The Old-Fashioned Way

The Old-Fashioned Way (1934)

The Great McGonigle and his troupe of third-rate vaudevillians manage to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and the sheriff.

Date of release
1934-07-13
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (16)
Runtime
1h 11m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
William Beaudine

Casting

Interesting facts

The Old Fashioned Way is a 1934 American comedy film produced by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by William Beaudine and stars W. C. Fields. The script was written by Jack Cunningham based on a story by "Charles Bogle".

Production notes

Fields's "Great McGonigle" character—a riff on the Great Ziegfeld—resembles the self-important frauds he had played on Broadway in Poppy (1923) and its silent-film adaptation Sally of the Sawdust (1925). He would return to variations of this character in his later films.

The play depicted in the film is the American temperance play The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved, first performed in 1844. In 1933 little-theater producer Galt Bell mounted a revival of The Drunkard in Los Angeles. The show opened on July 6, 1933, and was an immediate success. Bell presented The Drunkard as an audience-participation show, and urged the crowd to hiss the villain and cheer the hero.

W. C. Fields loved the show and wanted to make a film version. He arranged for Paramount Pictures to hire members of the Los Angeles stage company: Jan Duggan, Ruth Marion, Samuel Ethridge, Larry Grenier, and William Blatchford. The villain of The Drunkard, actor Henry Kleinbach, was also signed; Fields kept Kleinbach on hand during the filming.

As the film's centerpiece, the Drunkard sequence runs about 20 minutes and is performed in the style of the late 1890s. Reaction shots show audience members at a pitch of emotional involvement: an excited elderly spectator is cautioned by his wife to think of his heart; a young sophisticate skeptically asks his pretty date, "Do you think this is a good play?" to which she answers rapturously, eyes glued to the stage, "Oh, yes!" For the 1930s, the…

McGonigle's juggling act seen in the film affords a rare opportunity to observe Fields's own juggling talent—his famous vaudeville specialty—as he juggles airborne balls and cigar boxes. In this bit, Fields looks relatively fit and slim, in contrast to the plumper look that became familiar in later years.

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