A Man Who Could Detect the Sham
Will Rogers
By Will Rogers
Will Rogers (1879–1935) was the most celebrated humorist of his era, a star of stage and screen as well as a popular columnist and author.
Rogers contributed the following piece to “The Real Calvin Coolidge,” a series of firsthand accounts of the president that Good Housekeeping magazine published after Coolidge’s death. The Coolidge Foundation republished these accounts as a series of booklets beginning in the 1980s.
Mr. Coolidge had more subtle humor than almost any public man I ever met. I have often said I would like to have hidden in his desk somewhere and just heard the little sly “digs” that he pulled on various people that never even got ’em at all.
I bet he wasted more humor on folks than almost anybody. You see most fellows notify you that they are about to pull one, or it’s done with a story—“Did I ever tell you the one about the farmer at the election?” Mr. Coolidge never did that, his were pulled with not even a change of inflection, you got it, or you dident, and it dident make any difference to him.
He never did it publicly, because he told me one time that it was fatal to show humor in public office, it reacted against you. How he was able to withhold it publicly is more than I know, for he was a man that very quickly could detect the sham and insincerity and “hooey,” but he just had to sit there and keep a straight face and think it to himself.
One of the best and “fastest” ones he pulled on me (and he pulled many). I was to lecture in Washington on one of my periodical tours (before reforming). I dropped in and wanted him to come to my little show that night, I explained to him that there was nothing to it, only me talking for two or three hours, but that I had a very fine quartet that sang. Quick as a flash, without a trace of a smile, he says,
“Yes, I like singing.”
Now it would have been a shame if I had muffed that one. Now just imagine how many he must have pulled on old boring politicians that went right over their heads, for they are so used to having somebody give ’em warning when one is coming. He had that real old New England humor, the “no effort” and “no demonstration” kind.
He was a great fellow. I thought much of Mr. Coolidge, told a thousand little jokes and anecdotes about him, but they were all ones that brought out some little humanness in his makeup. They were all jokes on qualities which the people admired in a man. I like all public men, but I especially liked Mr. Coolidge, and Mrs. Coolidge was just about my “Public Female Favorite No. 1.”
First Lady Grace Coolidge added her own responses to entries in “The Real Calvin Coolidge.” Here is what she wrote about Will Rogers:
In the spring of 1927 Mr. Rogers toured in Europe and wrote for one of our weekly publications a series of articles under the general title “Letters from a Self-Appointed Ambassador to His President.”
It was President Coolidge’s custom to invite returning Ambassadors to make him a visit at the White House. When he learned that Mr. Rogers had sailed for home, he instructed his secretary to send an invitation to him to be a White House guest. Upon receipt of it Mr. Rogers sent a wire to the secretary worded in somewhat this fashion:
“Have received an invitation purporting to come from the President. Am taking train for Washington stopping off in Philadelphia. If I am asleep and dreaming, wake me there.”
In reply he received a message confirming the invitation, and he arrived that evening after we had gone in to dinner. His arrival having been announced, he was bidden to join us, and he entered the dining room with a twinkle in his eye, looking like a small boy who has just swallowed a forbidden piece of candy.
As we were rising from the table he turned to me, and in an aside which all might hear he said, “I wish you would tell me if the President is going to run again.”
In the same confidential tone I replied, “You find out if you can, and let me know.”
To read more remembrances of Coolidge, see The Real Calvin Coolidge.