The full tale of how Roy Rogers, the Singing Cowboy, adopted a little Scots girl and changed her life forever, is finally being told. Sandra Dick explains

The horse’s hooves clip-clopped across the plush hotel carpet, its soft white tail swishing as it delicately negotiated each step of the marble staircase.

Holding the horse’s reins, dressed head to toe in his brilliant white cowboy suit and megawatt Hollywood smile, his devoted “Queen of the Cowgirls” by his side, was the star of countless Saturday matinee films.

Roy Rogers, his actress wife Dale Evans and the rather odd sight of his famous Palomino stallion Trigger climbing the stairs of the Caledonian Hotel in the heart of Edinburgh was for many the highlight of the trio’s early 1950s visit to the city.

But as a new radio programme is set to reveal, the real showstopping moment would come across town in a church-run children’s home, and the sweet song of a little girl.

There, the superstar couple became so entranced, that within months they had whisked the child from Edinburgh to spend Christmas with them and begin a new life on their Californian ranch.

The remarkable story of how the Hollywood superstar and his beautiful wife adopted a 13-year-old girl from an Edinburgh children’s home is set to be told in a Christmas Day radio programme which follows her emotional return to the city with her own grown-up children.

Roy Rogers Kid reveals how a sequence of quite unforeseen events led to Marion Fleming capturing the hearts of the famous couple – international idols for children at the time – setting her on course for a completely different destiny.

The story has been unravelled for BBC Radio Scotland by journalist and presenter Stephen Jardine. He tracked down Marion – now known as Mimi Swift – and accompanied her as she revisited the modest children’s home where her new life began.

He said: “I’ve known about Mimi’s story for a long time but never thought I’d be able to track her down.

“When I did, I discovered she was planning a trip to Scotland to where the whole story started.

“That piece of luck helped make possible a documentary about the most incredible lucky moment that transformed a life.

“It’s been a challenging year, so I can’t think of a better way to end it than with a real-life fairy story built around human goodness.”

Mimi’s story could easily have been scripted for one of The Singing Cowboy’s own films, and even has echoes of a real Hollywood movie – Annie, the story of a fiery orphan girl whose life is turned around after being adopted by a billionaire businessman.

It could even stand as a forerunner to Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who adopted a multi-cultural family of children.

“Nowadays it would be more complicated,” adds Jardine. “But in 1954, after a few months and some legal wrangling, Marion spent her first Christmas on their ranch in California as their daughter.”

The couple’s sprawling 168-acre property in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles was a world away from her very humble beginnings, born in an air raid shelter in Edinburgh’s Craigmillar in 1940 to a couple who would soon feel the strain of the Second World War.

Their separation saw her father granted legal custody of two-year-old Marion, her sister and her two brothers. However, his active service took him to the frontline, leaving the children separated and in the care of a series of children’s homes.

The little family of siblings eventually came together at Edinburgh’s Church of Scotland-run Dunforth Children’s Home, a large Victorian mansion overlooking the bustle of Newhaven harbour.

It was far from the harsh style of some children’s homes of the time. Instead, speaking with a light Scottish lilt despite spending years away, Mimi tells of happy Christmas parties and days out; sneaking out between lessons to play among the crates of fish in Newhaven harbour and looking after the small boys’ room in the home by dusting and sweeping it each morning before heading to nearby Victoria Primary School.

However, her life changed dramatically when the so-called King of the Cowboys and Queen of the West brought their Wild West show to Edinburgh in 1954.

Tickets for their show had sold out months earlier. However, the couple – whose lives were touched by tragedy after mumps led to the death of their young daughter, Robin – were known to visit local children’s homes and hospital wards in towns where they were performing.

According to the programme, a well-known Edinburgh policeman, William Merrilees, arranged for the couple to visit Dunforth home, and asked the young Marion to sing her favourite song.

Captivated by the littler girl’s lively personality, the Rogers invited her to their sell-out show and to lunch at the city’s upmarket Caledonia Hotel.

Within a fortnight Marion, dressed in a kilt, was on board a plane, destined for California.

At first, she struggled to understand why the couple wanted her to join them in America. “Everyone was gobsmacked,” she says. “Part of me thought it was not going to happen. I was not a cute little five or six-year-old, I was 13. Then I thought ‘maybe it’s true’. And then they sent the tickets.”

Mimi packed her bags for the trip, unaware that she would be leaving Edinburgh and her siblings behind for good. “I didn’t know I’d never come back,” she adds.

Although she kept in touch with her natural family, she only returned years later after she was married and with a daughter of her own.

The Rogers had initially faced a legal struggle to adopt the little girl but battled on until they were finally confirmed as her new parents.

Mimi, now 79, was one of several children the couple fostered and adopted. She went on to marry a Native American, while her famous parents drifted into retirement.

One of the most popular movie and Western stars of his era, Roy Rogers died in 1998, followed three years later by his wife, Dale.

Their decision to pluck the young Scots girl from Edinburgh for California altered her life forever, but Mimi says she had no regrets about her new “home on the range”.

“It sounds like very cold-hearted, but I didn’t want to come home,” she says of Edinburgh. “I felt like I was home.”

Roy Rogers Kid is on BBC Radio Scotland, Christmas Day, 1pm