Roy Rogers and Bette Davis in Kingsport (not together)

 

Roy Rogers at the Strand!

Once upon a time, a simpler time, celebrities passed through Kingsport on a regular basis.

There was the Vice President of the United States, Thomas Riley Marshall, in 1917, Sgt. Alvin York in 1926, Tom Mix in 1934, (Mrs. Tom Mix in 1945!), Gene Autry in 1939.

Well, you get the picture.

I’d heard about all those. But I never knew that Roy Rogers strolled across Broad Street in 1942 and grabbed lunch in the Mayflower Restaurant at 135 Broad Street between shows at the Strand Theatre.

Or that Bette Davis, star of stage and screen – long before there was television – spent the night in the Model City in 1945 during a cross country honeymoon motor trip with her husband (number three), William Grant Sherry.

  

Roy Rogers was in Kingsport? Why didn’t someone tell me? I carried a Roy Rogers Double-R-Bar Ranch lunchbox to Johnson Elementary every day until I outgrew it.

They didn’t tell me because I wasn’t born yet.

But Roy was here (in 1942). And so were other western stars: Gene Autry (in 1939) and Hoot Gibson (in 1937) and Tom Mix (in 1934) and Lash Larue (in 1950).

Even Bette Davis, who was in several episodes of the TV western “Wagon Train,” visited Kingsport once!

I found out by randomly reading old issues of the Kingsport Times.

Here’s where I found out about Roy in Kingsport, from Herman Giles’ Over the Coffee Cup column of Feb. 23, 1946:

Roy Rogers, the singing cowboy, is one of my favorite film stars. Not because of any talent I’ve seen him display on the screen but because of something that happened right here in Kingsport.

Roy was making a personal appearance at a local theater several years ago. Fans were lined up to see him and it was quite a wait for some of them.

Apparently one little old lady didn’t have the stamina for here’s what happened:

It was between shows and Roy came out of the theater and went into a restaurant a short distance up the street.

A tall gangling lad in overalls was standing nearby. Beside him was a slight woman dressed in dark clothes with a bonnet over her hair.

“There he went, Ma,” the boy said. They started to follow and then changed their minds. But they stood outside and waited.

When the cowboy star came out again, the boy stopped him and said, “Roy, I want you to meet my mother. She’s seen you in the movies but she didn’t get to see you on the stage.”

He took off his big white hat and shook hands with the little old lady. Then he bent down to look in her face and said something and they both laughed.

For several minutes he stood there talking to her, his arm slightly across her shoulders. And when he left the little old lady kept watching his back and smiling.

 

Wonder what Roy said to that little old lady that made her laugh. We’ll never know.

 

Here’s the advance story the Kingsport Times ran on Sunday Jan. 11, 1942:

Roy Rogers Plays In Person Here At Strand Saturday

Roy Rogers, Republic's blue-eyed, blond cowboy star, and favorite of millions of horse opera enthusiasts, will appear in person on the stage of the Strand Theatre Saturday with his troupe of western stars.

Born in Cody, Wyoming, of American, Irish and Indian descent, Roy's first ambition was to be a dentist. Family fortunes being on the decline, however, Roy left school to earn a living, and worked in a shoe-making shop, carving soles. But he sang while he worked, and thereby hangs a tale.

A customer who overheard him sing suggested that he try for a radio audition. Heading for New York, his money ran out by the time he reached Cincinnati, where he applied for a radio job, and got it.

It was not until 1932 that he began to get attention from radio big-wigs. His break came when he was signed to sing on The Sons of the Pioneers' program. This group later made a tour of the west coast in personal appearances. When they hit Hollywood, Roy was found by a talent scout, and given a part in a short subject starring El Brendel. It was a comedy called "Radio Scout,” but Roy's singing wasn't comical. In fact, it was so good that he got another job immediately in pictures. A singing job! For a while he thought his voice was a curse, for he was never given an acting part - he remained always a singer. By this time Roy wanted to be an actor!

He kept trying, alternating between screen and radio, always hoping for the chance to act before the cameras. It wasn't until late in 1937 that the chance came. He was signed by Republic Pictures for a part in a Gene Autry picture. It wasn't all singing either. Following the completion of that picture, he was given another part in another Autry western. It was then that the studio signed him on a long-term contract. Roy says this contract brought him the greatest satisfaction of any event in his life. No wonder, he had waited long enough for it.

Roy's ambition is to be the best, the top-ranking-singing cowboy of the screen!

 

This story is, of course, baloney, concocted by a Hollywood press agent. But Roy Rogers wasn’t the only Hollywood star with a bogus backstory.

In reality Roy Rogers was born Leonard Slye in Cincinnati and spent his youth in Ohio. Len, as he was called, did work in a shoe factory but it was in Cincinnati. The family got to California by following Len’s older sister Mary and her husband.

When he was 20, he auditioned for an Inglewood, California radio show, the Midnight Frolic. From that show came a gig with the group the Rocky Mountaineers. That evolved into a group called the Pioneers Trio, which was redubbed the Sons of the Pioneers by a deejay who said they were too young to be Pioneers. Len did appear in a few Gene Autry pictures but he was billed as Leonard Slye. When Autry left because he wanted more money, Republic Pictures began auditions for a replacement singing cowboy. Len won and was renamed Roy Rogers, the Rogers part coming from Will Rogers.

That’s the real Roy Rogers story.

 

Vince as a cowboy circa 1952 (pulling uncovered wagon)

I was always a Roy Rogers fan as a kid; I even carried a Roy Rogers lunchbox in first grade. He wasn’t my favorite cowboy but I liked his show and I liked his horse Trigger and I especially liked his dog Bullet. I wanted a German Shepherd so badly. Never got one because we lived on Bristol Highway and my mother explained, “You’ll just get attached to it and it’ll get run over.” She just didn’t like dogs.

There was only one problem with “The Roy Rogers Show.” When was it?

Roy, the self-proclaimed King of the Cowboys, always rode Trigger. His wife Dale Evans, the Queen of the West, always rode her horse Buttermilk.

Everyone in Mineral City, where they lived, rode a horse. Every business in town had a hitching post.

But Roy’s best friend Pat Brady drove a Jeep.

What?

There were no Jeeps in the Old West.

I’d seen hundreds of old westerns on WJHL’s 5 p.m. show “Pecos Ben and the Circle F Ranch” (sponsored by Foremost Dairies) and none of them had cars of any kind.

Tom Mix rode a horse (named Tony). Ken Maynard rode a horse (Tarzan). Johnny Mack Brown rode a horse (Rebel). Even Lash Larue, the oddest of the cowboys, rode a horse (Black Diamond).

When the good guys chased the bad guys, they did it on horseback.

They rode into town on horses and back to the ranch on horses.

There were no cars!

So how in the name of Gabby Hayes did Roy Rogers get in this time warp where all the cowboys and cowgirls rode horses except Pat Brady, who drove an unreliable Jeep named Nellybelle?

Years ago I asked the late Troy Brown of Wallace News – a huge aficionado of westerns - about this seeming time confusion. “Almost all westerns are supposed to take place in 1887, right after the Civil War. That’s why I didn’t like Gene Autry. They had phones and cars. I liked Roy but I didn’t like the cars.”

After talking to Troy, I watched an episode of “The Roy Rogers Show” called “The Outlaw’s Girl” where the bad guy, Chick Dillon rode into town in what looked like a 1949 Pontiac convertible. So at least one person drove a car besides Pat.

When Roy and Pat set out to catch Chick, Roy insisted that Pat get out of his Jeep and ride a horse. And somehow the two guys on horses caught the guy in the car!

Maybe that’s what Roy was whispering to that old lady in 1942, how horses outran cars in the Old West.

 

My favorite cowboy was Bob Steele. For years I told people that my favorite cowboy movies were the Trail Blazers pix with Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson and Bob Steele that I watched on the “Circle F Ranch” TV show on WJHL. Turns out those three only made three movies together. (I had to wait for Al Gore to invent the internet to find that out.) Ken Maynard hated Bob Steele and wanted him kicked out of the series. Instead Monogram booted Ken.

(When I wrote a column for the Louisville Courier-Journal, I would occasionally mention my love of Bob Steele and how I preferred Gene Autry's singing to Ken Maynard's. This would inevitably bring a letter to the editor from Ken Maynard's nieces, who lived across the Ohio in Clarksville, Indiana. One said: "Ken Maynard vs. Gene Autry, I don't think so!" It then launched into a fierce defense of Uncle Ken.)

 

 

(This is the best I could do on this photo - microfilm photos don't reproduce well.)

 

Bette Davis blew through Kingsport Dec. 17, 1945 with her new husband in tow.

She was corralled by one Sgt. Ed H. Snyder, whose only byline in the Kingsport Times was his hurried interview with the reluctant subject:

 

By Sgt. Ed H. Snyder

Bette Davis, newly-married star of the stage, screen and radio, spent last night in Kingsport on the second to the last hop of a cross-country honeymoon that will take her to her home in New Hampshire in time for Christmas.

The thrice-wed actress and her new husband, William Grant Sherry, 31-year-old artist recently discharged from the Navy, stayed at the Kingsport Inn, signed autographs for the goggle-eyed hotel guests during the dinner hour, posed for news photographers, and then left this morning for the North.

It was Miss Davis' first visit to Kingsport. “We wanted to stop here," she told a reporter. "We'd heard that Kingsport was a charming and progressive city-and it certainly is!"

This Christmas will be the first which Miss Davis has been able to spend in her New Hampshire hill home since the beginning of the war. For the past three Christmases she's been in California where she headed the Hollywood Canteen and was one of its most energetic workers.

“Other Christmases have been so busy," she smiled. “But now I feel that I really can have one of my own."

Miss Davis and Sherry arrived, at the Inn last night shortly before eight o'clock. After dinner, during much of which she was engaged in autographing cards for a lobby full of hotel patrons, the couple retired.

A news photographer who asked her to pose for a picture last night was graciously turned aside with: "Surely you wouldn't want my picture after a 500-mile auto trip! I’ll see you in the morning!"

After breakfasting in bed, Miss Davis, true to her promise, appeared in the lobby at 8:15 a.m. She posed for several pictures, was interviewed briefly, then left with Mr. Sherry.

For traveling the screen star was wearing a gray wool coat dress, brown alligator belt and shoes and bag to match. Their car was a sleek, cream-colored convertible. Mr. Sherry was at the wheel as it rolled away from the Inn.

The noted actress and her husband were married Nov. 31 at Riverside, Calif., in a ceremony at historic Mission Inn. The wedding previously had been scheduled in St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Laguna Beach, Calif., but because of Miss Davis' previous marriages the plans for a church ceremony had to be abandoned.

Miss Davis was divorced from Bandleader Harmon O. Nelson, in 1938. In 1940 she married Arthur Farnsworth, aircraft executive, who died of injuries incurred in a fall in 1943. It was the first marriage for Sherry, a sea and landscape painter and former Navy pharmacist's mate.

From California, the couple traveled to Mexico City where Miss Davis was honored by the Mexican government at the premiere there of her picture, "The Corn Is Green." And it was the long cross-country honeymoon from Mexico to New Hampshire that brought Misa Davis through Kingsport last evening.

The actress declined to discuss plans for her future career beyond saying that she was returning to the West after the holidays.

 

There is no record of Miss Davis or Sgt. Snyder ever being in Kingsport again after that Christmas 1945 stay.

Other celebrity sightings in Kingsport: