Old Cowhand

By Neil MacNeil

The stage is almost bare. A few props rivet the playgoer's eye: an ancient desk piled high with books and yesterday's newspapers, a sawhorse with a Western saddle draped over it, a picture of a turn-of-the-century cowboy. Suddenly, a lecturer appears. He wears a coat. As he sheds the coat, he reveals to the audience that he is performing the eternal theatrical ritual, dropping the mask, assuming the myth, becoming the man. He pulls out a bandana and ties it around his neck. He gives his forelock a forward tug. Bowed of leg, lariat twirling, stetson arched back over his forehead and shy grin. It is Will Rogers.

The name summons up fond and durable memories: the gum-chewing philosopher of humor, the man of homely common sense that somehow added up to uncommon wisdom. Out of it he fashioned not one, but a half-dozen careers--rodeo bronco rider, walk-on humorist (before the phrase had even been invented), Ziegfeld Follies headliner, movie star, radio commentator, newspaper columnist --a one-man galaxy of talent. He lives again on the stage of Washington, D.C.'s Ford Theatre in a gifted recreation by James Whitmore in a show appropriately titled Will Rogers' U.S.A.

No Malice. Unlike Hal Hoi brook in his Mark Twain Tonight, Whitmore does not attempt to achieve a flesh-tinted, bone-perfect reproduction of Rogers, nor does he even speak with Rogers' casual, careless Oklahoma drawl. What he tries for, and succeeds in evoking, is a psychic affinity with the wit of the Western corral, a man whose comic spirit always had a visible edge but no sting of malice, a man who could toss off a one-liner like, "I could have gone to West Point, but I was too proud to talk to a Congressman."

Much of Rogers' impact came from his delivery, and Whitmore has mastered that perfect timing: "We've got the best politicians in the country [pause] that money can buy." Not surprisingly, Rogers' political sallies have a particular savor for a Washington audience: "When you straddle an issue, it takes a lot more explaining." Or, "My little jokes don't hurt anybody, but when Congress makes a joke, it's a law." The biggest laugh of the evening erupted on his comment about Calvin Coolidge: "When he was Vice President, he done the right thing--he kept his mouth shut!"

Some humor dates in an almost embarrassing way. Not so the humor of Will Rogers--at least as it has been assembled and edited by Director Paul Shyre and Associate Producer Bryan Sterling. Though Rogers commented on daily events and the doings of petty men, he saw things in the larger perspective of man as the eternal presumptuous ape, full of folly, and pomposity and greed, yet strangely lovable. He forged a link between every human being by reminding us that for better or for worse, we are all stuck with our foolish, fumbling selves. Some of Rogers' humor has a peculiarly pertinent contemporaneity as when he chides the Federal Government for its ignoble abuse of the Indians (he was part Cherokee), or when he speaks, gently but tellingly, of his hatred of war.

A quality in the inner being of Will Rogers forced him to speak out about such things. He had something warmer than blood in his veins--an openhanded generosity, an unstinting friendliness, a native courtesy that embraced with equal grace the lordly and the lowly.

Rogers died in a plane crash at Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1935, along with the globe-girdling pilot, Wiley Post. In the nostalgia of Whitmore's performance, it is refreshing to be reminded of a time when a man who had amassed millions could scuff his toes at success and say quite simply, "Shucks, I was just an old cowhand that had a bit of luck."

-Neil MacNeil

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