Yesterday, I spoke with Cheryl Rogers-Barnett, daughter of Roy Rogers, about appearing alongside her dad in Trail Of Robin Hood (1950).
Son Of Paleface (1952) also came up, and she explained the culture shock of going from Republic to Paramount.
Cheryl Rogers-Barnett: “Poor Dad, when he worked on Son Of Paleface, that was just so totally different. He was used to being in every scene and the set-ups just going bang, bang, bang. Forty set-ups a day was nothing for Republic. Over at Paramount, if they did five in a day, they thought they were being overworked… I know working with Mr. Hope just drove him nuts, because at Republic, you did not get to rewrite your script. You knew your lines before you arrived in the morning. They hardly ever changed anything, because they didn’t have time to do much in the way of changes. Mr. Hope never gave the same line twice, so Dad was always waiting for his cue. It took him a couple of days to find a rhythm and be able to work with that. Ad-libbing wasn’t something Dad had done.”