The County Chairman

"The County Chairman" is a fair comedy drama set in 1902 Wyoming. Will Rogers is Jim Hackler, the head of a county political party. It's a fair story, based on a play of the period, which is based on an historical event of the earliest women's suffrage in the Cowboy State

Rogers whips out some of his witty quips, for which he was known. Mickey Rooney was just 15 years old when this film was made, yet he had been in more than 90 short and feature length films since his child star debut in 1926. He already had more movies under his belt than most actors and actresses who become stars would make in their entire lifetime careers. Rooney was far from the total films of the longest supporting cast and bit players who had 500 or more film credits. But, when he died at age 93 in 2014, his 343 film credits must be the most, or close to the most, of any actor who was a major star for many years.

In this film, Rooney's "Freckles" trips up a girl with his rope at a Western picnic. But for Rogers, long-time and well recognized Barton Churchill as Elias Rigby, most of the rest of the roles are forgettable. Some of the acting is still quite wooden - a carryover from the silent film days. I don't recall having seen this movie in the past, but the recent DVD I saw was of a black and white film so bleached out that the details of the faces are hardly noticeable at times.

The other reviews do a good job of explaining the plot but omit two of the best lines from any Rogers film which illustrate his ability to comment on politics of his day or of ours. Rogers is at his relaxed best as the wily rural county chairman.

Rogers' candidate is young. This results in many people commenting and complaining about his age. As Rogers travels with the young man to drum up votes he must deal with the older voters reluctance to vote for a youngster.

"Well, I know he's young but he's getting over it everyday."

"There ain't nothing wrong with him that the calendar can't fix!"

Two of my favorites. Sadly the film has not been released on DVD.

"The County Chairman" is one of Will Rogers' last films and it is very unusual because instead of playing the usual nice-guy, he is a cynic who is adept at playing dirty tricks in an election campaign.

The story begins with Jim Hackler (Rogers) heading a political party meeting and they are trying to pick a man to run for Prosecutor. After it appears neither leading candidate will get a majority, they pick a dark horse...an unknown who comes as a suprise to everyone. Young Ben Harvey is an honest man and agrees to run ONLY if it's a clean and honest campaign...and soon the campaign consists of Harvey lying and making all sorts of promises...all at the insistence of Hackler. But, in the process, Ben has become estranged from his fiancee, Lucy, as she's the daughter of Ben's opponent! What is the outcome? And, what is Hackler's motivation to wage such a dirty campaign? See the film and find out for yourself.

In real life, Will Rogers was largely apolitical and made it a point to make fun of both parties. But underneath it all, he also had a certain cynicism and contempt for politicking...which is why he plays such an odious character in this film. In other words, the film's intention is to expose the truth about all the untruths in politics...even small town politics like you see in this Wyoming county.

So is the film any good? Well, the bad of it is that like many of Rogers' movies, it also features Stepin Fetchit...the most awful stereotype of the lazy black man...something acceptable back in the 1930s but which will horrify most viewers today. To make it worse, you can barely understand what Fetchit says...and the film really needed captions (the YouTube versions I found didn't). On the positive side, Rogers made acting seem so natural and simple...he really had a way with the camera. Additionally, the story is a nice cynical civics lesson. Overall, it's well worth seeing...warts and all.