Friday, October 31, 2008

Birthday Girl: The Happy Trails Lady

Now here's an unlikely Hallowe'en baby: that sunniest of all cowgirls (and here at the Café, we know from sunny cowgirls), the bride of Roy Rogers for more than half a century, Miss Dale Evans. It's an uncharacteristic pose, too - she was always far more girl next door than saloon strumpet.

On the other hand, by the time the onetime Frances Octavia Smith hit Hollywood, she was no shrinking violet. On their wedding day, Roy said "I do" for the third time, and Dale for the fourth, with a son (billed by her studio as her brother) to show for at least one of those marriages.

But the decades rolled by, and she ended her long life a pillar of respectability, with only the saucy gleam in her eye hinting at times gone by.

Here she's seen late in life with a loved friend. Now I know the way your dirty minds work, so please - no pussy jokes, you hear?

Special Birthday Bonus!

There must be something in the air on October 31 that just promotes a special kind of sauciness...

Sharing the date is Café favorite Cleo Moore. Had fate been kinder, she'd be celebrating her 80th birthday today, and I bet she'd have been fabulous.

3 comments:

  1. I'm really ashamed that I missed Cleo Moore's birthday! We love her!

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  2. My mother once had the privilege of picking Miss Evans up from the airport and escorting her about town for the day and accompanying her to her ladies group luncheon. She said that she was extremely polite and the soul of discretion. No gossip passed her lips. I couldn’t help but think of the play “Greater Tuna” and the line about a turquoise Dale Evans swimsuit with lots of cow gal fringe…such is the case of brushes with brushes with celebrity.

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  3. Your lucky mother! The closest thing to glamour that my own mother's women's club ever got was Erma Bombeck - fun, but hardly the same as Dale Evans.

    There is something kind of Tuna about admiring her, but even though she was a fundamentalist dinosaur, I kind of do...

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