In Ropin’ Fool (1922) Rogers plays Ropes Reilly, a cowboy who ropes anything that moves until a lynch mob decides to use Reilly’s rope for a hanging party, with Reilly as the guest of honor. Motion Picture World wrote: “Plentiful use of slow motion photography shows how it is done and dispels any possible belief that the stunts are faked. No audience can help but marvel as Rogers throws a figure eight around a galloping horse, or lassoes a rat with a piece of string, or brings to term a cat melodiously inclined.” Later Rogers would wryly claim fame as America’s “Poet Lariat.”
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.
