Joe Roberts

Acting

Joe Roberts

Born 1871-02-02 · Albany, New York, USA

"Big Joe" Roberts, as he was known in vaudeville, toured the country with his first wife, Lillian Stuart Roberts as part of a rowdy act known as Roberts, Hays, and Roberts. Their signature routine was called "The Cowboy, the Swell and the Lady." At this time, in the first decade of the twentieth century, Buster Keaton's father, Joe Keaton, had started a summer Actors' Colony for vaudevillians between Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake in Michigan. Roberts became acquainted with the Keaton family as a member of this community. When Buster Keaton's film apprenticeship years with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle came to an end, and Keaton began making his own shorts in 1920, he asked Roberts to join him. Roberts' hefty 6'3" frame, usually playing a menacing heavy or authority figure, made a striking and amusing contrast to the thin, 5'6" Keaton. IMDB shows that Roberts made only two films without Keaton. He played the role of "Roaring Bill" Rivers in 1922's The Primitive Lover starring Constance Talmadge—Keaton's sister-in-law—and the silent film actor Harrison Ford; and a drill master in the Clyde Cook comedy The Misfit,[4] released in March 1924, after Roberts' death. When Keaton began making feature films in 1923, he apparently intended to continue working with Roberts. Roberts had roles in Keaton's Three Ages and Our Hospitality (both 1923). During the filming of the second feature, Roberts had a stroke but insisted on returning to the set to finish the film. After completion, Roberts suffered another stroke and died shortly afterwards.

Acting credits

One Week poster
7.9

Newlyweds receive a build-it-yourself house as a wedding gift—and the house can, supposedly, be built in "one week". A rejected suitor secretly re-numbers packing crates, and the husband struggles to assemble the house according to this new 'arrangement' of its parts.

One Week

1920

Cops poster
7.2

Buster Keaton gets involved in a series of misunderstandings involving a horse and cart. Eventually he infuriates every cop in the city when he accidentally interrupts a police parade.

Cops

1922

Our Hospitality poster
7.5

A young man falls for a young woman on his trip home; unbeknownst to him, her family has vowed to kill every member of his family.

Our Hospitality

1923

Hard Luck poster
6.9

A down on his luck young man makes several attempts at committing suicide but fails them too. He then finds himself becoming more confident through a series of petty adventures, to such an extent that this becomes his undoing.

Hard Luck

1921

My Wife's Relations poster
6.3

Buster and a woman are mistakenly married and her initially unfriendly family begins to treat him nicely when they come to believe he has a large inheritance awaiting him.

My Wife's Relations

1922

The Haunted House poster
6.5

A bank teller becomes involved with a hold-up, counterfeiters and a theatrical troupe posing as spooks in a haunted house.

The Haunted House

1921

The Goat poster
7.2

A series of misadventures occur when Buster is mistaken for a criminal on the lam.

The Goat

1921

A Brave Engineer: Buster Keaton's Last Ride poster
NR

From 1920 to 1965, the great Buster Keaton made spectacular use of locomotives in his films. This video essay charts the course of his iconic cinematic career across the many tracks he rode along on screen: as a young man in the surge of his silent movie ascent in Our Hospitality, while making his masterpiece The General, and traversing the width of Canada on a railway speeder car as an old man in The Railrodder.

A Brave Engineer: Buster Keaton's Last Ride

2026

The Misfit poster
7.0

THE MISFIT - starring Clyde Cook, with Blanche Payson and Joe Roberts. A rarely-seen silent comedy short. Henpecked hubby Clyde totes groceries and paints floors for his wifey, escaping at last...by joining the U.S. Marines. The basic training sequence was shot at the Buster Keaton studios; this may be "Big" Joe Roberts' final screen role.

The Misfit

1924

The Blacksmith poster
6.6

Buster clowns around in a blacksmith's shop until he and the smithy get in a fight which sends the smithy to jail. Buster helps several customers with horses, then destroys a Rolls Royce while fixing the car parked next to it.

The Blacksmith

1922

Day Dreams poster
6.5

In order to impress the father of a girl he is keen on, a young man goes to the city in search of work. In his letters home he writes of his various jobs which her imagination expands into much nobler ones than those that he is actually attempting.

Day Dreams

1922

Three Ages poster
6.8

The rituals of courtship, romantic rivalry, and love play out three times as a man vies with a villain for the girl. In the Stone Age, the rivalry is set off by dinosaurs, a turtle used as a ouija board, and a round of golf with stones. In ancient Rome, the men display their brawn through a chariot race, using dogs instead of horses. In contemporary times, the man finds himself overcome by modernity, including a very fragile car.

Three Ages

1923

The Scarecrow poster
7.4

Two farmhands compete for the love of the farmer's daughter.

The Scarecrow

1920

The Love Nest poster
6.7

In an attempt to forget his lost sweetheart, Buster takes a long trip at sea where he boards a whaling ship with a strict captain.

The Love Nest

1923

The Paleface poster
6.1

A butterfly collector unwittingly wanders into an Indian encampment while chasing a butterfly, but the tribe has resolved to kill the first white man who enters their encampment because white oil tycoons are trying to force them from their land.

The Paleface

1922

The High Sign poster
7.1

Buster is thrown off a train near an amusement park. There he gets a job in a shooting gallery run by the Blinking Buzzards mob. Ordered to kill a businessman, he winds up protecting the man and his daughter by outfitting their home with trick devices.

The High Sign

1921

Little Lord Fauntleroy poster
7.0

An American boy turns out to be the long-lost heir of a British fortune. He is sent to live with the cold and unsentimental lord who oversees the trust.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

1921

Neighbors poster
7.1

The Romeo and Juliet story played out in a tenement neighborhood with Buster and Virginia's families hating each other over the fence separating their buildings.

Neighbors

1920

Convict 13 poster
6.7

A young golfer is mugged by an escaped convict and finds himself in a prison where he foils a jailbreak.

Convict 13

1920

The Electric House poster
6.8

Botany major Buster mistakenly graduates in electrical engineering and is hired to wire a new home.

The Electric House

1922

The Play House poster
6.8

Upon waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.

The Play House

1921

The Frozen North poster
6.2

A mix of guns and mistaken identity leads to chaos in this satirical parody of William S. Hart's melodramatic westerns, finding Buster in the frozen north - "the last stop on the subway".

The Frozen North

1922

The Primitive Lover poster
6.7

A free-spirited girl is caught between her love for her husband and her attraction to a handsome adventurer.

The Primitive Lover

1922