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Steamboat Round The Bend (1935) Starring Will Rogers

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Steamboat Round The Bend (1935)

Starring Will Rogers

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 for most of the proceedings as the proprietor of a combination travelling waxworks and medicine show. The plot resolution hinges on a climactic steamboat race, in which Rogers' paddlewheeler is fed bit by bit into its own furnace when the fuel supply runs out. Steamboat Round the Bend was released posthumously after Rogers' sudden death, at which point Fox Studios tried unsuccessfully to create a "new" Will Rogers--in the form of his old friend and costar Irvin S. Cobb.
Director: John Ford
Writers: Dudley Nichols (screen play), Lamar Trotti (screen play)


Stars: Will Rogers, Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb, Eugene Pallette, Stepin Fetchit

The film was released shortly after Will Rogers' death on 15 August 1935 from an airplane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska. Originally, the ending of the film had him waving goodbye to the character played by Irvin S. Cobb, but the ending was changed to avoid the audience thinking he was saying goodbye to them, which may have caused them to leave the theater in tears. The review which appeared in Variety 25 September 1935 indicated the film had been "announced" as 102 minutes, but had been considerably shortened, which no doubt accounts for some problems in continuity and the abrupt ending.
Rogers' boat, "Claremore Queen," was named after his home town of Claremore, Oklahoma.
Rogers bought the rights to the story for $10,000 in 1933. It was Fox's biggest grosser in 1935.
Cobb's boat, "Pride of Paducah," was named after his home town of Paducah, Kentucky.
The film was based on the 1933 novel of the same name by author Ben Lucien Burman, who was widely known for the Catfish Bend series of books.