Ford directs the "Garrison Keller" of his day Will Rogers in this comedy about life in the rural south. Rogers was not a trained actor but had been a performer on Broadway for years with the Ziegfeld Follies where he developed his cracker barrel philosopher shtick.
Rogers eventually ended up in Hollywood working with John Ford who apparently got along well with Rogers allowing him to actually improvise a lot of his dialog.
Steamboat Round the Bend is not The Searchers this is strictly a commercial entertainment but a very good one. There is still the expected sloppy sentimentality and corn ball humor Ford liked to stick into his films but it plays pretty well in this film. Rogers plays a con man selling a line of snake oil up and down the river on an old steamboat.
The film reaches it's climax with a steamboat race which is still pretty exciting and fun to watch.
82 minutes written by Ben Lucien Burman, Lamar Trotti and Dudley Nichols.
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