Born on this day, October 31, in Texas in 1912, Frances Octavia Smith. By the 1920s, she was singing on the radio. During the next decade, she adopted a new name, Dale Evans, and performed with big bands and in nightclubs.

By the 1940s, Dale Evans had moved on to Hollywood where she became a well-known movie actor, reaching the height of her popularity when she co-starred in a string of western films with the singing cowboy, Roy Rogers.

During the 1950s, the couple (by then, married in real life) starred in a weekly 30-minute western television program, The Roy Rogers Show. Throughout the country, Dale Evans was known as the Queen of the West.

I’m marking Dale’s birthday (and Halloween) by wearing my favorite western boots.