The Great McGonigle, ham actor extraordinaire, cares for his troupe of performers in THE OLD FASHIONED WAY, thorough chicanery, larceny & skullduggery...
Here is W. C. Fields in all of his pompous, vulgar glory: evasive, duplicitous, sneaky - utterly wonderful. Delivering dialogue in his unique buzz saw rasp, he gives out so many familiar lines that at times he almost seems to be performing a self-parody. This film brilliantly shows why Fields needed the sound cinema to let him be fully appreciated, and with Paramount giving him free rein to develop his material as he wished, it is not surprising that the film is a classic. Fans need look no further to find the essential Fields.
The romance between Judith Allen & Joe Morrison is a rather dull affair, although the young man sings well. Tammany Young plays Fields' loyal amanuensis. Movie mavens will recognize comedian Billy Bletcher as the tomato thrower & sour-visaged sheriff Clarence Wilson, both uncredited. Legend has it that Hollywood's first movie star, Florence Lawrence, derelict & forgotten, made one of her last unbilled appearances here before her 1938 suicide.
Fields found it useful to populate his films with at least one she-dragon, a female of frightful aspect against whom he could bounce off some of his best humor. This film has two: rail-thin, Nora Cecil - prim & dour as the troupe's suspicious landlady; and most especially silly Jan Duggan, horridly bejeweled & curled, as Field's wealthy target. Here was an actress, now nearly forgotten, who could easily equal in hilarity even Fields himself. It is generally overlooked how important her contribution is to the celebrated supper table scene with Fields & Baby LeRoy - one of the funniest sequences ever to appear in an American film. And her rendition of `Gathering Up The Shells On The Seashore' is a wonderful spoof of such sentimental songs as `When You And I Were Young, Maggie,' which were so popular in that era. Miss Duggan would return to briefly plague Fields in three additional films, including THE BANK DICK (1940). (She died in 1977 at the age of 95.)
Fields has included the old melodrama The Drunkard into the plot and to his credit he plays it straight,' letting its honest antique sentiment speak for itself. In his own private olio, Fields makes a curtain call to show off his astonishing talent of legerdemain. It is wonderful to have his routine captured on film as he really is quite amazing - it is easy to see how at one time he was considered the world's greatest juggler. Now he is remembered as one of cinema's supreme comics.
