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WILL ROGERS
Memorial Commission
By JOHN C. FLINN
FIVE of the large motion picture companies through Will H. Hays in November, 1935, offered to the Will Rogers Memorial Commission a binding guarantee to subscribe annually the sum of $100,000, for five consecutive years, to maintain as a permanent memorial for the humorist and actor the N. V. A. Sanitorium at Saranac, N. Y.
Some time in January, 1936, the legal transfer of the property, said to have cost in the neighborhood of $1,000,000, will be completed. At the same time the sanitorium will be renamed, the Will Rogers Memorial Sanitorium.
When Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed near Point Barrow in an airplane crash last summer there were several movements started immediately by friends of Rogers to create some permanent memorial. These various proposals finally were consolidated under the Will Rogers Memorial Commission, of which John N. Garner, Vice-President, was named chairman, and Jesse H. Jones, R. F. C. Chairman, was appointed treasurer. A national operations committee, of which Owen D. Young was chairman and Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker was director, organized friends of Will Rogers into numerous local committees. The commission decided that the national memorial committee would appropriate to California and Oklahoma an amount from the nationally collected funds not less than the amount collected in each of these states.
No portion of the national contributions will be diverted to the cost of upkeep of the sanitorium at Saranac. The national fund will be expended for relief and care of handicapped children, without limitation as to locality. When the amount raised by popular subscription is finally determined, a special committee will decide on the procedure best fitted to the aims of the commission.
Rogers was a unique figure in American life. Members of the commission daily learned new facts of the affection and regard which were showered on Rogers from unusual sources. More than any other actor of his time, Rogers moved with assurance and success in fields of activity other than the motion pictures, and the theater. He was a popular radio star, and a widely read newspaper commentator. His commonsense brand of homely humor and philosophy was popular with all classes of people. He was a political power; yet never was moved with political ambition.
The motion picture industry, through the generosity of the film companies, has created and will maintain a suitable and effective memorial for Will Rogers. The companies which will guarantee the cost of upkeep and care of patients in the Saranac sanitorium are Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Loew's, Inc., R. K. 0. Theaters, Inc., and Fox West Coast Theater, Inc.
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