Happy Sunday my friends and welcome to a new installment of Cowboy Church.
We start today's musical selection off with another song from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans 1959 album Jesus Loves Me. This song is entitled The Circuit Riding Preacher. Next comes The Carter Family performing Church in the Wildwood in a 1929 recording. Next comes Johnny Cash singing a song from his 1965 album Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West called Letter From Home. Next Hank Williams sings a gospel classic Where the Soul Never Dies. This recording is from the Mother's Best Flour radio show which starred Hank, who ended almost every show with a gospel number. Next comes Charlie Daniels performing a song he wrote himself, Jesus. This song was off his 1996 Christian album Steel Witness. Last but not least is George Jones performing the great gospel song Leaning on the Everlasting Arms off his 1966 gospel album, Old Brush Arbors.
Most of us know Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle from his great series of silent short films. These were fast paced slapstick humor at its best. That is what makes his very first feature film so surprising. The Round Up (1920) is a fairly straight western. What needs to be taken into account here is that by this time there had been few comedy features. In fact Charlie Chaplin wouldn't release The Kid until 1921. Sure there had already been Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), but that could have been viewed as a fluke, plus tastes in slapstick comedy had already changed significantly since then. It is most likely that the filmmakers felt that Arbuckle's fast paced slapstick would not sustian a whole feature film and therefore he was put into a rather straight role. He adapts to this very well. Arbuckle was a very talented actor and could adapt to a serious role easily.
One thing many silent movie fans think of when they think of Arbuckle is how he helped Buster Keaton get his start in movies. Though Buster was a huge star by the time of The Round Up, he took a very tiny and uncredited role in this movie. Buster would later say he did this movie just for fun.
Besides being Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's first feature film, this movie also marked another milestone in movie history. It was the first feature length western to be shot in Lone Pine California. There would be many more to come. Such western stars and directors as John Wayne, Tom Mix, John Ford, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, Tim Holt, James Stewart, Hoot Gibson, Clint Eastwood, Joseph Kane and Henry Fonda would make some of their classic westerns there. It wasn't just old westerns that were shot in Lone Pine though. Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012) and Disney's The Lone Ranger (2013) also had scenes shot there.
This film also features Arbuckle less at the creative end of things than he was in his shorts. Arbuckle often directed and wrote his own short subjects. In The Round Up his only job is as an actor. George Melford directs and Tom Forman writes.
Arbuckle's feature film career did not last very long as in 1921 he was wrongfully accused of rape and murder. He was found innocent, but his film career had ended.
The Round Up would be remade in 1941 under the same title. That film would also be shot in Lone Pine.
The film is not available to watch on the internet, but it is available on DVD and Blu-ray. It has also been occasionally shown on TCM. Here is Robert Osborne introducing the movie on TCM.
Since I can't share a video of the feature, here is a 1918 short starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton called Out West (1918).
-Michael J. Ruhland
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