Now, I’m no expert on Will Rogers – just a longtime admirer – but I have had the good fortune to know a few folks who were highly credentialed authorities on the Oklahoma-born Cowboy Philosopher.

            One of them, regretfully, no longer is with us.  Reba Neighbors Collins – educator, author and historian from Edmond, Okla. – died last year at the age of 80.

            Reba Collins was considered “one of the world’s foremost scholars on Will Rogers,” said The Oklahoman in a November 15, 2005 story about her death.  “Author of seven books and hundreds of articles about Rogers, she traveled worldwide speaking on television and radio about the man she affectionately called, ‘Our Will’”, the newspaper said.

            I had known Reba since she was on the faculty at Central State College (now University of Central Oklahoma) at Edmond.  When she earned her doctorate at Oklahoma State University in 1968, her dissertation was “Will Rogers, Writer and Journalist.”  She went on to become director of the Will Rogers Memorial Commission in Claremore, Okla., from 1975 to 1989.  It was during her service that the Oklahoma State University Press published “The Writings of Will Rogers”, which included six books, Convention Articles (one volume), Daily Telegrams (four volumes) and Weekly Articles (six volumes), all of which are in my collection.

            Bryan B. Sterling, with his wife Frances as researcher and collaborator, compiled a vast amount of Will Rogers’ writings in a series of books which led Will Rogers, Jr. to write: “Bryan Sterling knows the writings of Will Rogers probably better than any other person.”  For years the New York writer edited these writings for a daily syndicated column, “Will Rogers Says.”  He selected and edited material for the award-winning stage play Will Rogers, U.S.A., which starred James Whitmore.  I met the Sterlings in 1991 at a cast party following an Oklahoma-night production of The Will Rogers Follies at the Palace Theatre, and this led to a long-term relationship. 

Rogers’ lack of formal education proved no hindrance to his ability to communicate through both the spoken and the written word.  In his 1979 book, “The Best of Will Rogers”, Sterling documented Rogers’ writing career:

            “In December 1922, Will Rogers wrote the first of 667 weekly articles, which he continued until his death in 1935.  In addition, between 1925 and 1927 he wrote 511 columns called ‘The Worst Story I’ve Heard Today’; and beginning in 1926 … he also wrote 2,861 daily squibs, now called ‘The Daily Telegrams.’  There were also syndicated articles covering Democratic and Republican national conventions and feature articles for the Saturday Evening Post, Life, The Theatre, New York American, New McClure, American, and Photoplay.  One must further mention the introductions to over half a dozen books, ranging from two books about western artist Charles Russell to biographies of Eddie Cantor and Annie Oakley.”  His six books were compilations of gags he had written for the stage and previously published articles.  Add to this literary product the transcripts of 69 radio broadcasts and the combined total is estimated at well over 2 million words. 

            Sterling added: “But during that same period, 1922-1935, Will created new material not only for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922 and 1924 but also for lectures in almost four hundred cities and towns across America, with original material specifically prepared for each community.  He had to write, and update, his part in the Broadway show Three Cheers, in which Rogers never adhered to the original script.  In the twenties Rogers wrote the continuity for at least two dozen of his silent films.  There were literally hundreds of charity performances and after-dinner speeches, from which only a relatively small number of notes have been found.  And lastly, Will Rogers made twenty-one sound films; for each of these he completely reworded his own part.”

            Many authors have commented on Rogers’ writing ability, habits and style.  Paula McSpadden Love, Rogers’ niece, who was curator of the Memorial until her death in 1973, wrote in “The Will Rogers Book”, published in 1972: 

            “Will did not aspire to be a writer.  It was his early ambition to be the best trick roper in America.  He achieved that goal, but he also developed into a forceful and much sought-after speaker.  He was perhaps more surprised than anyone else when he found out that people wanted to remember the things he said.  They liked to discuss them and ponder the wisdom of his funny, often salty quips long after the laughter had subsided.

“It did not seem difficult for Will to write, and he could write anything for anybody at any time. 

            “Wherever he went, he carried a portable typewriter with him and pecked out his articles with his middle fingers at an amazing rate of speed.  In the crashed airplane that took his life was found his typewriter with an unfinished weekly article still in the machine.  The last word that he had written was ‘death’.

            “When Will made the transition from monologist to writer, he kept the same personality he had employed on the stage.  He wrote as he talked, in an informal intimate manner with no regard for grammar, syntax, or the formal rules of English. 

            “His was a style of his own, set down in his peculiar, homely, often careless but understandable manner. As he explained, ‘When I write ‘em, I’m through with ‘em.  I’m not being paid reading wages.”

            My former UPI colleague, Joseph H. Carter, traced Rogers’ evolution as a writer in his 1991 book, “Never Met a Man I Didn’t Like”, written while he was serving as director of the Will Rogers Memorial at Claremore, Okla., and the Will Rogers Birthplace near Oologah, Okla. (1989-1999):

            “During his early travels around the Southern Hemisphere, Will Rogers’ letters to folks back home and his commentary had made their way into type at weekly newspapers in Oklahoma.  He was an inveterate communicator and letter writer who developed a habit of reading the New York Times as a child and never kicked it.

            “At age thirty-nine (1918) he was asked to write a special newspaper article for the New York American, which he accepted on a pledge to ‘lay my chips down a little different.’   ‘I want it to go as she lays, even if the guy that has to set up the type has to get drunk to do it.’

“Will Rogers made the big time as an author when his Ziegfeld Follies quotes were published by Harper & Brothers in 1919 as “Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference.”  It was the first of six books that carried the Will Rogers byline.  Printing stage quips in a book proved profitable.

            “In 1922, V. V. McNitt, president of the McNaught Syndicate … asked him to write a weekly column to be sold to newspapers around the country.  The first column appeared in the December 24, 1922 New York Times as the flagship outlet, and a week later the column went into general syndication …  Over the next thirteen years, Will Rogers wrote 665 Sunday columns, expanding his audience from two thousand Follies patrons to forty million readers weekly.

            “After Rogers had been writing the weekly epistles for four years, New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs suggested that Will Rogers cable any interesting items during a trip to Europe.  Will Rogers sent the telegrams and the Times published them as ‘Will Rogers Says’ daily telegrams.  The Times articles were under copyright protection even though Will Rogers was not being paid for their content.

            Will Rogers had supplied forty-seven succinct columns exclusively to the Times before the McNaught Syndicate was able to catch up with the author and make the deal to sell his product.  Will Rogers’ daily telegrams went into syndication October 10, 1926, appearing immediately in ninety-two newspapers that paid – including, finally, the New York Times.  At times, six hundred newspapers carried Will Rogers’ columns.

            “From movie sets or during far-flung travels, Will Rogers wrote 2,817 daily columns under a seven p.m. Eastern Standard Time deadline that often meant a fast race to the nearest Western Union office with ‘Will Rogers Says’ copy.  The wire arrived at the syndicate headquarters in New York and was simultaneously telegraphed to subscribing newspapers for publication in the following morning’s editions.

            “Will Rogers’ writer’s royalties rose from $1,700 a week from McNaught to a guaranteed $130,000 a year.  This income was in addition to fees for special writings, lucrative movie contracts, speech honorariums, and radio commentaries sponsored by e. R. Squibb and Sons or Gulf Oil.

            “Newspapers were important to Will Rogers, and ‘all I know is what I read in the papers’ was a common opening line both for speeches and for columns.

            “‘Will Rogers Says’ telegrams and the weekly newspaper columns were the backbone of some two million words that he wrote between the ages of forty-two and fifty-five.  His six books were based either on his shorter writings or on his stage commentary.”

            Ben Yagoda, in his critically-acclaimed “Will Rogers: a Biography”, published in 1993, had this to say about Rogers’ 1922 unsteady venture into column-writing for the McNaught Syndicate, and how he matured:

            “Will was a little slow getting out of the box.  His first effort, headlined Batting for Lloyd George, opened with a self-conscious and rather clumsy fiction about the recently resigned British prime minister … Following was a series of political gags along the lines of what he had been doing for years.

            “But in the weeks and months that followed, there were fewer and fewer gags.  Will emerged – remarkably for someone who had never thought of himself as a writer and had only rarely set anything down on paper that sustained a thought for more than one line – as an estimable comic essayist and political commentator, comfortable with the form (the column ran as long as fifteen hundred words), with an impressively broad rhetorical and thematic range and an unmistakable and unique voice.  It was that voice, unquestionably, that made him into the most widely read columnist in the country.

            “Will never aspired to Literature, and his columns were anything but well-tempered Grecian urns.  The beginnings were usually just throat-clearings, the endings throwaway exit lines.  After he had typed a piece out, he would give it a once-over and pencil in a few revisions; the idea of a second draft would never have occurred to him.

            “But if wasn’t a literary artist, he was – once he had gotten up a head of steam – a formidable craftsman of words, humor, and ideas.”

            Will Rogers’ legacy as one of America’s most popular and influential writers is defined in comments made about him by some of the outstanding figures in journalism and literature:

            “Will Rogers was the greatest communicator America ever produced” – Dr. Laurence Peter.

             “Will Rogers was undoubtedly America’s most complete human document  One-third humor.  One-third humanitarian.  One-third heart.” – Damon Runyon.

            “Look at the man.  He alters foreign policies.  He makes and unmakes candidates.  He destroys public figures.  By deriding Congress and undermining its prestige he has virtually reduced us to a monarchy.  Millions of Americans read his words daily, and those who are unable to read listen to him over the radio … I consider him the most dangerous writer alive today.” – H. L. Mencken.