Joe Roberts

Usually billed as Big Joe Roberts, this massive, generously mustached character comedian spent several years in vaudeville with a rough and tumble act called Roberts, Hays, and Roberts. During his brief movie career, he worked almost exclusively in the films of his old vaudeville friend Buster Keaton. From One Week (1920) onward, he growled and grimaced his way through most of Keaton's silent two-reelers, notably as the harried police captain in the classic Cops (1922). Shortly after appearing as the patriarch of a feuding mountain family in Keaton's feature-length Our Hospitality (1923), Joe Roberts died of a series of strokes.