THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN
Starring Will Rogers
EXCEPTIONAL PHOTOPLAYS
November 1922
No matter what the difference of opinion may be as to the Will Rogers' screen production of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" ("The Headless Horseman") as a whole -- whether one is inclined to be satisfied or disappointed -- there will probably be general agreement as to Mr. Rogers having given us a unique and whimsical original character in his figure of the gaunt and comical Yankee school-master of the Irving tale. The crane-like quallity, the scare-crow grotesqueness of the orignal is missing. On the other hand, the original misses somewhat of the drawing of Mr. Rogers -- notably, in the element of human pathos and clown-like likeability, on the part of the poor alien who, striving to knock some learning into the thick pates of their children, finds himself the butt of the burgher's sturdy Dutch humor. Thus, it is an original, but none the less honest, reading of the role; it stamps Mr. Rogers as an actor of versatility -- as an artist more concerned with doing truth to human nature than doing human nature at the expense of truth. Not that Mr. Rogers needed to furnish proof of this virtue, or to give further assurance that as long as he continues in pictures, credit will be reflected on the American screen.