Will Rogers wait to die so it can be carved. Rogers was born on his parents' Dog Iron Ranch in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma. The house in which he was born had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River". His parents, Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838–1890), were both of mixed-race and Cherokee ancestry, and identified as Cherokee. Rogers was 9/32 (just over 1/4) Cherokee, with the remainder European American. Rogers quipped that his ancestors did not come over on the "Mayflower", but they "met
Will Rogers audience, in stitches and proved his remarkable skill at off-the-cuff, witty commentary on current events. He built the rest of his career around that skill. A 1922 editorial in "The New York Times" said that "Will Rogers in the Follies is carrying on the tradition of Aristophanes, and not unworthily." Rogers branched into silent films too, for Samuel Goldwyn's company Goldwyn Pictures. He made his first silent movie, "Laughing Bill Hyde" (1918), which was filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Many early films were filmed and produced in the New York area in those years. Rogers could make a film,