The story
Will Rogers Days in Claremore
Will Rogers Days is Claremore, Oklahoma's annual birthday tribute to its most famous resident, the humorist and performer Will Rogers, held around his November 4 birthday since the Will Rogers Memorial opened in 1938. The week centers on the Will Rogers Motion Picture Festival, screening G- and PG-rated films at the Will Rogers Theatre, a downtown parade with themed floats, a memorial 5K, and a wreath-laying ceremony at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum.
Will Rogers, born in 1879 near Oologah in what was then Indian Territory, grew up on his father Clem Rogers's Dog Iron Ranch before becoming one of the most famous entertainers in the United States, first as a rope-trick performer in Wild West shows and vaudeville and later as a newspaper columnist, radio commentator, and film actor whose folksy commentary on politics and American life made him one of the best-known public figures of the 1920s and early 1930s.