The last silent film to be shot at New York City's Astoria Studios, RUNNING WILD is a lively comedy about a wimp who is transformed into a world-beater by hypnosis. For the film, W.C. Fields set aside his stock con artist persona and entered the skin of the other staple character in his
repertoire: the meek and mousy breadwinner eternally terrorized by boss and family.
Elmer Finch (W.C. Fields) is his name, but it might as well be Caspar Milquetoast. At work, a lowly billing clerk, he is bullied by his employer Mr. Harvey (Frederick Burton); at home--despite the sympathetic presence of Mary (Mary Brian), his daughter by a previous marriage--he is browbeaten by
his wife (Marie Shotwell) and stepson (Barnett Raskin).
One day, Elmer wanders onto a vaudeville stage where a professional hypnotist (Edward Roseman) convinces him that he's a superman instead of a supermouse. Repeatedly shouting "I'm a lion!" Elmer storms off and quickly accomplishes two key tasks he had failed at earlier in the day: he ferociously
collects on an overdue account from one of his boss's toughest customers (Frank Evans) and signs a coveted potential client (J. Moy Bennett) to a million-dollar contract.
Back home, Elmer reads his shrewish wife the riot act and proceeds to give his bratty stepson the whaling of his life. Even after the hypnotist shows up and reverses the spell he has cast, Elmer retains enough gumption to bluff his boss into sanctioning the romance that has developed between their
children, Mary and Dave Harvey (Claude Buchanan). After pocketing his $15,000 commission check, Elmer, master of all he surveys, chases his terrified stepson down the street.
"The son of a bitch is a ballet dancer.... He's the best ballet dancer that ever lived, and if I get a good chance I'll kill him with my bare hands," goes the famous Fields comment on Charlie Chaplin. Fields' envy of Chaplin's nimbleness may have motivated him, before age and paunch caught up with
him, to abandon temporarily the cramped domain of the professional juggler and stand-up wiseacre--his customary turf--in favor of the expanded horizons of RUNNING WILD.
Probably his most kinetic performance, Fields' portrayal of Elmer Finch begins with some balletic calisthenics performed as part of Elmer's wake-up ritual. A little later, on his way to the office, he combines the plight of a man who is late for work with the self-imposed constraints of a soul who
is too superstitious to step on sidewalk cracks in a dazzlingly twinkletoed jig that is as graceful as it is funny. Ultimately, he will spend most of the afternoon literalizing RUNNING WILD's title as his "I'm a lion!" phase propels him ever helplessly onward, like the ballerina in the fabled red
shoes.
Some of this hyperactivity is adroit; little of it is true Fields. The manic lion phase, in particular, goes on too long, eating up nearly two of the film's seven reels with repetitious windmilling activity that most adults won't find very amusing to begin with. Fields is more effective
articulating Elmer's passive pre-hypnosis personality, which allows him to trot out his most abject sniveling smile and a series of those inimitable Fieldsian feints of fright, in which he is liable to recoil from anything that moves, and a few things that don't.
THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE (1935), an unofficial remake of RUNNING WILD which reteamed Fields and Mary Brian as father and daughter, was a notably superior effort. (Violence.) leave a comment
