Story Of Will Rogers DVD

Narrated without sentimentality by Bob Hope. The life of the rope twirling humorist is traced from his Oklahoma roots to his death in an Alaska plane crash. Rogers' skill with a lariat led him into show business as a trick rope artist with Texas Jack's Wild West Circus. In rare footage of his act, we see some of the astonishing feats he could routinely pull off. As the jokes and irreverent quips he added to his act became more popular than the tricks, his fame grew to where he became the country boy conscience of his time. With film culled from newsreel sequences, his appearances in motion pictures, and his family's home movies, a warm human portrait emerges of the cowboy philosopher. Carefully researched, THE STORY OF WILL ROGERS not only captures the man, but also the impact he had on his times. His death was announced like a national disaster and triggered the greatest outpouring of grief since the death of Lincoln. The moving sequence of a nation in mourning expresses just how profoundly he had touched the heart and mind of the average American. The country wasn't the same without him, and by the end of this program we all felt like we'd lost a close friend.

USA, 1961, B&W, 60 minutes.

NTSC Region 0 encoding (Entire World)