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Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Are Still Good Influences

Guest Columnist
J'Amy Pacheco

As a parent, I spend a great deal of time thinking — and worrying — about what my child is exposed to in this world.

It might be something she sees on the street; it may be an inappropriate commercial squeezed between parts of an otherwise wholesome family show on television, but there is no shortage of material to give this mother of an 8-year-old girl more than a few sleepless nights.

I wasn’t looking for role models when I took my daughter to the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Film Festival last month. Because I had the good fortune to get to do some writing for Rogers and Evans, my daughter has been around their family most of her life. She adores them, and looks forward to the film festival all year long.

The Rogers family moved to Branson, Mo., last year, and we knew they wouldn’t make the festival this time. So we just went for the movies, and to help raise a little money for the Happy Trails Children’s Foundation, which supports the Cooper Home for Abused and Neglected Children in Apple Valley.

But we got so much more.

For two days, we watched old movies. Some were in black and white; some, we learned from experts who introduced the films, were in “Trucolor.” In some, Dale Evans starred opposite her husband; in others, we were introduced to leading ladies like Penny Edwards and Phyllis Brooks.

We watched movie after movie, and listened to panels of old-time Western stuntmen talk about their experiences. We bought film festival T-shirts and ate way too much junk from the theater concession stand.

We thrilled at the sight of Roy Rogers and his golden Palomino, Trigger, racing across the screen. We laughed to see Dale Evans, portraying an ex-Marine ichthyologist, getting the best of her opponents.

We also watched “A Day at the Ranch,” a slideshow from an event held last year as part of the festival. The show consisted of stills taken during a day-long open house at a local ranch that once was owned by Roy and Dale, and which has been lovingly restored.

My little girl, who had donned a battered cowboy hat and a pink bandanna for the festival, begged me to take her to the ranch open house scheduled for the day after this year’s festival. I explained that it wasn’t possible — it would be a school and work day for us.

I didn’t realize how disappointed she was until the next movie started. I looked over, and realized she was crying.

I’m sure part of it was that she is used to getting to do a lot of fun stuff with Mom. I rarely say “no” to adventure.

But as I watched Roy, Dale and Trigger on the big screen, it occurred to me that what she really wanted was to be closer to the action — to be part of what she was seeing in the movies.

On the big screen, she saw Roy fighting for truth and justice. She saw him protecting every underdog, from Native Americans threatened with displacement by a greedy businessman to salmon threatened by the over-fishing of a river.

Sure, Roy used guns and his fists. But he also used his brains, outsmarting not only the bad guys, but well-intentioned good guys who frequently mistook our hero for the bad guy.

Watching Roy, and listening to the messages that sometimes get downright preachy in his films, my little girl was influenced, in the best of ways.

Some of the films we watched were made more than 60 years ago. But these stories have endured and continued to endear, I believe, because they’re good. Maybe not in an Academy Award kind of way, but in a more important way.

In Roy’s old films, crime doesn’t pay. Not only does the good guy triumph, but the bad guy always gets what he deserves.

Oh, and the good guy always gets the girl.

Most of the people in the audience appeared to be of the age that they might have grown up with Roy. During between-film conversation, some of the women admitted how they’d swooned over the singing cowboy.

My own little girl admitted to me that she thought Roy Rogers was “kind of cute.” For a moment, I’m pretty sure she, too, swooned.

In a clip we watched together, Roy closed with these words: “Goodbye, good luck, and may the Good Lord take a liking to you.”

I wish I could tell Roy Rogers that I hope the Good Lord has taken a liking to him, too.

Because my little girl certainly has.


J’Amy Pacheco is editor of the San Bernardino Bulletin, a Metropolitan News Co. publication.

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