A Desert Hero
1919 film by Roscoe Arbuckle
A Desert Hero is a 1919 American short comedy film directed by and starring Fatty Arbuckle. The film is considered to be lost.
Plot
Arbuckle plays a miner who has struck gold. He comes into a frontier town called Carbolic Camp looking for a good time. The town is wild and woolly; anybody who takes the job of sheriff is killed within minutes. Looking to change his gold into cash, Arbuckle enters Hyena Hall, a dancehall run by an enormous bully named Bullneck Bradley. The locals scheme to steal his gold. The star dancing girl refuses to be part of the scheme and is thrown out into the street.
Arbuckle gets into a fight with the town bully; when he wins, he is elected sheriff. He falls in love with the dancing girl, who reforms and joins the Salvation Army.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “A Desert Hero” as 1919 film by Roscoe Arbuckle. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1919 film by Roscoe Arbuckle. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3223526. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “A Desert Hero”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow A Desert Hero primary sources, A Desert Hero archive and Desert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “A Desert Hero”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “A Desert Hero” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.