Dale Evans

Dale Evans (b. October 31, 1912 in Uvalde, Texas; † February 7, 2001 in Apple Valley, California; born Lucille Woods Smith), the Queen of the West, was an American actress and singer. She achieved her greatest popularity alongside her husband Roy Rogers in numerous musical westerns and the TV show named after Rogers. Along with Patsy Montana, she is considered one of the few great female icons of Western music.

According to her birth certificate, Evans was born on October 30, 1912, under the name Lucille Woods Smith in Uvalde, Texas. In contrast, Evans herself insisted on October 31 as her birthday. Her first name was later changed to Frances Octavia. She spent her childhood in Italy, Texas, an agricultural small town south of Dallas, and later moved with her family to Memphis, Tennessee.

As time went on, Evans had singing talent, so she began to pursue a career as a singer. In the 1930s, she worked at several local radio stations in Memphis, Louisville, Dallas, and Chicago. During this time, she also adopted her stage name. In 1940, she first applied to Hollywood, which led to contracts with studios 20th Century Fox (1941) and Republic (1943), where she had her first roles in hillbilly films such as Swing Your Partner. Finally, in 1943, she starred alongside John Wayne for the first time in a western, War of the Wildcats.

The big turning point of her life came in 1944 when she landed a role alongside Roy Rogers in the musical western The Cowboy and the Senorita. Audiences loved the pairing and 28 more films and numerous TV shows were to follow. Evans, who had not yet given up her dream of a solo career as a pop singer, initially had doubts about whether she could permanently accept her role as a co-star and toyed with the idea of leaving the studio in 1945. In the same year, the comedic musical drama Hitchhike to Happiness, produced by Republic Pictures with her and Al Pearce, was released.

A close relationship also developed privately between colleagues Roy Rogers and Evans. After the death of Rogers' first wife Arline in 1946 Evans was the support at his side, on New Year's Eve 1947 they finally married on the set of their film Home in Oklahoma. For Evans, it was her fourth marriage. She had previously been married to composer R. Dale Butts, among others. From then on, Rogers and Evans were the dream couple of the western scene, both on screen and television and in their numerous public appearances. She wrote the song Happy Trails, which was to become Rogers' trademark. She also composed other well-known songs such as Hazy Mountains and My Heart Went That-A-Way.

Their marriage produced a daughter, Robin Elizabeth, who was born with Down's syndrome and died shortly before her second birthday. The deeply religious Evans came to terms with this stroke of fate in the book Angel Unaware, and she also wrote other religious books and songs, such as The Bible Tells Me So. Besides Roger's three children from her first marriage - Cheryl Darlene, Linda Lou and Roy Jr. ("Dusty") - the couple adopted four more children: Mary ("Dodie"), John David ("Sandy"), Marion ("Mimi") and Deborah Lee. The marriage lasted 51 years until Rogers' death in 1998.

Next to Patsy Montana, Dale Evans has most fundamentally shaped the image of the singing cowgirl, although unlike colleagues such as Dorothy Page or Jane Frazee, she never played the lead role in a Western. Thus the country band Dixie Chicks, who had cultivated a cowgirl image before their big break in 1998, named their first album Thank Heavens for Dale Evans (1991) after her.

For her services Dale Evans was awarded several times, including a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. She died of heart failure on February 7, 2001, at the age of 89.

Evidence

1. ↑ Green, Douglas, Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8265-1412-X, p. 193.