenty-one colossal hits that lifted Bill Fox's firm from near bankruptcy into what became the legendary Twentieth Century-Fox studio.       May said success was "in direct proportion to the film producers' ability to give form and narrative structure to Rogers' well-known views."       "In practice," May wrote, "the transformation signaled a major change in mass culture...a civic arena that begins to include women, minorities, and youth."       Will Rogers drew on "his Cherokee roots and communal memories to popularize a more inclusive and radical vision of nationality" that departed from previous notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority and liberal capitalism." May wrote that it created a wide upheaval in American culture.       Ideas and ad-lib quotes on the silver screen also were themes of Will Rogers' widely syndicated newspaper columns and radio commentaries. His views often drew criticism by contemporary establishment that the humorist seemed to brush off.       May charged that following Rogers' death a "large scale whitewashing....distorting Rogers' memory" succeeded in denying future generations the reasons why an entertainer had risen to be arguably "the most noted public man of the day."       Into World War II years and afterwards, May wrote, Hollywood generally adopted films that, again, held out traditional Anglo-Saxon instead of American perspectives. May contrasted Will Rogers with John Wayne, who arrived in the later era. Both were major stars linked to the "myth" of the West.       According to May, Rogers "embodied the ideal of a hybrid, hyphenated American. In film after film he operated in an autonomous civic sphere with others to transform society and peacefully negotiate across barriers."      On the other hand Wayne "evoked the image of the pure Anglo-Saxon hero...who protected established institutions and used violence to conquer enemies."       May's book discusses several media stars who used talkie movies to generate a competitive civic sphere of art and politics of various persuasions. However, Will Rogers drew May's initial focus because of his pioneering success.       Despite their popularity, sixteen of Will Rogers' copyrighted feature films have not been re-released in more than half-century. Four were issued in the 1990s for home video after the musical, The Will Rogers Follies: A Life in Revue, became a hit on Broadway.       The forceful black and white 1934 drama that braced racism, Judge Priest, directed by John Ford, slipped into the public domain and is a popular video sold at the Claremore museum gift shop. Under a exception for education, other Rogers features are shown daily in rotation, free-of-charge, at the museum and some have been screened in New York by the Museum of Modern Art.       A major endeavor, using private donations, was launched during 1997 in Claremore to harness modern high technology to preserve, protect and restore the twenty-one Fox and Twentieth Century-Fox movies.       Cost to the museum for this service for the first five feature movies was $600 each using volunteer donations for the top-quality, state-of-the-arts work.       Will Rogers' movies were, in order of release: They Had to See Paris, 1929; Happy Days, 1929; So This Is London, 1930; Lightnin', 1930; A Connecticut Yankee, 1931; Young as You Feel, 1931; Ambassador Bill, 1931; Business and Pleasure, 1931; Down to Earth, 1932; Too Busy to Work, 1932; State Fair, 1933; Doctor Bull, 1933; Mr. Skitch, 1933; David Harum, 1934; Handy Andy, 1934; Judge Priest, 1934; The County Chairman, 1935; Life Begins at Forty, 1935; Doubting Thomas, 1935; Steamboat Round the Bend, 1935; and In Old Kentucky, 1935.       In addition to twenty-one talkies, Will Rogers starred in fifty silent movies, published some 4,000 newspaper columns, contributed dozens of articles to nationally distributed magazines, wrote six books and talked on the stage in the Ziegfeld Follies for a decade after a career in vaudeville and wild west shows. He died at age fifty-five.

 

Thomas Hart Benton Painting Graces Cover of May Book       With deliberate purpose, Dr. Lary May of the University of Minnesota selected a painting by Thomas Hart Benton for the cover of his revealing new book: The Big Tomorrow : Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way.       Benton, renowned artist from Kansas City, entitled the artwork as Hollywood. May's prologue begins with the statement that "nothing is more American than Hollywood" and credits Benton with capturing that spirit.       May says that Benton believed in the values of a producer's democracy and used his art to promote that promise. The work reflects more than a fantasy but a set built by common workers who assemble a work of art. May writes that Benton's work revealed "behind the scenes to show how the image is created."

Lary May: Author       Dr. May is professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.       He wrote Screening Out the Past and is editor of Recasting America.       Nearly a decade ago, Dr. May visited the Will Rogers archives at the museum in Claremore, Oklahoma, to pursue his research.       Within the context of the library's rules, his work was juried by Archivist Pat Lowe and Curator Greg Malak and photographs from the 15,000-picture collection were provided.       In gratitude, May wrote that staffers' "generosity and dedication to the public good were remarkable. I could not have written and illustrated the chapter on Will Rogers without their research facilities and their assistance."       Michelle Lefebvre-Carter, museum director, said the richness of the collection and its accessibility are a reflection of gifts from the family of Will Rogers and of generous funding by taxpayers of Oklahoma.