Dale Evans

Crowned "Queen of the Cowgirls," Dale Evans emerged as the dominant female figure in twentieth-century cowboy lore. Born Frances Octavia Smith on October 31, 1912, in Uvalde, Texas, she ran away at fourteen with her high-school sweetheart. Within a year she arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, already a widow raising a child while trying to launch a singing career.

A program director at radio station WHAS, where she worked as a staff vocalist, suggested she adopt the first name Dale. Joe Eaton supplied the surname Evans, judging it euphonious enough to suit an announcer’s tongue. Performing under that name, she moved to Chicago, sang with several big bands, and later joined the staff of WBBM, the local CBS outlet. Paramount talent scouts noticed her, arranged a screen test for the Fred Astaire–Bing Crosby musical Holiday Inn, and although she was not cast, the footage reached 20th Century Fox, which signed her to a one-year contract.

Herbert Yates, president of Republic Studios, sought to enlarge the female roles in westerns after seeing the stage success of Oklahoma and chose Roy Rogers as the beneficiary of that approach. Believing that a Texan like Evans could handle rope and saddle, he cast her opposite Rogers in The Cowboy and the Señorita—the first of twenty-eight pictures they would make together. Their professional partnership soon became a personal one; they married in 1947.

In 1950 Evans composed the decade’s signature western anthem, “Happy Trails to You,” scribbling the words on an envelope while preparing a radio broadcast and teaching the number to Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers only forty minutes before airtime. The song later closed each episode of their half-hour television series, The Roy Rogers Show, which continued until 1957.

She stayed productive for the remainder of her life, contributing to more than four hundred songs, among them the western standard “Hazy Mountains” and the gospel favorite “The Bible Tells Me So.” She also wrote several books, helped establish the Happy Trails Children’s Foundation for severely abused and neglected youngsters, earned induction into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and collected three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Roy Rogers died of congestive heart failure in 1998 at eighty-six; after her own health declined, Dale Evans followed three years later. She is remembered as a quick-witted, spirited cowgirl, a prolific songwriter, and a compassionate humanitarian whose down-to-earth faith and lively sparkle marked every step of her long trail.