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America's
boyfriend took Wings
By Ronald Bergan
Friday April 23, 1999
The exceptionally long screen kiss in My
Best Girl (1927) between the young hero
and heroine could be attributed to the fact
that they were falling for each other in fact
as well as fiction. She was Mary Pickford,
America's sweetheart and one of the
highest paid movie stars in the world; he
was the boyish, 22-year-old Charles
'Buddy' Rogers, making only his third film.
Rogers, who has died aged 94, had a
crush on Mary, and she was flattered by
the attentions of a man 11 years her
junior. The problem was that Pickford was
already married to Douglas Fairbanks.
The pathologically jealous Fairbanks
turned up on the set of My Best Girl one
day, but left abruptly, later admitting that,
'It's more than jealousy. I suddenly felt
afraid.' In this case his fears were justified,
although it was 10 years before Mary and
Buddy were to marry. 'Buddy was as
straight and as square as they come,'
said a classmate of his at the University of
Kansas. 'Falling in love with a married
woman was the only unlikely thing he ever
did.'
Rogers, the son of a Kansas judge and a
Sunday-school teacher, wanted to be a
musician and had a five-piece jazz band at
college. He was picked to enter
Paramount's School for Stars after a friend
sent his picture to the studio. Of his
screen debut, in Fascinating Youth
(1926), one critic wrote: 'He is young and
appealingly handsome, has crisp black
curly hair, brown eyes, and a soft, kind
expression.'
Rogers soon became known as 'America's
boyfriend', representing youthful high
spirits in a string of movies set on fictional
college campuses, where he pursued - or
was pursued by - student flappers. He and
Nancy Carroll co-starred in five features,
the first being Abie's Irish Rose (1928),
adapted from the long-running ethnic
stage comedy. The popular duo moved
effortlessly into talkies, as both Carroll
and Rogers had pleasing singing voices.
For their last pairing they appeared, as a
golf pro's daughter and her golf instructor,
in Follow Thru (1930), a musical in
two-tone technicolor.
Rogers's most prestigious film, his
favourite, and the best he made, was
William Wellman's first world war drama,
Wings (1927), the first movie ever to win
an Oscar as best picture. All the
spectacular aerial sequences were shot
without faking. This was done by mounting
cameras on the front of the planes, the
actors going aloft with a pilot who would
duck down as the stars struck the right
heroic attitudes. The tale told of the rivalry
between two airmen pals - naive Rogers
and rugged Richard Arlen - for the
affections of Clara Bow. For the scene
when the boys are on leave in a Paris
cafe, Wellman got Rogers drunk before
calling, 'Action'.
He played an aviator again for Wellman in
Young Eagles (I930), in which he falls for
a spy played by Jean Arthur. However,
most of Rogers's films of the 1930s were
musicals. In Safety In Numbers, he
crooned no less than six songs, including
the delightful ballad My Future Just
Passed.
Previously, Rogers had been one of the
young bachelors summoned to Pickfair,
the famous Hollywood home of Doug and
Mary, as extra men. Invitations ceased
around 1931 when it became public
knowledge that he was in love with his
hostess.
When the Fairbanks' divorce was final in
January 1936, and Douglas married Lady
Sylvia Ashley a few months later, Mary
and Buddy began to see more of each
other. 'The attentions of such an attractive
young man were naturally a wonderful help
during those years of loneliness that
followed the final break with Douglas,'
Pickford confided to a friend. 'He gave me
back my desire to live.' Some of their
circle remarked on the uncanny
resemblance between Rogers and
Charlotte Pickford, Mary's beloved mother.
Mary and Buddy were married in June
1937 and settled at Pickfair. While Mary,
having retired from acting, was active as
vice-president of United Artists (the studio
she helped found) and busy running the
Mary Pickford Cosmetics Company, he
toured with his own dance band, the
California Cavaliers, which included singer
Mary Martin and drummer Gene Krupa.
His wife went with him when he played
engagements in major cities, and it was in
Chicago in 1939 that Mary heard the news
of Fairbanks's death at the age of 56. 'My
darling has gone,' she told Buddy, who
discreetly left her alone to weep.
In 1941 Rogers returned to films, mainly
playing the long-suffering husband of
tempestuous Lupe Velez in three of the
Mexican Spitfire series, before joining the
naval air corps as a lieutenant in the
second world war.
Over the years, the relaxed and genial
Rogers was a loving father to their two
adopted children, Roxanne and Ronald,
and tolerant husband to Pickford, who was
increasingly hitting the bottle. In 1981, two
years after Mary's death, Rogers married
real-estate agent Beverly Ricondo (who
survives him), and settled in Palm
Springs. As head of the Mary Pickford
Foundation, a charitable organisation, he
became a leading philanthropist. He got
Mary Pickford's films preserved in the
Library of Congress, and did everything he
could to keep her memory alive
Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, screen actor,
born August 13, 1904; died April 21, 1999
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