Mr. Rogers, 86, who died Monday in his sleep at his Apple Valley, Calif., home was the No. 1 Western star at the box office for 12 years (1943-54).
"I feel like I was a kind of a baby sitter for mothers in those days," Mr. Rogers said in a 1992 interview.
"They could drop their kids off and then come back and pick them up about 5 in the evening, and they'd be happy and full of candy and popcorn."
Roy Rogers galloped into millions of young American hearts with 200 films, and on radio, television and in the newspaper comics. Trigger, his famous palomino, usually got second billing, even after he married Dale Evans in 1947.
He always got his man -- but only after a fair fight.
Mr. Rogers first earned national attention in the 1930s singing "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water" with the Sons of the Pioneers.
He took the name "Roy Rogers" in honor of the late humorist Will Rogers, whose final public appearance before his 1935 death was at a Sons of the Pioneers concert in San Bernardino, Calif.
His fan club once boasted 1.75 million registered members in the United States alone. Mr. Rogers' fan mail peaked at 75,000 letters a month in 1945, two years before the widower married Ms. Evans, his co-star and co-writer of their 1951 TV theme song, "Happy Trails to You."
"We made our pictures for the family," he explained in 1992, while wearing his trademark white Stetson. "We tried to be honest with kids about right from wrong. We tried to put something in every picture that showed and proved to them that right always won out over wrong."
ROY ROGERS
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 Born: Leonard Franklin Slye on Nov. 5, 1911, to Andrew and Mattie Slye, 412 Second St., Cincinnati.
Childhood: By age 7, moved with his family to Duck Run in Scioto County, about 12 miles west of Portsmouth. They lived on a boat before buying a farmhouse.
Teen years: At 15, he returned to Cincinnati with his father to work at U.S. Shoe on Spring Grove Avenue. Lived at 1913 Ohio Ave., in Over-the-Rhine. At 18, in 1930, he went to California with his dad to visit his sister, Mary. He moved there permanently a year later.
Family: Married Arlene Wilkins in 1936, who died in 1946. They had three children: Cheryl, Linda and Roy Jr. ("Dusty"). Married co-star Dale Evans in 1947. They had a daughter, Robin, and adopted children, John David "Sandy" of Covington and Mary Little Doe, of Dallas, Texas.
Music: Started singing at a Log Angeles-area radio station in the early 1930s. Joined the Rocky Mountaineers, which led to the formation of the Sons of the Pioneers.
Movies: Signed with Republic Pictures for $75 a week in 1937, and eventually appeared in 200 films.
TV: Starred in prime-time shows on NBC (1951-57) and ABC (1962), and on a Saturday morning CBS series (1961-64).
Businesses: Formed his own TV production company in 1952; opened Roy Rogers restaurants with the Marriott Corp. (sold to Hardee's in 1990). His Roy Rogers Enterprises licensed toys, clothing, jewelry other merchandise and a comic strip. -- John Kiesewetter
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Life wasn't always a happy trail for Mr. Rogers. He was born at 412 Second St., near Cincinnati's Public Landing, where the Crown (formerly Riverfront Coliseum) stands today.
By age 7, he had moved with his family a small Scioto County farm near Duck Run, about 12 miles from Portsmouth, Ohio.
"They almost had to pipe sunlight to us, we were so far back in the woods," he said.
By age 10, the future King of the Cowboys learned to call square dances in the Ohio Valley. Five years later, "rough (economic) times" forced him to move back to Cincinnati with his father, Andrew Slye, to work at the U.S. Shoe plant on Spring Grove Avenue and live at 1913 Ohio Ave., near the University of Cincinnati. He attended night school (dropping out his junior year) and bought his first guitar in a Vine Street pawn shop.
"We were there a couple of years when my dad woke up one morning (in 1930) and said, "Let's go to California and see Mary (Roy's sister).' And so we did," he said.
They drove a 1923 Dodge sedan and slept on the ground wherever they stopped. The old Dodge, and the taxidermic remains of Trigger, are on display at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, Calif., opened in 1967 near the couple's home, about two hours northeast of Los Angeles.
Times were just as tough in California for the Slye family, so young Mr. Rogers started singing at a Los Angeles-area radio station in the early '30s. A band called the Rocky Mountaineers heard him, which led to the formation of the Sons of the Pioneers.
"I didn't know what I was getting into, but I was thrilled to death to do it," he said in 1992 while promoting Roy Rogers: King of the Cowboys, an American Movie Classics documentary.
The Sons of the Pioneers -- the vocal trio consisting of Mr. Rogers, Tim Spencer and Bob Nolan -- pioneered sophisticated jazz-influenced vocal harmonies in cowboy music, complete with intricate three-part yodels and the hot fiddle and guitar solos of brothers Karl and Hugh Farr. They created such enduring classics as "Way Out There," "Cool Water," "I'm an Old Cowhand" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds." "I can't read music, so I have to memorize the songs, especially if they give me some new songs," Roy admitted in 1992. (He re-recorded his greatest hits with Clint Black, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Lorrie Morgan and other country stars for a 1991 album, Roy Rogers: Tribute.)
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
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Movies
Tumbling Tumbleweeds, 1935
The Big Show, 1936
Rhythm on the Range, 1936
Under Western Stars, 1938
Billy the Kid Returns, 1938
The Arizona Kid, 1939
Days of Jesse James, 1939
Dark Command, 1940
The Border Legion, 1940
Robin Hood of the Pecos, 1941
Red River Valley, 1941
Sons of the Pioneers, 1942
Romance on the Range, 1942
King of the Cowboys, 1943
Song of Texas, 1943
The Cowboy and the Senorita, 1944
The Yellow Rose of Texas, 1944
Lake Placid Serenade, 1944
Utah, 1945
Don't Fence Me In, 1945
My Pal Trigger, 1946
Song of Arizona, 1946
Helldorado 1946
Apache Rose, 1947
Springtime in the Sierras, 1947
Eyes of Texas, 1948
Melody Time, 1948
Grand Canyon Trail, 1949
North of the Great Divide, 1950
Heart of the Rockies, 1951
Son of Paleface, 1952
Alias Jesse James (cameo), 1959
Mackintosh and T.J., 1975 Television
The Roy Rogers Show, 1951-57
The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, 1962-63
Recordings
"Tumbling Tumbleweeds," 1934 (Sons of the Pioneers)
"Cool Water," 1936 (Sons of the Pioneers)
"A Little White Cross on the Hill," 1947
"My Chickashay Gal," 1947
"(There'll Never Be Another) Pecos Bill," 1948
"Blue Shadows on the Trail," 1948
"Stampede," 1950
"Money Can't Buy Love," 1970
"Lovenworth," 1971
"Happy Anniversary," 1971
"These Are the Good Old Days," 1972
"Hoppy, Gene and Me," 1974
"Ride, Concrete Cowboy, Ride" 1980 (with Sons of the Pioneers) "Hold on Partner," 1991 (with Clint Black)
(Sons of the Pioneers elected to Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980; Rogers also elected as an individual in 1988) Businesses
Roy Rogers restaurants, developed with the Marriott Corp. Sold to Hardee's in 1990.
Television production company.
- The Associated Press
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"He and Gene Autry were the cowboy sound. They were on the side of angels, Americanism, good wins over evil," said Ronnie Pugh, a historian with the Country Music Foundation, which runs the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville.
Mr. Rogers is the only performer inducted twice into that Hall of Fame, once as part of the Sons of the Pioneers in 1980 and then as a solo artist in 1988.
Mr. Rogers' solo recordings downplayed the harmonies but continued that swing-influenced style on such definitive recordings as "Home on the Range" and "Blue Shadows on the Trail."
Today, that sound is enjoying renewed popularity through the work of young Western revivalist groups such as Riders in the Sky, Sons of the San Joaquin and Ranch Romance. One of the Sons of the Pioneers films, Rhythm on the Range, inspired the name of the 1980s Cincinnati band, the Rhythm Rangers. subhead:Making a friend body:
By 1937, Republic Pictures had signed him to a movie contract for $75 a week and ordered him to pick out a horse.
"I think Trigger was the third one I got on, and I never looked at the rest," he recalled. "He was 4 years old when I made my first picture, and I was 26. And he was 33 when he passed away.
"I think he was the greatest horse that ever came along. You could teach him anything," he said. "He was a terrific horse to ride, and he could out-run anything on the set."
Mr. Rogers also learned he could out-maneuver Republic's paltry paycheck by making personal appearances. He toured the nation by station wagon, earning $150 a night.
"That was big money in those days. If it hadn't been for that, I don't know how I would have raised my kids," said the cowboy, who had six children, three from each marriage. Three of his children are deceased.
Daughter Robin died of complications from the mumps shortly before her second birthday in 1952. Dale wrote a book, Angel Unaware, about Robin.
Korean-born Debbie, one of the couple's adopted children, was killed with seven others in a 1964 church bus crash. The following year, their adopted son John David "Sandy" from Covington choked to death while serving in the Army in Germany. subhed:A break with studio body:
After 14 years with Republic Pictures, the singing cowboy split with the studio in 1951 when it refused to grant him TV rights. His Roy Rogers Enterprises licensed toy guns, clothing, games, songbooks, charm bracelets and comic books. (A Roy Rogers comic strip appeared in 186 newspapers in 1953.)
Roy Rogers' Western Corrals were located in Sears stores for more than 20 years.
"I had a good organization. I had about 400 articles on the market . . . so we just started our own production company and got some of the same writers that wrote some of my old pictures," he said.
Instead of a horse, bumbling TV sidekick Pat Brady drove a Jeep named "Nellie Belle" on NBC's Roy Rogers Show (1951-57).
"Nellie Belle is my Jeep, and I used to ride it to the studio," Mr. Rogers explained. "Every time I passed a bunch of school kids waiting for a bus, you could see them pointing and hollering because (the Jeeps) did a great job during World War II.
"So I thought, maybe I should put Pat on that," he said. "People seemed to like it, especially the kids."
Well into the 1970s, Mr. Rogers and his wife continued to appear at state fairs and rodeos. And well into the 1990s, he continued to be amazed at how far he had come from the Ohio Valley.
"In those days, in the Depression, I couldn't dream of anybody making $100 a week!" he said.
When the cowboy star chatted with TV critics six summers ago, he knew he was near the end of a long, dusty trail. Yet the deeply religious Mr. Rogers continued to see the trough half-full, not half-empty, in his sunset years.
"I have so many things to be thankful for," he said. "I've had a lot of things happen -- a couple of heart operations -- so I just get up and start smiling in the morning at the day ahead of me.
"I have probably grown up in the greatest era this country will ever know -- from the horse-and-buggy to man on the moon," he said. "Life is what you get out of it. You can help make misery, or you can help make happiness."
That's how you become an All-American hero.
Larry Nager and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
