Tillie and Gus **** (1933, W C Fields, Alison Skipworth, Baby LeRoy) – Classic Movie Review 11,463

The 1933 pre-Code comedy Tillie and Gus stars WC Fields and Alison Skipworth.

Director Francis Martin’s 1933 American pre-Code comedy film Tillie and Gus stars W C Fields, Alison Skipworth, Baby LeRoy, Julie Bishop, Phillip Trent, and Clarence Wilson.

It is the precious first encounter between spectacular old sourpuss Fields and impressive young grizzler LeRoy as The ‘King’ Sheridan (Fields says he likes kids ‘only if they’re cooked’).

Both Fields and LeRoy score loads of laughs off each other in this famed movie bout. But then 70-year-old British player Skipworth comes in and delivers a knockout performance as Tillie Winterbottom, a Shanghai saloon owner who helps her cardsharp ex-husband Augustus Q Winterbottom, aka Gus (Fields), stop conman attorney Phineas Pratt (Clarence Wilson) tricking their niece Mary Sheridan (Julie Bishop, billed in her real name of Jacqueline Wells) out of her rightful inheritance.

With her father Pratt conniving, Mary has to movie in to a dilapidated ferry called the Fairy Queen with her husband Tom Sheridan (Phillip Trent) and their infant son The ‘King’.

Tillie has just lost her waterfront saloon in Shanghai, China in a dice game and Gus is on trial for murder in Lone Gulch, Alaska, when they learn that Tillie’s brother has died. Gus escapes and reunites with Tillie in Seattle, and then they head for Danville, California, to investigate the dead man’s estate and the chance of an inheritance.

Gus reminds us: ‘Well, don’t forget, Lady Godiva put everything she had on a horse!’

It is written by Martin and Walter DeLeon, based on a short story by Rupert Hughes entitled Don’t Call Me Madame. The film Paramount Pictures released it on 13 October 1933.

Fields recalled a difficult shooting day when a short scene was repeatedly ruined by Baby LeRoy’s crying until he devised a solution: ‘I quietly removed the nipple from Baby LeRoy’s bottle, dropped in a couple of noggins of gin, and returned it to Baby LeRoy. After sucking on the pacifier for a few minutes, he staggered through the scene like a Barrymore.’ (Actor John Barrymore had a chronic drinking problem.)

Baby LeRoy’s career began when he was less than a year old, in Maurice Chevalier’s A Bedtime Story (1933), and ended with a cameo as himself in Cinema Circus (1937). He is immortalised for his appearances in three W C Fields films: Tillie and Gus (1933), The Old Fashioned Way (1934) and It’s a Gift (1934). When he was 16 months old, he became the youngest person in a long-term contract by a major studio.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,463

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