Jubilo (1919)
Will Rogers stars as Jubilo, an affable drifter who wanders into a small ranching town, talks his way into odd jobs, and gets pulled into the affairs of the family that takes him in, in this comedy-drama adapted from a Ben Ames Williams short story.
Jubilo was one of Will Rogers’s earliest starring vehicles, cast to type as a genial vagabond whose folksy charm carries the picture — the same homespun persona that would soon make Rogers one of the most beloved entertainers in America.
Background
Directed by Clarence G. Badger for Samuel Goldwyn’s Goldwyn Pictures and adapted from a Ben Ames Williams short story, Jubilo was one of Will Rogers’s earliest starring vehicles, released December 7, 1919. Rogers plays Jubilo, an affable drifter who wanders into a small ranching town, talks his way into odd jobs, and becomes entangled in the affairs of the family that takes him in — a genial-vagabond role cast directly to Rogers’s own homespun public image, with Josie Sedgwick and Charles K. French co-starring.
What to watch for
The role tracks closely the folksy, unhurried charm Rogers was already cultivating as a stage and vaudeville performer, years before his later fame as a humorist and radio commentator; the film is essentially an early test of whether that persona could carry a feature picture, and its reception helped confirm that it could. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2021, a recognition that arrived more than a century after its release and reflects its value as an early record of Rogers’s screen presence rather than any particular formal innovation in the filmmaking itself.
