The Old Fashioned Way **** (1934, W C Fields, Baby LeRoy, Joe Morrison, Judith Allen, Nora Cecil) – Classic Movie Review 9333

Director William Beaudine’s agreeably raucous and extremely funny 1934 W C Fields comedy The Old Fashioned Way sees the star at his grouchiest as The Great McGonigle, the blustery actor-manager head of a group of strolling actors performing a barnstorming extravaganza called The Drunkard. Fields plays Squire Cribbs in The Drunkard or The Fallen Saved, an American temperance play, first performed in 1844.

The Old Fashioned Way is full of typical Fieldsean funnies such as his jokey juggling or his daffy misadventures with Mrs Wendelschaffer (Nora Cecil)’s little kid Albert (Baby LeRoy). McGonigle’s juggling act offers a rare chance to see Fields’s famous vaudeville speciality juggling talent as he juggles airborne balls and cigar boxes.

The Old Fashioned Way is near Fields’s best level, thanks to the zippy pace and often hilarious gags and routines.

The nostalgic 20-minute Drunkard sequence is the film’s centerpiece and is performed in the style of the late 1890s with audience members in high emotional involvement, celebrating the enthusiasm 1890s American small-town audiences had for travelling theatrical companies.

W C Fields contributed the original story as well as gags to the script as ‘Charles Bogle’. The screenplay is credited to Garnett Weston and Jack Cunningham, but many other hands were at work.

Also in the cast are Joe Morrison, Judith Allen, Jan Duggan as Cleopatra Pepperday, Jack Mulhall, Nora Cecil, Oscar Apfel, Joe Mills, Samuel Ethridge, Emma Ray, Ruth Marion, Clarence Wilson, Richard Carle as Sheriff of Barnesville, Otis Harlan, Tammany Young as Marmaduke Gump, Dorothy Ray, Oscar Smith, Lew Kelly and William Blatchford.

Memorably, Baby LeRoy throws a handful of custard into Fields’s face, yanks on his nose, and destroys his pocket watch by tossing it into a bowl of molasses. Fields endures each of these but the scene ends with Fields spotting LeRoy standing in a doorway and giving him a kick to the rear end, which Beaudine said got ‘the biggest laugh in the picture.’

The cast are W C Fields as The Great McGonigle / Squire Cribbs in ‘The Drunkard’, Joe Morrison as Wally Livingston / William Dowton in ‘The Drunkard’, Baby LeRoy as Albert Pepperday, Judith Allen as Betty McGonigle / Agnes Dowton in ‘The Drunkard’, Jan Duggan as Cleopatra Pepperday, Tammany Young as Marmaduke Gump, Nora Cecil as Mrs Wendelschaffer, Lew Kelly as Sheriff Walter Jones, Jack Mulhall as resigning actor Dick Bronson, Oscar Apfel as M. Livingston, Samuel Ethridge as Bartley Neuville / Edward Middleton / The Drunkard in ‘The Drunkard’, Ruth Marion as Agatha Sprague / Mary Wilson in ‘The Drunkard’, Richard Carle as Sheriff of Barnesville, Larry Grenier as Drover Stevens in ‘The Drunkard’, William Blatchford as Landlord in ‘The Drunkard’, Jeffrey Williams as Mrs Arden Renclelaw in ‘The Drunkard’, and Donald Brown as The Minister in ‘The Drunkard’.

The 1974 comedy The Great McGonagall stars Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.

Ronald Le Roy Overacker (May 12, 1932 – July 28, 2001), better known as Baby LeRoy, is best known for his three W C Fields films: Tillie and Gus (1933), The Old Fashioned Way (1934) and It’s a Gift (1934).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9333

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