Poppy

WC Fields stars as a circus performer whose daughter claims to be heir to a small-town fortune. A sentimental comedy with music and schmaltzy love story (Rochelle Hudson, Richard Cromwell), Field is--as always--watchable and quite good in a fairly straight role. However, character actresses Catherine Doucet and Maude Eburne steal the film as a fake countess and Hudson's benefactress. Fields film regular Bill Wolfe is also fun. This old-timey comedy has a Chaplin-like feel in its blending of humor and pathos. A near-miss for Fields but still worth watching for his good performance and a couple of classic routines.

In this film, W.C. Fields who was one of the great elder comedians of his time plays a carnival performer. He and his daughter, Poppy, arrive in town. It's there that Poppy falls in love with the town's most eligible handsome bachelor. It's a mutual attraction but her breeding and heritage is not attractive. Poppy is a carnival girl who was raised by her father and traveled from town to town with the carnival. She certainly wouldn't get approved by the local society. Anyway, there are tricks and turns that changes everything without spoiling it. W.C. Fields was a comic genius on stage and in film before television. He was one of the great legends that came to film in his winter of his career. Even though, the cast is first rate but the writing is weak. Anyway it's entertaining and unforgettable. Watch W.C. Fields performing is a timeless treasure.

It's 1883 and Professor Eustace P. McGargle, charlatan extraordinaire, arrives in the bucolic berg of Green Meadow. There he will attempt to deceive the local rubes into believing his beautiful daughter POPPY is heiress to an unclaimed fortune.

Once again, the inimitable W. C. Fields manages to merge the lovable & the larcenous into a highly amusing package designed to delight even the most jaded audience. Watching him perform his classic routines - the temperance lecture, the croquet game, the instrumental solo - is to be in the hands of a comic master. And has cinema produced funnier frauds than The Talking Dog or Purple Bart's Sarsaparilla? Probably not.

Fields had played the flimflamming professor before - on Broadway in 1923 and in D. W. Griffith's silent SALLY OF THE SAWDUST and he had made the role his own. But Fields' health was now at a low ebb after years of alcoholic overindulgence and he needed 10 months of rehabilitation and a sojourn in a sanitarium before beginning POPPY. And the filming itself was not without incident: his scene on the ‘ordinary' bicycle - which could have been handled by a stunt man - resulted in a fall that broke a vertebrae, leaving him in much pain. This is not apparent in his performance, however. (Another accident after filming ended sent him back for a further stint in the hospital.)

Fields' co-stars also do much to add to the high entertainment level of the film: Catherine Doucet & Lynne Overman play a conniving countess & shyster lawyer who have their own plans for getting their greedy hands on the envied greenbacks; Maude Eburne is a fiercely protective old lady who befriends Poppy; and skeletal Bill Wolfe is very droll as a gardener who refuses to be cheated by one of Fields' scams. Movie mavens will recognize Dewey Robinson as the calliope driver who is one of Fields' early victims.

As the young lovers, you could scarcely have done any better than Rochelle Hudson & Richard Cromwell. Having both lit-up many a film during the 1930's, they bring a great deal of charm to their roles, even in scenes which spread on the sticky sentiment a bit too thick. And Miss Hudson supplies the film with its loveliest moment when she sings ‘A Rendezvous With A Dream,' a tune which definitely deserves to be revived.

Fields, of course, dominates everything. Which is as it should be. However it is sad that the contributing factor to his eventual death - dipsomania - was already starting to destroy his body when he made this very funny film.

POPPY is an atypical W. C. Fields film even though this was the second time he filmed the story (earlier it was the 1925 D. W. Griffith silent SALLY OF THE SAWDUST with Carol Dempster and Alfred Lunt as the young lovers). This gentle little comedy/drama, originally a turn of the century stage melodrama, casts Fields as a carnival con man with an 18-year-old daughter Poppy (Rochelle Hudson). While in a small town, Hudson falls in love with the mayor's son (Richard Cromwell) and Fields, thought to be a distinguished lecturer, attracts the attention of the presumably wealthy Madame DePuizzi ("Madame DePussy" according to Fields!!) deliciously played by Catherine Doucet. Seems the Mme. is quite a con herself - she is only a presumed heiress, being the former mistress of a now deceased wealthy man of the town whose only actual heir, a daughter mysteriously disappeared twenty years ago. Fields with the help of shady attorney Lynne Overman concocts a story that he is the widower of the daughter, making his own daughter the heiress of the estate. Meanwhile Mme. "dePussy" starts to show her claws and is in cahoots with Cromwell's old girlfriend and others to shame Hudson for her carnival background and disprove Field's claims.

The atmosphere for this 1880's tale is quite charming and effective and there are several wonderful Fields comic bits, particularly his barter of a "talking dog" although I found his croquette travesty a misfire that didn't work. His performance is top notch however and the charming young Hudson and the equally adorable Cromwell are very appealing. Maude Eburne stands out among the supporting cast in a delightful role as a local matron who takes an interest in Rochelle and becomes her only friend in town. POPPY is perhaps a bit too genteel for W.C.'s biggest fans who like him best in a wild comedy but it's still a pleasing and successful albeit modest picture.

When POPPY was filmed, W.C. Fields was in poor health. Suffering from back pain, he had to wear a kind of corset to keep his back straight. His condition was aggravated when he fell off a bicycle during shooting, fracturing a vertebra. This apparently accounts for Fields' relatively limited screen time, despite his top billing. But when he does appear, he shows no signs of illness. Indeed his humorously iconoclastic personality dominates the film.

It is a blessing that Fields is in this film at all. Without him, POPPY would be forgettable. The late 19th century settings, particularly a carnival locale, are pleasing to the eye. Director Edward Sutherland imbues this milieu with pastoral charm, evoking a nostalgia for a simpler, more innocent time. Never mind if that time wasn't actually as rosy as this film indicates.

Alas, the charming period atmosphere cannot enhance the tired scenario. The romance between Poppy (Rochelle Hudson), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and Billy Farnsworth (Richard Cromwell), a boy from a wealthy and prestigious family, was old hat even in 1936. Hudson is bland and Cromwell is wooden, so one feels little empathy toward them.

Fields rescues POPPY from tedium. As Poppy's guardian Professor Eustace McGargle, he flimflams his way through everything. His larcenousness provide for some wonderful routines that elevates the film to classic comedy such as when he cons a bartender (Wade Boteler) into purchasing a "talking" dog and when he tries to get hot dogs for himself and Poppy without paying. These bits remain in one's memory after the love story is forgotten. Fields also reveals a tender, avuncular side in his intimate moments with Hudson. One understands her dedication to him, despite his crookedness.

POPPY does not rank among Fields' best work. But it demonstrates his greatness not only in that he rises above ordinary material, but that he vigorously soldiers throughout his scenes despite his real life ailments.