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Steamboat Round the Bend

  • 1935
  • Passed
  • 1h 22m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
Will Rogers in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
ComedyDramaRomance

A Louisiana con man enters his steamboat into a winner-take-all race with a rival while trying to find a witness to free his nephew, about to be hanged for murder.A Louisiana con man enters his steamboat into a winner-take-all race with a rival while trying to find a witness to free his nephew, about to be hanged for murder.A Louisiana con man enters his steamboat into a winner-take-all race with a rival while trying to find a witness to free his nephew, about to be hanged for murder.

  • Director
    • John Ford
  • Writers
    • Dudley Nichols
    • Lamar Trotti
    • Ben Lucien Burman
  • Stars
    • Will Rogers
    • Anne Shirley
    • Irvin S. Cobb
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    6.9/10
    1.3K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • John Ford
    • Writers
      • Dudley Nichols
      • Lamar Trotti
      • Ben Lucien Burman
    • Stars
      • Will Rogers
      • Anne Shirley
      • Irvin S. Cobb
    • 15User reviews
    • 16Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
  • Photos28

    Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Ben Hall, Fred Kohler Jr., Charles Middleton, Will Rogers, and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Will Rogers and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Will Rogers and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    John McGuire, Will Rogers, and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    John McGuire and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Ben Hall, Fred Kohler Jr., Charles Middleton, Will Rogers, and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Irvin S. Cobb, John McGuire, and Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
    Anne Shirley in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Will Rogers
    Will Rogers
    • Doctor John Pearly
    Anne Shirley
    Anne Shirley
    • Fleety Belle
    Irvin S. Cobb
    Irvin S. Cobb
    • Captain Eli
    Eugene Pallette
    Eugene Pallette
    • Sheriff Rufe Jeffers
    John McGuire
    John McGuire
    • Duke
    Berton Churchill
    Berton Churchill
    • New Moses
    Francis Ford
    Francis Ford
    • Efe
    Roger Imhof
    Roger Imhof
    • Pappy
    Raymond Hatton
    Raymond Hatton
    • Matt Abel
    Hobart Bosworth
    Hobart Bosworth
    • Chaplain
    Stepin Fetchit
    Stepin Fetchit
    • Jonah
    C.E. Anderson
    C.E. Anderson
    • Jailer
    • (uncredited)
    Sam Baker
    • Undetermined Role
    • (uncredited)
    William 'Billy' Benedict
    William 'Billy' Benedict
    • Breck
    • (uncredited)
    Heinie Conklin
    Heinie Conklin
    • Jailbird
    • (uncredited)
    Tex Cooper
    Tex Cooper
    • Townsman
    • (uncredited)
    D'Arcy Corrigan
    D'Arcy Corrigan
    • Hangman
    • (uncredited)
    Luke Cosgrave
    Luke Cosgrave
    • Labor Boss
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • John Ford
    • Writers
      • Dudley Nichols
      • Lamar Trotti
      • Ben Lucien Burman
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      The film was released shortly after Will Rogers' death on 15 August 1935 from an airplane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska with noted aviator Wiley Post. 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. Cobb urged the ending not be changed. 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.
    • Goofs
      At the end of the race, an official on a stand is waving a black and white checkered flag. A title card at the beginning of the film states this film is set in the early 1890s. The earliest known use of a checkered flag to signify the end of a race was for the 1906 Vanderbuilt Cup auto race.
    • Quotes

      New Moses: I've got souls to save.

      Doctor John Pearly: No, you got a life to save, and the Lord don't care which one of your jobs you do first.

    • Connections
      Featured in Directed by John Ford (1971)
    • Soundtracks
      Steamboat Round the Bend
      (1935) (uncredited)

      Music by Oscar Levant

      Lyrics by Sidney Clare

      Sung by an unidentified chorus during opening sequence and played during closing credits

    User reviews15

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    7/10
    Will Rogers Sure Seemed Nice Part III
    Endings are important, and even in light comedies with adventure undertones, those endings end up helping to shape everything that came before it. I was a bit flustered by the first hour or so of John Ford's Steamboat Round the Bend, finding things to like but frustrated at the extraordinary loose nature of the telling, but the ending brought everything together in rip-roaring fashion. Will Rogers' final filmed role before his airplane crash that killed him ends up being a fancifully entertaining trip down the Mississippi.

    Rogers plays Doctor John Pearly, a conman selling a tonic he says comes from a recipe by Pocahontas herself, but which is literally just rum, to people on the river as he makes his way up to find his own dilapidated riverboat, ready for him to refurbish and put back on the water. When he first arrives at his new home on the river his nephew Duke (John McGuire) arrives with a swamp woman in tow, Fleety Belle (Anne Shirley). Duke had killed Belle's father in an act of self-defense after they had been seeing each other secretly for some time, but the only witness to the events that could possibly clear his name is New Moses (Berton Churchill), a bearded temperance preacher who travels up and down the river, converting wayward souls. However, before anyone can find New Moses, the law arrests Duke, and John forces Belle's family away by lying and saying that Duke and Belle have married.

    This was a strong start, and then the movie just kind of begins to flounder for a while. John takes Belle on his refurbished boat up and down the river nominally looking for Old Moses, but they take on a traveling museum of sorts, filling the hold with mannequins of famous historical figures with a lot of talk about how to Americanize the figures to help attract customers. Some small adventures, misunderstandings, and scrapes dominate the middle section of this film around the museum, and while most of it is very lightly amusing, it feels like the movie itself has gotten lost. There's suddenly no urgency about Duke or his plight. It's kind of odd.

    After a brief marriage ceremony to make John's lie of Belle and Duke a reality, Duke gets taken down to Baton Rouge for execution. John ends up chasing after Duke and gets caught up in a riverboat race, forced to join as the only way to go further south on the Mississippi and developing a rivalry with Captain Eli (Irvin S. Cobb), pilot of another steamboat. It's here where the movie reclaims its focus and, more entertainingly, a strong sense of energy as the film becomes a race against the clock on two different fronts, the literal race against the other steamboats and the need to get to Baton Rouge before Duke's execution. They may not have much more of a plan than that, but they have to go. In swift order, though, they encounter New Moses preaching on the side of the river, rope him in (literally), and speed off, burning more and more of the riverboat's ephemera to fuel the engines from the lifeboats to, as the race becomes more desperate, the mannequins themselves. Watching New Moses in all of this is a treat, and when he discovers that John has a supply of the Pocahontas cure all on board, also that it's just rum, he has the idea of throwing them in to heat the engine and propel them faster. It's kind of wild stuff, and it's a very fun comedic crescendo for the whole picture.

    The film was apparently cut down by about twenty minutes after Will Rogers' death, mostly in the ending, forcing a final shot of Rogers as John reclining on the deck of his boat. It's a nice moment for the character as well as the actor.

    This is the first time that Rogers worked with Ford where it felt like Rogers was actually playing a character instead of just himself, and it's a nice change of pace. He doesn't dominate the film like he does in the other two films (Doctor Bull and Judge Priest) to varying degrees of success, allowing the story to play through without completely overrunning everything else. He's the central character for sure, but he allows space for Annie Shirley, as his primary counterpart, to shine in bright and cheerful fashion.

    It really could have used a rewrite in its middle section, a section that dragged the film down a good bit, but that ending is really something else, a madcap race with real stakes and cut quickly for an all around good time. It really won me over by the end.
    helpful•0
    0
    • davidmvining
    • Dec 3, 2021

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • September 6, 1935 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Steamboat Bill
    • Filming locations
      • San Joaquin River, California, USA(River and Delta at Stockton: steam ships, rivers channels)
    • Production company
      • Fox Film Corporation
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • Runtime
      1 hour 22 minutes
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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