“Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.”

Cherokee-American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorist

Will Rogers was a Cherokee-American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorist. Born in the Cherokee Nation in what was then the Indian Territory, he became known as “Oklahoma’s Favorite Son” and was a major American entertainer in the early twentieth century. He traveled around the world three times, made 71 films, and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, he was widely admired in the United States for his political wit and counted among Hollywood’s better-paid film stars. He died in 1935 when a small airplane carrying him and aviator Wiley Post crashed on takeoff near Barrow, Alaska.