biography
| name: |
Rogers, Will(iam Penn Adair)
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1879–1935)
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| biography:
| Humorist, stage, film and radio actor, born in Oolagah, Indian territory (now Oklahoma), USA. Part Cherokee, he was a practising cowboy but went abroad to seek adventure, beginning his career (1902) as a rider and trick-roper in Wild West shows in South Africa and Australia. Returning to the USA (1904), he moved into vaudeville and Broadway musicals, becoming an especial favourite in the Ziegfield Follies (1916–24), by which time his act had begun to feature his own cracker-barrel wit and homespun philosophy. By 1918 he was making the first of many films, and soon he projected his persona of the common-but-shrewd man through many mediums - as a popular radio performer, a syndicated newspaper columnist, author of several books, and a presidential candidate on the Anti-Bunk ticket (1928). His trademark line was ‘All I know is what I read in the papers’, which he used to launch his wry comments on the current scene. When he died with Wiley Post in a plane crash in Alaska, he was mourned as an authentic American folk hero. |
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