Pool Sharks

Pool Sharks was a short subject film made in New York while W.C. Fields was in the Ziegfeld Follies. It must have been work for a day or two when they didn't have matinées and Fields co-stars with another silent screen comedian Ben Ross who never quite had the career Fields did. These are the only two names in the cast. We don't even get to see the name of the girl these two are fighting over.

After some slapstick attempts of oneupmanship with the girl watching the two take it to a poolroom with her and a crowd watching Fields and Ross square off over the green felt table. Naturally we don't see the color.

At this point I was expecting to see something like the pool game that was prominent in Six Of A Kind. Instead I got to see some crude animation as both these guys make some impossible shots that even Minnesota Fats would have said were impossible.

Without the voice, but those famous reactions to life that Fields was later famous for in the Thirties are all present in Pool Sharks. A must for fans of the great comic cynic W.C. Fields.

Given its significance in the career of the great comic W.C. Fields, "Pool Sharks" would certainly be worth seeing for its historical interest alone. In itself, it's probably just an average feature for its time and genre, and it doesn't give Fields the chance to shows his greatest strengths, but it is fun to see him in such an early screen appearance.

You can see the strong influence of Chaplin and Keystone, as the plot and all the characters are patterned after those styles. Fields plays one of two rivals for the hands of a girl, and his character gets involved in the kind of manic slapstick that characterized a great many short comedies in the mid-1910s. Nothing wrong with that at all, and while "Pool Sharks" in itself would not stand out, it probably would not have left too many of its original viewers disappointed, either.

Besides the slapstick, there are some visual effects with the pool table, and while the special effects technique is rudimentary, it's amusing enough.

For the most part, Fields himself just has to keep up with the madcap pace, and cannot do some of the things that he did best, yet you can see his talent when he has the chance to show it.

It is clear that Mr. Fields had not yet solidified his famous character in this pedestrian little silent effort. One wonders exactly how he was directed, since evidence indicates a totally different character in his stage routines than what he would portray in this film. Very disjointed, most stereotypical slapstick with no real inventiveness, this film is really interesting only in that it portrays a much younger W. C. Fields than modern audiences are accustomed to.

This is W.C. Fields' first movie. It's an 11 minutes short silent film that tells the story of two rivals vying for the affection of a girl. After some physical comedy that we'd later see the Three Stooges use (like grabbing the person's nose with one hand and smacking it off with the other), the two decide on a game of pool to settle the score. We get an amusing display of early special effects that is used to manipulate the pool balls in a humorous fashion. And speaking of humorous fashion, Fields has a very bizarre mustache. This is a fun little silent film, featuring a young and slimmer Fields.

This movie debut from W.C. Fields is a fairly nondescript affair that presents only fleeting glimpses of the comedy legend Fields would become on the screen. The 35-year-old comedian is far from the finished article here. The booze hadn't yet gone to work on those unmistakable features, but he already looked older than his years. He sports a bushy moustache in this one, that would be pruned back over the years before disappearing completely, and relies too heavily on some fairly unpleasant comic violence for laughs that don't often materialise. In one scene he holds open his love rival's eye between finger and thumb so that he can poke it precisely with an extended forefinger – a coldly savage moment designed to appeal to the baser instincts of the film's target audience.

Although he's barely recognisable as the character with whom we would become familiar, Fields already displays his trademark animosity towards small children when he tips over the chair of a small boy, efficiently dispatching the child so that he can sit beside the woman whose affections he seeks. When he and his rival aren't antagonising each other, we are entertained by stop-motion photography of pool balls travelling around a table before returning to their original position, entering the pockets via impossible angles or flying onto a shelf on the wall. It probably knocked them out in 1915, but it's all familiar stuff now.

Of interest to curiosity seekers only…