Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

43 "Oh, Gee! Ok, Gosh!" Buddy Rogers, as a baby, found life such an exciting romp, that he brings the same enthusiasm to his present existence as a star. B$ Pats? DuBuis A SMALL boy whose life at ten seemed to have been one long series of spankings. Unremembered, but vaguely suspected spankings in babyhood, for breaking milk bottles. Three-year-old spankings for swimming in the bathtub, attired in rompers. Five-year-old spankings for not feeding the family dog. Seven-year-old spankings for hiding in the closet of the school music room to listen to the teacher sing. At nine the spankings involved everything from breaking windows to refusing to eat carrots. At eleven the spankings lost all system or regularity. Charles Rogers was the little boy who got so many spankings. Not that Charles' mother was hardhearted, nor did she enjoy spanking him. She merely discovered that, at an early age, Charles had a mind of his own, and if not strongly reprimanded might demonstrate it, disastrously. The Rogers family, beginning with Mr. and Mrs. Bert Henry Rogers, and graduating from Geraldine to Charles, had lived in Olathe, Kansas, since any of them could remember. Mr. Rogers owned a newspaper in Kansas City, twenty miles away from Olathe, and, as Charles told me when we had lunched together at the Paramount studio, "We could run up there in about an hour." Being technical, I asked if such quaint things as horses and buggies still existed in the little city, vehicles that would make twenty miles in anything as little as an hour. Charles blushed. "It's a pretty big town," he said defiantly, "about four thousand. Why, I've only been away from there three years, and three new families have moved in since I've been gone !" I was content to let that alarming increase in population be as it was, while the curly-headed Rogers boy told me more about his childhood in Olathe. "I was just like any kid. Except that I didn't remember to feed the dog. Had an idea he would feed himself, I guess, or that he had parents who would take care of him as mine took care of me. Gee, I can't see how I could have felt that way. Why, now I've the finest dog in all the country — Baron, a police dog. I wouldn't take the world for him ! Wish I'd had him when I was a kid — my chum George and I would have had a great time with him. "George and I used to play Indian. We made tents out of mother's sheets — uh, huh, we were spanked for ruining them — and we painted them all up with secret signs. Ran around all day yelling and having a great time. "Gosh, we didn't get tired of playing Indian till we went to high school. We felt we ought to be dignified then." The family album yielded this photo of Buddy, with his mother and elder sister, Geraldine. While Charles was telling me about George and the Indians, I wondered why his voice was just a little tight, why his eyes looked sad. I wish I hadn't asked, but I did. I asked where George was, now. "He — he died, coming out here to see me, last year." I could not break the silence that followed. Here, I thought, was Charles Rogers — Charles who gets countless letters from boys who say, "If only I had a pal like you." And Charles' own pal is dead. He broke the silence, with a fine show of putting George out of his mind, and getting back to the interview. "I — I think the last time I was spanked was when I was fourteen." "What for?" I asked. "Sneaked out of the house one night and took one of Jerry's chums to a college dance." "Jerry" is his elder sister. "Wasn't that a dumb thing for a fourteen-year-old kid to do? I thought I was smart, but believe me, I didn't think so after the spanking I got. And I lost interest in girls, too." This Rogers boy speaks with a young earnestness that is delightful. He says "gosh" and "gee" with an exuberant happiness, and eats corned beef and cabbage, avocado salad and wicked butterscotch sundaes in the same meal, in much the same manner. "You know," Charles looked at me seriously, "I don't know why it is, but I've always been lucky. Had everything I wanted. I don't deserve it. Funny. "Wanted to go to college, and when I finally entered the University of Kansas I was so shy. But dad gave me a saxophone, and I traded in an old Ford roadster Continued on page 114