Dans la peau du lion

W.C. Fields portrays Elmer Finch, a milquetoast whose persona is sunk with fear of everything, including sidewalk lines, but particularly of his wife, stepson and boss, resulting in a comically miserable life with affection shared only with his daughter, played by the excellent Mary Brian. His extreme inferiority complex has kept him mired in the same dull job for 20 years without promotion or pay raise, as he is overly timid about approaching his employer, performed very well by Frederick Burton in his final silent effort. All of this comes to an abrupt end, due to Finch finding a horseshoe, as the scenario cleverly builds to a point where chance controls events, and Elmer has an opportunity to revise his failed life. The second half of the film becomes largely farce, with a rather slender and extremely energetic Fields not being still for a moment, with his body or his extremely expressive face, as he produces all of the crowdpleasing correctives that are called for by the script. The story is graced with a splendid organ score written and performed by the ever reliable Gaylord Carter and is well written and directed by Gregory La Cava, who continued in the talkies at the helm of such snappy classics as MY MAN GODFREY and STAGE DOOR.

Elmer Finch (W.C.Fields) is a good man, married for the second time and working for twenty years in a company as accountant. However, he is not respected by his wife and his stepson and even by his dog. In his work, his boss and colleagues spend an abusive treatment, and clients do not respect him either. His life changes when he is accidentally hypnotized and transformed in a lion, changing his attitude.

"Running Wild" is an excellent comedy, with a great screenplay and performances. The beginning is very dramatic for a comedy, but when Elmer is hypnotized, becomes very funny. The dog is cute and responsible for most of the best sequences, and his mean stepson Junior (Barnett Raskin) is amazingly funny and irritant. The DVD presents in the Extras the "famous sentences" of W.C. Fields, and they are also very ironical and funny. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "O Selvagem" ("The Savage")

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. (***)