“Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.”
Have you ever wondered why all of John Wayne’s movies have been shown ad nauseam, heralded as classics and masterpieces (and some of them are), but only 5 of the 21 copyrighted talkies featuring Will Rogers have been re-issued? Lary May’s, The Big Tomorrow : Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way, answers that question.
Will Rogers: Serious Side Explored
May charged that following Rogers’ death a “large scale whitewashing….distorting Rogers’ memory” succeeded in denying future generations the reasons why an entertainer had risen to be arguably “the most noted public man of the day.”
Into World War II years and afterwards, May wrote, Hollywood generally adopted films that, again, held out traditional Anglo-Saxon instead of American perspectives. May contrasted Will Rogers with John Wayne, who arrived in the later era. Both were major stars linked to the “myth” of the West.
According to May, Rogers “embodied the ideal of a hybrid, hyphenated American. In film after film he operated in an autonomous civic sphere with others to transform society and peacefully negotiate across barriers.”
On the other hand Wayne “evoked the image of the pure Anglo-Saxon hero…who protected established institutions and used violence to conquer enemies.”
Will Rogers (1879-1935)