Name: Roy Rogers on Letterman, June 22, 1983
Uploaded: 2017-04-04T01:49:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Roy Rogers on Letterman, June 22, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-04-04. Transcript available. Roy Rogers' only appearance on Late Night.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Roy Rogers on Letterman, June 22, 1983' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-04-04. Transcript available. Roy Rogers' only appearance on Late Night.

thank you very much welcome back to the program ladies and gentlemen my first
guest tonight is
truly an international star instantly recognized the world over and we're going
to take a look at
him now in his very first screen appearance this gentleman would be the one on
the right
that was from a motion picture called the old homestead i also had a small part
in that
the date was 1935 and that gentleman of course was the king of the cowboys mr
roy rogers it's
a pleasure to welcome you nice to meet you right thank you very much for being
here for having me
and uh thank you for the nice welcome the uh the bit of film that we just saw
the the old
homestead what was that the sons of the pioneers or one of those yes i i was
the original son of the
pioneers uh uh organized back in the early 30s and um and that was one of the
first pictures we did
did you guys perform as a group before movies or just for movies no we we were
on radio as a group
uh for a long time and uh we made a whole bunch of transcriptions in 1934 35
which started the uh radio
standard radio transcription company and uh of course we never made any money
out of it but uh the people
that had the transcriptions did and it started uh we'd become known all over
the country and uh they
started getting requests for pictures and this was one of them one of the first
ones do you remember who
the other gentlemen were in the group that we just saw yeah you and carl far
and uh lloyd uh bob nolan
and tim spencer and uh i'm the only one left of the original five the other
fellows are gone before
that you were in another singing group now were you did you think of yourself
in those days as a cowboy
or dressed sort of like a toledo lawyer there 1931 and 32 you didn't think
yourself of anybody you're
just worrying about trying to get enough to eat yeah yeah it was uh right at
the bottom of the depression and
what was the first group or the one that preceded this uh the rocky mountaineers
and uh
then later on the oboro cowboys we barn stormed down to new mexico arizona and
texas
like to starve to death but we eat half of the jackrabbits between here and oklahoma
now yeah that you actually did have interesting ways of getting yourself meals
didn't you betcha
what uh what would you do well we um uh you mean to eat yeah i told you rabbits
we ate rabbits but
you rabbits you mashed with the car or no no how did you just exactly now we
got to roswell new mexico
and it was in tune about this time of the year in 1933 and uh we out of money
didn't have a dime
and we went to this little motel and told him our story and we were playing the
theater there the local
theater in a week or so and we went on the local radio station and we i asked
the man if he had a
little 22 or something i could borrow we like to hunt you know didn't want to
tell him we were hungry
so uh he let me have his little rifle and we'd go out in the evening get us a
couple of jackrabbits
and bring them in and fry them in our motel when we started kidding one another
over the air what we
like to eat and people started bringing us chicken fried chicken that's great i
like uh uh but uh lemon
cream pies yeah and one day i got a call if i would sing the swiss yodel uh uh
they would have us two
big beautiful lemon meringue pies at our motel that night well i sang i sang uh
the song as best i knew
how and that evening sure enough here come a young lady and her her mother over
with two of the most
beautiful lemon pies they were about that thick and we couldn't wait for them
to leave so we could
inhale those things because it was really hungry out and uh the lady young lady
that brought my uh the
pies over turned out to be my first wife who uh uh i have two children by her
and she unfortunately
passed away three days after my boy was born this dusty was born then later on
they and i got married but
that's the story of our trip except there's a lot of in between but you don't
have time to tell it we
have plenty of time right i'm wondering though if that uh that technique would
work now if you and i
suddenly said boy we're ever hungry we could people show up here with if you
got me with you you're gonna
eat well that's good to hear we'll uh we'll go away here for a commercial break
we'll be back to talk to
the legendary mr roy rogers
welcome back to the show this of course is roy rogers uh when i met you earlier
in the uh uh
green room back there a gentleman i assume he's with you uh he said be sure and
ask roy about gabby
and the bear that was a funny story i think it is uh gabby was like my brother
and my buddy and my dad
all wrapped up in one we did 65 pictures together so old gabby he uh we were
doing a picture one time
and we had this big bear and was supposed to be in central park in the picture
in new york cowboys in
central park to new york for some reason and i don't remember the story except
this particular one part
of it and so um gabby had to play with this bear you know and uh it was
supposed to be his bear and
he said i'm not gonna mess with that bear you know gabby he's very opinionated
so when he thought
something's wrong he wouldn't do it so the guy that owned the bear he says all
this he was an italian
guy i can't do much of an italian dialect but he says this embarrasses he don't
hurt nobody i raised
him from a little teeny baby says watch this says push papa and the bear ran
out and bit the end of
his nose off and gabby says see what i mean you know what you can't argue with
that so we had to
rush him to the hospital and sew his nose back on so accidents do happen that's
a joke now let me get
this straight the owner had taught the bear to bite his nose off no gabby was
supposed to do a certain
thing with the bear but he wouldn't have anything to do with it he was scared
of it what was what was
was gabby like uh he couldn't have been like the character he played nobody
really no gabby was uh
he was like a well he wore those beautiful english tweed suits you know and he
was straight as an arrow
he was a very dapper guy yeah very dapper guy and he drove a long continental
four-door convertible
and uh had a beautiful uh white beard one time he he decided he's uh i was
going to be gone about four
months and he decided he's going to shave his beard off see what he looked like
without a beard he hadn't
seen himself in about 15 or 20 years and he was telling me about when i got
back and he said roy
i got that beard off and i looked took one look in the mirror and he said you
never saw such an ugly
so-and-so in your life he put his wife in the car and they all went to the they
were palm desert and
stayed in the house for six weeks so his beard would grow out he wouldn't get
out in front of the people
at all but he he was one of the all-time great characters oh i just loved him
he just couldn't
be beat we just i just loved him very much uh there's there's another uh great
character from
motion pictures uh ronald reagan who tells uh uh i didn't mean that the way it
came out or or maybe
i did who knows who cares uh but ronald reagan has a story about you and dale
that he yeah i've heard
him tell that one yeah how does that go well i don't uh i don't like to repeat
somebody else's stories
well let's bring the president out he's backstage
no it's a great story uh anyway well he was uh campaigning and he he told this
as a story when
he was campaigning that he and his lovely wife went to this little place out in
some small town and
and uh walked up on the porch the old man was up there rocking and he said um
how do you do i'm uh
running for president says i want to say hello to everybody and he said
uh the guy says so well who are you and he said well i i'll give you a hint
says my needles are r r
and the old man jumped up and hollered in the house says hey ma says come on
out here and meet
roy rogers and day 11s are running for president something like that
excuse me you're running for president that's a great story that's wonderful uh
we uh do we have time to
show the the stuff now yes or no yes okay okay uh we're gonna we have some uh a
compilation of some
of your old films and i think maybe well let's just take a look this would be
uh the uh roy rogers
ladies and gentlemen doing uh what he does best so watch closely
when you hear your little you see him riding to his gal and you see the way
i want your permission to uh you want to marry my daughter no the golden
soldier you mean to say
you want to marry a horse you must be plum local well gang if we're making a
picture right here for
for somebody to call her ex let's go
we'd better get out of here
say roy this is just like one of your movies yeah right but your picture is
always finished with music
oh
roy rogers day 11. you look great you always look terrific uh we'll be right
back we're gonna
give you a round of applause for station identification
thank you
welcome back to the show uh later this half hour ladies and gentlemen some
acting tips from
larry melman also uh detective virginia snyder and uh right now oh i'm gonna
tell you about
tomorrow night robin will be here and also uh peter tosh
uh roy rogers is here boy looking at those uh uh film clips of you in action
you looked great
your your your stuff looked good uh your horse looked good uh dale looked good
i mean it was
uh very attractive uh presentation
well you know we're gonna i was talking to you about uh but 20 of these
pictures we've picked out and
we're gonna dale and i are gonna do a live opening as of now and talk about
them when they were the
year they were made and they're gonna run them on the disney thing yeah that'd
be great yeah these
these these these films are also still being playing played on television yeah
a lot of them have a lot
of people have their home movies uh with the cassettes too yeah tell me a
little bit about uh trigger
how did you how did you get him and he he was without a doubt the greatest
horse that ever came
along i got him when i made my first picture he was four years old and before
that just the fall
preceding that uh the first time he's ever in a picture was uh olivia de haviland
rode him in
uh sherwood forest in that picture she made with errol flynn and uh i made my
first picture with him
in january 1938 and we made uh around 90 of our features and 101 of the half
our tv shows plus
appearances and he was like an iron horse and he just uh smart also well there's
a place if there's
a heaven for horses that's where trigger is he was something else but he could
do things that he
could do anything yeah yeah he was just uh he was sharp and you show him a few
times and he'd just
do it yeah it's on on cue you know a horse a horse has two sets of brains one
for each eye and you
really mm-hmm a lot of people don't know that or realize that but you you've
probably heard the
saying never mount a horse from the right side that's because you saddle him
and do everything
from the left side and most people do and um uh if you go on the other side you're
a stranger
and i i could i could prove it by a trigger i could work uh on the left side
where you always mount
the horse from the left side and uh i'd give him the cues to go through the
things and he'd go through
everything i'd go on the other side and give him the same cues he'd just stand
there as if i wasn't
there so he his the the right side of him had never really met you that's right
but but no that you
you can balance them going up the same way you turn a horse to the left uh
several times and never
turn to the right you can't get him to turn to that you have to train him to do
that yeah i didn't
didn't realize that uh you're now you wanted to mention you're in town for uh
yeah that's a big
occasion to being a world famous motion picture singing cowboy you're a restaurateur
well i don't
know about restaurant tour or not but i uh i'm roy rogers it has something to
do with a lot of
restaurants we have about 500 of them now and but the reason i'm in new york
500 restaurants yeah
and i i like to go out and meet the people we have a little get together and i
talk and answer
answer questions and it's like old home week because i feel like i've grown up
with practically
everybody that's alive today so so we have a lot of fun and answering questions
so we're opening one
on time square tomorrow 11 o'clock and it's uh we're gonna have a lot of fun
now will you actually
be there serving oh yeah i just came from when i was one this morning now what
kind of food is this
is this italian it's good chinese we have hamburgers cheeseburgers roy roger's
uh double r bar burgers
we have chicken we have a salad bar we have a lot of food okay and it's good uh
all right so this was
one of 500 yeah i'm with the marriott corporation and we've been together for
15 years and we started
off with 22 little restaurants now we got not not bad not bad for a cowboy i
can't boil water
i can't boil water myself but i can eat those hamburgers uh roy i understand
and this is a treat
uh you are now going to sing for us correct
right here i hope so right here
this thank you this is a little song and some of you may remember we we uh used
it as our theme song
for many many years dale wrote it and it's dale goes like this happy trails
happy trails again happy trails to you keep smiling until then who cares about
the clouds if we're together
just sing a song and bring the sunny weather happy trails to you till we meet
again
we'll be right back we'll be right back with some action tips thank you roy
you

Roy Rogers on Letterman, June 22, 1983

thank you very much welcome back to the program ladies and gentlemen my first
guest tonight is
truly an international star instantly recognized the world over and we're going
to take a look at
him now in his very first screen appearance this gentleman would be the one on
the right
that was from a motion picture called the old homestead i also had a small part
in that
the date was 1935 and that gentleman of course was the king of the cowboys mr
roy rogers it's
a pleasure to welcome you nice to meet you right thank you very much for being
here for having me
and uh thank you for the nice welcome the uh the bit of film that we just saw
the the old
homestead what was that the sons of the pioneers or one of those yes i i was
the original son of the
pioneers uh uh organized back in the early 30s and um and that was one of the
first pictures we did
did you guys perform as a group before movies or just for movies no we we were
on radio as a group
uh for a long time and uh we made a whole bunch of transcriptions in 1934 35
which started the uh radio
standard radio transcription company and uh of course we never made any money
out of it but uh the people
that had the transcriptions did and it started uh we'd become known all over
the country and uh they
started getting requests for pictures and this was one of them one of the first
ones do you remember who
the other gentlemen were in the group that we just saw yeah you and carl far
and uh lloyd uh bob nolan
and tim spencer and uh i'm the only one left of the original five the other
fellows are gone before
that you were in another singing group now were you did you think of yourself
in those days as a cowboy
or dressed sort of like a toledo lawyer there 1931 and 32 you didn't think
yourself of anybody you're
just worrying about trying to get enough to eat yeah yeah it was uh right at
the bottom of the depression and
what was the first group or the one that preceded this uh the rocky mountaineers
and uh
then later on the oboro cowboys we barn stormed down to new mexico arizona and
texas
like to starve to death but we eat half of the jackrabbits between here and oklahoma
now yeah that you actually did have interesting ways of getting yourself meals
didn't you betcha
what uh what would you do well we um uh you mean to eat yeah i told you rabbits
we ate rabbits but
you rabbits you mashed with the car or no no how did you just exactly now we
got to roswell new mexico
and it was in tune about this time of the year in 1933 and uh we out of money
didn't have a dime
and we went to this little motel and told him our story and we were playing the
theater there the local
theater in a week or so and we went on the local radio station and we i asked
the man if he had a
little 22 or something i could borrow we like to hunt you know didn't want to
tell him we were hungry
so uh he let me have his little rifle and we'd go out in the evening get us a
couple of jackrabbits
and bring them in and fry them in our motel when we started kidding one another
over the air what we
like to eat and people started bringing us chicken fried chicken that's great i
like uh uh but uh lemon
cream pies yeah and one day i got a call if i would sing the swiss yodel uh uh
they would have us two
big beautiful lemon meringue pies at our motel that night well i sang i sang uh
the song as best i knew
how and that evening sure enough here come a young lady and her her mother over
with two of the most
beautiful lemon pies they were about that thick and we couldn't wait for them
to leave so we could
inhale those things because it was really hungry out and uh the lady young lady
that brought my uh the
pies over turned out to be my first wife who uh uh i have two children by her
and she unfortunately
passed away three days after my boy was born this dusty was born then later on
they and i got married but
that's the story of our trip except there's a lot of in between but you don't
have time to tell it we
have plenty of time right i'm wondering though if that uh that technique would
work now if you and i
suddenly said boy we're ever hungry we could people show up here with if you
got me with you you're gonna
eat well that's good to hear we'll uh we'll go away here for a commercial break
we'll be back to talk to
the legendary mr roy rogers
welcome back to the show this of course is roy rogers uh when i met you earlier
in the uh uh
green room back there a gentleman i assume he's with you uh he said be sure and
ask roy about gabby
and the bear that was a funny story i think it is uh gabby was like my brother
and my buddy and my dad
all wrapped up in one we did 65 pictures together so old gabby he uh we were
doing a picture one time
and we had this big bear and was supposed to be in central park in the picture
in new york cowboys in
central park to new york for some reason and i don't remember the story except
this particular one part
of it and so um gabby had to play with this bear you know and uh it was
supposed to be his bear and
he said i'm not gonna mess with that bear you know gabby he's very opinionated
so when he thought
something's wrong he wouldn't do it so the guy that owned the bear he says all
this he was an italian
guy i can't do much of an italian dialect but he says this embarrasses he don't
hurt nobody i raised
him from a little teeny baby says watch this says push papa and the bear ran
out and bit the end of
his nose off and gabby says see what i mean you know what you can't argue with
that so we had to
rush him to the hospital and sew his nose back on so accidents do happen that's
a joke now let me get
this straight the owner had taught the bear to bite his nose off no gabby was
supposed to do a certain
thing with the bear but he wouldn't have anything to do with it he was scared
of it what was what was
was gabby like uh he couldn't have been like the character he played nobody
really no gabby was uh
he was like a well he wore those beautiful english tweed suits you know and he
was straight as an arrow
he was a very dapper guy yeah very dapper guy and he drove a long continental
four-door convertible
and uh had a beautiful uh white beard one time he he decided he's uh i was
going to be gone about four
months and he decided he's going to shave his beard off see what he looked like
without a beard he hadn't
seen himself in about 15 or 20 years and he was telling me about when i got
back and he said roy
i got that beard off and i looked took one look in the mirror and he said you
never saw such an ugly
so-and-so in your life he put his wife in the car and they all went to the they
were palm desert and
stayed in the house for six weeks so his beard would grow out he wouldn't get
out in front of the people
at all but he he was one of the all-time great characters oh i just loved him
he just couldn't
be beat we just i just loved him very much uh there's there's another uh great
character from
motion pictures uh ronald reagan who tells uh uh i didn't mean that the way it
came out or or maybe
i did who knows who cares uh but ronald reagan has a story about you and dale
that he yeah i've heard
him tell that one yeah how does that go well i don't uh i don't like to repeat
somebody else's stories
well let's bring the president out he's backstage
no it's a great story uh anyway well he was uh campaigning and he he told this
as a story when
he was campaigning that he and his lovely wife went to this little place out in
some small town and
and uh walked up on the porch the old man was up there rocking and he said um
how do you do i'm uh
running for president says i want to say hello to everybody and he said
uh the guy says so well who are you and he said well i i'll give you a hint
says my needles are r r
and the old man jumped up and hollered in the house says hey ma says come on
out here and meet
roy rogers and day 11s are running for president something like that
excuse me you're running for president that's a great story that's wonderful uh
we uh do we have time to
show the the stuff now yes or no yes okay okay uh we're gonna we have some uh a
compilation of some
of your old films and i think maybe well let's just take a look this would be
uh the uh roy rogers
ladies and gentlemen doing uh what he does best so watch closely
when you hear your little you see him riding to his gal and you see the way
i want your permission to uh you want to marry my daughter no the golden
soldier you mean to say
you want to marry a horse you must be plum local well gang if we're making a
picture right here for
for somebody to call her ex let's go
we'd better get out of here
say roy this is just like one of your movies yeah right but your picture is
always finished with music
oh
roy rogers day 11. you look great you always look terrific uh we'll be right
back we're gonna
give you a round of applause for station identification
thank you
welcome back to the show uh later this half hour ladies and gentlemen some
acting tips from
larry melman also uh detective virginia snyder and uh right now oh i'm gonna
tell you about
tomorrow night robin will be here and also uh peter tosh
uh roy rogers is here boy looking at those uh uh film clips of you in action
you looked great
your your your stuff looked good uh your horse looked good uh dale looked good
i mean it was
uh very attractive uh presentation
well you know we're gonna i was talking to you about uh but 20 of these
pictures we've picked out and
we're gonna dale and i are gonna do a live opening as of now and talk about
them when they were the
year they were made and they're gonna run them on the disney thing yeah that'd
be great yeah these
these these these films are also still being playing played on television yeah
a lot of them have a lot
of people have their home movies uh with the cassettes too yeah tell me a
little bit about uh trigger
how did you how did you get him and he he was without a doubt the greatest
horse that ever came
along i got him when i made my first picture he was four years old and before
that just the fall
preceding that uh the first time he's ever in a picture was uh olivia de haviland
rode him in
uh sherwood forest in that picture she made with errol flynn and uh i made my
first picture with him
in january 1938 and we made uh around 90 of our features and 101 of the half
our tv shows plus
appearances and he was like an iron horse and he just uh smart also well there's
a place if there's
a heaven for horses that's where trigger is he was something else but he could
do things that he
could do anything yeah yeah he was just uh he was sharp and you show him a few
times and he'd just
do it yeah it's on on cue you know a horse a horse has two sets of brains one
for each eye and you
really mm-hmm a lot of people don't know that or realize that but you you've
probably heard the
saying never mount a horse from the right side that's because you saddle him
and do everything
from the left side and most people do and um uh if you go on the other side you're
a stranger
and i i could i could prove it by a trigger i could work uh on the left side
where you always mount
the horse from the left side and uh i'd give him the cues to go through the
things and he'd go through
everything i'd go on the other side and give him the same cues he'd just stand
there as if i wasn't
there so he his the the right side of him had never really met you that's right
but but no that you
you can balance them going up the same way you turn a horse to the left uh
several times and never
turn to the right you can't get him to turn to that you have to train him to do
that yeah i didn't
didn't realize that uh you're now you wanted to mention you're in town for uh
yeah that's a big
occasion to being a world famous motion picture singing cowboy you're a restaurateur
well i don't
know about restaurant tour or not but i uh i'm roy rogers it has something to
do with a lot of
restaurants we have about 500 of them now and but the reason i'm in new york
500 restaurants yeah
