See Will Rogers, then America’s Biggest Movie Star, in John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934), with Step’n’Fetchit, for Free, Complete, and without Commercial Interruption, at WEJB/NSU

By Nicholas Stix

You can skip the interview with Chris Enss, by going straight to 6:52. The picture runs for only 80 minutes.

Unfortunately, William Penn Adair Rogers (1878-1935) died in a plane crash on August 15, 1935, at the height of his fame, after being America’s biggest movie star for two consecutive years (1934, 1935), according to Quigley’s magazine. Prior to Rogers’ run, fat, old Marie Dressler (1868-1934), the first Quigley’s champ, had been the number one star for two years, before the Red Witch, aka the Big C, came for her. Folks in Hollywood and elsewhere, must have begun to think that being box-office champ was jinxed, though Shirley Temple then survived, holding the title for three straight years.

Rogers, who was an Okie and part-indian, was a huge star in wild west shows, vaudeville, and Ziegfeld’s Follies as a humorist. He’d play with his lariat, and let loose with jokes. Many of his lines were for a century in pre-racial socialist America among the best-loved American quotations. Some are laugh-out-loud funny, while others display Rogers’ mischievous intelligence.

“Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.

“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.

“If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

“A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.

“Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

“It isn’t what we don't know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

“The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

“When the Okies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states.”

“Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.”

And my favorite, which ain’t on any of the lists:

“Hardly a day goes by, you know, that some innocent bystander ain’t shot in New York City. All you got to do is be innocent and stand by and they’re going to shoot you. The other day, there was four people shot in one day—four innocent people—in New York City. It’s kind of hard to find four innocent people in New York. That’s why a policeman don’t have to aim. He just shoots anywhere. Whoever he hits, that’s the right one.”

And he could play the piano and sing, too.

In Judge Priest, while he’s playing the piano, his housekeeper (Hattie McDaniel) is cleaning and singing, and he suddenly breaks into a duet with her.





The WEJB/NSU Theater, 1902-1981:

Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902);

The Great Train Robbery (1903);

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Harry Carey and John “Jack” Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917), the First Feature-Length, “Cheyenne Harry” Western;

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

Starring “Jack”: See the 1920 Silent Picture Classic of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton’s One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director;

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart) with English subtitles;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Charlie, in The Gold Rush (1925);

Lon Chaney, in The Phantom of the Opera (1925);

King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, and Harry Behn’s The Big Parade (1925), Starring Gilbert and Adore!

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

John Ford’s 1926 Western, 3 Bad Men;

When a Man Loves (1927), Starring “Jack” and Dolores Costello;

Josef von Sternberg and Ben Hecht’s Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture;

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s Restored, Classic Silent Picture, Wings (1927), One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners;

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners);

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), the Greatest S/F Picture Ever, Plus Its Soundtrack Suite;

Frank Borzage and Austin Strong’s Seventh Heaven (1927);

Samson Raphaelson, Alfred A. Cohn, Jack Jarmuth and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the First-Ever Talkie, Starring Al Jolson, by Warner Brothers;

St. Louis Blues (talkie, short, 1929);

Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s First Talkie: M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) (M: A City Searches for a Murderer);

Paul Robeson in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (talkie, 1933);

The Man Who Knew too Much (1934): The Original Version of the Early Hitchcock Classic

Kate Hepburn in the Super Chief’s Quality Street (1937);

Cary Grant and Roz Russell in Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940);

Zero’s Since You Went Away (1944);

William Dieterle’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948);

Jules Dassin, Albert Malz, and Malvin Wald’s The Naked City (1948), Plus Music; and

Paul Newman, in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981).