HAPPY TRAILS: Our Life Story - Softcover

Rogers, Roy; Evans, Dale

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684804360 ISBN 13: 9780684804361

Publisher: Fireside, 1995

Synopsis

American popular culture icons Roy Rogers and Dale Evans trace their triumphs and tragedies, from Roy's days with the Sons of the Pioneers, through their meeting and marriage, and their immense success in films and television. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

From Booklist:

What a pairing: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the cowboy king and the western queen, teamed with those connoisseurs of kitsch, Jane and Michael Stern, authors of The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste (1990) and many other tongue-in-cheek homages to the way we were before it all went bad. This thoroughly engaging mix of joint autobiography and pop cultural history--Roy and Dale alternate chapters, and the Sterns offer introductions to each of the book's six parts--proves once again that you can't help but like Roy Rogers. When Roy tells us that there is so much cussing and violence in modern movies, he wouldn't let Trigger watch them, we love him for it. We cry along with Dale when she recounts the tragedies of her life (the deaths of three children), and when the Sterns describe a friend remembering how, as a kid, she strained to touch Roy's hand while he circled Madison Square Garden on Trigger, we wish we had been there, too. That's the thing about this book: don't expect to find any tongues in any cheeks. You can laugh at tuna casserole, as the Sterns did in Bad Taste, but you can't laugh at Roy Rogers. Ilene Cooper

From Kirkus Reviews:

Pop-culture enthusiasts Jane and Michael Stern (Way Out West, 1993, etc.) are the perfect coauthors for the popular cowboy/cowgirl couple, stars of movies, radio, and TV during the 1940s and '50s. Alternating with Roy and Dale's first-person reminiscences, the Sterns' chapters provide a cultural/historical background and add an appreciative (but never icky) account of their impact on young Jane, Michael, and other Baby Boomers who bought cap guns, moccasins, and similar items emblazoned with Roy's image. Rogers and Evans themselves, despite their firmly professed Christian faith, are not saints: Dale was married at 14, a mother at 15, divorced at 16; when she wed Roy in 1947, he was a widower with three young children inclined to resent her. Although they chronicle the untimely deaths of three other offspring (one a Down's syndrome baby, another killed in a car crash, a third done in by a drinking bout with fellow enlisted men), the tone is generally upbeat and sweet--but not too sweet. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fireside
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0684804360
• ISBN 13: 9780684804361
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256