Fifi Peau de Pêche

Chief of police Quade (Lloyd Nolan) has had enough of con-woman Peaches O'Day (Mae West). She had sold the Brooklyn Bridge again and she keeps doing it. Quade orders Police Captain Jim McCarey (Edmund Lowe) to arrest her, but he is taken with her charms. She promises to leave town, but instead she charms the wealthy recluse Van Doon (Charles Winninger) and his butler Larmadou Graves (Charles Butterworth).

Mae West wrote the script. It's not my favorite. It is a little unnecessarily complicated. Van Doon and Graves should be her underlings right from the start. Their connection confuses me. Maybe I am missing something about these characters or maybe they are awkwardly presented. Nevertheless, McCarey simply needs more time with Peaches O'Day. This should be a rom-com. I'm not laughing at the comedy as much as I see the comedy and appreciate it.

This is not the worst film of Mae West's career (MYRA BRECKENRIDGE and SEXTETTE share that position), but it is not one of her best films. She is saddled with the wrong performer as her leading man. Edmund Lowe was a decent actor, but not one to set the world on fire. It is significant that his pairing with Victor MacLaglan in a series of films starting with the silent film version of WHAT PRICE GLORY was what he was best recalled for - so that Mike Todd gave the two a joint cameo in AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS. If his role had been played by the villain of the film, Lloyd Nolan (one of the best character actors in Hollywood history) the film would have been better. Still Nolan is able to give it some mileage. It needs it. West is good (selling the Brooklyn Bridge to Herman Bing and cutting a hole into the window of a jewelry shop by doing a silhouette using a typically dense Charles Butterworth). Butterworth was still capable of his punctuating style of hesitant "accidental" humor. As one of the three backers of the honest Lowe against the crooked Nolan in a Mayoral campaign, he is ably assisted by Walter Catlett and Charles Winninger. Their best moment is when, to protect Lowe, they try to drug him and only succeed in drugging themselves.

There are not many films dealing with 19th Century New York City politics (most of which was quite corrupt - usually due to Tammany Hall). The most recent one is Martin Scorsese's THE GANGS OF NEW YORK, which gives a nearly correct view of the depth of corruption, but makes the mistake of making Boss Tweed an ally of a gangster (Daniel Day Lewis) based on Bill "the Butcher" Poole. Bill Poole (like Lewis) was a "know-nothing" - he hated immigrants, especially those from Ireland who were Catholics. Tweed actually was so pragmatic a political genius that he built his political machine on the Irish and other immigrant groups. He would never have worked with Poole and his friends.

Besides THE GANGS OF NEW YORK there is UP IN CENTRAL PARK (wherein Tweed is played by an elegant Vincent Price, not by a heavy set actor). And that would seem to be it. EVERY DAY'S A HOLIDAY is the only other notable film dealing with mayoralty politics, and West does try to show how questionable it was. Nolan seems to be backed by the party machine, and Lowe is the honest outsider. There were a few honest mayors who tried to reform the city. Most are forgotten today (William Havemeyer, Edward Cooper, Abram Hewitt, William R. Grace, Seth Low). But then most New York City mayors are forgotten except by historians. Aside from Fiorello LaGuardia and Rudy Giuliani (both of whom left a deep imprint on their times - Giuliani due to 9/11 actually more than his policies) most of the 20th Century mayors are forgotten. Only one (the corrupt but likable Jimmy Walker) merited a movie - BEAU JAMES. LaGuardia did become the subject of a good musical (FIORELLO) but it was never filmed. So one has to do with just the three movies mentioned earlier.

Nolan's McQuade is the corrupt (if smart) Chief of Police. Actually no Police Chief ran for Mayor in 19th Century New York City. But West, and whoever else helped with the script, may have been thinking of a series of police scandals in the 1890s, leading to the Lexow Committee hearings. The most notorious casualty from this was the great Chief of Detectives, Captain Thomas Byrnes. Byrnes (the inventor of "the Rogues' Gallery") was a tough, no nonsense police officer of the old school - civil liberties meant little to him in cracking cases. But he was forced into retirement because he took bribes (mostly stock gifts and tips) from Wall Street figures. Byrnes made sure the work atmosphere of Wall Street was not interrupted by thieves (he set up a "warning line" south of which was unhealthy for any pickpockets or thieves to be traveling without any legal reason). The stock gifts and tips were in gratitude for what he had done.

The film helps capture of the period, but it is meant as a harmless comic entertainment. So it can't be too deep or perceptive of the actuality. Still it is a glimpse at it.

Once again in her favorite era, the Gay Nineties (that is, the end of it: New Year's Eve, 1899), Mae West looks perfectly comfortable and swell - and in her element: as a small-time crook, 'selling' the Brooklyn Bridge to strangers... Police Chief 'Honest John Quade', who's also running for mayor, is obsessed by the idea of getting her arrested at last - because she had the 'impudence' to turn the crooked politician down. But the 'flatfoot' (as Mae alias 'Peaches O'Day' calls her 'special friends' from the New York police force) McCarey, who's assigned to the case, just 'isn't able' to get her - because he's in love with her and always lets her get away...

But finally, he HAS to do his duty: he tells her unmistakeably that she's got to leave town. 'Peaches', though, has other plans which she works out at a crazy New Year's Eve party in the famous, renowned old 'Rector's Restaurant' with a new acquaintance of hers - a butler and his rich master, who 'hates women'... until he sees Peaches, of course! So, together with her 'manager', they decide that she'll actually leave for Boston - and return, with a black wig and a French accent, as a famous French singer for whom they'll put up a big show...

Although, of course, by 1937 the Production Code showed no mercy anymore ESPECIALLY with Mae West's well-known 'dubious' scripts, and "Every Day's a Holiday" looks a lot tamer than her pre-Code movies, it's still a VERY enjoyable piece of entertainment, with an exceptionally good cast, a quite nice and clever story, nostalgic song numbers (Mae sings not only with a lovely French accent, but also in perfect French!), and generally a lively, inventive comedy you can just watch over and over again - Hollywood nostalgia at its very best!

In turn-of-the-century New York, con woman Mae West runs Edmund Lowe for mayor against corrupt Lloyd Nolan.

Mae West's last movie for Paramount has her ploughing her familiar milieu, with a large cast that includes farceurs such a Charles Butterworth, Charles WInninger, and Walter Catlett. Louis Armstrong get to perform half a number, and there is a general sense of frivolity. Its premiere at Manhattan's Paramount Theater broke house records. But this wasn't the old Mae West. A little something known as the Production Code had come in, and the front office at Paramount wasn't interested in fighting Joseph Breen for the sake of a lady they knew they'd have a fight with every time, and had pushed past 40. So the zingers are not as sharp, even if second-rate West, like second-rate Marx Brothers, is still better than anything else.

Well it's safe to say that "McCarey" (Edmund Lowe) isn't much of a cop as he has to apprehend con artist "Peaches" (Mae West) but befriends her instead and let's her go. His deductive skills aren't great either as she returns bedecked in French frills and speaking like ziss, now purporting to be the celebrated Parisian star "Mmme. Fifi" and he's none the wiser. Naturally, she becomes a roaring success and quickly attracts the attention of local bigwig "Quade" (Lloyd Nolan). He's a budding candidate for mayor, is as dodgy as the day is long and takes a shine to her. When she declines his kind advances, he determines to drive her out of town. Luckily, "McCarey" is having none of this malarkey so steps in to challenge him for elected office, and soon has the shrewd and savvy "Fifi" pulling strings to help him, and her, to be shot of their scheming nemesis. This plot is really nothing new and this is all really a vehicle for (screenplay writer) West to glamourise the role with some grand frocks and a few stage routines that she carries off effortlessly. Nolan seems to enjoying himself but Lowe adds little even as the writing gives us a few pithy one-liners and a little fun as this all builds to a fairly predictable conclusion. The film does look good, the story doesn't hang about and if you're a fan of a woman who knew exactly which buttons to press with an audience, then it's perfectly watchable.