Man on the Flying Trapeze

Man on the Flying Trapeze
August 3, 1935
Paramount
Comedy
DVD
B-

Well, this movie surprised me.  My expectations were low when I saw that Kathleen Howard again plays Fields's nagging wife, but there's more to her character here, although she's not given as much screen time.  The second half of the movie, with all the complications of Fields's job as a memory expert, his desire to see a wrestling match, and his family troubles (as usual, only the roughly 20-year-old daughter, here named Hope, is loyal to him), is much better than the first, although I can see how that first half sets things up.  The direction, by Fields himself, has much more energy than anything since International House, which admittedly was not just a Fields movie.  There are some nice comic touches, like the way his boss Peabody pronounces "decades" like "decayeds" and "condolences" like you've never heard it before.  Fields even gets a few lines past the censors, like "Nuts!" while stepping on walnuts, and calling a nosegay "nose candy."

Carlotta Monti, Fields's real-life live-in lover, does a fine job playing his secretary, even telling off Peabody, and she would play a receptionist in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.  Lew Kelly and Billy Bletcher were both in The Old Fashioned Way.  Jack Baxley would go on to Double Wedding, both Helen Dickson and Sarah Edwards to It's a Wonderful Life.  And one of the wrestlers is none other than future "star" of Plan Nine from Outer Space Tor Johnson!

Since it's a Paramount comedy, what does the title mean?  I thought that the classic song would be one that the burglars (one played by Walter Brennan, the other of course Tammany Young), the one friendly cop Fields meets, and Fields would sing in their basement quartet, but they don't.  I think the title is meant to be an ironic comment on how Fields's Ambrose Wolfinger isn't daring or young, nor does he float through the air (or life) with the greatest of ease, but there's something quietly heroic about him.  I think this is the first of his movies where I actually cared about his character.