Million Dollar Legs

Million Dollar Legs is the second feature film with W.C. Fields in the sound era. Still not sure of his box office potential Paramount billed him second under Jack Oakie. That would be something that would change shortly as Fields was given greater creative control of his films.

Although Oakie has his moments as his usual lovable blowhard self, a character that would be gradually taken over by Jack Carson in the Forties, the film really does belong to Fields. A year before Duck Soup was out, Million Dollar Legs took some real good political jabs using the American hosted Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as a background. Certainly saved on location shooting.

In fact one of the best things Million Dollar Legs has going for it is the good use of newsreel footage of the Olympics cut into the film. This was to be a showcase for the United States on the world stage. Remember how cleverly Ronald Reagan exploited the Olympics also held in Los Angeles in 1984 in his re-election bid? Herbert Hoover sent his Vice President Charles Curtis to open the Olympics, but the publicity certainly didn't redound to Hoover's credit. In fact Paramount exploited the Olympics better in this film.

W.C. Fields is the President of Klopstokia, a Ruritanian like country in Europe where all the people are trained from earliest times on earth to be athletes. Fields in fact is the strongest man in his kingdom and that's how one becomes president. It's a test of strength in Indian wrestling. When and if one beats him as Treasury Secretary Hugh Herbert keeps trying to do, you become president.

But Herbert's lined up the rest of Fields's disloyal cabinet against him. The country's national debt is about to put it in chapter eleven. What to do?

This is where Oakie comes in. He's a fast talking salesman for Baldwin Brushes and he's got a great offer from company president George Barbier. Recruit some of the populace for the Olympics and enter a Klopstokian team and he'll pay them whatever for use in his advertising. Sounds like a plan.

Herbert's down, but not out. He recruits international femme fatale spy for hire Mata Machree played by Lyda Roberti. She's to do what she does best, work on the hormones of the Klopstokian athletes so they're not concentrating on the Olympics. Make sure they're heads are not in the game.

Like Duck Soup to which this film bears a lot of resemblance Million Dollar Legs is good satire, a little gentler than Duck Soup, still it hits what it aims at. 220 years ago Million Dollar Legs could have come from the pen of Jonathan Swift.

This film went a long way to making W.C. Fields a star. He was a star on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies and in George White's Scandals, but in silent films and in his sound work so far, he played mostly supporting roles in feature films. After this his star status at Paramount and later Universal was assured. He's got some devastating lines here, mostly of his own making because Fields was notorious for just using the script situations as a guide. In a battle of wits, nobody tops him and that includes the director and the writers.

Fields and Oakie are supported by a real good cast of comic actors. Besides who I've mentioned, special mention should go to Andy Clyde as Fields's major domo and Ben Turpin as the silent cross-eyed spy.

For fans of W.C. Fields, a must. Oh, Yes.

There is room among movie aficionados to do a full study about "Ruritanian" Romances and films. Besides THE PRISONER OF ZENDA the number of films dealing with fictitious foreign states include musicals, comedies, and even straight political dramas. While all the studios put them out, Paramount certainly seemed to do more of them than the others. Look at THE LOVE PARADE, THE MERRY WIDOW, DUCK SOUP, and the present film, MILLION DOLLAR LEGS. Basically these countries have very poor populations ("Klopstokia" in MILLION DOLLAR LEGS is said to be basically made of nuts and goats; "Marshovia" in THE MERRY WIDOW, and "Freedonia" in DUCK SOUP depend on the largess of one rich woman in each country). The politics are not really democratic. "Sylvania" in THE LOVE PARADE is a monarchy, and has a particularly ruthless (if hapless) ambassador at work for it in DUCK SOUP. "Freedonia" in DUCK SOUP gives up democracy to satisfy a condition for a loan, and adopts an eccentric dictator (although a sharp one). And, although "Klopstokia" has a President, the election is based on physical strength - not on actual popular demand. Moreover W.C.Fields is as capricious in his way as Groucho Marx was in DUCK SOUP. Witness how Fields imagines a General he is dictating a letter to has insulted him, and breaks him to the rank of private.

It is a land of intrigue - for some incomprehensible reason Ben Turpin keeps turning up as a spy on the goings on of Fields and everyone else. The Vice President (Hugh Herbert - not quite so silly in this film as in others) keeps looking for ways of turning out the President either legally or by underhanded ways. When Klopstokia sends a large team of splendid athletes to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Herbert hires the world's greatest vamp/spy - Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti) to demoralize and split up the team (and so discredit the President).

Fields is forced to rely on Migg Sweeney, a brush salesman (Jack Oakie) who is romancing Fields' daughter Angela (Susan Fleming) by singing the national love song, "Woof Blugle Gif" which is based on the tune of "One Hour With Your" from the Paramount film of the same name. He fortunately never gets to sing the entire song in the movie - he does play it on his ukulele. Migg manages, despite his fear for his safety from his prospective father-in-law, does do the best he can to keep the team in tack, and to try to bring it to Olympic gold.

The film is fast, as well as funny. I would give it an 8 out of 10.

One simply....one of the funniest movies of the 1930's. Everything's perfect in this little, silly comedy about a small country trying to get out of their financial con-dish by getting a sponsor for their people in the Summer Olympics.

The entire cast is just great from W.C. Fields down to Vernon Dent and Billy Gilbert.

One of the funniest lines: (To Mata Macree's butler:) "I want to see this woman no man can resist." (Butler:) "Madam is only resisted from 2-4 in the afternoon."

This film, along with "International House" and "If I Had A Million" is the kind of silly, clever comedy that only Paramount could've released.

I found Million Dollar Legs to be one of the funniest films I've seen. I was unaware that it is available on video.I'm going to get myself a copy,and show it to my friends who appreciate satire and/or slapstick in the style of the Marx Bros.

W. C Fields is the hot tempered President of Klopstokia, an impoverished country where the Presidency is decided by arm wrestling matches. All Klopstokians have impossible athletic abilitites. This 1932 classic is a fun, wacked out laff riot. The writing is perfect. (Sample Fields dialog; "The Constitution forbids me to hit a man under 200 pounds." "I just had my lunch of roast goat stuffed with eel." Lyda Roberti is hysterical as Mata Macree, a Brooklyn accented femme fetale "Not too clozz boyzz, youse catch on fi-yer." 62 minutes of genius comedy.