Un conte d'apothicaire

The big surprise for me when viewing the KINO release of the 1926 W.C. Fields comedy IT'S THE OLD ARMY GAME was how beautiful the print is. For the most part it is pristine. For any Fields fan who is familiar with his classic sound feature IT'S A GIFT there is much to compare and enjoy in this silent rendering. No doubt the routines work better with sound and polishing but it's fun to see it being attempted without the sound. Fields looks youthful and fit. Louise Brooks is not only beautiful but very animated and delightful in this her fourth film. The Ben Model pipe organ score works very well and is authentic to the way many audiences would have experienced the film originally.. The only Extra is a commentary track by author James L. Neilbaur. It has its original tinting. If you are a fan of Fields or comedy from the silent era then this release is worth taking a look at. The film title don't really do justice to the film content but it is explained during the course of the film.





























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Once thought lost, this W.C. Fields silent comedy was later remade (more or less) as It's a Gift. Here he's a pharmacist instead of a grocer (I think the short The Pharmacist also re-uses elements from this one), and some of the gags are different. There's a subplot about Fields investing in a real estate scam. The guy who's running it (William Gaxton) has a romantic subplot with Louise Brooks, who works as Fields' counter girl. Alas, Fields without his voice is barely half as funny. His attitude remains identical, but his acerbic line readings are gone. It also doesn't help that the version presented on Youtube is run at a slow speed, making the film much longer than it should be. I wouldn't recommend it.

In his 1967 book "The Art of W.C. Fields," film historian William K. Everson bemoaned the apparent loss of much of Fields' early movie work. In a chapter devoted to eight silent films that Fields made for Paramount from 1926 to 1928, Everson wrote: "Of those eight features, not one is known to have survived." Stills from most of those films decorate Everson's book; they stare out from the pages as ghostly reminders of films believed gone for good.

That was then; since Everson's book was published, copies of three of those missing features have turned up: "So's Your Old Man," "Running Wild" - and "It's the Old Army Game." (The one film in the group of eight that film historians would really like to get their hands on is "That Royle Girl," which was the second feature Fields did with D.W. Griffith, the first being "Sally of the Sawdust.")

I got to see "Army Game" at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland. As funny as the film was - and it was very funny - the experience of seeing it on the big screen was also surprisingly poignant, given its formerly lost status. Relying on contemporary reviews, Everson speculated that Fields' silent Paramount features, which were all produced by the company's New York studio, were done on the cheap and probably suffered from a "cramped 'East Coast look.'" As it turns out, "Army Game" is a very handsomely mounted production, and includes location filming in Florida and New York City (it was fairly amazing to see scenes of midtown Manhattan in 1926 and notice how much of it - the buildings, mainly - has barely changed in nearly eight decades). "Army Game" is so well produced, it was sad to think that, like Clementine, it was once thought "lost and gone forever."

Partly remade as "The Pharmacist" in 1933 and "It's a Gift" in 1934, "Army Game" stars Fields as Elmer Prettywillie, a small town druggist who suffers various indignities at the hands of his relatives (no wife here, but there is an obnoxious sister and her nephew), customers and neighbors. Can a silent Fields be as funny as the talking one we're all familiar with? This film says definitely. Of course, we all know what Fields sounded like, so this can simply be a case of filling in his voice with our imaginations. But our imaginations don't stop there. In one scene, when Fields is trying to sleep on a porch swing and a baby girl (who, I'm convinced, was played by an adult female midget) stands nearby and bawls, I could hear her crying rattling in my brain.

But perhaps we do miss Fields' voice, after all. One minor complaint I have about "Army Game" is that Fields' character seems to keep changing on us. In one scene, he's a milquetoast who can't bring himself to charge an overbearing woman for the two cents' worth of postage she's purchased; in another, he comes perilously close to maliciously dropping the above-mentioned baby off a balcony; in another, he's a sharpie who out-hustles a would-be hustler; in another, he's a buffoon who doesn't know the meaning of a "no trespassing" sign and calls a grandfather clock a "watch." I'm not saying a film character can't show different sides or can never surprise us with some hidden trait or ability, but Elmer Prettywillie seems to be suffering from multiple personality disorder. Had Fields been able to use his voice in this film, he might have brought all these seemingly disparate threads together, as he probably did in "It's a Gift" (which I don't remember well, it's been about 30 years since I've seen it - yipe!). "Army Game" also has an extraneous romantic subplot involving drugstore employee Louise Brooks and handsome con artist William Gaxton that threatens to split off into its own film.

This was the first time I'd seen Louise Brooks in a movie, and all I can say at first blush is: Wow. As Prettywillie's young assistant, Brooks positively radiates from the screen without even trying. OK, she does try in one scene: clad in a swimsuit, leaning against a tree, head tilted back, eyes closed and trying to look heartbroken, Brooks is so obviously posing (or being posed) for the camera, it's hard not to snicker. But she does it *so* well. (The director was Edward Sutherland, who married Brooks around the time this film was made; their marriage lasted all of about two years.)

In his Fields book, Everson said "Army Game" was "not remembered with any great enthusiasm" by Brooks. In her own book, "Lulu in Hollywood," Brooks, recalling her work with Gaxton, says with acerbic candor that she knew then that "our parts as the 'love interest' in a Fields comedy meant nothing." Did Brooks ever get to see "Army Game"? It's doubtful. In her 1982 book, published three years before her death, Brooks said she hadn't seen it. It's a shame - not only did she miss out on a truly funny W.C. Fields vehicle, she also missed out on seeing a delightful young actress with a pageboy-style haircut who lit up the screen every time she appeared. (Dear AFI: Could you schedule a screening of "Pandora's Box" real soon, please?)

A couple of footnotes: AFI's presentation of "Army Game" featured excellent live organ accompaniment by Ray Brubacher. Also, the film, when I saw it, ran about 90 minutes, considerably longer than the running time listed by IMDb - I suspect AFI ran the film as close to "natural speed" as possible, which was a definite plus in terms of presentation.

Plenty of solid good bits from WC Fields gun prior to talkies a lot of the skits that were done in this movie we're done later and Takis

Classic stuff

After only knowing about this silent W. C. Fields film by its reputation, I finally saw it on YouTube. I found myself chuckling if not completely gawfalling at the antics of Fields as Elmer Prettywillie, a druggist. First, his sleep is rudely interrupted by a woman constantly ringing at the entrance just to buy a two-cent stamp which leads to other such nuisances in a dry run for the same sequence in his It's a Gift. There's also a picnic scene which would also appear in that later talkie. The later plot concerns a traveling man who's smitten with Mr. Prettywillie's employee Louise Brooks selling real estate and wanting to put a big ad in his window, making Elmer vice president. I'll stop there and just say while I didn't think this was one of the funniest things ever, it was still pretty enjoyable for what it was. So I say give It's the Old Army Game a look.