Man on the Flying Trapeze

This was one of W.C. Fields' favorite films, and in fact was closest to his own family situation, or at least his version of it. It also reprises many of his skits worked out with the writer J.P. McEvoy, which he also replays in It's A Gift and other W.C. Fields' movies of the domestic type, like The Bank Dick.

I love this movie; it contains much of the actual W.C. Fields. The son, Claude, for example. W.C. Fields' and Hattie Fields, his wife, were estranged while their son, William Claude, Jr., grew up. Fields believed, according to biographers, including his grandson, that his wife turned his son against him. He always believed that if he'd had a daughter, she would be a more loyal child. In this movie, the son, Claude, is awful to him, while the daughter, Hope (!), is loyal and loving.

The gags fly: "How can you hurt a person by throwing him on his head?" "It must be hard to lose your mother-in-law." "Yes, it is, almost impossib-, um, yes." Or my favorite exchange, the most brilliantly poignant comment on an unhappy marriage, I think, ever portrayed in a movie. "Is your toast warm, Dad?" "No, dear, it's cold. But it's all right. I've been eating cold toast now for eight years; I like it." All the while looking as miserable as anyone ever could. God, he was brilliant.

There's also the sense that Ambrose, the character The Great Silly plays, is someone lost in a world that he doesn't understand. The scene where instead of the burglars, HE is the one sent to jail. Or the scene where he's parked in a no parking zone, and the painful exchanges with the cop, the chauffeur, etc. Or when he loses the car's wheel and chases it down the hill, over the dale, down the railroad tracks, barely escaping death twice.

His actual mistress (W.C. and Hattie, Catholics, never divorced), Carlotta Monti, plays his secretary, and is the one who explains that her mother is good friends with Hookalakah Meshobbab, somehow without howling with laughter.

Ah, what a film, and it's a disgrace that it's not on DVD yet.

I consider this title, along with "It's A Gift", to be the best work of W.C. Fields entire career. He isn't a carnival huckster or a flim-flam man here...no top hat and double breasted suit. He's just a lower middle-class husband dealing with a lazy brother-in-law, shrewish wife and meddlesome mother-in-law. He's a classic case of what we would call today "passive-aggressive", a brow-beaten man who appears to have given up on asserting himself with his family, deferring to everyone around him, but still managing to do what he wants. I only wish he and Kathleen Howard(playing his wife) had done more than two movies together. They play off of each other wonderfully. So many hilarious set-pieces, but the breakfast table scene, with that "delightful verse by Gertrude Smotten," still ranks as my favorite.

I agree with Fowler of Metarie. This is one of W. C. Fields classic masterpieces. It is certainly on a par with the available later films such as "The Bank Dick" and "Its a Gift". It is a shame that this film isn't available on commercial video.

The scene where W. C.'s character in sent, unwillingly, to investigate the, "burglars singing in the cellar", is one of the funniest on film. He encounters the burglars, including a young Walter Brennan with hair, in the cellar with his friends stealing W. C.'s illegal cider and singing. W. C. admires the singing and enters into the festivities. This scene, from the point where he is browbeaten into going down to check the cellar, to the point point where he is arrested by the investigating cops for making cider without a license, is comparable to anything on film, including the famous "and-a two hard boiled eggs," scene from the Marx Brothers, "Night at the Opera", or Fields own back porch scene from "Its a Gift".

I remember seeing this film broadcast about twenty years ago. I have looked to no avail for it to be rebroadcast ever since. This is such a good movie it really needs to be available.

Something's amiss if I'm posting the first and only comment on this important Fields comedy, and I think I know what it is: none of his mid-30s Paramount triumphs are available for viewing! Videotapes of Fields films ca. 1932-6 are seemingly nonexistent, and they're never on television (cah-mon, Turner Classic Movies, look alive here!) End result: many thousands of younger viewers -some of 'em already fans of 30s movies- are being cheated of their comedy birthright. (Of course, his later and equally-funny Universal jobs are readily available - witness the ever-spiraling reputation of THE BANK DICK, for starters.) And you can sing THE BANK DICK's praises morning, noon and night and get nothing but 'amens' from me, but a case can be made for mid-30s Fields-at-Paramount as his best and most fertile period, and TRAPEZE -which came at the end of that run- embodies every virtue inherent in the Great Man's work. When a Fields movie fires on all cylinders, it should almost seem a throwaway: meandering plot, disconnected bits of old vaudeville, sitcom surrealism and Falstaffian braggadocio loosely strung together with a nonchalant mean streak adding the sting in the tail. (Certainly, every fan of FAWLTY TOWERS needs to see this one!) Here, he plays Ambrose Wolfinger, a man as put-upon and abused in his fruitless search for middle-class contentment as BRINGING UP FATHER's Jiggs (complete with his very own harridan Maggie, played here by Kathleen Howard, whose baleful countenance could've cowed Groucho into meek silence!) The plot revolves around Fields' doomed attempts to sneak away from work to see his favorite wrestler, the aforementioned Mr. Mishabob, with neither his boss nor his wife ever being the wiser. That's it; that's the plot, thin enough to be rejected for an episode of LIFE OF RILEY. And as usual with Fields, this ludicrously threadbare conflict is the essence of his art, as we watch this browbeaten fellow struggle to maintain a sense of decorum as everyone and everything in his universe conspires to crush, defeat and deny him this one simple desire, with hilarious results. (Well, I told you about that mean streak, right?) The beauty of Fields and TRAPEZE is that, though he's essentially a small, petty, unlikable prig, everyone AROUND him is a thousand times worse - so horrid and poisonous that he becomes sympathetic and even heroic by comparison (with the exception of the one pearl of sentiment he allowed himself, the loving and understanding daughter who defends him by allowing him to think she needs HIS protection). There aren't very many comedies that deliver such richness of pleasure from such skeletal premises: in fact, most of them were made by Fields. Will someone please revive this gem before the last print falls to dust?

This is one film that most W C Fields Fans would want to buy--if it were available on video from Universal, the video source that has the deepest, darkest vaults in the video business. What Universal is not releasing (among many other Fields films) is a saga of Fields in his "Henpecked Husband" role as an office manager who has the answers to everything in the interior of his massive roll top desk. He is unappreciated by his wife, mother-in-law, and do nothing step-son, but loved by his grown daughter--a reoccuring theme in many of his movies. All he wants to do is take the afternoon off to go to the wrestling match, and being a loyal employee who does not want to offend his boss, thinks of an excuse to leave for the day. From here his day goes downhill. Does he ever see the match? Try to turn on the television and see this film, if it ever shows up on the major film "networks". Or, just pray for Universal to release this film on video. It's a great Fields film. Don't miss it if you can!