This article has appeared previously in Equestrian Life magazine. To see what’s in the latest digital issue, please click here.
Roy Rogers and Trigger in action on screen
From Roy Rogers to Saddle Clubbing, the horses starred
By Suzy Jarratt
A whole generation grew up watching The Saddle Club, and pony clubs were swamped as a result. But long before that phenomenon, a whole different generation grew up watching Roy Rogers and Trigger… and yodelling was briefly in fashion!
Leonard Slye was never going to have his name up in lights. No self-respecting moviegoer would rush to the box office to watch someone who sounded like a dodgy accountant or a taxidermist. Although they might have unknowingly seen him yodelling in a second-rate western.
Sometime in the late thirties, Republic Pictures held a “singing cowboy” competition. Leonard Slye entered and won… but the production company immediately changed his name. He became Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys who rode a palomino named Trigger – the Smartest Horse in the Movies.
The rest is history.
Read the full article in the November 2020 issue of Equestrian Life magazine here.
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