Charles "Buddy" Rogers was born in Olathe, Johnson County, Kansas, where his father served as a judge and the editor for the Olathe Mirror newspaper. After graduating high school, Rogers attended the University of Kansas, where he studied music and led a dance band.

Rogers was discovered by a Paramount Studios talent scout just before graduating KU in 1925, and he attended the studio's acting school. He thereafter began his film career and was immediately in two big hits at the time, Fascinating Youth (1926) and Wings (1927), a World War I film co-starring Clara Bow and Richard Arlen. Wings won the first Academy Award for Best Picture in 1929 and is the only fully silent film to win that award.

Rogers continued appearing in movies, including My Best Girl (1927), Varsity (1928), Young Eagles (1930), and Old Man Rhythm (1935). He also returned to serving as a band leader.

Rogers worked with Mary Pickford (1892-1979) on My Best Girl in 1927. Pickford, who had been born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Canada, began acting as a child. By 1916 she had her own studio production company, and she was known as "America's Sweetheart." Rogers became known as "America's Boyfriend."

Married twice previously, first to Owen Moore from 1911-1919 and then to Douglas Fairbanks from 1920-1936, Pickford married Buddy Rogers in 1937. The couple remained married for the rest of Pickford's life and resided at Pickfair, the elaborate estate Fairbanks and Pickford had built during their marriage. Buddy Rogers and Mary Pickford adopted two children, Ronald "Ronnie" Charles Rogers (1936-2010) and Roxanne Pickford (Rogers) Monroe (1942-2001).

During World War II, Rogers served as a flight instructor in the Navy Air Corps. After the war he helped with Navy recruitment and continued in acting, conducting, and producing films.

Rogers won numerous awards for his humanitarian and charitable efforts, which included serving on the boards of the Boy Scouts of America, National Organization of Christians and Jews, Motion Picture and TV Fund, Motion Picture Home, and other nonprofit organizations. The Mary Pickford Foundation endowed a Charles "Buddy" Rogers Scholarship at the University of Kansas in 1987 for needy, worthy students interested in careers in theatre and/or film.

Rogers was named the Native Sons and Daughters' Kansan of the Year in 1969, and in 1986 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him the Jean Hersholdt Humanitarian Award. He also received the first 3M Lycra Bob Hope Humanitarian Award and a "Man of the Year" award from St. Jude's Hospital, presented by Danny Thomas. In 1960, Rogers and Pickford both received stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

After Pickford died in 1979, Rogers remarried to Beverly Ricono, a real estate agent, in 1981. They lived in a new house that Rogers had built on the edge of the Pickfair estate with the help of Ricono's brother, a builder, called Pickfair Lodge. They continued Rogers' charitable efforts, which also included participating in several celebrity golf tournaments and serving as chairman of the board of the Mary Pickford Foundation. In the late 1990s, they decided to sell Pickfair and its contents. Charles "Buddy" Rogers died in 1999, and his widow Beverly Rogers died in 2007.