Will RogersFilmography

The Movies March On

Actors: Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, William S. Hart, Charles Chaplin, Ben Turpin

Synopsis: The Movies March On was Number 12, volume 9 of Louis de Rochemont's March of Time series. Narrated by the stentorian Westbrook Van Vorhees, this fascinating documentary manages to squeeze 40 years of filmmaking into a mere two reels. Beginning with the once scandalous The Kiss (1898), the film Read More

The County Chairman

Actors: Will Rogers, Evelyn Venable, Kent Taylor, Louise Dresser, Mickey Rooney

Synopsis: George Ade's turn-of-the-century stage success The County Chairman was retailored as a Will Rogers vehicle in 1935. Set in 1904, the film casts Rogers as Jim Hackler, political-party chairman of Tomahawk County, Wyoming. At rise, Hackler is running for county prosecutor against his old political Read More

Steamboat Round the Bend

Actors: Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, Eugene Pallette, John McGuire

Synopsis: Two of America's most distinguished humorists, Oklahoma's Will Rogers and Kentucky's Irvin S. Cobb, costar in Steamboat Round the Bend. Cobb isn't much of an actor, so it is Rogers who carries the comic weight of this fast-paced slice of Americana. Will uncharacteristically sticks to the script Read More

Life Begins at 40

Actors: Will Rogers, Rochelle Hudson, Richard Cromwell, George Barbier, Jane Darwell

Synopsis: A best-selling nonfictional book of the 1920s provided the title for this Will Rogers vehicle. Rogers plays a small town newspaper editor who prints all the news that fits his own homespun view of the world. Against the wishes of the town higher-ups, Rogers tries to clear the name of Richard Cromwell Read More

In Old Kentucky

Actors: Will Rogers, Dorothy Wilson, Russell Hardie, Charles Sellon, Louise Henry

Synopsis: Oklahoma's own Will Rogers stars in In Old Kentucky. The storyline is in the grand tradition of most films about the Bluegrass State: There's a long-standing family feud, a pair of star-crossed lovers, and a crucial horse race. Rogers cuts through the banality with his seemingly off-the-cuff Read More

Doubting Thomas

Actors: Will Rogers, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Sterling Holloway, Andrew Tombes

Synopsis: Doubting Thomas is the 1935 film version of George Kelly's satirical comedy The Torch Bearers, tailored for the talents of Will Rogers. Billie Burke, Will's wife, becomes so involved in a local amateur theatre group that she has no time for her husband. In retaliation, Will pretends to "go Read More

David Harum

Actors: Will Rogers, Louise Dresser, Evelyn Venable, Kent Taylor, Stepin Fetchit

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1915, David Harum is the story of an upstate New York rancher devoted to trotting races. Will Rogers makes no attempt to alter his Oklahoma accent as David Harum, but audiences in the 1930s came to see Rogers and not the character. After several examples of his horse-trading Read More

Handy Andy

Actors: Will Rogers, Peggy Wood, Conchita Montenegro, Mary Carlisle, Roger Imhof

Synopsis: In this domestic comedy, a small town druggist is married to a woman with social aspirations. To achieve her goal, she cons him into selling his store to a chain. She then puts on all sorts of phony airs and proceeds to make a pompous fool of herself. Meanwhile he amuses himself with hobbies. The Read More

Judge Priest

Actors: Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise, Henry B. Walthall, Rochelle Hudson, David Landau

Synopsis: Will Rogers stars as Judge William "Billy" Priest, the common-sense Kentucky jurist created by humorist Irvin S. Cobb. The Judge's easygoing manner bothers many of the self-righteous good citizens of his small 19th-century hometown, imperiling his chances for re-election. The anecdotal plot boils Read More

Doctor Bull

Actors: Will Rogers, Vera Allen, Marian Nixon, Howard Lally, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Will Rogers is Dr. Bull, a small-town physician with precious little book learning. This doesn't stop him from ministering to the citizens, often substituting advice and witticisms for pills and sutures. There are those who resist Dr. Bull's everyday doses of common sense and humanity, especially Read More

Mr. Skitch

Actors: Will Rogers, ZaSu Pitts, Rochelle Hudson, Florence Desmond, Harry Green

Synopsis: Mr. Skitch was filmed under such working titles as See America First and Green Dice, which was also the name of the Anne Cameron short story on which it was based. Will Rogers plays Mr. Skitch, who after losing all his money in the stock market, packs his wife (ZaSu Pitts) and daughter Emily (Rochelle Hudson Read More

State Fair

Actors: Will Rogers, Janet Gaynor, Lew Ayres, Sally Eilers, Norman Foster

Synopsis: The 1933 State Fair was the first of three film versions of the Phillip Stong bestseller. Some consider it the best of the three because of its stricter adherence to the source material and the presence of star Will Rogers. Rogers plays Abel Frake, patriarch of a family whose individual members Read More

Too Busy to Work

Actors: Will Rogers, Marian Nixon, Dick Powell, Frederick Burton, Constantine Romanoff

Synopsis: The second film version of Ben Ames Williams' magazine serial Jubilo, and the second to star Will Rogers, Too Busy to Work takes considerably more liberties with the source material than the original 1919 Jubilo. Once again, Rogers is cast as a lovable hobo named Jubilo (after the old spiritual of Read More

Down to Earth

Actors: Will Rogers, Dorothy Jordan, Irene Rich, Matty Kemp, Mary Carlisle

Synopsis: This sequel to the highly successful Will Rogers vehicles They Had to See Paris and So This is London details the further adventures of the nouveau riche Peters family of Claremore, Oklahoma. Oil millionaire Pike Peters (Will Rogers) remains his old "down to earth" self, but his family -- wife Idy Read More

Business and Pleasure

Actors: Will Rogers, Jetta Goudal, Joel McCrea, Dorothy Peterson

Synopsis: Very loosely based on Booth Tarkington's novel The Plutocrat, Business and Pleasure stars Will Rogers as Earl Tinker, a newly rich Oklahoma razor-blade manufacturer. On the pretext of taking a vacation with his family, Earl journeys to far-off Syria, there to purchase the secret formula for Read More

Young As You Feel

Actors: Will Rogers, Lucien Littlefield, Donald Dillaway, Terrance Ray

Synopsis: In this comedy, a successful owner of a meat-packing plant tries to pass on his obsession for punctuality and rules to his two sons. But both of them are spoiled playboys who care little for time. One loves cafe society and the many girls he meets there; the other has bohemian affectations and Read More

Ambassador Bill

Actors: Will Rogers, Marguerite Churchill, Greta Nissen, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Ray Milland

Synopsis: Bill Harper (Will Rogers), a cattle baron turned diplomat, is assigned to the middle European country of Sylvania, which is in a nearly constant state of uproar ever since King Lothar (Ray Milland), who is convinced Queen Vania (Marguerite Churchill) was having an affair, left the country. Their Read More

A Connecticut Yankee

Actors: Will Rogers, William Farnum, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan, Frank Albertson

Synopsis: This Mark Twain adaptation affords a rare opportunity to enjoy a "collaboration" between two of America's greatest humorists. Will Rogers plays the operator of a tiny radio repair shop, who is called to an old mansion to replace a battery on a dark and stormy night. Here Will meets a scientist (William Farnum Read More

Lightnin'

Actors: Will Rogers, Louise Dresser, Joel McCrea, Helen Cohan

Synopsis: Lightnin' is based on the 1918 stage play by Winchell Smith and Frank Bacon, in which Bacon (the father of director Lloyd Bacon) had starred for years on Broadway and "the road." Will Rogers steps into the leading role as "Lightnin'" Bill Jones, the slow-moving husband of Mary Jones (Louise Dresser Read More

So This Is London

Actors: Will Rogers, Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lumsden Hare

Synopsis: Will Rogers' second starring talkie feature was a spiritual twin of the first, They Had to See Paris, albeit with a significant change of locale. Although newly rich Texas mill owner Hiram Draper (Rogers) intensely despises all things British (dismissing the country as the land of "marmalade Read More

Happy Days

Synopsis: Filmed in "Fox Grandeur," an early widescreen process, Happy Days was the immediate follow-up to Fox Studios' Movietone Follies of 1929. Most of the film takes place on the showboat of Mississippi entrepreneur Colonel Billy Batcher (Charles E. Evans). When the Colonel faces foreclosure after Read More

They Had to See Paris

Actors: Will Rogers, Irene Rich, Marguerite Churchill

Synopsis: Will Rogers' first all-talking feature casts the beloved humorist as Pike Peters, owner of an auto repair shop in Claremore, OK (Rogers' real-life home town). Living in genteel but contented poverty, Pike and his family suddenly find themselves millionaires when an oil well in which he is Read More

Tiptoes

Actors: Dorothy Gish, Will Rogers, Nelson Keys

Synopsis: Another of English producer-director Herbert Wilcox's collaborations with American star Dorothy Gish, Tiptoes was also one of the most successful of the batch. Gish plays one-third of a Yankee vaudeville act, who try out some new material in a Liverpool music hall. When their act bombs, our Read More

A Texas Steer

Crew: Intertitle Writer

Actors: Will Rogers, Louise Fazenda, Sam Hardy, Ann Rork, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Synopsis: Though Will Rogers was still packing 'em in on Broadway, he was considered a Hollywood has-been when he starred in the independently produced A Texas Steer. Rogers also wrote the screenplay of this "topical comedy," in which he plays Texas rancher Maverick Brander, who is maneuvered into politics Read More

Jubilo Jr.

Actors: Will Rogers, Mickey Daniels, Mary Kornman, Joe Cobb, Farina Hoskins

Synopsis: The beloved humorist Will Rogers, whose own series of Hal Roach two-reelers was produced concurrently with the studio's Our Gang series, makes a guest appearance in the Gang comedy Jubilo Jr.. The film opens with Rogers, as wandering hobo Jubilo, befriending a group of fellow tramps and telling Read More

Going to Congress

Don't Park There

One Glorious Day

Actors: Will Rogers, Lila Lee, Alan Hale, John Fox, George Nichols

Synopsis: This quirky comedy with its mystical overtones was a departure for the down-to-earth Will Rogers. The story opens up with a title card that announces there are spirits floating around waiting to be born into the material world. One spirit, the mischievous Ek (young John Fox), misses being born by Read More

The Headless Horseman

Actors: Will Rogers, Lois Meredith, Ben Hendricks, Jr.

Synopsis: Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane -- now, that's interesting casting! Opinions were mixed on whether he fit the role or not. While he wasn't quite the physical ideal for the gangling schoolmaster, his gawkiness was certainly in the right place. Sometimes, however, he was too gawky -- when the Read More

The Ropin' Fool

Actors: Will Rogers, Irene Rich, John Ince, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Russell Powell

Synopsis: Because he was unable to give voice to his earthy wit, Will Rogers' on-film appeal was a bit limited during the silent era. Producers often didn't know what to do with him and, in fact, when Rogers began producing his own films, he didn't know what to do with himself, either. That's about Read More

Doubling for Romeo

Crew: Intertitle Writer

Actors: Will Rogers, Sylvia Breamer, Raymond Hatton, Al Hart

Synopsis: It is said that every actor wants to play Shakespeare. Will Rogers would seem a likely exception to that rule, but here he is in this silent, taking a stab (albeit comic) at Romeo. Slim (Rogers), of course, begins as a cowpuncher but his boss switches from cattle to sheep, throwing him out of Read More

Boys Will Be Boys

Actors: Will Rogers, Irene Rich, Sydney Ainsworth, Edward M. Kimball

Synopsis: Peep O'Day (Will Rogers) is the illiterate pauper of a small Southern town. When he gets the news from Judge Priest (Edward Kimball) that he has inherited a fortune from a relative back in Ireland, Peep's life changes overnight. He decides to use his money to experience the childhood he never got Read More

Bill Fields and Will Rogers

Synopsis: This video double feature consists of early silent short subjects starring those two old Ziegfeld Follies colleagues, W. C. Fields and Will Rogers. Made in 1915, Fields' Pool Sharks is a crude knockabout farce, making very little sense until the climactic pool game. Most of W.C.'s more remarkable Read More

Poor Relation

Actors: Will Rogers, Sylvia Breamer, Wallace MacDonald, Sydney Ainsworth, George B. Williams

Synopsis: In spite of many attempts to bring Will Rogers superstardom in silent films (he was already one on Broadway), it wasn't until sound came in that he found his niche. Here, he and director Clarence G. Badger flounder as they try for pathos a la Charles Chaplin's The Kid. Rogers plays Noah Vale, a Read More

Guile of Women

Actors: Will Rogers, Mary Warren, Bert Sprotte, Lionel Belmore, Charles A. Smiley

Synopsis: Will Rogers plays the lead in this adaptation of a Saturday Evening Post story. While Rogers really needed talkies to bring him cinema superstardom, he could only have portrayed the character of Yal in silents -- after all, who ever heard of Will Rogers with a Swedish accent? Seduced by the Read More

Unwilling Hero

Actors: Will Rogers, Molly Malone, John Bowers, Darrel Foss, Jack Curtis

Synopsis: Although he wouldn't find his true place in motion pictures until the talkie era, humorist Will Rogers certainly made a lot of films during the early '20s. Here he brings his down-to-earth persona to an O. Henry story, Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking. Whistling Dick is a hobo who loves life Read More

Water, Water, Everywhere

Synopsis: Although Billy Fortune (Will Rogers) has a hankering for Hope Beecher (Irene Rich), he acknowledges that her suitor, Ben Morgan (Wade Boteler) is the better man for her. Ben is the doctor of the Western town in which they all live, and to Hope's dismay, he loves his liquor a bit too much. A Read More

Jes' Call Me Jim

Synopsis: During the silent era, Will Rogers was generally on the losing end of a romantic triangle; this time his good-natured common sense wins out. Although trapper Jim Fenton (Rogers) loves Miss Butterworth (Irene Rich), he thinks that she really cares for inventor Paul Benedict (Raymond Hatton), who Read More

Honest Hutch

Synopsis: Even though he's a lazy, worthless bum, Hutch (Will Rogers) is a truly likable guy -- maybe that's why his wife Sary (Mary Alden) is willing to support him and their six kids. When he finds fifty thousand dollars, he knows he can't spend a cent of it without drawing suspicion (being permanently Read More

Jubilo

Synopsis: This simple comedy drama was adapted from a serial in the Saturday Evening Post, but the film itself doesn't seem to have enough story to have run over several issues of a magazine. Jublio (Will Rogers) is happy with his lazy life as a hobo, but one day when he goes begging for food at a ranch Read More

Almost a Husband

Synopsis: In this romantic comedy, a school teacher moves from his home in the country to a small town. He attends a party and becomes a hit when he suggests the partygoers stage a mock wedding with the loveliest girl in town. Much to his surprise, they are married by a bona fide reverend and the marriage Read More

Mack Sennett Comedies: Vol. 2

Synopsis: This anthology is comprised of several short chucklers from the King of Slapstick comedy Mack Sennett. These shorts feature the hilarious Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. The titles include: Fatty and Mabel Adrift, Mabel, Fatty, and the Law, Fatty's Tin-Type Tangle, and Our Congressman. The Read More

Our Congressman

Synopsis: This video follows the escapades of Louise and Fatty in the 1915 "Fatty's Tin-Type Tangle." In the second half of this video, Will Rogers is featured in the 1924 "Our Congressman." ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More