The Photo-Play Journal (Jul 1919-Feb 1921)

14 I "T was this way," Will Rogers affirmed, standing on the lawn of the Goldwyn studios at Culver City, California, and swinging his lariat as he talked, "I was born in Oklahoma, and you know that state was partly carved out of the old Indian Territory, and when I was young I used to hear about eastern boys who dreamed about running away from having to go to the grocery and heading for the Indian Territory — I guessed they liked the name, or something. Well, it used to most break my heart, contemplating that I hadn't a place to run away to like the Indian Territory, having been born there. It didn't seem fair, somehow ; I felt I should have had a chance with the rest of the fellows. I couldn't even get sore because my folks sent me to the grocery too often, because there wasn't a grocery within forty miles of our place, and in that grocery they sold licker principally, and so far as infants were concerned, the neighborhood was prohibition, so I wasn't often sent for a cake of soap. I learned to rope steers at a tender age, but what fun is there in roping steers when all your neighbors are so used to things like that they just ride by and yawn? I used to think it would be fun roping things in a New York street, where people would look at you and clap their hands, but I didn't know." And the star shook his head and thinking wistfully of the past, "I don't know." Every life is a matter of anecdotes, and that of Rogers is even more so than usual, for he has, in a way, made a business of anecdotes. But the choice anecdote of his career is one which he doesn't often speak of. "It still gives me the willies when I think of it," he says, classically. But after due urging, he will tell you something like this : "Somehow or other I left cowboying for the vaudeville stage, making a feature of my ability, so to speak, to swing a rope. My whole act consisted of doing tricks with a lariat, Photo-Play Journal Will Rogers Talks By EDWIN JUSTUS MAYER and the only time I opened my mouth was to yawn or maybe say 'thank you,' to admiring audiences. Those were the days when I used to come first on the bill, so as to put people into a state of mind where they thought anything else must be good, I suppose. "Well, one day all the ghosts of the dead Indians over whose graves I had had whooping-cough in my boyhood must have caught me at last, because all of a sudden unseen fingers grabbed my rope and began to do all sorts of things to it, pulling it this way, that way, the other way, and both ways, and sorely perplexing me. I suspect I commenced to get red in the face and I was sorely afraid that the audience was getting red in the eye. In my agony I breathed a silent prayer and said to myself, 'Words, come to me !' And they came. I don't know where from, but they came. " 'Swinging a rope is all right,' I remember saying, 'when your neck ain't in it. Then it's Hell.' I heard some faint titters. "Emboldened, I went on, 'Out west, where I come from, they won't let me play with this rope. They think I might hurt myself!' Well, that audience started to laugh and forgot to look at the lariat, and I was saved. After that I started to make wise cracks regularly until the time came when I hardly did anything with my lariat, but made my tongue wag instead, so as to make a pleasant and profitable living. "George M. Cohan once said that life is a funny proposition, and I believe there was a man somewhere back in the seventh century who also remarked that. In fact, I understand it was his last remark, as in those days they didn't stand for platitudes. But now a man can say anything and get away with it, unless he says he's for prohibition and means it, and there are men about. Well, life is a funny proposition. After I had dropped my pantomime with my lariat and took up talking for a living, along comes Samuel Goldwyn, and before I know what has happened he has me working in what they call the silent drama, where people can see your lips move, but can't hear the wisdom of your inmost brain. "So now I'm back where I started from, except that they have taken away my rope and given me a director who is a good feller, but talks through a megaphone. Anyhow, I like the movies because you can meet so many famous operatic stars in them. And I'm even further west here in the Goldwyn studios in California than I was when I was born, and I used to wish I was born elsewhere so I could run away to where I was born. That sounds odd, don't it?" I said it did. It is on record — printed in various papers — that previous to the Republican nomination the star asked Boise Penrose, "What do you think of Doc Leonard Wood?" To which the Pennsylvania "solon" replied: "It will take more than a doctor to do this country any good, the shape it's in. Wlnt we need is a magician." Whether Mr. Rogers ever interviewed the Pennsylvanian is certainly a problem, but it is certain, at least, that the