Will Rogers (1879-1935) had what it takes to tickle the national funny bone. His keen wit and the ability to see the humor in all things concerning mankind continue to endear him to millions of people around the world. His wry countenance was comical to see, and his consciously cultivated drawl lent a rustic savor to his sophisticated quips. His popularity spanned both sides of the Atlantic, receiving the welcome accorded mostly to crown heads. I was born about a decade after his premature death, and yet heard so many stories about him that I felt we were contemporaries. In preparing the sketch, I chuckled over his timeless quips.
He razzed Congress unmercifully, twitted Presidents, kidded the American public, and echoed the generally held impression that politicians should do more and talk less. Being a philosophic jester, he made incisive judgments about the changing American scene. He suggested the following epitaph for his tombstone:
“I joked about every prominent man in my lifetime, but I never met one that I did not like.”
“I don’t make jokes, I just watch the Government and report the facts.”
“If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches, there would not be any inducement to go to heaven.”
“Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it is not one bit better than the government we got for one third the money twenty years ago”
I once saw a one man show about his life. The actor who impersonated Mr. Rogers wore a cowboy outfit, prominently chewed gum, used a rope to lasso the furniture, and maintained a comical disposition throughout most of the program.
While Mr. Rogers was never a serious political candidate, he received many protest votes. “It was the best way to file a protest without going Socialist.” Rogers once said, “ I am not a member of any organized party, I am a Democrat!”
Being part Indian, Rogers joked that his ancestors had not come over in the Mayflower; they had “met the boat.” To keep his humorous material fresh, Rogers assiduously read the newspapers, often managing to get off a pithy comment on some occurrence in the current day’s news. This was the origin of one of his quoted wisecracks.
”All I know is what I read in the papers.”
Will Rogers also contributed widely to magazines and newspapers, and was syndicated to about 500 newspapers.
Once an interviewer asked him for his recipe for humor and Rogers replied:
“A gag to be any good has to be fashioned about some truth. The rest you get by your slant on it and perhaps by a wee bit of exaggeration, so the people will not miss the point.”
“Our Foreign dealings are an Open Book, generally a Check Book.”
He died prematurely in an airplane crash with his friend Wiley Post.
