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The Rough Riders (film)

1927 film by Victor Fleming

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 28, 2025
Entity authorityQ7761607 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Rough Riders is a 1927 American silent drama film directed by Victor Fleming, released by Paramount Pictures, and starring Noah Beery, Sr., Charles Farrell, George Bancroft, and Mary Astor. Due to the public apathy towards silent films, a sound version was also prepared early in 1928. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The picture is fictional account of Theodore Roosevelt's military unit in Cuba. This film had an alternate release title, The Trumpet Call. The cinematography was by James Wong Howe and E. Burton Steene.

Plot

Cast

Noah Beery as Hell's Bells

Charles Farrell as Stuart Van Brunt

George Bancroft as Happy Joe

Charles Emmett Mack as Bert Henley

Mary Astor as Dolly

Frank Hopper as Theodore Roosevelt (some sources list him as Frank Hooper)

Fred Lindsay as Leonard Wood

Fred Kohler as Sgt. Stanton

Mark Hamilton as a soldier

Music

The sound version featured a theme song entitled “Goodbye Dolly Gray,” with lyrics by Will D. Cobb and music by Paul Barnes. Also featured was the song entitled “The Rough Riders”

which was composed by Hugo Riesenfeld.

Preservation

Incomplete or fragment prints of The Rough Riders are extant at the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Rough Riders (film)” is 1927 film by Victor Fleming. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rough, Riders and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1927, 1928—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1927-01-01. For this dossier, Rough, Riders and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1927 film by Victor Fleming” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7761607. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927 and 1928.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. 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.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Rough Riders (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Rough Riders (film) primary sources, The Rough Riders (film) archive and Rough research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Rough Riders (film)”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Rough Riders (film)” 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.