Summary
A monochrome dream unfurls inside a single barn-stripe of celluloid: Will Rogers, that laconic Oklahoma centaur, gallops out of the Ziegfeld footlights and into the iris of a camera that can barely blink. His mount, the ink-black Dopey, becomes a negative-space canvas while Rogers twirls a rope bleached white like bone against coal. In the hush between cranks of the hand-cranked shutter, the lariat sings—a helical aria of kinetic calligraphy—snaring not merely the forelegs of a thundering horse but the very notion of frontier entropy itself. Frames stutter, then flow; the loop elongates, contracts, knots itself into a cat’s cradle around Rogers’ waist before he pirouettes through it as though time were a slack-jawed calf waiting to be branded. Each whip-crack is a stanza in a prairie psalm, each spin a stanza break. The horse, the man, the rope, the dust motes orbiting them like minor planets—all conspire to choreograph a haiku of hazard and grace, leaving the spectator suspended between barn-door darkness and the white-hot vertigo of motion.
Synopsis
Will Rogers repeats for the camera his famous roping tricks from the Ziegfeld Follies. With a white-painted rope to show up against his black horse Dopey, Rogers demonstrates running catches, wherein he ropes the fore legs of the galloping horse. Rogers also spins his trick lariat, jumping through it and back, and exhibiting the prowess that made his roping a national sensation.
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