Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)

Director:

Clyde Bruckman

Writers:

Ray Harris (screenplay) and
Sam Hardy (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

3 August 1935 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Hard-working, henpecked Ambrose Ambrose Wolfinger takes off from work to go to a wrestling match with catastrophic consequences.

Plot Keywords:

Mother In Law | Wrestling Match | Loyalty | Brother In Law | Wrestler

Cast

W.C. Fields	...	Ambrose Wolfinger
Mary Brian	...	Hope Wolfinger
Kathleen Howard	...	Leona Wolfinger
Grady Sutton	...	Claude Neselrode
Vera Lewis	...	Mrs. Cordelia Neselrode
Lucien Littlefield	...	Mr. Peabody
Oscar Apfel	...	President Malloy
Lew Kelly	...	Adolph Berg
Tammany Young	...	'Willie' the Weasel
Walter Brennan	...	'Legs' Garnett
Edward Gargan	...	Patrolman No.1
James Burke	...	Patrolman No.2
Carlotta Monti	...	Ambrose's Secretary

Also Known As:

The Memory Expert (UK)

Runtime:

66 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #945) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | USA:TV-PG (TV rating)

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

This was the last film directed by Clyde Bruckman. Although Bruckman's name appears on the credit, this film was actually directed by W.C. Fields, who took over after Bruckman had to quit early in the shoot due to the effects of his alcoholism. This is the only film on which Fields technically worked as his own director.

Quotes:

Ambrose Wolfinger: The more haste the less speed.

Movie Connections:

Remade as Andy Plays Hookey (1946)

Soundtrack:

On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away

Absolutely One of W.C. Fields' Best

This was one of W.C. Fields' favorite films, and in fact was closest to his own family situation, or at least his version of it. It also reprises many of his skits worked out with the writer J.P. McEvoy, which he also replays in It's A Gift and other W.C. Fields' movies of the domestic type, like The Bank Dick.

I love this movie; it contains much of the actual W.C. Fields. The son, Claude, for example. W.C. Fields' and Hattie Fields, his wife, were estranged while their son, William Claude, Jr., grew up. Fields believed, according to biographers, including his grandson, that his wife turned his son against him. He always believed that if he'd had a daughter, she would be a more loyal child. In this movie, the son, Claude, is awful to him, while the daughter, Hope (!), is loyal and loving.

The gags fly: "How can you hurt a person by throwing him on his head?" "It must be hard to lose your mother-in-law." "Yes, it is, almost impossib-, um, yes." Or my favorite exchange, the most brilliantly poignant comment on an unhappy marriage, I think, ever portrayed in a movie. "Is your toast warm, Dad?" "No, dear, it's cold. But it's all right. I've been eating cold toast now for eight years; I like it." All the while looking as miserable as anyone ever could. God, he was brilliant.

There's also the sense that Ambrose, the character The Great Silly plays, is someone lost in a world that he doesn't understand. The scene where instead of the burglars, HE is the one sent to jail. Or the scene where he's parked in a no parking zone, and the painful exchanges with the cop, the chauffeur, etc. Or when he loses the car's wheel and chases it down the hill, over the dale, down the railroad tracks, barely escaping death twice.

His actual mistress (W.C. and Hattie, Catholics, never divorced), Carlotta Monti, plays his secretary, and is the one who explains that her mother is good friends with Hookalakah Meshobbab, somehow without howling with laughter.

Ah, what a film, and it's a disgrace that it's not on DVD yet.