Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers and the American People

by Steven Watts

Citizen Cowboy is a probing biography of one of America's most influential cultural figures. Will Rogers was a youth from the Cherokee Indian Territory of Oklahoma who rose to conquer nearly every form of media and entertainment in the early twentieth century's rapidly expanding consumer society. Through vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway, syndicated newspaper and magazine writing, the lecture circuit, radio, and Hollywood movies, Rogers built his reputation as a folksy humorist whose wit made him a national symbol of common sense, common decency, and common people. Though a friend of presidents, movie stars and industrial leaders, it was his bond with ordinary people that endeared him to mass audiences. Making his fellow Americans laugh and think while honoring the past and embracing the future, Rogers helped ease them into the modern world and they loved him for it.

Genres: Biography

477 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2024

About the author

A specialist in the cultural and intellectual history of the United States, Steven Watts is Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Missouri.

Reviews

[Randall Harrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a difficult book to read. It was dense, literally and figuratively. I expect it required heavier paper than other books given how small the print was. I don't wear glasses but needed a lot of bright light to read. That was just one of my challenges.

I'm a big fan of Rogers; this is the third biography about him I've read and have half a dozen additional volumes about him in my personal library. Can't say I knew everything about him before reading this but there wasn't a lot of new information in this book, relative to other Rogers bios, despite the depth and breadth. Think Watts could have told us just as much in about 2/3 the pages. We are not wiser or more knowledgeable about the man, despite the minute level of detail Watts uses to describe some elements of his life story.

Here are my two complaints about this volume: the author develops a number of themes in his narrative and uses those themes to flesh out his larger story, i.e., Roger's place in, and affect on, American culture in the early 20th century. This isn't a unusual device; many authors do the same. However, in this case it made a lot of things appear out of order, and therefore, wasn't always chronological in the telling. My peeve certainly, but didn't find that this device further enhanced its readability or the narrative in general.

Second, there is a lot of material about the country and culture in the narrative, even though some of it only relates to Rogers tangentially. For example, the material about vaudeville was interesting but didn't really add anything to the narrative about Rogers, other than his place in it. Same for his detailed discussion about his movie career. Most of us don't need a history lesson about the Great Depression or its effect on Americans. I'm old enough that I heard those stories directly from my parents who lived through it.

This was particularly bothersome when he discusses Rogers movie career. Watts goes into great, I'll say stultifying, detail, about his movies once he started making "talkies". This includes detailed plots of the individual movies, the cast, directors, set locations, etc. Watts then relates the movie plots to the changing culture in the US and Rogers role in it. It didn't work for me. I don't think this long-winded recitation added anything to the narrative, nor to our understanding of the subject. It almost seemed if Watts, a retired academic, had written this piece about Rogers previously and wanted to shoehorn it into this volume. Again, long, detailed discussion about his movie roles doesn't really tell us much about the man. As a journalist and author of other biographies, not sure why the narrative doesn't flow more smoothly. Not sure why he chose this device with Rogers. Maybe his other bios are like this but I'm not inclined to read another to find that out.

The flipside of this excessive (in my mind) detail, was his almost perfunctory discussion of Rogers travels around the world during his adult life. There is a lot about his voyages to South American, South African and Australia as a young man. However, the round the world travels in his adult life, while already a celebrity, didn't include that same level of detail. Maybe that information wasn't available. However, I would have liked to read a lot more about his world travels and a lot less about his movies. The chapters relating detail about his movies is also not chronological to the larger narrative; much of it had already been broached in previous chapters. Couldn't understand why he went into such detail when identifying and defining them the second time.

Think maybe my previous knowledge about Rogers made it more challenging for me to read. I kept wondering when's he going to start talking about Wiley Post, for example. He is mentioned early in the book when he talks about Rogers' love of flying. However, most of the detail about Post and their fatal flight is only part of the Epilogue. Would have like to have seen more about the trip that led to their fatal flight. Again, maybe Watts mined all the material about that and he included all he found.

I wouldn't recommend this book to the casual reader. It's a tough volume to read. There are other easier-to-read biographies around. One of my favorites is, An American Original by Ray Robinson, which 0 believe was published in 1996 i f you can still find that in a library. This book was too detailed; it read like a doctoral thesis instead of a volume for a general audience. Should have expected that when I saw it was published by the Oxford University Press. What, no American publisher for a seminal work about one of our favorite sons? lol

When rereading my review, I hate that I come off sounding like a grouchy old man, despite my advanced age. Really wanted to like this book and got excited when I saw it on the library shelf. Just found it too detailed in some odd areas -- movies, and not sufficiently detailed in others -- details about his family and how his death affected their lives. Given the previous books I've read about Rogers, this wasn't my favorite, a lot more detailed but not a lot more informative. Not sure if the detail will therefore appeal to the casual reader.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will Rogers once said corrupt politicians misappropriate money because they “didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it by nightfall.”

Rogers also had faith in the “normal majority” of the American people—just trying to get by, not cheating their neighbor, not trying to manipulate markets, not taking bribes.

Steven Watts traces Rogers from ranch hand and indifferent farm manager to cowboy performer to a populist king of all media. Rogers didn’t want to, to quote songwriter Hoyt Axton, simply work his fingers to the bone for … bony fingers. He was a part-Cherokee product of an agrarian society that was rapidly urbanizing and modernizing and discovering leisure and creative enterprises, like the stage, the radio, and the screen.

Watts says Rogers worked as a mediator for a nation that reached the end of its geographic frontier and had to adjust to technology and capitalization and a widening yaw between rich and poor. His humble, aw-shucks public persona belied a master at reading and reaching an audience, conveying authenticity and truth with humor, even on tough issues. FDR saw him as unparalleled in foreign analysis. Broadway and Hollywood and media players met their match with his clear-eyed approach to business, and everywhere this barnstorming went, he seemed to make friends, though he generally held family closer.

He managed to be a wise and generally undisputed voice of the little fellow, with a power we don’t see today. He could rope rings around anti-Trump commentators these days, because no one could out-love his passion for America, nor see him as a member of some “elite,” although he certainly earned enough to be there.

Watts explores the hard work that went into the production of Will Rogers—and a reader cannot help but wonder how he would derail efforts to throw people without due process into hellish prisons in El Salvador, Libya, or Rwanda. Or engage in a costly undeclared war against the Houthis in Yemen. What would Rogers, the stern moralist, say about a leader who could tell a little girl she could only have two dolls while his family is making billions from bitcoin graft in worldwide pay-for-play bribery schemes? Or would cut suicide lines for veterans or cut food and medical aid to the world’s most vulnerable people?

When Rogers died in a plane accident in northern Alaska, Damon Runyon called him the “unofficial prime minister of the people.” The New York Mirror said he had been “the intimate friend…of tens of millions of Americans.”

No one ever said that Will Rogers forgot where he came from.

[Ink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Citizen Cowboy by Steven Watts is probably one of the most intricately detailed yet utterly immersive biographies I have ever read (and I don't say that lightly) It is a hefty tome but every part is relevant in detailing the life and work of Will Rogers, a man of the people for the people who famously said;

"I joked about every prominent man of my time but I never met a man I didn't like"

Everything about Will Rogers' life was polarity but without conflict and he was well liked for it. A huge star of stage and screen, from Vaudeville, to silent movies and then the talkies, Rogers was able to turn his natural humour and wit to any medium.

Citizen Cowboy follows Rogers career juxtaposing it against American history and the huge cultural changes between 1899 and his untimely death in an aviation accident in Alaska in 1935. Not only does the book explore a glittering public career, but also Rogers private life which was a direct contrast to his public persona

This biography is fascinating on so many levels, not just about this incredible icon

Thank you very much to Netgalley, Cambridge University Press and the author Steven Watts for this compelling ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone knows Will Rogers. But, who exactly is Will Rogers? Some facts are understood. He is an Oklahoman of Cherokee Nation heritage. He is also a talented cowboy and rope artist; an accomplished actor in both the silent movies and stage; and a widely read and admired writer and political commentator. He was also one of the most universally liked people in our nation's history. That universal esteem was dramatically demonstrated as word of his death, along with pilot and friend Wiley Post, was broadcast around the world. His death was seared in the memories of many people in much the same way felt by President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Still the big question remains: who was Will Rogers? Answering that question is the task taken on by the eminent University of Missouri historian, Steven Watts, in this work. Watts takes pains to point that this book is not a biography in the usual and ordinary sense. This is a book graphically describing how one man born in 1879 Oklahoma could so perfectly reflect America in that turn-of-the-century era. But it is also a book graphically describing how that same Oklahoman became one of the most significant influences in the way we today think of that same turn-of-the-century era. Steven Watts applies the professional historians experience and knowledge of that America and puts Will Rogers clearly into it in a way that the reader can understand just how Will Rogers and America so perfectly fit together. In a way, just like Will Rogers so often said he never met a man he didn't like it is terribly difficult to find someone even today who doesn't like and admire Will Rogers. The author of this book so capably tells just why we feel that way about a man died almost ninety years ago.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an exhaustive biography of Will Rogers and the impact he had across a broad spectrum. It covers how he developed his style in vaudeville and carried it over to radio, movies and one man shows. It was a bit of a struggle to read at times as the author has the unfortunate habit of repeating himself numerous times throughout the book. That may work for some readers, but once is enough for me. An additional warning is that this is not a once over lightly easy read.

I received a free Kindle copy of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook page.

[Maggie Eisenberger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read it but I can't help feeling there might have been a better choice of biography. This book was way too long and repeated the same anecdotes and quotes multiple times in the course of analyzing Will's politics, philosophy, his personality and character, the history of American humor, his travels, his career arc, his connections to his contemporary celebrities, the history of moving pictures, and more. It is certainly a book of prodigious scholarship but I suspect someone interested in Will Rogers isn't really working on a graduate degree in the subject. I hope you choose better than I did.

[Beth Husen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book hoping to learn more about fellow Oklahoman Will Rogers & I did but I learned a lot more than I needed to know. The author has dry writing and with way too much detail and too much repetition. If you want to know more about Will Rogers, this is not a book that I would recommend to do so.