Poppy

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.

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.

No it is not the greatest of W.C. Field's comedies - it does not rank with THE BANK DICK or IT'S A GIFT or THE OLD FASHIONED WAY or even MY LITTLE CHICKADEE. But POPPY is of considerable interests to the many fans of the great misanthropic comic. In 1923 he appeared on stage in POPPY as "EUSTACE McGARGLE". It was the first lead role in a play (as opposed to one or two comic supporting parts, and his years of vaudeville juggling/comic routines, or his years headlining in the Ziefeld Follies) that FIelds had. Interestingly enough his performance on stage enabled him to cross paths with another future movie comedian (though a lesser one in retrospect), Robert Woolsey (of Wheeler and Woolsey), who appeared as a rustic victim of McGargle. The play gave Fields a "Fields" day as a carnival swindler, who was also the foster father of a young woman who Fields/McGargle would try to pass off as an heiress. The play was subsequently made into a silent film, "Sally of the Sawdust" (Field's third silent movie, and first directed by the great D.W.Griffith). The silent version was actually a vehicle for Griffith's pitifully inadequate actress find Carol Dempster (who was also his girlfriend at the time). It is also of interest because the boyfriend of Dempster was played by a young Alfred Lunt (sadly Lynn Fontaine was not in this film).

The 1925 "Sally of the Sawdust" had some good moments when Fields did his larcenous best - including a "heroic" scene at the end where he explains "Sally"'s true parentage at court, and saves her from prison. But Dempster's attempts at "gamin" like cuteness are tiresome to a viewing today. Lunt does well, but is a distinctly supporting actor here.

Fortunately sound came along, so that Mr. Lunt (now with Lynn Fontaine) would make THE GUARDSMAN and plenty of television appearances in the future to demonstrate their fine acting abilities. Ms Dempster, of course, just faded into oblivion. Fields too would benefit by sound, and would leave us that nasal twang that made us guffaw so much. And by doing "Poppy" as a sound film we were able to hear some of the dialog from the stage play that the silent film did not have. Mention has been made of three moments: the sale of the "talking dog", the business with the hot dog vendor (which is where the line at the start of this review comes from), and the business with the patent medicine purchaser ("No more"). A fourth one is the sequence (somewhat too brief) where "Professor" McGargle entertains the guests at a society party with some high sounding concerto on a strange looking stringed instrument. He ends up playing "Pop Goes the Weasel". At the end, when "Poppy" is revealed to really be the lost heiress, McGargle takes leave of his adopted daughter in a quiet, dignified way - not quite as tragic as a similar sequence in THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, perhaps, but equally not as tragic and total as his leaving her in the radio version of "Poppy" that was made within two years of the film. That version was put out on records about 1970, and keeps to the story, but seems sadder than this movie or the 1925 silent version.

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.