"He Wasn't an Actor": John Wayne Wasn't Kind to This Actor Who Was Also One of His Western Rivals

John Wayne considered one of his fellow western stars to be a phony cowboy and had little respect for him.

John Wayne did not hold a fond view of a western star with whom he had filmed a feature: Roy Rogers. The remarks he made to Robert Osborne in a Disney magazine in the late 1970s, as found by Far Out:

"He Was Barely a Singer!"

Cinema Center Films

"Honestly, the problem with this industry is that far too many people pretend to be something they are not. Take Roy Rogers. He wasn't a cowboy; he was a damn country singer from Ohio! And Rogers wasn't an actor; he was barely a singer! And everyone applauded him!"

It is important to contextualize who Roy Rogers was in the United States. After becoming a music star through radio appearances across the country, the singer transitioned to acting starting in 1935 (in several uncredited roles), and three years later, Republic Pictures cast him as the star of Twilight (1938) directed by Joseph Kane, in which his character fights against the destruction of a dam that deprives an entire state of water.

This marked the beginning of a successful career for Rogers, whose face became emblematic of the positive, heroic, and singing American. He was even awarded the title of "greatest western star" for ten consecutive years, from 1943 to 1952. During part of this period, John Wayne's career struggled until several major films helped him: Red River and Fort Apache (1948), which also established him as a western star and allowed him to access films with larger budgets.

With only a four-year age difference, Rogers and Wayne were thus "competing" for the title of king of movie cowboys, perhaps explaining Duke's ad hominem attack on his colleague.

They Had Filmed Together

Warner Bros.

John Wayne had actually worked with Rogers in the lesser-known western The Dark Squadron, directed by Raoul Walsh in 1940. Wayne co-starred with his colleague from Stagecoach and The First Rebel, Claire Trevor, with whom he would later film Written in the Sky (1954).

It is worth noting, for the sake of honesty, that Wayne criticized Rogers for being merely a stage cowboy, while he himself had never truly lived the ranch life, driven cattle, or participated in any rodeo. And while Wayne has been quite transparent about his inability to play singing cowboys, he has always been less vocal about his legitimacy to portray a man of the West on screen.

On the other hand, one can acknowledge that Wayne learned his craft from the ground up, starting as a prop man or set assistant, slowly climbing the ranks over nearly two decades to reach the top of the bill, whereas Rogers was propelled to stardom through a well-executed marketing strategy by Republic Studios.

Rogers played singing cowboys for years, even becoming the hero of his own western series, The Roy Rogers Show, from 1951 to 1957, after which he stepped away from the sets. He passed away in 1998 at the age of 86.