WC Fields Forever: The Film Forum, NYC, starting Friday 4/22

It's impossible to avoid ballyhooing it up when announcing the seminal event in mine or any other film drunkard's life, the Film Forum's WC Fields retrospective, beginning tomorrow, Friday April 22nd. Unless I'm mistaken it includes every single film--even the silents and shorts--the Great Man ever appeared in. If you're unfamiliar with Fields, think Hank Quinlan in TOUCH OF EVIL if he drank more and strangled Akim Tamiroff less; think Nic Cage in LEAVING LAS VEGAS if he didn't leave, and didn't care about sex, love, or any form of gambling he couldn't cheat at; think Ray Milland in LOST WEEKEND if he stopped cringing and learned to laugh at the mouse-eating bats in his belfry. In fact, Fields would size up these aforementioned cinematic drunks and proclaim them a lot of "sissies." (He'd probably tolerate Geoffrey in UNDER THE VOLCANO, though).

Ironically, Fields never hit the big time until he was old, and almost dead, in THE BANK DICK. But he worked all through the silent era, and in Vaudeville, where he was huge, and came from a literal hard-knock life as a child in Philadelphia, a life few of us will hopefully ever come close to having. That trauma and pain was used by him as the ailment for which booze was the cure, and his clear-eyed ambivalence about the death he was drinking himself to is reflected in his existential gallows humor.

As for women, no luck or much interest sexually, but he loved to have young girls around--daughters, nieces, visiting princesses--and tolerated a slew of shrewish wives while generally steering clear of intimacy or most other physical endeavors outside of juggling, golf, deep elbow-bending, and pool, at which he was a master. He was married to booze, period, and like all true drunks, this singleness of purpose made him an almost holy figure, sanctifying him in film after film as the caretaker of abandoned orphan-style tykes and studio proteges. They were safer with Fields in his cups than they would be with any priest or adopted 'righteous' parents. Fields ferried orphans to rich relatives in SALLY IN THE SAWDUST, and POPPY while 'saving' a princess's life in YOU'RE TELLING ME, and protecting his daughter from bullies and/or suitors in MILLION DOLLAR LEGS, THE BANK DICK, and MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE. He also was given a niece in NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK. Perfect companions to this staggering talent, these girls and Fields worked together in a way that was surprisingly touching, especially considering Fields' rep as a reprobate and raconteur.

But it's his aggressive carny pitchmen and towering drunks that really stick out, and who made him such a hit on college campuses in the 1960s, and ever since for some of us, you know who you are, and you need to stop to drinking, or at least stop long enough to get out to the Film Forum.

Below I've laid out the first few films of the schedule for your convenience, but you can also check it out here on the FF website. I've seen most of them (though not in these new prints) except for a few of the silents and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, so I've rated them as well, in case you need to be choosy:

Friday and Saturday - April 22/23:
IT'S A GIFT - 1934 - **** (dir. Norman Z. McLeod) / THE DENTIST 1932 - *** / MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE- 1935 - *** (dir. Clyde Bruckman)
Fields had two personae: the roustabout carny pitchman who'd rob his own grandmother to pay his bar tab, and the harried husband, stoically enduring abuse at the hands of a shrill wife and loudmouth kids until he finally (hopefully) snaps. IT'S A GIFT is far and away Fields' best in the latter category, with one memorable set piece after another. THE DENTIST has been floating around in so many butchered public domain editions that the the occasional flash of 'what the hell' as Fields ends up practically mating with one of his female patients is sometimes long lost, but not this time, Josephine! FLYING TRAPEZE is, confidentially, one of the weaker of the family man films, with primitive Hal Roach-style gags, a truly evil wife and a stepson who steals Fields' wrestling ticket and otherwise makes life hell for him and his daughter from a previous marriage. Fields endures it all until...well, look out. The best part is the beginning, a gag involving burglars breaking into Fields' homemade liquor barrel.

Sunday/Monday - April 24/25
DAVID COPPERFIELD 1935 - **** (dir. George Cukor) / ALICE IN WONDERLAND 1933 - ***1/2 - (Norman Z. McLeod)
Fields as Humpty Dumpty! Cary Grant as a mockturtle! Etc. Weird but great in its weirdness (see here) COPPERFIELD: Fields was a huge Dickens fan and gave this his all -- but it's no comedy, especially with Basil Rathbone as the sadistic evil stepfather, and Fields only shows up towards the second half. But once he does show up he's so great, and the previous stuff is so grim, that tears shall surely ensue.

So if you're in NYC this coming weekend, look around for me! Say hi! Say, what's up!? You're not a jabberknowl, you're not a mooncalf, you're not those things, are you? Speaking of which, there's always some weird old man with a green plastic binder who sits right next to me, unbidden, whenever I go to revivals at the Forum, and he grins and looks at me during the jokes! It blows my mind, I can't escape him, so if you can't find me, just look for him, and shudder...

Great Acid Shorts: BLACK AND TAN FANTASY (1929)

You can draw a thin but prominent line after a certain moment in jazz history, and the early-sound Duke Ellington short BLACK AND TAN FANTASY (1929) could be the pen. It marks the moment jazz split into sanitized radio 'sweet' music ala Benny Goodman or "the old Maestro" on one hand, and the delirious forward-thinking danger of Louis Armstrong and his Hot Fives on the other. It's the line that separates uptown Manhattan from gritty swingin' Harlem, back in the day when the thing to do was get drunk and dance sweetly in midtown until around midnight, then jet up to Harlem and watch agog, through a haze of reefer smoke, as black artists strut, shimmied and blew the roof off. And in between those two lines, the point of that pen - was Duke Ellington.

Using the big band format to craft elaborate, beautiful, wistful, dark, surreal and elegant yet raw and bluesy compositions that sound fresh and new to this day, he was--especially in the 20s/early 30s (Prohibition made it all so urgent)--supernatural. He'd later become polished and institutional. But back in the late 20s he's like a fancy ship that starts out slow and sweet and is soon taking you to strange lands between life and death.

Duke's first film appearance, Black and Tan Fantasy  reflects this mix of surrealism, existential openness and social commentary. Floating elegantly by in 20 minutes or so, it begins as a piano rehearsal set around an almost-repossessed piano and--after a bit of comedy with a bottle of gin and some piano repossessors--segues into dance numbers on the Cotton Club stage and the lead female dancer, physically and spiritually exhausted, killing herself, Red Shoes-style, in a drugged-out shimmy. Finally she lays dying in a shadowy backstage dressing room. As her last request, she asks that the band, gathered around her like a mix of angels, coffin-bearers and an AA intervention, play "that Black and Tan." This becomes a bedside serenade, kind of like the dwarfs singing to comatose Snow White (the Disney film was still some eight years off, but the Betty Boop version (with fellow Cotton Clubber Cab Calloway singing "St. James Infirmary" as a rotoscoped ghost) was only 4 years off and is even more psychedelic than either, which says a lot about how DMT-enriched fairy tales used to be. 

Alas, most of the versions available online are just the music segments edited together, so you miss the drama of Duke, his dancer Fredi Washington (above) and his trumpeter (Arthur Whetsol) bribing the collection agency piano movers with a quart of bootleg gin. And you miss the backstage drama of the doctor warning Fredi not to dance because of a heart condition, and you miss her psychedelic collapse, but the more complete version can be found in a highly-recommended Kino compilation.

Alongside his fellow masters of Harlem Armstrong and Waller, Ellington's is the perfect music to wind down with after a long crazy night of psychedelic colors and angry inner demons devouring the soul. But while Armstrong focuses on the cheery and fun side of the psychedelic abyss, and Waller the playful trickster flirty side, Duke never shies from plunging down into the obsidian oval with you, wrapping you  up with him and his band in a warm blanket of opiates and starlight, and you're glad for the company, because when it comes to locating the redeeming angel of mercy buried somewhere in the vast core of the dark and lonesome blues, Duke is a magic bloodhound.

The film also offers a rare and precious glimpse of the kind of stuff white patrons would see at the Cotton Club, where the Duke often held court and lithe black Venus-style flappers gyrated in a manner that might be too shocking even for pre-code Hollywood. But Harlem was Harlem, and in this marvelous little 20 minute film, you see just why it mattered, and still should.

Standing at the dawn of the sound age with few surviving peers, BLACK AND TAN FANTASY still crackles with weird, lysergic power. That muted trumpet in the beginning can light up your spine like a Kundalini serpent if you're chemically open to it, so open up! As they used to say at prohibition era parties when the guy arrived with the suitcase full of bootleg bottles, "that man is here!"