When they discuss the great movies of director Michael Curtiz, they start with Casablanca, which may well be the greatest American movie - for which he earned a well-deserved Oscar - and go on to such screen gems as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, Yankee Doodle Dandy (which is a slow movie with a great performance by its star), Life with Father, and a host of others. I doubt anyone would think to mention this movie.
And The Story of Will Rogers is not a great movie. It does not move with the relentless drive of Casablanca or Robin Hood, it does not sparkle like Life with Father. Seventeen years after his untimely death in 1935, it tells the story of the then still well-remembered American humorist, Will Rogers. Since everyone still knew his story then, the movie did not have to tell it; rather, it picked the moments that it wanted to stand out.
That isn't Rogers' years in the Ziegfeld Follies, which made him a household word, or his appearance in movies, even through, for a short while, he was the biggest box office attraction in talkies.
Rather, it concentrates on Rogers' support of General William (Billy) Mitchell and his efforts to get Congress to put money into air power at a time when the U.S. was pulling back into isolationism. World War II and the terrifying German blitzkrieg would eventually show that Mitchell and Rogers were right.
It also concentrates, in the last part, on Rogers' fund raising for the poor during the depths of the Depression. That, too, is an aspect of Rogers' career that is probably forgotten today.
This movie won't keep you glued to your seat. But it does serve to remind us, now that there are few among us who remember seeing and hearing Rogers, what warm-hearted pleasure he brought to Americans when so many of us needed a smile so badly. His sense of humor may seem corny today - it was corny back then, too - but there is a lack of nastiness or derision to it that I often miss today.
