Biography

Dale Evans

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Overview

Born
October 31, 1912 · Uvalde, Texas, USA
Died
February 7, 2001 · Apple Valley, California, USA (congestive heart failure)
Birth name
Frances Octavia Smith
Nicknames
- Queen of the West
- Queen of the Cowgirls
Height
5′ 4″ (1.63 m)

Mini bio

American leading lady of musical westerns of the 1940s. Born Frances Octavia Smith in Uvalde, Texas. She was raised in Texas and Arkansas. Married at 14 and a mother at 15, she was divorced at 17 (some sources say widowed). Intent on a singing career, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and worked in an insurance company while taking occasional radio singing jobs. After another unhappy marriage, she went to Louisville, Kentucky, and became a popular singer on a local radio station. There she took the stage name Dale Evans (from her third husband, Robert Dale Butts, and actress Madge Evans). Divorced in 1936, she moved to Dallas, Texas, and again found local success as a radio singer. She married Butts and they moved to Chicago, where she began to attract increasing attention from both radio audiences and film industry executives. She signed with Fox Pictures and made a few small film appearances, then was cast as leading lady to rising cowboy star Roy Rogers. She and Rogers clicked and she became his steady on-screen companion. In 1946, Rogers' wife died and Evans' marriage to Butts ended about the same time. Rogers and Evans had been close onscreen in a string of successful westerns, and now became close off-screen as well. A year later she married Rogers and the two become icons of American pop culture. Their marriage was dogged by tragedy, including the loss of three children before adulthood, but Evans was able not only to find inspiration in the midst of tragedy but to provide inspiration as well, authoring several books on her life and spiritual growth through difficulty. She and Rogers starred during the 1950s on the popular TV program bearing his name, and even after retirement continued to make occasional appearances and to run their Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, California. Following Dale's death, the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum moved to Branson, Missouri.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

Family

Spouses

Trademarks

Frequently played roles in Westerns.

Trivia

Her horse's name was Buttermilk. She wrote the song, "Happy Trails", which became her and Roy Rogers' theme song.
When she sent for a copy of her birth certificate in 1954, which she needed to get a passport, it read that her birth name was Lucille Wood Smith and that her birthday was Oct 30, 1912. However, her mother swears that they made a mistake and that her name was Frances Octavia Smith, with a birthdate of October 31, 1912.
Inducted (with her husband Roy Rogers) into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1976.
Daughter Robin Elizabeth Rogers was born in August of 1950. She died two days shy of her second birthday.

Son John David, nicknamed Sandy, died at the age of 18 while in the army and stationed in Germany.

Daughter Debbie, originally named In Ai Lee, who was of Korean and Puerto Rican ancestry, died in a bus crash at the age of 12.
Adopted her 5th child, a daughter Mary Little Doe "Dodie" Rogers (aka Little Doe Rogers) who was born in October 1952. Child's father is her now late 4th husband, Roy Rogers. Roy was of partially Native American heritage, so they chose Dodie in honor of this.