The Old Fashioned Way has W.C. Fields as the head of a troupe of strolling players who are just above the poverty level and Fields has to stay one step ahead of the law to dodge his many creditors. Part of that troupe is his daughter Judith Allen and she's got a young man played by Joe Morrison who wants to leave college and go on the stage in pursuit of her.
This is a period film and it goes back to the turn of the last century right about the time when a young juggler named W.C. Fields was going into vaudeville. The Old Fashioned Way offers us a rare treat to see Fields doing the juggling act which he started in show business with. I'm sure Fields drew from his experiences way back when to both write the original story on which the film is based and to give his usual good performance.
The film has a musical score of mostly old public domain standards, but the songwriting team of Mack Gordon and Harry Revel wrote a couple of original songs for the film. Gordon and Revel were with Paramount at the time, but would soon move to 20th Century Fox where they wrote a number of songs Alice Faye introduced. Morrison has a nice tenor voice and a pleasing, but somewhat limp personality. He does the best known song from the film, Poor Folk well with his tenor, but I have a bootleg radio recording of Russ Columbo doing it on one of his radio shows. Russ's baritone is far more suitable to the number than Morrison's tenor.
Still the show in this film is Fields and no one comes near stealing this film from him. Actress Jan Duggan plays the rich spinster who has stage ambitions and who Fields courts relentlessly, even putting himself through the torture of hearing her sing a really stupid song about gathering sea shells. Duggan would play Bill Fields's foil in several more film after The Old Fashioned Way.
Fans of the eternal Fields will like The Old Fashioned Way and if you see it you'll become a fan of W.C. Fields.
