The Old Fashioned Way

This is one of the top 2 or 3 movies I recommend when someone wants an introduction to the films of W. C. Fields. Classic wisecracking Fields, interaction with Baby LeRoy (including a well-placed kick), the Fields juggling act, and Fields classic costume as he gets off the train and leads (he thinks) a parade, the oversized, ballooning coat. Hi slines are priceless, his interaction with Jan Dugan as Cleopatra Pepperday, singing a song about gathering shells on the seashore brings tears to my eyes with laughter, Nora Cecil does very, very well as the hatchet-faced boarding room landlord Mrs Wendelschaeffer. Very good look at turn of the century melodrama as they present "The Drunkard" onstage. If you see one full-length W. C. Fields movie as an introduction to this comic genius, make it this one! Recommended highly!

There will never be another W.C. Fields in the entertainment world. He was one of a kind, an original, and unique in his style of comedy. He never played sympathetic characters like his peer comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd. In this film, he plays the head of a traveling theater company. They stop in a small town where his daughter falls in love. He often plays father figures to the young women. In order for his show to succeed, he conned a local widow which I thought was wrong in how it ended up. The film is a comedy and sometimes light-hearted. W.C. Fields was a comic genius and one of the great old time performers and movie stars of his day. It's worth watching this film at least once to appreciate his comedic genius.

I love this movie! Ever since I first saw it as a kid I've counted it among my favorite W.C. Fields comedies, and when I saw it again recently it was just as funny, warm, and entertaining as ever, maybe all the more so with the passage of time. While it may not be the funniest film he ever made, The Old Fashioned Way is perhaps Fields' most autobiographical work, as it recreates the life of the traveling player at the turn of the last century, a life he experienced personally as a vaudeville juggler. (A newspaper indicates that the story takes place in April 1897, which makes the "new-fangled horseless carriage" mentioned at one point very new indeed.) Fields' early years on the road were said to be pretty rough. He and his fellow performers were forever at the mercy of unscrupulous managers, forced to live in crummy lodgings where they ate poorly, in towns where they were generally regarded as no better than tramps and whores by the disapproving townsfolk. It was not unheard of for those unscrupulous managers to abscond with the box office receipts, stranding the actors in hostile territory without a penny. Yet somehow, with the advantage of hindsight, Fields was able to turn these unhappy memories into great comedy, comedy that also serves as something of a history lesson -- albeit a pleasant one -- for viewers interested in the American stage.

Because Fields was in his mid-50s when he made this film he was able to turn the tables, in a sense: instead of reprising his real-life role as a starving young actor he'd graduated by this time to the role of the unscrupulous manager, known here simply as The Great McGonigle. McGonigle leads a ragtag troupe of players who are touring the hinterland in that ever-popular temperance warhorse, "The Drunkard." As our story begins this troupe is fleeing a town one step ahead of the sheriff, and heading for their next engagement in the village of Bellefontaine, where prospects don't look much better. In desperate need of cash, McGonigle is compelled to woo a local wealthy widow who aspires to the stage, the magnificently named Cleopatra Pepperday (played with appropriate magnificence by Jan Duggan), while in the meantime his daughter is wooed by a college boy who also dreams of performing. The boarding house where the troupe stays serves as the locale for two hilarious comic set-pieces, back-to-back: first, McGonigle's lunch is ruined by Mrs. Pepperday's rowdy toddler Albert, who flings food in his face, grabs his nose, and dunks his pocket watch in molasses. And then, as if he hadn't been punished enough already, McGonigle must listen to Mrs. Pepperday's spirited rendition of "The Sea Shell Song."

These two sequences alone are reason enough to make this movie a must-see comedy classic, and, interestingly, in each of them Fields himself plays victimized straight man: first to Baby LeRoy, then to Jan Duggan, whose rendition of the song is a show-stopping triumph. Fields' reactions to both of these characters are priceless, but it's also worth pointing out that in this instance the notoriously paranoid, cantankerous W.C. Fields, who was said to be deeply jealous of other comedians, generously shared the spotlight with not one but two fellow players -- one of whom was a baby! -- and permitted each to temporarily steal the spotlight, to the ultimate benefit of the project.

The movie's finale consists of the troupe's performance of "The Drunkard" plus a sentimental song or two, and, best of all, McGonigle's juggling act. This extended sequence feels like an authentic recreation of just what an evening at a small-town theater of the period would have been like, from the cheap-looking sets and declamatory acting styles to the heavy curtain that hits the stage with a crash after each scene. The juggling routine is a special treat, as it represents the most complete filmed record of Fields' legendary feats of legerdemain. My only complaint is that there are a few too many cut-away shots showing audience members' reactions; I'd have been perfectly happy to watch the whole routine in a couple of uninterrupted takes, with no reaction shots at all. But in any event, the juggling act is wonderful.

According to a recent biography of W.C. Fields by James Curtis The Old Fashioned Way suffered through a troubled gestation process. Just as the film was going into production Fields' original screenplay, entitled "Playing the Sticks," was found to be somewhat jumbled and too brief to sustain a feature-length movie. Apparently the savior of the project was an unheralded screenwriter named Jack Cunningham, then known primarily for his earlier work on Westerns such as The Covered Wagon and a couple of Douglas Fairbanks vehicles. It was Cunningham who reworked and expanded Fields' original script into the seamless story it became, and who chose to interpolate the sequences from "The Drunkard." He also persuaded Fields to dust off his old juggling act for the finale. If this background information is correct, then viewers owe a debt of thanks to Mr. Cunningham for his important contribution to this terrifically entertaining, funny, and nostalgic slice of theatrical Americana.

This is the only time that W.C.Fields captured his brilliant juggling skills in a prolong scene in a feature film he starred in. In some of his late films, in decline, like SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD, he would do a portion of his billiard routine or some such work, but here he was fully involved doing the juggling as an encoure to his performance in THE DRUNKARD. And it fits neatly in that position too. Even into the 1920s it was not unusual for a stage star or manager to alter the mood of the evening by doing something unusual and opposite to what he or she had just done. While performing as Hamlet John Barrymore would do an occasional saxophone solo between acts. So why shouldn't Fields (or "the Great McGonigal") do a bit of juggling for an audience in the sticks?

Normally Fields character dominates his comedy, like Laurel and Hardy's personaes dominate their films, or like the Marx Brothers dominate theirs. But here the story line manages to blend everything better than in most of Fields films. Compare it with POPPY, where Fields (as Eustace McGargle) has to balance two story lines: his attempts to pass off his beloved adopted daughter Poppy as a missing heiress, and his attempt to hoodwink the yokels at a local fair. It would not be too hard to split that film into two movies. But here the story deals with the tribulations of a down-at-the-heels stage manager trying to hold his troop together, despite declining revenues. Actually, although it is a funny movie, THE OLD FASHIONED WAY is a study of tragic frustration. For, in the end, despite all his partial victories, McGonigal can't save his troop. He does put on the play THE DRUNKARD, but he fails to maintain the plays' "angel" Cleopatra Pepperday (Jan Dugan) as backer - he fails miserably in this, probably because he can't bring himself to put her into even one small scene as she is so bereft of talent. She is led to believe that her key line is "Here comes the Prince!", and is seen practicing it before the eyes of her friend the sheriff, who can't believe she is going to be on stage. She never does appear on stage, and is last seen crying with the sheriff trying to comfort her. McGonigal realizes he can't pay his troops salaries, nor the cost of their lodgings. And his daughter is going to leave him to marry the man she loves. Look at his face as he embraces her for what he knows is the last time. Who says Fields couldn't act? He is last seen selling some nostrum to the public, pretending to be hoarse until he drinks it. Only the faithful Tammany Young, as his shill, remains from his days of glory.

It's a real downer ending, but the comedy is superb. The scene of the trapped Fields forced to hear Dugan singing "the Sea Shell Song" is a triumph, and it is frequently forgotten that when McGonigal's daughter's boyfriend offers to audition, he says he knows the "Sea Shell Song" , almost causing Fields to have a stroke! Fields run-ins with Baby LeRoy (who even spoils his juggling routine) are a panic. It is a great little film, and one wishes it were shown more often.

Curiously enough the play THE DRUNKARD (written in the 1840s) was a leading melodrama of the 19th Century, and it would be brought back to the screen by another comic legend a few years later. Buster Keaton, as young Willum, confronted Alan Mowbray (as Lawyer Cribbs) in THE VILLAIN STILL PURSUES HER. That film too is rarely revived on television, and it would be interesting to see it and THE OLD FASHIONED WAY to compare versions of THE DRUNKARD. It is a hokey play by our standards, but in the 1840s, when temperance was such a major topic, it was very important. Still, one can't get out of one's mind the comment of a forgotten supporting bit player in THE OLD FASHIONED WAY. He's a young man, with his girlfriend, watching this play because it is the only entertainment in this one horse town. He looks somewhat more sophisticated than she does...she just looks star struck. He's observing her. "Oh, isn't it wonderful!", she gushes. "You think this is a good play?", he asks (emphasizing "this"). "Oh yes!", she responds. Well what can one say to that kind of reaction - probably quite a common one in the boondock areas of the United States in 1880 or so.

The Old Fashioned Way has W.C. Fields as the head of a troupe of strolling players who are just above the poverty level and Fields has to stay one step ahead of the law to dodge his many creditors. Part of that troupe is his daughter Judith Allen and she's got a young man played by Joe Morrison who wants to leave college and go on the stage in pursuit of her.

This is a period film and it goes back to the turn of the last century right about the time when a young juggler named W.C. Fields was going into vaudeville. The Old Fashioned Way offers us a rare treat to see Fields doing the juggling act which he started in show business with. I'm sure Fields drew from his experiences way back when to both write the original story on which the film is based and to give his usual good performance.

The film has a musical score of mostly old public domain standards, but the songwriting team of Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote a couple of original songs for the film. Gordon and Revel were with Paramount at the time, but would soon move to 20th Century Fox where they wrote a number of songs Alice Faye introduced. Morrison has a nice tenor voice and a pleasing, but somewhat limp personality. He does the best known song from the film, Poor Folk well with his tenor, but I have a bootleg radio recording of Russ Columbo doing it on one of his radio shows. Russ's baritone is far more suitable to the number than Morrison's tenor.

Still the show in this film is Fields and no one comes near stealing this film from him. Actress Jan Duggan plays the rich spinster who has stage ambitions and who Fields courts relentlessly, even putting himself through the torture of hearing her sing a really stupid song about gathering sea shells. Duggan would play Bill Fields's foil in several more film after The Old Fashioned Way.

Fans of the eternal Fields will like The Old Fashioned Way and if you see it you'll become a fan of W.C. Fields.