Man on the Flying Trapeze

Burglars singing in the cellar scene is hysterical. "What are they singing?" Fields asked his distraught wife. The breakfast scene where his wife reads poetry while Fields finds nothing to eat. "And best of all," she declares, "it has no punctuation." Fields in jail with a killer. "I had three wives, and this is the first one I've ever killed." "That's very much in your favor," notes Fields. This film is wonderful. It is a shame it's not available on video.

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!

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.

Comedy is funny. I mean that it is odd in addition to being amusing. You can laugh and also wonder about why and maybe even laugh at that.

Film comedy is different than other comedy, say written comedy.

My own notions of film are that everything essential was worked out in the thirties when competing concepts elbowed each other and we ended up with the rough cinematic vocabulary we have now. Nowhere is this more true than with straight humor.

Since that time, we've developed a complex notion of the humors of irony, but what I'm talking about here is people directly depicting funny stuff.

So when you go back, you find a few innovators, something like the few jazz inventors of the 50s. What they did is pure by retrospective definition. Going back helps you discover yourself: are you a Keaton man? Chaplin, Arbuckle, Marx, Laurel?

W C Fields is one that you should experience. I liked his "Sucker" movie the best because it was his last and most mature; and the story dealt with him as Fields and the studios telling him he wasn't funny.

Here is his best early film where he does his thing. It is in the vaudeville tradition of being a bunch of loosely connected skits. But it is highly cinematic humor, just not the sight gags you see with the others. It depends all on timing.

The first sequence is the best. Our man is preparing for bed. He sneaks drinks while his witchy wife complains (in a separate bed, as this is post-code). The key joke here is him taking his socks off.

If you haven't seen it, I know this sounds odd, but Fields taking his socks off is hilarious. It takes forever. Then they hear intruders below and he puts his socks back on, taking almost as long. It is a truly precious lesson in investing in laughter. It isn't explosive. It isn't particularly subtle or clever. It is just reality bent in a complex rubato that we have to take the time to relish.

Terrific. I watched that one scene several times.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Despite his marvelous comic con-men, who always outwits the rubes and dolts about him, there is a side of W.C. Fields that few people ever notice: he is usually a hopeless, henpecked husband when he is married. His Ambrose Wolfinger (in MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE) is probably the most helpless married man that he ever portrayed.

Ambrose has actually been married (presumably more happily) to a previous wife, who has died. But they had a little girl (now grown up) named Hope (Mary Bryan) who is his one total ally in the family. His second wife, Leona Wolfinger, née Nesselrode (Kathleen Howard) is strict and shrewish with him. And his mother in law and brother in law Claude (Grady Sutton, playing a totally disreputable liar, trouble-maker, leech, and thief for a change) make his hell total.

In this film Fields is controlled by events and people - he rarely shows any of the spunk and cleverness that his Great McGonigal or Egbert Souse or Larson E. Whipsnade show. He tries to get two burglars charged in court, but they were drinking apple jack that he had allowed to ferment, so the idiot crabby judge ignores the burglary and charges Fields with violating the prohibition laws! He tries to see a wrestling match, but is delayed by traffic problems, a tire that runs away from him, a set of traffic cops, and arrives too late to see the match, only to be knocked down by one of the wrestlers being thrown on him. To make the situation even more absurd, he did not realize this ticket was stolen by Claude, who seeing him lying on the ground sneers at him as "Drunk again!"

He is also harried by his boss (Lucien Littlefield) at work, and he has to lie to get a miserable afternoon off to see the match (he says his mother-in-law died). When the truth comes out, Littlefield (on his own - as he subsequently regrets) fires him.

This is how it goes throughout the film. Except for Mary Bryan and for his secretary (Carlotta Monti, who has a nice moment at Littlefield's expense), all of the characters use and abuse Fields. He is only finally aroused when Claude tries to slap Hope, and Fields defends her, knocking out Claude. But even after that he still seems lost regarding what to do to pick up his life.

The film is funny - witness the business about Field's filing system at the office (he's a memory expert). When the actual head of the firm (Littlefield's boss - Oscar Apfel) tries to find things without Fields around, he goes nuts with the system. Littlefield tries to defend his action, only to be told by Monti that he has libeled her by suggesting Fields and she were out together at the match. Littlefield is then informed that if he can't get Fields back he'd better start looking for a new job (in the depression).

Howard's role is curious. Like her performance in IT'S A GIFT, she is extremely strict and suspicious. At one point, when Fields is getting ready to go down and check for burglars, she is begging for him to hurry and not to forget his gun. He takes the gun out, and accidentally fires it. High strung by the situation, the shooting scares Howard into a faint - Fields looks at her and with a slight trace of hope in his voice he asks, "Are you dead?" Yet, he did marry her, and at the end, when stuck alone with her mother and brother (who won't look for work), she seems to realize that - for better or worse - Ambrose was a good provider. In the end she is reunited with him and with her step-daughter.

It is a good comedy, and if it lacks the polish of THE BANK DICK and IT'S A GIFT and THE OLD FASHIONED WAY it is still worth watching.