Best Known As: Partner of singing cowboy Roy Rogers
Name at birth: Frances Octavia Smith
Dale Evans was a movie actress who starred with wholesome singing cowboy Roy Rogers in a series of 1940s westerns. The two were married in 1947 and from then on appeared as a popular pair in movies and on TV. Evans wrote the song that became their very popular theme: "Happy Trails to You." Evans's movie horse was Buttermilk, the counterpart to Rogers's horse Trigger.
Buttermilk, like Trigger, was mounted after death and put on display in the Roy Rogers - Dale Evans Museum. The museum was originally located in Victorville, California, but was moved to Branson, Missouri in 2003.
Representative Albums: "It's Real," "Sweetheart of the West," "Rage of the Sage"
Biography
Crowned "Queen of the Cowgirls," Dale Evans stands out as the most powerful female presence in cowboy culture throughout the 20th century. Evans was born Frances Octavia Smith, October 31, 1912, in Uvalde, Texas. At age 14, she eloped with her high school sweetheart. A year later, she found herself in Memphis, TN, a widow and single parent, pursuing a career in a music.
The station manager at radio station WHAS (where the aspiring star was working as a staff singer) encouraged her to change first her name to Dale. The surname Evans came about as Joe Eaton felt it was "euphonious" and would roll easily from the lips of announcers. As Dale Evans, she traveled to Chicago, became a vocalist with a number of different big bands, and was eventually hired as staff singer for radio station WBBM, the local CBS affiliate. Talent scouts from Paramount Studios discovered her and arranged a screen test in Hollywood for the movie Holiday Inn, starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. She didn't get the part, but the screen test found its way to 20th Century Fox studios where she received a one-year contract.
Herbert Yates, head of Republic Studios, was inspired by the successful stage play Oklahoma, and decided to expand the female lead in westerns and adopt this format for one of his biggest stars, Roy Rogers. Since Evans was from Texas, Yates figured she could surely rope 'n' ride, and subsequently offered her a starring role in The Cowboy and the Señorita -- the first of 28 films Roy Rogers and Dale Evans would make together. This on-screen team became a real life romance, and they were married in 1947.
In 1950, Evans wrote the song most closely associated with the cowboy fascination of the '50s. "Happy Trails to You" was written while preparing for a radio show; scribbling on an envelope, Dale wrote the famous lyrics and taught the medley to Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers forty minutes before show time. The song eventually served as the closing song for their half-hour television series, The Roy Rogers Show, which ran until 1957.
Evans remained active throughout the rest of her life, co-writing more than 400 songs, including the immortal western classic "Hazy Mountains," and the Sunday School standard "The Bible Tells Me So." She also authored several books, co-founded The Happy Trails Children's Foundation for severely abused and neglected children, is a member of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and has an impressive three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Roy Rogers died in 1998 from congestive heart failure at the age of 86, and after a series of medical problems, Dale Evans followed him into the sunset three years later. Her memory stands not only as a fiery whip-smart cowgirl, but as a gifted songwriter and a warm humanitarian who shone with an earthy spirituality and a twinkle in her eye for the entire length of the long and dusty trail. ~ Zac Johnson, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: Rio Grande, My Pal Trigger, Don't Fence Me in
First Major Screen Credit: Here Comes Elmer (1943)
Biography
American singer/actress Dale Evans took a stenographer's job while seeking out singing work. A widow at 17, she became a radio and nightclub songstress, married again and set out to try her luck in Hollywood. Few good parts came her way at the major studios (she is barely visible in 20th Century-Fox's Orchestra Wives [1942], which featured an equally unbilled Jackie Gleason), so she had to settle for leading roles at Republic Studios, a "B" factory. She wasn't keen on westerns, but westerns were what she got, co-starring in 20 oaters with Republic's Number One singing cowboy, Roy Rogers. It wasn't until Rogers' first wife died in the late '40s that he and Evans realized that theirs was more than just a happy professional association. Rogers and Evans were married in 1947, assuming the honorary mantle of "King of the Cowboys and Queen of the West;" it was Evans who wrote the couple's enduring theme song, "Happy Trails to You."
The Rogers starred together in two TV series, a standard weekly western in the 1950s and an ABC variety show in 1962; in the early '80s, Evans soloed as host of a long-running syndicated religious talk show. Rogers and Evans' marriage was sorely tested by multiple tragedies; of Evans' six children, one was mentally retarded and only three survived past the age of 21. Evans was strengthened by the solidarity of her marriage and by her unwavering religious convictions. To help others to cope with anguish, she has written several uplifting books about the travails and triumphs of her life. She has also been quite active in her pet cause, the prevention of child abuse. In the mid-'90s Dale Evans was in the process of recovering from a serious illness, and resuming her religious and charitable activities. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Born Lucille Wood Smith in Uvalde, Texas, her name was changed in infancy to Frances Octavia Smith. She had a tumultuous early life, eloping at the age of 14 with her first husband, Thomas F. Fox. She bore one son, Thomas F. Fox, Jr. when she was 15. Divorced in 1929 at 17, she married August Wayne Johns that same year, a union that lasted until their divorce in 1935. She took the name Dale Evans in the early 1930s to promote her singingcareer. She then married her accompanist and arranger Robert Dale Butts in 1937. In 1947 she married Roy Rogers. The marriage was his second, and her fourth. Together they had two children and were happily married for 51 years.
A songstress emerges
After beginning her career singing at the radio station where she was employed as a secretary, Evans had a productive career as a jazz, swing, and big band singer that led to a screen test and contract with 20th Century Fox studios. She gained exposure on radio as the featured singer for a time on the Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy show.
During her time at 20th Century Fox, the studio promoted her as the unmarried supporter of her teenage "brother" Tommy (actually her son Tom Fox, Jr.). This deception continued through her divorce from Butts in 1946, and her development as a cowgirl co-star to Roy Rogers at Republic Studios.
Joint efforts
Evans married Roy Rogers at the Flying L Ranch in Davis, Oklahoma, on New Year's Eve 1947.[1] Rogers ended the deception regarding Tommy. Rogers and Evans were a team on- and off-screen from 1946 until Rogers' death in 1998. Together they had one child, Robin Elizabeth, who died of complications of Down's Syndrome shortly before her second birthday. Her life inspired Evans to write her bestseller Angel Unaware. Evans was very influential in changing public perceptions of children born with developmental disabilities and served as a role model for many parents. After she wrote Angel Unaware, a group then known as the “Oklahoma County Council for Mentally Retarded Children” adopted its better-known name Dale Rogers Training Center in her honor. Evans went on to write a number of religious and inspirational books.
From 1951 to 1957, Dale Evans and her husband starred in the highly successful television series The Roy Rogers Show, in which they continued their cowboy/cowgirl roles, with her riding her trusty buckskin horse, Buttermilk. In addition to her successful TV shows, more than thirty films and some two hundred songs, Evans wrote the well-known song "Happy Trails." In later episodes of the TV show she was outspoken in her Christianity, telling people that God would assist them with their troubles and imploring adults and children to turn to Him for help.
In the fall of 1962, the couple co-hosted a comedy-western-variety program, The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, which aired on ABC. It was cancelled after three months, losing in the ratings to the first season of The Jackie Gleason Show, another comedy-variety program, on CBS.
In the 1970s, Evans recorded several solo albums of religious music. During the 1980s, the couple introduced their films weekly on the former The Nashville Network. In the 1990s, Dale hosted her own religious television program.
Evans died of congestive heart failure, two and a half years after the death of her husband Roy.
