It's a Gift

It's a Gift
November 30, 1934
Paramount
Comedy
DVD
C

Despite McLeod as director, this is even more slow-moving, and less funny, than the other two Fields movies I have from '34.  It comes close to being amusing in the "picnic on private property" scene, but nothing builds.  Baby LeRoy is given less to work with than in Old Fashioned Way, and even a very talented toddler can't do much with molasses in two movies.  Kathleen Howard, who was in OLW, plays Fields's nagging wife and gets far too much screen time.  And it feels unbalanced that so much of the film is set before they actually get to the "orange ranch" in California, and then the day is saved with much less set-up than when Fields's invention sells in You're Telling Me!  It's hard to believe that this is considered one of Fields's best.

Fields regulars include Eddie Baker, Del Henderson, and Josephine Whittell.  Some of the cast would go on to appear in Marx Brothers movies:  Jerry Mandy in A Night at the Opera, Edith Kingdon in A Day at the Races, and Diana Lewis in Go West.

The Old Fashioned Way

The Old Fashioned Way
July 13, 1934
Paramount
Comedy, Historical
DVD
C+

This as slow as You're Telling Me!, but it does have the bonus of Jan Duggan as song-butcher Cleopatra Pepperday.  Luckily, she would return in later Fields movies.  So would Florence Lawrence, who three decades earlier was the first movie actress to have her name used in promotion.  Tammany Young, who was the unfunny caddy in You're Telling Me!, plays Fields's assistant Gump.  Nora Cecil, who had a small role in YTM, has more to do here as the boarding-house mistress, Mrs. Wendelschaffer.  Dorothy Bay, Del Henderson, James B. "Pop" Kenton, Edward LeSaint (again playing a train conductor), and Robert McKenzie also return.  Furthermore, Davison Clark, who was the second Minister of Finance in Duck Soup, is the train passenger whose lost ticket Fields uses.

The title this time seems to refer to the setting ca. 1900, with everyone excited when a "horseless carriage" drives by.  It's probably a pun as well, since "old fashioned" is a drink.

Ignore the hyphen in the title on the poster.