Mobley is one of eight children of Arthur Lance Mobley and Charlene V. Mobley. Lance Mobley, as the father was known, was born in Centralia in southern Illinois, and a retired pipefitter at the time of his death in a hospital in Beaumont, Texas. He and Charlene married in 1939, when he was seventeen, and she was fifteen. The couple moved from Indiana in the early 1950s to Pecos in Reeves County in West Texas before they headed in 1957 to Whittier, near Los Angeles.
Charlene Mobley was born in ruralOil City, Louisiana. For many years she was a real estate agent in Beaumont and then Vidor, Texas. For most of her life, she was a lay preacher in various churches in the communities in which the Mobleys resided. The senior Mobleys are interred in Vidor at Restlawn Cemetery.
Acting
Mobley sang with his older brother and sister in The Little Mobley Trio in Texas where the family then lived. After moving to California when Mobley was six or seven, the trio appeared on the Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour with disappointing results. However, they were spotted by Lola Moore, then the preeminent agent for child actors, who expressed an interest in Roger and arranged his audition for the part of eight-year-old Homer "Packy" Lambert in the NBCSaturday morningwesterntelevision series, Fury, starring Peter Graves, Bobby Diamond, and William Fawcett. He appeared in thirty-eight episodes of the series. Many of Mobley's subsequent myriad television guest appearances were also in westerns, but he was capable of playing against type, such as his 1963 role of the troubled youngster Joby Paxton in the episode "Somehow It Gets to Be Tomorrow" of CBS's Route 66. In 1960, Mobley was cast as young Matt Denby, Jr., in the episode, "The Madstone" of the syndicatedanthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, young Denby is bitten by a rabid skunk and must get the madstone of his maternal grandfather, Caleb Reese (George Macready, which is then the only treatment for hydrophobia. Myron Healey played Denby's father, whose wife stays behind in Texas while he seeks to start a new ranch in the New Mexico Territory. Denby, Sr., is alienated from his father-in-law, but the two make amends as the episode ends. In 1964, after having been impressed with Mobley's performance as Gustav in Emil and the Detectives, Walt Disney signed him to the title role in the highly acclaimed and Emmy-nominated "Adventures of Gallegher" serials for the Wonderful World of Color. Gallegher is an amateur sleuth newspaper reporter, a character created by the author Richard Harding Davis. Contrary to popular rumor, it is Mobley's name that Walt Disney wrote on his very last memo. After 9 years and appearances in 118 television programs or feature films, Mobley's career was interrupted at the age of eighteen by military service. Mobley was quoted, accordingly: "Uncle Walt had plans for me, but so did Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam won."
In 1968, Mobley was drafted into the United States Army. After boot camp at Fort Ord, California. Mobley asked to have his term of service extended so that he could qualify for training in Special Forces. He completed parachute jump training at Fort Benning, Georgia, after having volunteered for the Special Forces training at the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On completion of his training, Mobley was assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company, 1st Special Forces Group. He returned to the United States in November 1970. Back in civilian life, Mobley discovered only $6,000 had been set aside for him from his extensive work as a child actor. He and his bride, Sharie, relocated to Beaumont, Texas, where he joined the police department. He was also a criminal investigator for the cities of Vidor and Jasper, Texas.
