Million Dollar Legs

I found Million Dollar Legs to be one of the funniest films I've seen. I was unaware that it is available on video.I'm going to get myself a copy,and show it to my friends who appreciate satire and/or slapstick in the style of the Marx Bros.

W. C Fields is the hot tempered President of Klopstokia, an impoverished country where the Presidency is decided by arm wrestling matches. All Klopstokians have impossible athletic abilitites. This 1932 classic is a fun, wacked out laff riot. The writing is perfect. (Sample Fields dialog; "The Constitution forbids me to hit a man under 200 pounds." "I just had my lunch of roast goat stuffed with eel." Lyda Roberti is hysterical as Mata Macree, a Brooklyn accented femme fetale "Not too clozz boyzz, youse catch on fi-yer." 62 minutes of genius comedy.

First of all, bear in mind that this movie was made in 1932, not 2002. Then, do a little research into the popular media of the day, and you'll get the jokes a lot better. This is one of the funniest movies ever, and it is lightyears ahead of its time. The non-sequiturs (that means lines that don't make sense), the quick cuts, the topical humor - I just love it. What can you say about a country where all the men are named George, and all the women are named Angela? Why? Why not?? Let's take a few examples: do we all understand that it's the Fuller Brush Company that's being kidded in the first scene? Do you know about the terrorists of the day - the 'anarchists' - who were generally portrayed in black capes and hats, carrying daggers and pistols and those old fashioned bombs that look like cannon balls with fuses in them? Do you get the joke - Mata Machree? The image of the femme fatale Mata Hari, coupled with an old Irish song about Mom called "Mother Machree". Do we get that Lyda Roberti (who was Polish) is supposed to be Swedish, since Greta Garbo was the biggest star of the day? And the 'old Klopstockian Love Song' is sung to the tune of "One Hour with You," which was not only a popular film with, I believe, Maurice Chevalier, but was the theme song of the Eddie Cantor radio show, the most popular show of 1932? Movie audiences of the day would have gotten it.

Jack Oakie is perfect as the fast-talking brush salesman who saves Klopstockia. He is definitely a forerunner in style of not only Bob Hope, but of Robin Williams. Fields is hilarious, but so is everyone in this movie. Susan Fleming wasn't much of an actress, but she was beautiful. I just love Roberti, who came from a famous acting clan in Poland, and who died tragically young. She was a hoot, and could have had a memorable career. My favorite line of hers, when she does her hootchie kootchie dance to try to inspire Hugh Herbert to greater feats of strength: "I been done all I can do - in public." There are so many other quotable lines in this movie - it's the kind of movie you watch and recite along with the actors.

It helps to understand this movie to know a little something about what was 'in' in 1932, but it isn't absolutely necessary. The movie has enough funny lines and slapstick even by today's standards. It's also valuable as an example of the kind of editing we now take for granted. The kind of quick cutting and blackouts that we would see in, for example "Laugh-In," was rare in 1932. This was probably the first really screwball comedy, and it's the screwiest one of all.

Million Dollar Legs is the second feature film with W.C. Fields in the sound era. Still not sure of his box office potential Paramount billed him second under Jack Oakie. That would be something that would change shortly as Fields was given greater creative control of his films.

Although Oakie has his moments as his usual lovable blowhard self, a character that would be gradually taken over by Jack Carson in the Forties, the film really does belong to Fields. A year before Duck Soup was out, Million Dollar Legs took some real good political jabs using the American hosted Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as a background. Certainly saved on location shooting.

In fact one of the best things Million Dollar Legs has going for it is the good use of newsreel footage of the Olympics cut into the film. This was to be a showcase for the United States on the world stage. Remember how cleverly Ronald Reagan exploited the Olympics also held in Los Angeles in 1984 in his re-election bid? Herbert Hoover sent his Vice President Charles Curtis to open the Olympics, but the publicity certainly didn't redound to Hoover's credit. In fact Paramount exploited the Olympics better in this film.

W.C. Fields is the President of Klopstokia, a Ruritanian like country in Europe where all the people are trained from earliest times on earth to be athletes. Fields in fact is the strongest man in his kingdom and that's how one becomes president. It's a test of strength in Indian wrestling. When and if one beats him as Treasury Secretary Hugh Herbert keeps trying to do, you become president.

But Herbert's lined up the rest of Fields's disloyal cabinet against him. The country's national debt is about to put it in chapter eleven. What to do?

This is where Oakie comes in. He's a fast talking salesman for Baldwin Brushes and he's got a great offer from company president George Barbier. Recruit some of the populace for the Olympics and enter a Klopstokian team and he'll pay them whatever for use in his advertising. Sounds like a plan.

Herbert's down, but not out. He recruits international femme fatale spy for hire Mata Machree played by Lyda Roberti. She's to do what she does best, work on the hormones of the Klopstokian athletes so they're not concentrating on the Olympics. Make sure they're heads are not in the game.

Like Duck Soup to which this film bears a lot of resemblance Million Dollar Legs is good satire, a little gentler than Duck Soup, still it hits what it aims at. 220 years ago Million Dollar Legs could have come from the pen of Jonathan Swift.

This film went a long way to making W.C. Fields a star. He was a star on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies and in George White's Scandals, but in silent films and in his sound work so far, he played mostly supporting roles in feature films. After this his star status at Paramount and later Universal was assured. He's got some devastating lines here, mostly of his own making because Fields was notorious for just using the script situations as a guide. In a battle of wits, nobody tops him and that includes the director and the writers.

Fields and Oakie are supported by a real good cast of comic actors. Besides who I've mentioned, special mention should go to Andy Clyde as Fields's major domo and Ben Turpin as the silent cross-eyed spy.

For fans of W.C. Fields, a must. Oh, Yes.

One simply....one of the funniest movies of the 1930's. Everything's perfect in this little, silly comedy about a small country trying to get out of their financial con-dish by getting a sponsor for their people in the Summer Olympics.

The entire cast is just great from W.C. Fields down to Vernon Dent and Billy Gilbert.

One of the funniest lines: (To Mata Macree's butler:) "I want to see this woman no man can resist." (Butler:) "Madam is only resisted from 2-4 in the afternoon."

This film, along with "International House" and "If I Had A Million" is the kind of silly, clever comedy that only Paramount could've released.