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Happy Trails:
A Pictorial Celebration of the Life and Times of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
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Dale Evans and Roy Rogers are such icons of the American West – quintessential cowgirl and cowboy – that sometimes it is difficult to remember that their personas were media creations and not the real thing. Neither of them grew up riding the range. Dale Evans, born Frances Smith, was married as a young teen-ager, and then left to struggle as a single mother. Roy Rogers, originally Leonard Slye, grew up on a hard-scrabble farm.
Talent and the Hollywood machine transformed them into stars. They married after Rogers was left a widower with small children. Tragedy – and the triumph over it – didn’t stop there. Both adoptive and natural parents, they endured the sad loss of three of their children over the years.
Rogers and Evans managed to project an image of wholesomeness decade after decade over changing times.
Statistics of an American Icon
According to the Roy Rogers Corporation, the total revenue from the sale of Roy Rogers merchandise for 2015 was $14.4 million dollars.
In 2020 the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans official website had more than 912,000 visitors a month.
Ebay Auctions lists the Roy Rogers/Dale Evans memorabilia page as one of their most popular sites. More than 12,000 items are bought and sold a month.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans made eighty-one westerns for Republic Studios.
The Roy Rogers Show was among the top NBC television programs from 1951 to 1957.
In 1947 alone Roy Rogers received more than 900,000 fan letters.
In 1953 alone 408,000 pairs of Roy Rogers slippers, 900,000 lunch kits, and 1,203,000 jeans and jackets were sold.
