# the Roy Rogers Show-----Huh? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 20, 2014, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237 "2014-06-20T19:47:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/41 "2014-06-22T01:51:50Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I think it’s a shame that a very good fast food place (roast beef far better than Arby’s, pretty decent hamburgers and chicken, with a fixings bar where you could add lettuce, tomato, etc. to taste) was destroyed when they were bought by Hardee’s. I ate a great many Double-R burgers with much enjoyment. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/42 "2014-06-22T04:52:54Z")
> [@dougie\_monty](#): > > …Do you mean Rufus T. Firefly? It shoud be S. Quentin Quayle. No, I believe he’s referring to the TV show [Firefly](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Firefly_%28TV_series%29), which blended old West style stories with outer space elements. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/43 "2014-06-22T12:20:58Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > For a gritty reboot of The Roy Rogers Show, maybe sit down and watch The Wild Bunch. Horses, cars, six shooters, and machine guns all in one movie. Seriously, as noted above, the idea was to give kids the idea they could be a cowboy just like Roy today. > > On a somewhat related note, does anybody remember a short-lived Western series starring James Garner as a very early 20th century lawman who rode one of the crude, early motorcycles? Nickles, maybe? **Nichols**. I remember it, but never watched. I think they killed off the original Garner character because he wasn’t what audiences expected of him, and had Garner play Nichol’s twin brother in a failed attempt to pick up the ratings. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2014, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/44 "2014-06-22T22:18:40Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I think it’s a shame that a very good fast food place (roast beef far better than Arby’s, pretty decent hamburgers and chicken, with a fixings bar where you could add lettuce, tomato, etc. to taste) was destroyed when they were bought by Hardee’s. It’s a Fixin’s Bar. No true cowboy would pronounce the g. And I agree that what Hardee’s did to Roy’s was a crime against humanity. At least they’ve been doing OK since tossing off the Hardee’s yoke some 10-15 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2014, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/45 "2014-06-23T07:03:52Z")
[quote=“Wendell\_Wagner, post:16, topic:691237”] Didn’t cowboys use horses when they were rounding up cattle in the 1950’s (when the show was broadcast) and maybe even today?: They did in the mid-70s where I was. But the one that I find most striking is the first childrens book by Dr Seuss/Zeuss. “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street”, 1937. Comming home to tell dad what he saw today, he sees absolutely nothing interesting. Only a horse and cart. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2014, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/46 "2014-06-23T11:44:08Z")
I think it was more reflective of people’s reality, at the time, than you’re acknowledging. While it’s true horses had all but disappeared in modern, ‘moving with the times’, cities, rural conditions reflected a slower adaptation and thus a blend of the two such as the show represents. Don’t forget that those cities, and their forward thinking population, quickly taking up the latest modernity, largely came from rural areas. Their children, though being raised in the modern times and urban life, also regularly saw the rural origins of their parents and grandparents up close and often. Where the future and the past commingled for much longer, before the last vestiges of the horse drawn age disappeared forever. It was so for me. Until late into the 60’s, milk was still being delivered via a horse drawn vehicle, where my Gran lived. It was a small, sleepy, farming community, and it was the last horse in town when it finally went out of service. My cousins still rode a horse into town from time to time, when I was a child, because they didn’t all have bikes like us. Bikes were expensive for rural folk. ---
**Author:** ![lost4life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c4cdca/32.png) [@lost4life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lost4life)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2014, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/47 "2014-06-23T12:31:19Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > I believe that was from an episode of Weekend Update with Chevy Chase on SNL. _Sixty-four year old cowboy Roy Rogers stated this week that when he dies, he would like to be stuffed and mounted on top of Trigger, his dead horse, who is also stuffed and mounted. When asked to comment on this, Dale Evans, Roy’s affectionate wife, said that she, too, would like to be stuffed and mounted but not necessarily in that order._ ---
**Author:** ![bauble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f6c823/32.png) [@bauble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bauble)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/48 "2014-06-27T22:03:19Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > On the subject of Roy Rogers, I think it’s a shame that his once-great collection/museum in Victorville got shut down, exported to Branson, and finally auctioned off piece by piece. That makes me sad. I only went there once and was lucky enough to meet the man. He said he couldn’t sign autographs for my brother and I, and I think he felt guilty about that as he let us take several pictures with him and gave us a tour of the museum. Even though I was too young to really appreciate who he was, that impressed me a lot. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/49 "2014-06-27T22:26:01Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > I think it was more reflective of people’s reality, at the time, than you’re acknowledging. While it’s true horses had all but disappeared in modern, ‘moving with the times’, cities, rural conditions reflected a slower adaptation and thus a blend of the two such as the show represents. Reminds me of the scenes with Chuck Yeager at the beginning of _ **The Right Stuff** _. The dawn of the Space Age, and the people around Muroc were still living basically the same as in the 1880s. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/50 "2014-06-27T22:36:39Z")
Both the Roy Rogers Show and Gene Autry movies represented the kid version of a trope that has been since dubbed “New Old West”. As might be expected, [there’s a page at TV Tropes about the New Old West trope.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NewOldWest) ---
**Author:** ![Pogo1616](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f14d63/32.png) [@Pogo1616](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pogo1616)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/51 "2014-09-27T16:21:14Z")
Am I remembering it wrong, or did Roy also have a car for some of the episodes? It was a sports-car type vehicle – two seater with a Rolls Royce style front end? Or maybe I just dreamed it. Does anyone else remember this? ---
**Author:** ![Pogo1616](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f14d63/32.png) [@Pogo1616](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pogo1616)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/52 "2014-09-27T16:23:53Z")
Am I remembering it wrong, or did Roy also have a car for some of the episodes? It was a sports-car type vehicle, two seater and had a Rolls Royce style front end. Did I just dream this or does someone else remember it too? ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/53 "2014-09-27T16:52:50Z")
> [@Pogo1616](#): > > Am I remembering it wrong, or did Roy also have a car for some of the episodes? It was a sports-car type vehicle, two seater and had a Rolls Royce style front end. > > Did I just dream this or does someone else remember it too? Wasn’t there a post just before this about Roy having a car for some of the episodes? A sports-car type vehicle, two seater that had a Rolls Royce style front end? Or did I just dream that? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/54 "2014-09-27T16:55:44Z")
Wasn’t there a post just before this about Roy having a car for some of the episodes? A sports-car type vehicle, two seater that had a Rolls Royce style front end? Or did I just dream that? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/55 "2014-09-27T18:05:43Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#): > > Real Life is Messy. We still [del]had[/del] have radios after television, and Victorian houses don’t dissolve in a puff of smoke because someone built an Art Deco building. > > More to the point, in 1910 New York, a businessman could sit in his electrically-lit 30th-floor office making telephone calls, then ride downstairs in an electric elevator, go outside, and catch a horse-drawn cab to take him to Penn Station to catch an electric train. The square downtown in the city where I went to high school and college has parallel parking around the outside of the square, and the adjacent streets, but around the courthouse, it has side-by-side angled parking, and it’s a little awkward, because it doesn’t allow for turn lanes, and the streets all go from three to two lanes around the courthouse, so you get bad traffic at rush hour. It’s an odd anachronism that’s never been changed in spite of two multi-level parking garages built near the square. I saw a photo of the square from the 20s, and the parallel spaces were all for cars, but the angled spaces around the courthouse were for horse-and-buggies. I couldn’t tell you the last time one was parked there, but it was probably in the 1940s. There are still farms in the area, and a farmers’ market nearby. FWIW, there are also horseback patrols in Central Park in Manhattan right now. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/56 "2014-09-27T18:08:29Z")
I remember reading about the origins of the Lone Ranger in a book on old-time radio. It was decided to set the series in the Old West because the “modern-day Western was becoming ever more improbable.” (I assume the author was talking about shows like Gene Autrey’s.) The key words here being “modern-day Western.” Remember, this was in the 1930s, and not all that removed from Roy and Dale’s TV show. So things still hadn’t changed a whole helluva lot in fifty years. It wasn’t until after WWII that the US population finally became more urban than rural. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/57 "2014-09-27T18:43:33Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > For the first time in half a century, I just watched 2 episodes of the Roy Rogers Show. > And now I need help understanding just how stupid the human race was back in the 1950’s… Believe it, in 50 years time the same comment will be made about the 2010s, and with far more reason. The sheer stupidity of some of the TV shows around at the moment staggers the understanding. Beside these Roy Rogers looks like high art. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/58 "2014-09-27T21:18:05Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I recall my grandparents saying that travel by mule or horses was preferable in rural areas. Rural roads were rare in the 20’s and even 30’s. The roads that did exist were meant for wagons and not cars. > > So, yes there was a time when cars and horses were both still used. It depended on where you lived and traveled. I have cousins on my moms side who still plow and drive horses. _cough_ Amish _cough_ 😃 [URL=“[http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/](http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/)”] ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/59 "2014-09-27T21:20:47Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > Believe it, in 50 years time the same comment will be made about the 2010s, and with far more reason. The sheer stupidity of some of the TV shows around at the moment staggers the understanding. Beside these Roy Rogers looks like high art. I guess you weren’t around in the 1980s. The nadir that was (US) TV in the 1980s makes today’s TV look like high art. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2014, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237/60 "2014-09-27T23:07:54Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I guess you weren’t around in the 1980s. The nadir that was (US) TV in the 1980s makes today’s TV look like high art. You’ve _got_ to be kidding! _ **St Elsewhere** _, _ **Hill Street Blues** _, _ **Remington Steele** _, _ **Max Headroom** _, _ **Cheers!** _, _ **Night Court** _, \*\*_Magnum_, \*\*_ **Dallas** _, _ **Hart to Hart** _, _ **ST: TNG** _, _ **Miami Vice** _, _ **Crime Story** _, _ **Tour of Duty** _, the new _ **Columbo** _ series, _ **Murder She Wrote** _, _ **Soap** _, _ **Benson** _—these were all _worse_ than what’s on today?!? :eek: Give me a break! :smack: Even sitcoms like _ **Facts of Life** _, _ **Diff’rent Strokes** _, and _ **Webster** _ were infinitely better than most of the dreck that’s on now. They (and their success) are all what producers today _try_ to emulate.\* I’m sure there are people out there who long for lesser fare like _ **MacGyver** _, _ **The A-Team** _, _ **Falcon Crest** _, _ **Knight Rider** _, _ **Airwolf** _, and _ **Pee-Wee’s Playhouse** _ too. \*Yes, I know I left out _ **Cosby** _, but I honestly _hated_ that show. So sue me! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-roy-rogers-show-huh/691237.md?page=4)