It's the Old Army Game
About It's the Old Army Game
Druggist Elmer Prettywillie is asleep when a woman rings the night bell for a two-cent stamp. Garbage men, then firemen on a false alarm, then a real fire, keep waking him. On the back porch a surly iceman makes him lift a melting block, and a neighbor leaves him a baby who takes a mallet to the porch after he tries to quiet it. A shotgun finishes the porch. He, his clerk Marilyn, and her aunt picnic on a private lawn and tell the owner to clean up. Real-estate man William Parker, after Marilyn, sells lots out of the store, then New York police want him for an earlier swindle. Elmer drives to New York the wrong way on a one-way street, sheds parts of the car, hires a mule, and burns the car trying to make the mule move. He comes home to surrender and learns a developer has bought the lots at a high price. The town calls him a hero. He locks the aunt in a cell and leaves. Parker and Marilyn have eloped on a train.
Cast & crew
More about It's the Old Army Game
A. Edward Sutherland directed. Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, and William LeBaron produced. Paramount released it in 1926. It runs 70 minutes. It comes from the revue The Comic Supplement by Joseph P. McEvoy and W. C. Fields, plus sketches from Fields’s stage acts. Fields is Elmer. Louise Brooks is Marilyn. Blanche Ring, Sutherland’s aunt, is Tessie Overholt, in one of her few silent roles. William Gaxton is in the cast. The title is a shell game. Fields’s character watches one and says, “It’s the old army game.” Picnic and sleeping-porch sections were reused in It’s a Gift (1934).
Themes
Making
Sutherland films Fields’s stage bits as one night and one picnic. The shell-game line is the title. The 1934 talkie lifts the porch and the picnic rather than remaking the real-estate chase.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
A 70-minute print survives.
Notes
- The two-cent stamp is torn from a large sheet in the middle of the night.
- The aunt has a crush on Elmer. He does not return it. The cell is where he leaves her.
- Brooks and Gaxton’s elopement is the last train, not Elmer’s reward.
- A Commons copy carries the 1926 title.
Scenes
- The night bell is a woman who wants one two-cent stamp.
- The baby and a mallet take the porch apart. A shotgun finishes it.
- The picnic party orders the owner of the lawn to clean up.
- A mule and a burned car end the drive to New York.
- He locks the aunt in a cell as Marilyn leaves on a train with Parker.
Influenced by
- The Comic Supplement (Joseph P. McEvoy and W. C. Fields)
Influenced
- It's a Gift (1934)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (It's the Old Army Game (1926).webm)
Quotes
It's the old army game.
