Kino has released the silent comedy IT'S THE OLD ARMY GAME which was the 4th film for both W. C. Fields and Louise Brooks. We visit the alley-way looking up at a 4-story house which would be later used in the "Carl LaFong search", and again the stairs are used as noise-makers to keep W. C. awake on a long, long night.
One interesting tidbit is this film features Elise Cavanna in a series of scenes, yet she's uncredited, just as she was uncredited in the main role as the Olive Oyl patient in W. C.'s short THE DENTIST.
I wonder why she was never credited in either? Perhaps it was a pay issue... credit equals higher pay, perhaps.
In this film, she kicks off the antics and continually keeps them going, all to the detriment of Fields.
The video-quality is very decent. Not as good as MONOLITH MONSTERS from that ULT SCI-FI collection years ago, nor as good as the German-sponsored Laural & Hardy classic THE MUSIC BOX. But good enough and, well, "it's all we have".
This film also feels like a W. C. Fields study of "What will work on film vs. stage" since this film's story is supposedly an almagamation of his vaudeville skits, and is the first film where he had a substantial role as writer and scene-production.
I don't remember seeing this movie but Fields and Brooks are two distinctive faces from early cinema. I wonder how they got along with eachother. Ms Brooks was an under-utilized talent
whose star shown brightest after she left Hollywood to appear in European productions. I'd always heard that Fields had many more male fans than female. One look at how his screen wives
are portrayed and it's easy to understand why.