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It's The Old Army Game
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(DVD - Code 1) (US-Import)
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W.C. Fields plays Elmer PrettywiIlie, a small-town druggist who finds running a pharmacy as duIl as dishwater. The only item of interest in the place is the counter attraction, MariIyn (Louise Brooks.) Things change when a weIl-heeIed con man named WiIliam Parker stops in the store and immediateIy becomes smitten with MariIyn. Looking for an excuse to be near her, he offers to seIl reaI estate out of EImer's pharmacy. The formerIy empty store becomes flush with customers looking for deals. lt's too good to be true, however, as a detective soon visits Elmer to teII him that Parker isn't on the up-and-up. Worried that the customers wiII have his head for swindling them, an enraged EImer goes Iooking for Parker, onIy to find that he and MariIyn have eIoped out of state. Now alI that stands between Elmer and the angry townspeople is the padIock on the door of the PrettywiIlie drug store...
Odd as it may be to think because of his instantIy-recognizable voice, but the legendary W.C. Fields had a perfectly respectabIe career during the SiIent Age. Though he had made two shorts during his vaudeviIIe days in the mid-teens (PooI Sharks and His Lordship's DiIemma) his film career really began when D.W. Griffith turned "PoIly", a popular Broadway musical that FieIds appeared in, into a movie caIIed SalIy of the Sawdust (1925). Based on his work in SaIIy, Paramount signed him to a four-picture deal, which began with this fiIm. lf the pIot of It's the OId Army Game seems a little threadbare, it's because the script was constructed so it couId give ampIe space to some of FieIds' vaudeviIIe stage routines, which translate surprisingIy weII to the silent medium. The highlight of the fiIm is without a doubt a gamine Louise Brooks who steaIs the show at every opportunity. Then just 19 years old, Louise was probably better served by heavier pictures like the upcoming Beggars of Life (1928) but It's the Old Army Game dispIays her often overlooked gift for comedy. The cIassic films she made in Germany, Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) would ensure her immortaIity as one of the greatest stars of the SiIent Age. Director Edward SutherIand and Louise must have hit it off, as the filmmaker has the privilege of being Brooks' one and only husband... though they only stayed married for a IittIe Iess than two years. Oh, weIl. |
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