Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx

This is a really odd and somehow compelling movie. Gene Wilder is an independent and none-too-bright guy in a working class Dublin family. He does quite a good job in the role. I never much liked him away from Mel Brooks, but I have to admit he was just right in this part. I'm no expert on the working class Dublin dialects, but he fooled my ear. I couldn't even tell it was his voice!

Anyway, Wilder doesn't want to spend his life working in a factory like his dad, so he creates a profession for himself. He follows the horse-drawn delivery wagons, shovels up the horse-dropping from the streets, and resells it from a pushcart, as fertilizer. ("Get your fresh dung"!) He loves this, the city loves him for it, and he is generally loved by everyone he meets along the way.

The problem is that the modern world is encroaching on the world he has built for himself; the horses are going to be shipped off to unpleasant fates, and Wilder has no skills to find another profession. He can't even read or write.

Margot Kidder is the love interest of sorts, an adventurous American college student, and she was really college age (21) at the time it was filmed in Dublin, nearly a decade before she hit the big time as Lois Lane. She was very beautiful. Her character gradually seduces Quackser, and he thinks it's love. For her it's a frolic, which she regrets by the time they actually sleep together.

Just when things look bleakest for Quackser, without job or girl, there is a deus ex machina happy ending which spoiled for me an otherwise realistic and bittersweet movie.

Gene Wilder went full Irish in 1970 with the release of Waris Hussein's feature Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx. Despite its long seemingly absurd name, the film packs quite a punch of commentary on social issues that resonate today, nearly 50 years after its release. The story of a humble man who must fall in love to inspire him to experience the world is one that any audience can relate to. We all start out as trailblazers, never bending to the wills of society, and if we have fortunate, we stay that way.

Quackser (Aloysius) Fortune (Gene Wilder) has an unusual job around his Dublin home. He follows the horses that make deliveries around the city, collecting their manure and selling it to the housewives in the village. One day on his ride around collecting, he is nearly trampled by an American student studying at the prestigious Trinity College in Dublin. After she apologizes and the two go on their way, the student, Zazel (Margot Kidder) tracks Quackser down to properly apologize. The two develop a friendship and begin spending time together. Quackser's family, desperate for him to get a "real job" are enthused about the prospect of him meeting someone and marrying and advancing his life. As Quackser and Zazel continue to spend time together, even becoming romantic, their differences become more apparent. Quackser is looked down upon due to his job and humble upbringing, as his family has little money. Amidst all that exists to separate them, the two love struck young people seem committed to making a relationship work. One day, after ignoring several warnings from his family, Quackser's livelihood comes crashing down when the horse-drawn carriages are banned in Dublin. Seeing his financial stability come crashing down at the same time that his romantic relationship is ending with the completion of Zazel's semester, Quackser is forced to make big decisions about his life, that may include leaving it all behind for a foray into the Bronx.

It must be noted, that Gene Wilder maintains a wonderful Irish accent all throughout the film. It is all too common to be pulled out of a film by a bad accent job on the part of the principle actors, but Quackser Fortune never falls to this problem because of Wilder's exceptional job with the accent. An economically disadvantaged guy pushes a cart full of poop around for a living; the story on its own doesn't do much to pull in the audience. Add to it, though, the fierce determination to not live one's life only by the standards of other people and you have a quirky film with an important message. Waris Hussein never strays from real human emotions in this film. His film faces head on, the problems with the union between Quackser and Zazel, and refuses to cave to the easy ending. Disregard the silly title, and give Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx a chance, it packs a more powerful punch than you'd anticipate.

Another lead role for Gene Wilder, just 3 years after his first time on screen, certainly a feat not enjoyed by every actor. With the added difficulty of filming on location and maintaining a very dominant accent, this lead role was no slouch. It was great to see Wilder carrying a film as he shared the lead role with larger-than- life Zero Mostel in The Producers. Being a fan of WIlder's work, this film was a brilliant surprise as I had missed it previously while watching his filmography. Quackser is a standout performance for Wilder and one that should not be missed.

Like another writer said, this was showing as second in a double bill, in 1976 -- but I can't remember the name of the movie my friends and I went to see and stayed for this one, too. Yet I sure remember "Quackser Fortune." I barely knew anything about Gene Wilder at the time, though I had seen Young Frankenstein, and he was entirely believable in the role. It was funny, a little sad, yes, formulaic, but with a pleasantly surprising ending. What I remember best was the interplay between Quackser and his family as he gains a dawning understanding of the world around him, including the charms of a woman. Quackser owns no comb, and must use a toothbrush to primp for his first date. And his manure merchandising around Dublin, calling "Git yer sh --!" was hysterical. I've been to Ireland since, read extensively about the Irish people, and would love to see this one again -- but have yet to see it on HE (How about "aitch-ee" for a new acronym to take in both video and DVD? Quackser would approve -- he was a forward, yet pragmatic, sort of guy.) -- knr

Most people don't even get past the title. The website Total Film ranked it as the 16th worst film title of all time. Mind you, it comes from an era that also produced titles like Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? and Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe And Find True Happiness? So maybe it didn't stand out that much at the time.

And then there's the basic premise of the film – Gene Wilder as a simple Dubliner … who collects horse dung for a living. Not promising, on the face of it.

It's sometimes described as a romantic comedy. Well … it's certainly very funny. And there's a romance at the heart of it. But thankfully, it comes from a time when films didn't all have to conform to rigid categories so it's also filled with a sweet sadness right from the start, characterised by the melancholy little tune which Quackser hums to himself. Its hero lives in straitened circumstances with poor prospects. But this is far from Angela's Ashes. On the contrary, Quackser's lack of ambition and easygoing approach to life are a cause for celebration at the end of the Sixties.

It's very unusual for its time in being a major Hollywood motion picture which was not only shot but set in contemporary Dublin. The steady-ish stream of big-budget films made here in those years such as The Blue Max, Darling Lili and The Spy Who Came in from The Cold were inevitably of another place and - often - another time. But here was our Dublin on the big screen, though admittedly a Dublin that was already fading away before our eyes.

It was filmed in August/September 1969 mainly on location around the city but also in Ardmore Studios. It opened in the USA in July 1970 but thanks to distribution problems, it didn't reach Irish cinemas until June 1972, which is when I first saw it.

Let me tell you a little about some of the people involved, all of whom have had extraordinary careers: Whatever about Quackser's improbable story, Gabriel Walsh, who wrote the screenplay, can easily match him. Born into poverty in Inchicore in 1938, one of 10 children, he found himself working as a waiter in the Shelbourne Hotel at the age of 16 when a chance meeting with the great diva, Margaret Bourke-Sheridan led to him being whisked off to a privileged life in the USA and a career as an actor and writer. All of this is recounted in his autobiography, Maggie's Breakfast which was published in 2012. Incidentally he claims that the "dung recycling" business was his own first job.

Waris Hussein, the Indian-born British director, who incidentally directed the first four episodes ever of Dr. Who, spent most of his career in television, directing only half a dozen feature films in the course of a very busy 40-year career. The distinguished cinematographer Gilbert "Gil" Taylor demonstrates here his affection for urban scruffiness, already shown on A Hard Day's Night and Ferry Cross The Mersey – a far cry from his most famous films, Dr. Strangelove and the original Star Wars.

This was Gene Wilder's fourth feature film. He had already notched up Bonnie & Clyde, The Producers and Start the Revolution Without Me. The following year would bring Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So he was already a hot, if odd, property. For 21-year old Margot Kidder it was only her second feature film. Indeed it seems that after some harsh words from Waris Hussein during the making of Quackser Fortune, she temporarily left films to study acting in New York, doing television work to pay her bills. But when the money ran out, she returned to Hollywood and of course, huge success as Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the Superman movies.

1969 must have been a fantastic summer for Irish actors as, for many of them, Ryan's Daughter had already begun its lengthy shoot in Kerry. And anybody who wasn't down there seems to have ended up in Quackser Fortune. So at times it's not so much a "Who's Who" as a "Who's That?" of Irish acting but among those familiar to Irish viewers are two singers - the balding basso, Charlie Byrne, Joe Lynch's sidekick on Living With Lynch as a blacksmith and the celebrated tenor Martin Crosbie as a guard, not to mention Glenroe's Robert Carrickford as a waiter and in particular the three bar-flies in The Gravediggers in Glasnevin – David Kelly as … how to put this delicately … a shoe-fetishist, the wonderful Danny Cummins as a very persistent pub pest and in sharp contrast to his role as Fr. Sheehy in The Riordans, the young Tony Doyle as a gold-medallioned Lothario. It's a delight to see Eileen Colgan in a role that would certainly raise the eyebrows of those who know her best from Glenroe and later from Fair City. And what can you say about Quackser's family especially the lovely Liz Davis as his bicycling sister and the magnificent Seamus Forde and May Ollis as the long-suffering Fortune parents. And spare a thought for poor Paul Murphy, later to be beloved as a Cork-Mother-of-Seven and Ballymagash town-councillor in Hall's Pictorial Weekly, but here the worst kind of Trinity College rotter … called Damian.

Obviously one of the joys of the film for those of us familiar with Dublin, old and new, is to spot the changes that 40 plus years have wrought, especially around the north and south docks, though Trinity College and the area around the Peppercannister Church look remarkably unchanged. One surprisingly modern touch is the graffiti scrawled on a wall at one point: "Vote No" – a timeless sentiment!

I saw this particular movie in a Dublin theatre way back in the early 1970's and I found it to be a very memorable film about a working class lad who couldn't bring himself to follow in his father's footsteps and work in the factory punching a clock. When his livelihood dries up with the retirement of horse drawn wagons, he attempts to go to the factory but ends up making his own way in the end. Ah, yes, there is a love interest as well, which keeps the story interesting. Not many movies stick with me so that's saying something for me. It was the first time I noticed Gene Wilder in a film (though I'm sure I saw him in Bonnie and Clyde) and I thought he was very good - and genuine. His success doesn't surprise me. It's an "off the beaten path" kind of movie in a way - but not in the wild and crazy sense. And I would recommend it if you can find a copy somewhere.