Moviecut—The Old Fashioned Way

source: The Old Fashioned Way

The Old Fashioned Way

The scene where he sneaks his trunk out of the boarding house without paying his rent is a brilliant classic Field's con when he outwits the landlady.

I agree that Jan Duggan was superb in this movie. It was actually the scene that made me become a W.C. Fields fan. I would love to have an original copy of the movie. I did record it but quality is bad but not so bad that I cannot see "Cleopatra" sing and dance to "The Sea Shell Song." I think I laugh harder every time and that dress & wig could not have been any better for here character. I would even wake my children up when they were small singing this song. Of course they hated it but now that they have gotten older, they will actually ask me to sing it but I just cannot master it like Jan Duggan. I wonder if she was in anymore of his movies as I have not seen her in anything else but what a lady!

There's genuinely little in the way of plot but tons of laughs anyway in this gaslight era study of a traveling theater group and the various scrapes they get into thanks to their leading comic W.C. Fields. One of three films in which Fields encountered Baby LeRoy, this is famous for the sequence where Fields gets delicious revenge on the prankster tot. It is also extremely memorable for the scene where he romances a wealthy but untalented singer (Jan Dugan) and the finale during the show within the show where he performs his hysterically funny juggling act. The typical young romance is there (between actor Joe Morrison and Judith Allen, playing Fields' daughter) , but when Fields is off-screen, the film sags, but only a bit because he's on for most of it.

This is one of the top 2 or 3 movies I recommend when someone wants an introduction to the films of W. C. Fields. Classic wisecracking Fields, interaction with Baby LeRoy (including a well-placed kick), the Fields juggling act, and Fields classic costume as he gets off the train and leads (he thinks) a parade, the oversized, ballooning coat. Hi slines are priceless, his interaction with Jan Dugan as Cleopatra Pepperday, singing a song about gathering shells on the seashore brings tears to my eyes with laughter, Nora Cecil does very, very well as the hatchet-faced boarding room landlord Mrs Wendelschaeffer. Very good look at turn of the century melodrama as they present "The Drunkard" onstage. If you see one full-length W. C. Fields movie as an introduction to this comic genius, make it this one! Recommended highly!

W. C. FIELDS may be the last we shall ever see of this unique breed of artist, where writer and comedian merge into a character bigger than life itself. There is supercilious wit beyond mere dialogue, slapstick where necessary, and above all, Fields himself as both the antagonist and protagonist. The film may be forgotten in time, but "The Old Fashioned Way" is still as funny today as it was when it was initially released in 1934. In "The Old Fashioned Way" Fields plays "The Great McGonigle," much like a P. T. Barnum on steroids. Fields as always is up to no good, but in a delightfully unhinged sort of way, drinking, smoking, and evading legal subpoenas with pure finesse and grand style. Everything Fields does or says carries with it a kind of childish lunacy. There really isn't much of a plot to "The Old-Fashioned Way" which makes the film even more timeless than its 87 years. But nevertheless, it's perfect, wholly classic, and undeniable unapologetic.

A great Fields film in which he gets to juggle, kick a baby, and ham it up. One of the great things about Fields was that he was not afraid of being upstaged, and The Old-Fashioned Way provides the wonderful Jan Duggan (as Cleopatra Pepperday)a scene stealing musical number in which she sings Gathering Shells at the Shore and brings down the house. A superb grotesque, Duggan was also memorable in the underrated A Damsel in Distress as one of the madrigal singers. I hadn't seen this film in 35 years but it was still the comic gem I remembered. Cheers to Fields and Duggan!

I've seen this film at least a dozen times over the past half century and never tire of it. Fields is at his best, and the movie is hilarious. It ranks with You're Telling Me, It's A Gift, The Bank Dick, and My Little Chickadee. It seems incredible that this film gem has not appeared in either VHS or DVD. But such is the blockheadedness of the ruling powers in the media these days.