Running Wild

Running Wild (1927)

*** (out of 4)

Elmer Finch (W.C. Fields) is one of the biggest cowards that you're ever going to meet. He's had the same job for twenty-years and has never gotten a raise yet he's too scared to say anything. Even worse is his life at home where his second wife and stepson push him around. All of this changes when he's hypnotized and believes that he's a lion, which brings out a tough side he never knew he had.

RUNNING WILD is a film that can easily be called classic Fields. I know a lot of people are just so familiar with that wonderful voice that they never warm up to his silent pictures but I'm curious if those people have seen this film because it's quite funny and it perfectly uses Fields' talents to get some great laughs throughout the short running time.

The film clocks in at just 67-minutes and the first forty-minutes are devoted to seeing what a wimp this character is. We get a long stretch at his house where we see him getting pushed around by the wife and one of the most annoying jerks of a child that the screen has ever seen. We then see him getting pushed around by his boss as well as a man who owes the company a lot of cash. Throughout these scenes there is a nice and steady pace of laughs but there's no question that the highlight of the film is when the lion comes out.

Fields basically turns into a madman as he runs around with boxing gloves on, screams he's a lion and beats everyone up who confronts him. The maniac-style that Fields brings to the role was quite hilarious and just look at his eyes and see how crazy he really does seem. These scenes were certainly hilarious and I think they'd sell everyone on the fact that Fields could perfectly handle a silent movie. The supporting players are good but there's no question that the film belongs to Fields.

RUNNING WILD is a bit uneven at times and the first portion doesn't have many huge laughs but there's no question that fans of Fields should enjoy this.

Starts slowly (though the opening exercise scene is a fun satire of the radio exercise programs of the day), but once Fields gets hypnotized and transformed, it really gets going.

Good supporting cast, especially his boy (Junior) and the dog.

For W. C. Fields, only three silent features are available for home viewing (So's Your Old Man" exists but has remained stubbornly elusive), and 1927's "Running Wild" must be considered the best on an unfortunately short list. 1925's "Sally of the Sawdust" must be considered a curio, as director D. W. Griffith shifted the focus away from Fields toward current muse Carol Dempster, making the 1936 remake "Poppy" a far more faithful rendition. "It's the Old Army Game" is the one other silent that compares favorably with "Running Wild," but at 105 minutes runs on a tad long (Louise Brooks, still a luminous teenager, takes too much footage away from Fields). "Running Wild" co-stars Mary Brian as Fields' loving daughter, a role she would repeat in the 1935 classic "Man on the Flying Trapeze," sometimes identified as a remake but proving decidedly different. This probably represents Fields at his most downtrodden, henpecked by a shrewish wife still pining for her first husband, browbeaten by a loafing invalid stepson crying for his mother whenever he wants to get his father's goat (even the family dog doesn't like him). Employed by the same toy company for 20 years (too meek to ask for a raise), he ends up with the courage to fight back after being unwittingly hypnotized by a stage magician, convinced he is now 'a lion!' Even before the benefit of sound, this film proves that W. C. Fields was in total control of his own work, with most of the comic business unique to this one production.

RUNNING WILD (Paramount, 1927), directed by Gregory LaCava, may sound more like a sports story about a marathon race, but regardless of its title, it's a silent comedy starring W.C. Fields (sporting mustache) playing a timid husband and his attempt in trying to win some respect from both his family and co-workers.

Opening title: "There's one inventor who should have been boiled in oil." The story begins as the alarm clock awakens Elmer Finch (W.C. Fields) for a new day that's about to begin. Inter-titles introduce the individual characters in question: "Elmer Finch was a timid soul - he had been married twice"; "Elmer's daughter, Mary (Mary Brian), was all he had to remind him of his happy first marriage"; "Elmer's first mistake was his second wife" (Marie Shotwell). " "Elmer had a stepson (Barney Raskle) also - but that wasn't Elmer's fault." There is also a family dog, Rex, who sic's Elmer at Junior's command. Elmer is a billing clerk working at a toy factory for twenty years without ever receiving a raise in salary. His employer, D.W. Harvey (Frederick Burton) happens to have a son, Dave (Claude Buchanan), who love's Elmer's daughter, Mary. Because his wife and loafing brother-in-law take advantage of Elmer, Mary, unable to obtain a new dress for the upcoming ball, tells off her father by saying he doesn't deserve any respect. Though he knows that, hearing it from Mary is enough to hurt his poor ego. While at work, Elmer tries to make a good impression by passing himself off as sales manager when Henry Johnson (J. Moy Bennett), an important buyer for the company, arrives, only to have everything go wrong. Unable to collect payment from the tough Amos Barker (Frank Evans), Mr. Harvey sends Elmer out to get it, but seeing what Barker has done to the other collectors makes Elmer resist. Elmer's inferiority complex starts to change after attending a vaudeville show when Elmer becomes the subject to Arvo (Edward Roseman), a hypnotist, who changes him from weakling to a roaring "lion."

An extremely amusing WC Fields comedy with overly familiar pattern carried over to some of his classic sound comedies of the 1930s. While some of them were actually remade with Fields in the 1930s, RUNNING WILD is actually an original premise. Some sources claim RUNNING WILD to have been remade as THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE (1935), but it's not. The only similarities between the two movies are that they both feature Mary Brian as Fields' loving daughter, and that Fields' character, Ambrose Wolfinger, happens to be a henpecked husband in a second marriage bossed by a domineering wife (Kathleen Howard) who pampers her lazy good-for-nothing adult son (Grady Sutton). The second half of the "Trapeze" comedy focuses on Ambrose's attempt to get a day off from work to attend the wrestling matches while RUNNING WILD shifts timid husband to a forceful hypnotized individual after returning home. The results are not only well constructed but deserving.

As much as Fields' was a comedian equipped best for sound comedies, his silent ones initially failed to compete with contemporaries as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, yet, Fields, younger and thinner from his later efforts, holds his own here, even to a point of arousing sympathy through his sadden reaction regarding his lack of respect from his family. Mary Brian proves ideal as the sympathetic daughter, an actress Fields would use again in his other silent comedy, TWO FLAMING YOUTHS (1927).

While some Fields' silent comedies have been lost to future generations, RUNNING WILD fortunately survives intact, even to a point of its distribution to video cassette in 1992 equipped with excellent Gaylord Carter organ scoring accompaniment. To date, RUNNING WILD has never been released to television.

RUNNING WILD should be an enjoyable 68 minutes for fans of Fields or silent comedies such as this one, a rarely seen product that deserve recognition and discovery today. (***)

Report from Cinevent 2007: RUNNING WILD (****) One of the few W.C. Fields silents NOT remade as a Paramount talkie-- though the setup is awfully close to The Man on the Flying Trapeze, with Fields as an office drudge with a messy desk and a wife and pampered stepson who have him beaten down. The turning point of the plot takes it in a more visual direction, though-- his inner lion is released by a hypnotist and he literally runs wild, delivering comeuppance to all his tormentors in a lengthy comedy-action sequence. It had the audience in stitches, and showed that while his silents lack one of the talkies' great assets-- his voice-- they also had sides of his persona lacking in the films made when he was older and less agile.