Steamboats used in "Steamboat Bill Jr."

boat IDs

Do you have any pictures or movie clips of these boats? I'm not familiar with the movie.

Here is the whole movie from 1928, starring Buster Keaton:

Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928)

I'll go through it and will make screenshots of the scenes where the boats do appear.

Franz

I think the Fort Sutter was one involved, but my books are buried in boxes in storage!
David D.

Str Capitol [or al] City or Citie(s)

Hope you've watched it by now. It's a classic Buster Keaton with one of the most famous movie scenes ever. Buy it. If you're ever blue, watch it. It never stops being funny. Same thing for The General.

Sounds like one we should use for our silent movie series when we get the theater organ back in! I have to keep notes on all this stuff! Another good BK short is "Paleface" --probably not PC nowadays, but funny! (and it pokes more fun at "the English" than the Native Americans). We showed it at the Theatre's 80th birthday (used a "traveling" organ for that one, not quite the same as a real pipe organ, but it did the job!).
S'
David D.

Hey all,

I am gonna take a stab at these boats. The STONEWALL JACKSON looks suspiciously like a old California River packet named RED BLUFF. The KING...well, she ain't the FORT SUTTER or the CAPITOL CITY, because of that huge guard on the Main Deck. I have spent about 2 hours combing all sorts of webpages on Califorina River History and can't match a picture of any boat to the KING. With those twin stacks and huge wide guard...she looks like the aforementioned in the stern and bow...but where did all those guards come from?

Here are links to pics I found..

Sacramento History Online This one is the RED BLUFF

Here are the two boats together at the fictional town of River Junction.

That is what I found...come out of the woodwork sleuths and lets answer this one!

Travis

Well, I don't have the answers yet, but I will agree that the Fort Sutter is NOT one of the boats, she's too big to match these. In reviewing photos on the Sac. hist. site, there are two about the movie, and here's what they say about them:
Buster Keaton's classic STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. is perhaps the best remembered of the many films shot on the Sacramento River. The Sacramento Bee pronounced the city "Movie Mad" on July 18, 1927 after over 1800 people registered at the Chamber of Commerce for jobs as extras in the big budget United Artists film. Keaton's famous "collapsing house" set was a part of the "River Junction" set built for the comedy and his gags walking against gale-force winds and surviving a wall falling directly over him are cinematic icons, greatly admired and never done better.

Construction on the "River Junction" set for STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. began early in July 1927 on the west shore of the Sacramento River, opposite the mouth of the American River, about half a mile north of the I Street bridge. The 300 local extras used in the production met at the wharf at the foor of P Street and were ferried to the site, a recreation of a Missouri River town where scores of carpenters, electricians and laborers built the town, docks and a levee. Three river steamers were used in the movie, with railroad scenes shot at the Freeport railroad station, painted and cleaned to look like new. A special train on loan from the Southern Pacific Railroad carried about 100 Sacramentans in period costume up and down the tracks for establishing shots.

So, still don't know what boats these are, and the frustrating thing is, I think I have the information here. . . .SOMEWHERE . . . in box, in a room. . . .
S'
David D.

While the sleuths are ferreting out Steamboats on the Sacramento, please keep looking for the steamboats used in STEAMBOAT 'ROUND THE BEND.

*********

I have read someplace, some time ago, that Buster Keaton did the falling building scene himself, NO stunt-man used !.

It's ironic that no one seem to know the identity of those boats. There could not have been that many around. Certainly they were documented. Very strange. If they were Mississippi river boats, I'll bet everyone would know.

Yes, Keaton did all of his stunts. He was something of an acrobat, which is evident when you watch any of his films. There probably weren't too many people around who could do what he did.

Capt. Jim the Sacramento Str. LEADER was used in the original "steamboat round the bend". The Gordon C. Greene keeps being mentioned as also in the film but I'm not real sure.

I've seen "Steamboat Round the Bend" a few times, including when it was the nightly entertainment in the DQ's Orleans Room. I don't remember any shots of the GORDON C. GREENE. Then again she might have been in one of the many Scotch tape spliced areas on the DQ's copy, unable to be seen, but I don't think so..

It seems to me as if Jack Custer listed all of the boats used in "Steamboat Round the Bend" in his and Sandy's wonderful "Egregious Steamboat Journal." I'll have to do some huntin' for it.

I'm about 99% certain Gordon C Greene wasn't used in it, AFAIK, they were all Sacramento River boats--but I'll have to dig out my copy and watch it again!
S'
David D.

Dave,

I KNOW the GORDON wasn't in Steamboat Round the Bend or Steamboat Bill Jr.. She was in the Kentuckian and in a scene at the end of Gone With The Wind. None of our boats (the Mississippi River steamboats) were in either of the movies mentioned heretofore in this thread!

Travis

calif boats

hi all
back in about 1966 when I was cataloger for the Oakland, Calif History Museum we made a collecting trip to two river steamboats in delta county on the San Joaquin channelized river. The story is that the levee broke and two steamboat from the laid up boats in the Alameda estuary were sent for and they were taken to the break and so placed that there wheel could be used to push the water back out of the fields. and the the boats were stranded there.
They were later used for temporary labor housing and at some point the boiler and engines were taken off the boats. There was not much left to salvage. I think we got some cabin name plates on there the names were carved into the door lintels. If I know the names of the boats they have faded over the years. most of the pictures we took would be in the Oakland Museum. I might have a slide or two some where. It is my understanding that when the happened there were several steamboats in the estuary and these were likely the cheapest.
Carl Jones

I searched my complete roster of The Egregious Steamboat Journal and all I could find is that the Steamers J.D.PETERS and PORT OF STOCKTON were used in "Steamboat Round the Bend."

Steamboat Bill Boats

My friend Ray Brubacher is the theater organist for the American Film Institute here in Washington. I posed the Steamboat Bill question and he replied:

I have absolutely NO idea of the names of the vessels that were used. It appears that they were mock ups when you think of the decrepit old tub that Keaton and dad Ernest Torrence were operating with ropes.

I looked at this website. On the larger boat it appears that the stacks are not connected below the roof line?

STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.

Stan Garvey lists the Steamboat Round the Bend boats in King and Queen of the River: LEADER, PRIDE OF STOCKTON (Capital City), T.C. WALKER, PRIDE OF THE RIVER, CAPT. WEBER and CHEROKEE.

I recall an article in the 1970s in "American Film" the old AFI magazine, about Keaton's location filming, but that may have been only for The General. Maybe one of the internet/library sleuths out here can look for that citation? A virtual Snicker's bar could be at stake.

Wesley