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Monday, February 15, 2016
Page #14
Texas History Minute: Dale Evans her connections while working for a local insurance company, she landed singing roles at two local radio stations by 1930, WMC and WREC.
Dr. Ken Bridges Dale Evans spent decades as a star of the silver screen. While her career was legendary in its own right, her story behind the scenes was even more remarkable.
She moved to Chicago to try to find better employment, but her health collapsed under the strain of work, school, and raising her son. After she recovered, she found work at station WHAS in Louisville, Kentucky, where the station manager suggested her stage name, Dale Evans. By 1936, she found her way back to Texas and found work singing on Dallas radio station WFAA.
Her career gradually ascended. In 1942, she appeared briefly in the film Orchestra Wives, her first of She was born Frances Octavia Smith what became 44 films. She also took on a regular role on the in her grandparent's home in the South Texas community of Uvalde popular Edgar Bergen Show on NBC radio. With World War II in 1912. Her father was a farmer and owned a hardware store in the ongoing, she performed in many town of Italy. Struggling, the family USO shows to entertain the troops overseas. In 1943, she starred with moved to Osceola, in eastern Arkansas, in 1919 where her father John Wayne in the film In Old made an attempt to farm cotton. Her Oklahoma. education was sporadic, occasionally having to drop out of In 1944, she met Roy Rogers when they starred together in Cowboy school but managed to reach high and the Senorita. Dale Evans and school in Osceola by age 12. At age 14, she met a local boy at a Roy Rogers became close and dance. The two eloped, got married continued to work on projects at the home at a preacher in nearby together. After his wife died in 1946, the two married the next year Blytheville, and soon had a son and remained together for the next together. The marriage fell apart quickly. By 1929, her husband had fifty years. They adopted three children and had a daughter abandoned her, and she was left a divorced mother at the age of 17 at together. Tragically, two of their the dawn of the Great Depression. children died at young ages and a She would marry and divorce two third died in an accident while more men between 1929 and 1945. serving in the army. In the midst of these heartbreaking tragedies, she found solace in her faith. She Singing had been part of her life since a young age, and she looked wrote and sang hymns and actively for work as a performer while living promoted the church and prayer in in Memphis. She took several jobs her appearances and books. trying to scratch out a living while The couple appeared in numerous taking several business school courses at the same time. Through movies together and moved into
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television. In 1950, she wrote the died quietly at her home in song "Happy Trails," which the two California in 2001 at age 88. sang often on television and in the movies. It also became the title of their 1980 autobiography. In 1951, The Roy Rogers Show premiered on NBC and lasted for six seasons. After the program ended in 1957, the two made several more television appearances. Their last movie appearance together was as a cameo in the 1973 made-for-TV movie, Saga of Sonora. In 1996, she began hosting a Christian television program, Date With Dale. Though her own health was failing, she continued the program as long as she could. She
Dr. Bridges is a Texas native, writer, and history professor. He can be reached at drkenbridges@gmail.com.
