Tillie the Toiler

Unlike the other reviewer, I've actually seen this film.

Based on the popular comic-strip character which ran in newspapers from 1921-1959, this feature film from MGM stars the ever-delightful Marion Davies as Tillie the Toiler aka Tillie Jones, the quintessential flapper of the 1920s.

Tillie has a boyfriend Mac (Matt Moore) who gets her a job in his office as secretary to Mr. Simpkins (George Fawcett), and old fuss budget tyrant. The office is run by Mr. Whipple (George K. Arthur) who puts the moves on Tillie and takes her to lunch. There they see the rich millionaire Pennington Fish (Harry Crocker) who is attracted to Tillie and invites her to the fancy Piracy Club. Tillie decides to land herself a rich Fish.

Tillie lives as home with her mother and sister and overbearing brother-in-law (Bert Roach) and their kid. While she wants to marry Penny Fish, she still depends on good old reliable Mac for everything. After she lands the Fish and meets his mother, she learns that Mac is leaving town and discovers it's Mac she really wants.

Standard story doesn't give the stars much to work with. Davies makes a funny entrance when she gets an ash in her eye while walking down the street and is blinking madly. All the men think she's winking at them and follow her. Tillie is, as usual oblivious. The intertitles are funny and the pacing is good.

Davis is gorgeous in her dark bobbed hair and wears some short skirts. Moore and Arthur are solid in their rather confining roles. Crocker as Fish plays the stolid hero without much flair. Claire McDowell plays Ma Jones, Gertrude Short plays Bubbles, Mary Forbes plays Mrs. Fish, and James Murray is one of the admirers.

When you look at the films of Marion Davies, you realize that she rarely played dumb. Tillie is a tad on the dumb side, but Davies manages to keep her light and funny. She has a head on her shoulders, it's just not hers.

Marion Davies is Tillie Jones, a modern girl on the go and on the make. This movie is based on Russ Westover's popular comic strip, which ran from 1921-1959 -- so let the carping about modern movies based on comic books cease. We are introduced in short order to the folks at her workplace and her home, and particularly to Matt Moore, who longs for Miss Davies. She, however, is looking for a rich husband and quickly captivates rich Harry Crocker, who is captivated by her, because that is the plot this movie settles on.

Alas, the copy I looked at was rather poor, a VHS rip that has been in grey-market circulation for some time. The Eastman House is said to have a good copy, but it is not generally available; as I write, it is still under copyright.

Miss Davies is excellent in the role of the always well-dressed Tillie, and the cast is filled out with some excellent talent, including George Fawcett as her boss, George K. Arthur as her foppish co-worker, Claire MacDowall as her mother, Bert Roach as her conniving brother-in-law, and Ida May as a hideous dragon from Des Moines who warns Crocker about gold diggers. I was not particularly amused by Ralph Spence's titles, which relied heavily on malapropisms and witty comments that were not particularly on the mark. Matt Moore is something of a wet rag in the hands of Miss Davies. Still, it's fast, the situations are amusing, and it's certainly a movie that, if it ever becomes available in a good print, will be worth watching.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***

"Tillie the Toiler" was originally a comic strip drawn and written by Russ Westover for King Features Syndicate. Tillie was drawn in a style that was meant to make her look very sexy and chic, whilst the male characters in the same strip were drawn in a more conventionally cartoonish style to look grotesque and boorish. The strip often showed Tillie in her workplace, but she wasn't really a "toiler" because she spent most of her time concerned about her next date or her new dress or anything except her job.

The 1927 film version of "Tillie" was produced by Cosmopolitan Pictures, which tells you that the star of the movie is Marion Davies. (Hearst set up Cosmopolitan to produce star vehicles for his actress girlfriend.) With her straight blonde hair, Marion looks nothing like the comic-strip Tillie: in fact, she's much prettier. (The comic-book version of Tillie looked like Bernadette Peters, who doesn't do a thing for me.) "Tillie the Toiler" is a surprising vehicle for Davies, because Hearst preferred to cast her in pretentious costume dramas rather than frothy comedies. The humour in this movie is very broad (much like the original comic strip), with more slapstick than usual for Davies, but she's excellent in this role.

When we first see Tillie (Davies), she's walking down the street on her way to Mr Fish's office when a cinder blows into her eye. This causes her to wink repeatedly. Various men see Tillie winking, and each man assumes she's winking at him flirtatiously. One by one, the men fall into step behind Tillie while she walks down the street winking. By the time she reaches Mr Fish's office, she's got a whole pack of horny men behind her. Most of the film implies that Tillie doesn't realise how much she arouses the men around her ... which is rather hard to believe.

Tillie starts her new job as secretary to the pompous tycoon Pennington Fish, whom she calls "Penny". Tillie is meant to be a standard dumb blonde, in the Carol Channing/Gracie Allen mode ... only sexier, like an early Jayne Mansfield (or a proto-Goldie Hawn), but there are hints that Tillie isn't quite so dumb as she seems. Davies played a very similar role in "Not So Dumb", one of her early talkies. "Tillie the Toiler" is much funnier than "Not So Dumb" but not nearly so funny as "The Patsy" (Marion's funniest and sexiest role).

A lot of Tillie's dialogue in this movie involves malapropisms that are funny when we read them on silent-film title cards, but which wouldn't be nearly so funny if this movie had a soundtrack: for instance, when Tillie expresses her desire to attend "a charity bizarre". There's quite a bit of Jazz Age 1920s slang in this movie's title cards.

Tillie's "job" is really just an excuse for her to skive and lollygag, and to flirt with Mr Fish's male employees. This incurs the wrath of Frank Whipple, the Fish Company's office manager. Whipple is very well played by George K. Arthur as a fussy little dandified man. Arthur sometimes played men who were explicitly cissies, and his portrayal of Whipple seems to be on the borderline of effeminacy. Most of the men in Fish's company are ga-ga for Tillie, but Whipple seems to be immune to her charms ... and George K. Arthur's performance implies that, well, Whipple just isn't interested in women.

SPOILER COMING. Tillie spends a good bit of this movie toying with horny men like Bill (played by fat unattractive Bert Roach) until she meets Matt Moore, who plays the only "real man" in this movie ... so it's obvious whom Tillie will end up with.

I'm a fan of old-time comic strips, but Westover's "Tillie the Toiler" hasn't aged well, and is justifiably one of the more obscure examples of 1920s humour. This movie version isn't quite so dated (thanks to Davies's superb performance), but it's still very much a back number. The camera work is excellent, as are the sets. David Townsend is credited as Cedric Gibbons's "associate", which means that Townsend actually designed the sets while Gibbons took his contractual credit.