Joe Roberts gives Buster Keaton someone substantial to get past, with a heavy's size and a comedian's timing. We value him most in Our Hospitality, where his stern authority leaves room for restraint.
Fi1m perspective
Beside Buster Keaton, Joe Roberts makes the difference in size part of the joke. His bulk supplies the threat, but his timing makes it useful to the comedy. As a father, police chief or other imposing authority, he gives Keaton a reason to look vulnerable even when the physical business is meticulously controlled. We rate Roberts as a supporting comic actor because he makes those confrontations work without needing to soften the heavy. The limitation is clear enough: the size and severity can tell us much of what a part requires before he has done anything.
Roberts entered films with Keaton in 1920 and appeared in sixteen of his nineteen silent shorts made between 1920 and 1922. The police chiefs in The Goat (1921) and Cops (1922) show how regularly that authority was put to use. Keaton, as director and co-star, had a dependable opponent for elaborate physical comedy. The move into features brought Three Ages (1923), with Roberts as the girl's father, and Our Hospitality (1923), which asks more of him.
In Our Hospitality, his Joseph Canfield is stern but bound by a code of honour, a useful complication for an actor so readily cast as a menace. He fits the broader comic scale, while the part also gives him room for quieter playing. We enjoyed his severity because it gave Keaton's vulnerable William McKay someone worth worrying about. Keaton's precision never quite removes the sense of effort, and Roberts's physical presence makes that effort matter. Canfield has rules of his own to obey, so Roberts has something to play beyond simple aggression.
The film still asks for patience, and its romantic passages lack the particularity of the railway business. Roberts's fit with the broader comedy is one of its pleasures, though it cannot prevent the pace from slackening. His film work was concentrated in the Keaton company and in heavy roles, leaving limited evidence of what he might have done with different material. Start with Our Hospitality for Roberts, provided the slower romantic passages do not put you off.
Biography
Joe Roberts, also known as Big Joe Roberts or Joseph Henry Roberts, was an American comic actor. He appeared in 16 of Buster Keaton's 19 silent short films of the 1920s, frequently playing menacing heavies or authority figures whose large stature contrasted with Keaton's smaller frame.
Roberts began in vaudeville, touring with his first wife Lillian Stuart Roberts in the act Roberts, Hays and Roberts. He became acquainted with the Keaton family through the Actors' Colony in Michigan. From 1920 he joined Keaton's film company, appearing in shorts including One Week (1920), Cops (1922) and The Goat (1921), and features such as Three Ages (1923) and Our Hospitality (1923), in which he played Joseph Canfield. He made only two films outside Keaton productions.
During filming of Our Hospitality in 1923 Roberts suffered a stroke but returned to complete his scenes. He attended a preview of the film but died shortly afterwards on 28 October 1923.
