Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

This movie is the reason that video players come with a fast forward button. How anyone could sit through this saccharine sap fest is beyond me.

The target audience must have been weepy old women.

The last 23 minutes with Fields and Pitts are the only reason to watch this nearly complete waste of celluloid.

Fields must have lost a bet and was thus compelled to participate in this turkey.

I enjoy this movie immensely. You don't have to think, you can just sit and laugh, or cry, or whatever it makes you feel like doing. I laugh, simply because I am not a teary person.

This film stars Pauline Lord as Mrs. Wiggs, a woman who lives in a quaint almost-slum. If my memory serves me correctly, Pauline Lord was an established Broadway actress who played this role on the stage. She has it down pat, that's for sure. The main problem I had with her performance, and it's a small problem, is that she tends to be a little too soft-spoken. Seeing as my copy isn't very good quality, there were long stretches when her mouth was moving and I didn't hear anything. Then I turned up the volume on my TV--problem solved. Honestly, I thought she did a marvelous job...she defines the word "heartwarming." That sounds ridiculous, I know, but I just love her in this. I've never seen her in anything else, so perhaps this was one of those "Bring the Broadway star to relive her greatest triumph" things, like Shirley Booth.

The best thing about this little movie, at least in my opinion, is ZaSu Pitts. She was a great dramatic actress until sound came in, when her singsong monotone undermined her ability. It's displayed to good advantage here. Her first line in the movie is an example. She says something along the lines of "Animals just seem to run out from under me like chickens from under a hen." The way she says it just kills me. I feel bad for her though, losing her star status simply because she sounded like a bored tea kettle. Fortunately, though, one element of her silent screen acting remains. The character she plays, Miss Hazy (whom Mrs. Wiggs introduces to everyone as the maiden lady from next door), is a very flighty, nervous person, as spinsters are rumored to be. When she goes through her "book of sweethearts" and gets caught, her hands flutter about like panicked butterflies. She's being awkward in an extremely graceful way--it's difficult to explain. Miss Hazy finally gets her wish when her husband arrives, in the portly form of W.C. Fields. (Does "W.C." stand for "water closet," you think?) She probably regrets wishing, one has to think.

The children in the film are suitably saccharine, but Virginia Weidler (from "The Philadelphia Story") is as obnoxious as kids come. She taunts Miss Hazy by holding her breath, saying "I'll turn black in the face!" The other children were played by people I didn't recognize. Billy, one of the two boys, is the "man" of the family, and acts as such. He isn't above showing emotion though, as he cries with the best of them. Also of note is the awfully sway-backed horse Billy is given. That animal looked as though he'd had a rough life, but Mrs. Wiggs has a magic touch. The scene where they revive the almost dead horse is amusing, with Mrs. Wiggs telling the children to cheer for him but warning them against "overyelling." If they yell too loudly, they might tip him over and then they'd never get him up again. Once he's finally on his feet, Mrs. Wiggs and Miss Hazy hold him up until they're sure he can stand upright.

All in all, a cute little movie. That's the word for it--cute. If you don't like sweet little greeting cards from yesteryear, then this isn't your thing.

Pauline Lord plays Mrs. Wiggs, a poor, single mother whose husband is supposedly up looking for gold in the Klondike. She has five children, one of whom is very sickly. They have almost no money and their landlord is about to give them the boot, but luckily a benevolent rich couple takes an interest in them. Sometimes the relationship between the Wiggs and these two works out well. The couple's deeds seem sincere most of the time. But at odd times their behavior seems, well, not reprehensible, exactly, but questionable. It's almost as if they're treating the Wiggs as pets. How should we feel when the woman, Lucy, brings them a couple of baskets containing Thanksgiving dinner. Nice, yes, but does Lucy really have to be wearing a $5000 outfit made almost exclusively of fox fur? I suppose this element didn't mean anything to those who were suffering through the Depression: Lucy was nice and that's that. From this vantage point, though, I don't know; my knee jerked a little. The melodrama kind of fades near the end as good ol' W.C. Fields wanders into the picture. He plays a sort of a mail-order husband to Mrs. Wiggs' neighbor, Ms. Hazy (well played by Greed star Zasu Pitts). Fields is as humorous as ever, and there's a very amusing scene where the Wiggs family helps Ms. Hazy trick him into thinking she's a great cook. Donald Meek (best known as the whiskey salesman from Stagecoach a few years later) shows up in a quick role that doesn't work out too well. 7/10.

It is somewhat odd that in the decades of movie development from the turn of the century to the present so few stage stars were able to achieve stardom on film. Usually excuses are given about aging or the general theory that stage work was more prestigious than film work. So few great performers tried to make the change. George M. Cohan made several silent films and two sound films. Only one of the sound films, the musical THE PHANTOM PRESIDENT, is available to be seen - fortunately it shows a mature Cohan at his best. Sarah Bernhardt did do an early (1910) feature QUEEN ELIZABETH with Lou Telegrin as the Earl of Essex. It is worthwhile to watch, but she was an elderly actress at the time (perfect for that role). Unfortunately it is a silent film. Kathleen Cornell did do a Shakespearian speech in one of those all star Hollywood films of the 1940s, but nothing else. Luckier than most were Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine, who did REUNION IN VIENNA in 1932 (and got Oscar nominations that year), but no other films together - but did many television productions for shows like the Hallmark Hall of Fame (such as THE MAGNIFICENT YANKEE and THE GREAT SEBASTIANS) in the 1950s and 1960s.

Who was Pauline Lord? From the 1920s to the 1940s she was one of Broadway's leading ladies. Perhaps she is best remembered for appearing opposite Raymond Massey in ETHAN FROME in 1938. She made a few films, one of which is this one. She plays Mrs. Wiggs, who tries to survive with her children until her husband (Donald Meek) returns from the Klondike with a fortune in gold. The movie (based on a children's book from the 1890s)follows the lady as she struggles on. Ms Lord was actually a very subtle actress, but she had a low speaking voice

which on stage was effective but this film shows it is very tiring. Some critics have seen some of her furtive finger and hand gestures as evidence of great acting ability. Perhaps, but they are too subtle for this film viewer's taste. If the story was more interesting instead of being so simple and boring the movie might be worth watching. So it isn't.

It isn't a W.C.Fields movie either. It was obvious that the film needed some flavoring to keep it alive, so Fields got hired for one week's work as Mr. Stubbins, who is a mail order lover Zazu Pitts has been contacting. Fields tries to do what he can do with his material, but it is dull. Basically Stubbins wants a wife who can cook. Pitts can't cook. So she asks her friend Lord to cook a good meal to impress Mr. Stubbins. He is almost convinced, but he returns to have a second meal and Pitts has to cook it. And it is lousy. Disgusted with a lover who only thinks of his stomach, Pitts throws him out. Hardly the same material for the man who was Harold Bissonet in IT'S A GIFT and Egbert Souse in THE BANK DICK (or even Professor John Quayle in INTERNATIONAL HOUSE).

This was the only film with Charles Middleton as a villain (Lord's landlord) that I wished he would succeed in his villainy. Even he is spoiled in one scene near the end, where he has to be mildly reproved by the soft-spoken Ms Lord, just before Meek returns. This was a dull, boring movie.

Paramount really reached back in time going to the Theodore Roosevelt years for material in Mrs. Wiggs Of The Cabbage Patch. A film I doubt we'll see a fourth version of. Where would you find a W.C. Fields of today.

This story first came to Broadway in 1905 and it had a silent film version and another talkie after this one. Though W.C. Fields is in this film it is only maybe for about 15 minutes toward the end and he's part of a side story involving the Wiggs neighbor Zasu Pitts's quest for a husband. W.C. Fields has come a callin' in that regard. Can you imagine Fields as the answer to a woman's prayer?

The main story involves Mrs. Wiggs and her five children who live in a ramshackle house that they still owe $25.00 on. But Donald Meek the husband has left to seek fame and fortune in the Klondike and the mother and the kids fend for themselves or depend on the kindness of neighbors like Pitts, Evelyn Brent and Kent Taylor.

First billed above Fields is Pauline Lord who was a premier stage actress of the day whose credits on Broadway include Eugene O'Neill works like Anna Christie and Strange Interlude. She's got the firmest upper lip on this side of the Atlantic and is firmly convinced that husband Donald Meek will make it back to home and hearth.

One of the kids is George Breakston who is best known for playing Andy Hardy's best friend Beezy in that series. He's seriously ill and his scenes with Lord are the high point of the film.

In a very sad story Bill Fields truly is the comic relief. It's a pity he and Zasu Pitts never did a film of their own. I suspect Fields did not want to work with a scene stealer like her again. As for Fields there's a great example of his comic genius with body language and all and no dialog him trying to cut over a barbed wire fence leading to Pitts's home. Physical comedy at its finest.

Mrs. Wigss Of The Cabbage Patch is a quaint curiosity of a film that is interesting mainly for fans of W.C. Fields. For the historically minded it is a chance to see Pauline Lord in a rare film appearance.