From Duck Run to Hollywood And Fame as New Cowboy Star

Article taken from The Mansfield News, March 23, 1939

Young Lochinvar rode OUT of the west to get himself a mess of fame but young Roy Rogers rode into the west to become the No. 3 box office cowboy star of moviedom. And he rode out of Duck Run, Ohio (Its in Scioto county.)

Rogers is the singing cowboy star who is making a flying personal appearance tour between pictures and who is appearing at the Park theater today. He rode into Mansfield this morning in a big shining blue car. was whirled up to the City building and welcomed by Mayor Claude M. Hunter.

The 26-year-old "cowhand" who learned about cows in the pastures down around Lucasville and Portsmouth, is the unknown who went to Hollywood with he gui-tar a few years ago, messed around in radio singing cowboy ballads which he'd learned at Duck Run and then made a three-point landing in the middle of good luck and movie fame over night.

Louella O. Parsons, movie columnist and commentator, took one look at the bashful blond hero, and said: "he's destined to be the greatest Western star since William S. Hart."

He's been in pictures just a year but his name is the third biggest drawing card among all of the western stars. And he's taking his movie ambitions straight. Reminding him of Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott and James Ellison, three of the very few actors who made a successful transition from horseoperas to the ranks of glamor boys, we asked Rogers if he's heading his career in that direction.

"No'm," he said, "I don't guess I could live up to it"

He also mentioned the very pertinent fact that cowboy stars have twice as long a career as the masculine pulse-quickeners, and that their pictures actually make more money that those of the artier lads

Rogers was polite but sleepy today. He and his manager had been up all night, without so much as ten minutes of shut-eye. They left the Columbus theater where Rogers appeared yesterday, drove to Lucasville near the Ohio river where 125 of Rogers former school mates and teachers had waited two hours for them.

And so at 1:30 a.m. today he was the guest of honor at a wiener roast in a country town where he is still the "kid that was nuts about horses." The party broke up just before dawn and Rogers headed for his Mansfield appointment at 10 o'clock

"Could you," he asked a little diffidently, "say something about Trigger? That's my horse and I sure was disappointed not to bring him. He's a beautiful Palomino and a lot of boys and girls know him from his pictures."

Rogers is something of a Palomino himself-a golden brown with grey eyes. And he's unmarried which may account for the fact that 96 per cent of his S is from girls.

He has a 25-minute act with three assistants. He goes to East Liverpool tomorrow and back to Hollywood July 15