Jubilo

Jubilo is a 1919 film, starring Will Rogers.

Quoting the Library of Congress: In the third film of his illustrious motion picture career, humorist and cowboy philosopher Will Rogers enacted the easy-going, likable tramp Jubilo, named after a Civil War song in which enslaved people using stereotypical dialect celebrate their hoped for emancipation. Theater organists and pianists no doubt played the tune repeatedly throughout the picture, and for years afterwards, it became a signature song for Rogers, a multiracial member of the Cherokee nation who often portrayed a comic trickster common in both African American and Native American cultures. Despite its predictable plot, Jubilo was distinguished by the uniquely human character Rogers created and the title cards he authored that gave national audiences a taste of the topical remarks he would casually toss off from the stage as he entertained New York audiences with his roping and horseback riding tricks. One card, appearing after his character spends a night trying to fix an automobile, satirizes Henry Ford’s recently unsuccessful political ambitions with the line, "No wonder he wasn’t elected to the Senate with everyone owning one of these." Reviewers praised Rogers’ "wonderfully natural creation" and "rugged sense of humor," and a few years later, director Erich von Stroheim commended Rogers’ pictures for their character-driven realism, a desired quality he found otherwise lacking in most of Hollywood’s more plot-dominated productions. The film is preserved by the Museum of Modern Art.

Jubilo was added to the National Film Registry in 2021. The film is in the public domain, and can be watched or downloaded at the Internet Archive.