splash  It’s the Old Army Game is a comedy about a small town druggist (played by W.C. Fields) who gets involved with a real estate scam. Louise Brooks plays the druggist’s assistant. The film was Brooks’ fourth, and it reunited her with the Fields, the film’s star. The two had worked together in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1925.

In its review, the Newark Star-Eagle stated, “This picture not only affords a good deal of typical Fields comedy in a suitable story frame, but also reveals the possibilities of Louise Brooks, Follies girl who is making decidedly good in the cinema. . . . All told, Fields need not regret his first Paramount production. Louise Brooks, with a touch of piquancy, a good range of registration, and the conception of restraint, is pleasing as the heroine.”

It’s the Old Army Game was originally announced as starring Fields and future “It girl” Clara Bow, but she was shooting Mantrap (1926), so the female lead fell to Brooks. Exhibitor’s Herald stated, “Louise Brooks is the other important person in the picture and, as insinuated rather bluntly on the occasion of her first appearance — in The American Venus — she’s important. Miss Brooks isn’t like anybody else. Nor has she a distinguishing characteristic which may be singled out for purposes of identification. She’s just a very definite personality. She doesn’t do much, perhaps because there isn’t much to do but probably because she hits hardest when doing nothing, but nobody looks away when she’s on screen. If Miss Glyn should say that Miss Brooks has ‘it,’ more people would know what Miss Glyn is raving about. But in that case she would not be raving.”

The Portland Oregonian noted “Louise Brooks, the pert young woman who will be remembered for her work in The American Venus and A Social Celebrity, the latter with Adolphe Menjou, has the lead role opposite Fields. She poses a bit. An excuse was found to get her into a bathing suit too, which wasn’t a bad move, on the whole.” 

It’s the Old Army Game received mostly positive reviews, though some critics noted its rather thin plot. Algonquin Round Table playwright Robert E. Sherwood (who would go on to win four Pulitzer Prizes and an Academy Award) was then writing reviews for Life magazine. His pithy critique read, “Mr. Fields has to carry the entire production on his shoulders, with some slight assistance from the sparkling Louise Brooks.” Ella H. McCormick of the Detroit Free Press countered with “Fields scored a splendid triumph in this picture. A great part of the success of the offering, however, is due to Louise Brooks, who takes the lead feminine part.”

Today, It’s the Old Army Game is largely remembered as a starring vehicle for Fields — a comedic great, It is also remembered for the fact that not long after the film wrapped, Brooks married the film’s director, Eddie Sutherland.

STORY SYNOPSIS:
“Elmer Prettywillie, the village druggist, is awakened by a woman who needs a 2-cent stamp in the middle of the night. Seeking again a state of somnolence, Prettywillie must contend with the clamorous collectors of garbage, and with those of his own castle who have caught forty winks and then some. The letter-carrying lady, in trying to post her missive, manages to summon the city’s fire department to the pharmacy where, unable to find a fire, they sit and sip sodas while Prettywillie panders to their every want. When they leave, a bit of a blaze does erupt, but Prettywillie is forced to his own resources. Meanwhile, George Parker is smitten with Elmer’s buxom assistant and uses the storefront to promote a bogus land deal. The Prettywillie fortune is thus inflated, enabling the purchase of a flivver, but Elmer ends up wrecking a Florida estate and finally the flivver, foiling the schemers and delighting the denizens of the town, whose jubilation Elmer takes for an acute case of distemper. He jails himself for safekeeping.” (Note: this synopsis, provided by Famous Players Lasky, is inaccurate; Brooks character, for example, is not buxom, nor is her love interest named George).


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PRODUCTION HISTORY:
The film, especially interiors, were shot at Paramount’s Astoria Studios on Long Island (located at 3412 36th Street in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens) and in Manhattan. Location shooting, including exteriors, was done in Ocala and Palm Beach, Florida in late February and March, 1926. (Ocala is an inland farming community near Gainesville, Florida.)

CAST:
W.C. Fields
 Elmer Prettywillie
Louise Brooks
 Marilyn Sheriden
Blanche Ring
 Tessie Gilch, railroad station agent (and Marilyn Sheriden’s aunt)
William Gaxton
 William Parker
Mary Foy
 Sarah Pancoast
Mickey Bennett
 Mickey
Josephine Dunn
 Society Bather
Jack Luden
 Society Bather
George Currie
 Artist
Elise Cavanna
 Early morning customer (uncredited)
Rose Elliott
 (uncredited)
John Merton
 Fireman (uncredited)
CREDIT:
Studio:
 Famous Players-Lasky Corporation
Producer:
 Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky
Associate Producer:
 William LeBaron (Eastern Studio)
Director:
 A. Edward Sutherland
Second Assistant Director:
 Joseph Pasternak
Writing Credits:
 J. P. McEvoy (story), Thomas J. Geraghty and J. Clarkson Miller (screenplay), Ralph Spence (titles)
Format:
 Silent – black & white
Cinematography:
 Alvin Wyckoff
Film Editor:
 Thomas J. Geraghty
Running Time:
 7 reels (6,889 feet) – elsewhere, Sweden: 1868 meters, censored length 1831 meters or 66 minutes. United Kingdom: 6,400 feet.
Copyright:
 May 25, 1926 by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (LP22763)
Release Date:
 May 25, 1926
First Showings:
 Palm Beach, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia (other early screenings took place in Hartford, Connecticut and Indianapolis, Indiana)
Country of Origin:
 United States

ALTERNATE TITLES:
Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Bermuda, British Malaysia (Singapore), Canada, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Panama, and the United Kingdom (England, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland, and Scotland). In Czechoslovakia, the film was promoted under the title The Old Army Game. In Japan, it was once promoted as It’s the Old Army.

Elsewhere, It’s the Old Army Game was shown under the title El boticario rural (Argentina); Ein moderner Glücksritter (Austria); Een Apothekersstreek (Belgium); Risos e tristezas (Brazil); El Boticario Rural (Cuba); To je starí hra armády (Czechoslovakia); Miehen ihanne (Findland); Un Conte D’Apothicaire (France); チョビ髯大将 (Japan); Laimes spekuliantai (Lithuania); Un Conte d’hapoticaire! (Luxembourg); El Boticario Rural (Mexico); Pierewaaier — Pilledraaier (The Netherlands); Ungkar og spillemann (Norway); El boticario rural (Spain); Mannen som gör vad som faller honom in (Sweden *); and El boticario rural (Uruguay).

* The film was censored in Sweden, though when released in 1930, it was deemed suitable for all audiences.

STATUS:
The film is extant. Copies are held at the Cinematheque Royale de Belgique (Bruxelles), Cineteca Del Friuli (Gemona), Library of Congress (Washington D.C.) George Eastman House (Rochester), BFI/National Film and Television Archive (London), and Harvard Film Archive (Cambridge). It has been released for home video on VHS and DVD by various companies, which according to silentera.com, were likely mastered from a 16mm reduction print. Most of those earlier releases are out-of-print. Kino Lorber released the film on DVD / Blu-ray in March, 2018. The Kino Lorber version was mastered in 2K from 35mm film elements preserved by The Library of Congress, and features a new score by Ben Model and an audio commentary by film historian James L. Neibaur, author of the 2017 release The W.C. Fields Films.

RELATED DOCUMENTS, PROGRAM NOTES, etc…:
— Press Sheet (Paramount, 1926)
— Thematic music cue sheet (Paramount, 1926)

TRIVIA: about the film

— Clarence Badger was originally assigned to direct, but the film was soon turned over to Edward Sutherland, a onetime actor and Keystone Cop who began his directing career just a few years before with the help of Charlie Chaplin. The film was announced, at first, as starring W.C. Fields and future “It girl” Clara Bow, but as she was needed on the West Coast to shoot Mantrap (1926), the female lead fell to Brooks. It’s the Old Army Game was the first of five Fields’ films directed by Sutherland.

— Louise Brooks met Eddie Sutherland while he was directing her in It’s the Old Army Game. Sutherland and Brooks married in July 1926, and divorced in June 1928.

— Silent film historian John Bengston has written a series of posts on his Silent Locations website looking at various scenes from the film. Each are well worth checking out. They include “W.C. Fields in Palm Beach – It’s the Old Army Game” — “It’s The Old Army Game – W.C. Fields and Louise Brooks Bring Magazines to Life” — “It’s The Old Army Game – W.C. Fields and Louise Brooks in Ocala Florida – Part One“.

— The source of the film’s story was a series of sketches written by J. P. McEvoy for Fields 1924 show The Comic Supplement, portions of which were incorporated into Fields’ act in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1925. Brooks also appeared in the 1925 Follies. Bits from The Comic Supplement as well as It’s the Old Army Game were later incorporated into Fields’ classic 1934 film It’s a Gift.

— Outdoor scenes in Palm Beach, Florida were shot at El Mirasol, the estate of multi-millionaire investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury. In 1912, after having been a widower for thirty-some years, Stotesbury remarried and became the stepfather of three children including Henrietta Louise Cromwell Brooks (known simply as Louise Brooks), an American socialite and the first wife of General Douglas MacArthur. In her heyday, she was “considered one of Washington’s most beautiful and attractive young women”. Because of their names, the two women were sometimes confused in the press.

— Paramount had made other movies in Ocala, Florida – including scenes for the earlier Brooks’ film, The American Venus. (Brooks was likely not present on that occasion.)

— The film features the popular stage actress Blanche Ring (1871 – 1961) in one of her few film appearances. Ring was Eddie Sutherland’s aunt. Ring’s sister was Frances Ring, who was married to Thomas Meighan, a rugged leading man and film actor who appeared with Brooks in The City Gone Wild (1927). Ever hopeful, Blanche Ring was married four times, the last time being to Charles Winninger, a popular character actor who appeared in God’s Gift to Women (1931) with Brooks.

— Notably, It’s the Old Army Game marked the first film appearance of Elise Cavanna, who plays the nearsighted woman in search of a stamp.(She is the first character seen in the film.)  Cavanna started as a dancer (who reportedly studied under Isadora Duncan) and stage comedian before entering films in 1926. She appeared in another Brooks’ film, Love Em and Leave Em (1926), as well as four other films with Fields, most notably The Dentist (1932), where her scenes as a writhing patient in a dentist chair were deemed so risqué they were edited out of later television broadcasts.

— William Gaxton plays William Parker, Brooks’ love interest and the President of the High-and-Dry Realty Company. Born in San Francisco as Arturo Antonio Gaxiola, Gaxton worked mostly on stage, finding his greatest success in George Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing (1933) and other Broadway musicals during the 1930s and 1940s. In Lulu in Hollywood, Brooks recounts what an entertaining person Gaxton was off camera, and how funny he was when he read aloud from Gentleman Prefer Blondes when the company wasn’t working or drinking; Brooks also speculates that Gaxton was bitter about what he regarded as his failure as an actor in It’s the Old Army Game — his first film, and role he thought would launch his film career.

— It’s the Old Army Game was officially released May 25, 1926. The film opened in select cities on May 22, 1926, with the earliest showings taking place in Atlanta, Georgia, Hartford, Connecticut, and Indianapolis, Indiana. The film was advertised to open a few days earlier in Palm Beach, Florida (on May 18) and elsewhere, but was delayed.

— James Curtis’ 2003 biography of W. C. Fields contains valuable background on the making of It’s the Old Army Game, as does Barry Paris’ 1989 biography of Brooks. See also James Neibaur’s 2017 book, The W.C. Fields Films. For more on Brooks’ recollections of the Fields and the making of It’s the Old Army Game, see “The Other Face of W.C. Fields” in Brooks’ 1982 memoir, Lulu in Hollywood.