Sherry Chandler » Steamboat Round the Bend
Steamboat Round the Bend
Okay, let’s get this out of the way first. This movie has Stepin Fetchit in it and that’s an embarrassment to all concerned.
Some praise Fetchit (born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry) for managing any kind of film career in the Jim Crow 30s. It was a time when, to quote Langston Hughes, “On the screen, we are servants, clowns, or fools.” Fetchit managed to embody all three, whining and bumbling his way to superstardom (and a lot of money). It’s an uncomfortable reminder of our racist past to have to watch him. On top of that, he doesn’t really seem to be trying very hard in the role of Jonah, born out of the mouth of a papier maché whale. Possibly that’s the point. He is an impressive physical actor (and bigger than I remembered), making amazing stunts look easy. And, according to Jon C. Hopwood in the IMDb bio, the whining was a strategy:
Often, while making movies in which he found the lines offensive, Perry would skip or mumble lines he did not like, pretending to be too stupid to comprehend the script.
To be fair, there are plenty more stereotypes this movie. There’s Efe, the drunken Irish deckhand, played by Francis Ford, director John Ford’s brother. And fat southern Sheriff Rufe Jeffers (Eugene Pallette) runs his jail on a sort of Andy Griffith honor system. Easy enough when your prisoners consist of members of the Hall Johnson Choir* and the juvenile lead. John McGuire, the juvenile, spends his jail time wisely. He learns to play the musical saw.
The film stars, of course, Will Rogers, who plays that popular American mythological figure, the kind-hearted con-man. In short, I guess he plays himself. He ropes a steamboat in this one, as well as a robed and bearded evangelist called The New Moses.
So the movie presents us with a sort of prelapsarian America where everybody knows his place, everybody plays his part (I choose my pronouns deliberately), and we can all relax in the knowledge that everything will work for truth, justice, and the consummation of young love. Within those parameters, it’s an excellent film and a lot of fun to watch. And there is, of course, the culminating steamboat race.
It is rather famously Will Rogers’s last film. He was killed in a plane crash shortly before the movie was released. Coincidentally, the DVD copy of Captain Blood we rented recently had newsreel footage about the crash. Rogers and John Ford worked together on two previous films, Doctor Bull (1933) and Judge Priest (1934). The latter is set in Kentucky.
This film’s Kentucky connection is considerable. Its story was taken from a novel by Covington-born Ben Lucien Burman (more on Burman here and at the blog Living with Legends). It features Paducah-native Irvin S. Cobb as a rival steamboat captain. His boat is called “The Belle of Paducah” as Rogers’s is called “The Claremore Queen” after his birthplace in Oklahoma.
*I can’t authenticate this but certainly there is a chorus in the jail and I’m pretty sure Scott Eyman, in the commentary track on the DVD, mentioned the Hall Johnson Choir. He may have been speaking metaphorically. It’s a very good commentary.
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3 Comments
1. attila fitzpatrick replies at 25th August 2007, 3:16 pm :
The hell with the review by this damn yankee! SBRB is a grand movie, regardless of those oh so bad stereotypes. If you want to have a grand laugh and spend some time with Will Podgers it don’t get no better then this one!
2. sherry replies at 28th August 2007, 9:58 am :
atilla, for what it’s worth, you’ll find my southern bona fides here at the Dead Mule. I am nevertheless embarrassed by the shuckin & jivin.
3. Tim Strauch replies at 11th September 2007, 12:18 am :
Please stop the revisionist history! Stepin Fetchit was a great asset to this movie and he was in “No Way” portrayed in this movie with disrespect! What he was — he was! The man made a very good living for himself and his family. In this movie and others he was in with Will Rogers he was never lesser than any other actor on screen. Now you may not like it but that is a fact! Like it or not that is the way it was and we cannot simply ignore it — to do so would be setting us up to repeat the same predjudices of the past. Give the blessed man a break — in his own unique style he was part of the changing scene of Americana.
God Bless Him!
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