By Bob Strauss, Daily News Staff Writer
First appeared in the Daily News Los Angeles.
Ask any baby boomer about Roy Rogers, and you’ll likely elicit a story about watching his popular ’50s TV show or the memory of carrying a Roy lunchbox or maybe a few hummed notes of “Happy Trails.”
But while most fans recall Rogers the cowboy legend, there are residents in Chatsworth who knew him and wife Dale as their friends and neighbors, and who – on what would have been Roy’s 100th birthday today – shared their own memories of the King of the Cowboys.
“Roy was active in the Rotary Club and with the Chamber of Commerce, went to their meetings and everything,” recalled Virginia Watson, curator of the Chatsworth Historical Society. “Dale was very active in the PTA and she spoke for the Women’s Club. They were very interested in the community.”
Born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati on Nov. 5, 1911, the future Rogers became a music star with his group, The Sons of the Pioneers, in the mid-1930s. By 1938, he was appearing in movies as Roy Rogers, and he topped box office polls from 1943 to 1952.
“The Roy Rogers Show” ran from 1951-57, and for years after that in syndication. Rogers died in 1998; Evans followed him three years later.
“His career was quite multifaceted and he was a hero for generations of youngsters,” noted Jeffrey Richardson, associate curator of Western History and Popular Culture at the Autry National Center, which has two permanent cases of Roy and Dale artifacts at its Griffith Park museum.
“It’s important to note that everything Roy did always had kids and their best interests at heart,” Richardson said. “That was from his entertainment career all the way down to his personal life, where he made it a point to be an advocate for adoption and for operating a variety of children’s charity.”
That was certainly evident to his Chatsworth neighbors. Watson, now 91, got to know the Rogerses soon after the stars moved in 1955 onto a 141-acre ranch off Lassen Street.
Daughter Linda Rogers attended Sutter Junior High School, where she became friends with Judy Watson, the daughter of Virginia and her late husband Henry.
There were sleepovers at the Watsons and pool parties at the Rogers’ hilltop ranch house, where Roy and Dale’s famous horses – Trigger and Buttermilk – were never far away.
Linda would drive down the hill in Nellybelle, the Jeep used in Rogers’ shows, to open the gate for guests. The daughter of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars even worked a brief stint in the malt shop the Watsons owned at Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Devonshire Street.
“When Linda would come stay all night at our house, her dad would bring her over in his car, a big open thing that was all decorated,” Watson recalled.
Ray Vincent’s father, George, became friends with Rogers through the Chatsworth Rotary Club, while Ray was attending elementary school with one of the younger Rogers’ children, Debbie.
“He’d come to our house occasionally,” Vincent recalled. “Actually, Roy Rogers came over to help my mother build a pigeon coop once. He was from the Midwest, so he knew about pigeons. Probably, it was good therapy for him to be able to get away from his show business life and just do something simple and fun.”
The showbiz life was intense.
Not only were Rogers’ show, movies and Dale-written theme song “Happy Trails” known to every American kid of the 1950s, the merchandising was massive for Roy, Dale, Trigger, Bullet the dog and other Rogers-associated characters.
Lunchboxes, Thermos bottles, coloring books and paper dolls, toy guns, imprinted flash cameras and hundreds of other items made Rogers the second-most merchandised name in show business history, behind only Walt Disney.
Linda van der Valk has an impressive collection of Rogers and Evans memorabilia – including a 2- foot bronze statue of Roy, Trigger and Bullet – in her home. She and husband Andre are co-presidents of the Chatsworth Historical Society, and although they only met Roy and Dale after the famous couple had relocated to the Victorville area, they know the local Rogers lore very well.
“He was very accessible,” Andresaid. “He patronized the local businesses. He’d invite people to barbecues. And he and Dale weren’t the only ones. Lucy and Desi lived off of Corbin and they did the same thing.”
The famous family’s influence lived on in the Valley. Roads that run through their former acreage bear names such as Dale Court and Trigger Street; the latter is what Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, who grew up on one of its blocks, chose to name his production company. Another actor, Val Kilmer, moved with his family into the Rogers’ former house, and tragically lost one of Val’s brothers in its swimming pool.
The Rogerses themselves were no strangers to parental anguish. The only biological daughter they had together, Robin, was born with Down syndrome and didn’t live to see her second birthday.
In 1964, Debbie was killed in a bus accident in Mexico. Those who knew the couple believe Rogers and Evans left Chatsworth soon after to escape the memories.
But the tragedy was also a major factor in what may be their most lasting gift to the community.
The Chatsworth Historical Society formed around that time to save the 1903 Pioneer Church, where the deeply religious couple worshipped and Dale taught, played piano and sang at the Sunday school. When the congregation found a newer building, the landmark structure needed to be moved to the grounds of Oakwood Memorial Park if it was going to be preserved.
To get seed money for the project, Watson and others went to see Dale.
“She gave us the last $1,000 that was in Debbie’s bank account,” Watson recalled. “Dale said she’d been wondering what to do with that money. So we used it to start the fund to move the church up to the cemetery where it is now.
“That was our first project for the Chatsworth Historical Society,” Watson noted. “(The Rogerses) “also wrote a letter assuring people in the community that we were good and legitimate to give to.”
“They were our first honorary members,” Linda van der Valk said of Rogers and Evans. “They had cards number 1 and 2.”
Linda and Andre van der Valk collect and display Roy Rogers memorabilia in their Chatsworth home. (Andy Holzman/Daily News Staff Photographer)
P.S. Thanks to my brother-in-law Mike Donnelly for finding this article.