The Man in the Satin Slippers
Title refers to one of WC Fields’ quaint terms for Death. “The Old Man in the Bright Nightgown” was another.
WC FIELDS AND ME (1976) is worthless as film history, although some facts and some possibly-true legends did wriggle their way into it, like germs… to judge from this film, you would think that Fields never made silents or shorts, that Gregory La Cava directed all his films (in reality, only two of his silents), that Chaplin was a major force in the 1930s. When the film does intersect with familiar stories, it leaves out the best lines. It’s also shapeless as drama, and burdened with a VO from Valerie Perrine (the co-dependents’ co-dependent, reprising her hapless girlfriend act from LENNY) which seems like an afterthought. But it has its good points too. Perrine is fine, but not around for the first half-hour. Rod Steiger as Fields is magnificent, in a typically full-on way. He has the difficult job of sustaining an impersonation while performing emotions we never saw Fields do on the screen, and he pulls that off admirably. “I don’t know who else they could possibly have got,”said Fiona. I offered up Charles Durning and Kenneth McMillan, but good luck getting the backing for one of THOSE biopics. I guess Field’s odd build — fat body and head, long thin legs and arms — would make him a natural for a skinny actor in a fat suit, but I still don’t know who you’d get.
And you wouldn’t have thought that David Cassidy’s dad would be a natural choice to play John Barrymore, but he’s very good too.
Beautiful last scene — probably fictional — where a dying Fields, who can’t sleep except lulled by the sound of rain, smiles. Cus as he hears the patter of drops on the roof. CUT TO: Outside, where Perrine is playing a hosepipe over the slates. One of the movies’ most touching and strange acts of love.
OK, that’s not the last scene, we cut to Fields in a spotlight giving a monologue, drowned out by a Perrine VO that’s obviously been added at the last moment, presumably because something in the film was felt to be not working, or because they all hated Steiger so much they didn’t want to let him have the ending. So the last scene is a bloody mess.
(Some impressive credits: Robert Boyle, Edith Head, Henry Mancini, Albert Whitlock, and makeup effects god Stan Winston on schnozz duty.)
Director Arthur Hiller is never going to be hip. A journeyman in an age that suddenly, unfairly expected artistic personality, he had probably a better career than he deserved, on the whole, but will not be particularly remembered. I would love to know how THE HOSPITAL got those lovely long take dolly shots, which are way better than anything else he ever achieved of a visual nature. I guess cinematographer Victor J. Kemper is the man — his credits cover an amazing range of ’70s stuff, from DOG DAY AFTERNOON and THE CANDIDATE to SLAP SHOT, MIKEY AND NICKY and THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE. Oh, and THE GAMBLER — a real good one. The grainier, grittier, uglier end of the spectrum, but now curiously a nostalgic look. Hollywood films will never be allowed to look that bad again.
shadowplay 
May 2, 2014 at 2:34 pm
Re. Arthur Hiller: Don’t Forget The In-Laws and Making Love
May 2, 2014 at 3:59 pm
… or The Americanization of Emily.
May 2, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Actually, I never liked The In-Laws much. Neil Simon in zany mode doesn’t work for me, and jokes about dentistry make me faint.
I’m sure Chayefsky liked him because he was tractable — a writer’s director.
His later films look atrocious!
May 2, 2014 at 4:53 pm
Solid review, and thanks for putting Hiller in his proper place. The early 1970’s was a period of slight revival of interest in Fields, much of it fueled by Carlotta Monti’s 1971 memoirs which, as is typified by those variety of books, tends to elevate the importance of the teller in the entirety of the celebrity’s (in this case, Fields) career story and since this was a primary source for the film, it probably stands to reason that a strenuous adherence to history was not a priority. This was also characteristic of an interesting and entertaining (though far too sentimental) but ultimately unsuccessful musical comedy (which closed on it’s pre-Broadway tryout tour) entitled “W.C.” with Mickey Rooney as the great curmudgeon and Bernadette Peters as Monti.
May 2, 2014 at 6:32 pm
Bernadette briefly appears in this one too. She could author a book with the same title based on those two experiences, it seems to me.
Rooney is potentially quite good casting, in a way. Physique is wrong, but smushy face is quite good. I would have said he’s too energetic, but having seen his tamped-down turn in Richard Quine’s Drive a Crooked Road, I don’t think that’d be a problem.
Maybe double-bill this with Carl Reiner’s The Comic, a wholly fictional work inspired by aspects of Keaton and Stan Laurel’s lives and careers. Rooney’s Night at the Museum co-star Dick Van Dyke played the lead in that. It’s better than WCF&M, but after watching both I think you’d be feeling starved of cinematic breadth.
May 3, 2014 at 1:20 am
And Rooney plays DVD’s sidekick in The Comic as well. The young Fields always struck me as looking remarkably like Steve Martin. Another juggler (and B. Peters’ leading fella in The Jerk of course). I like to think the great man’s most recent successor is Dylan Moran. He’s also, miraculously, Stan Laurel’s.
May 3, 2014 at 5:56 am
Van Dyke has some lovely moments in The Comic, most of them small and subtle. Very uneven picture, but while the silent film recreations are what DVD remembers fondly, his portrayal of a lonely, bitter octogenarian is the real news in the picture. Mickey Rooney does some good work , too. Is it too soon to mention the fact that there’s a camera move called a “Mickey Rooney”? It’s a slow, small push forward toward the subject of a shot: “a little creep”, hence the name.
May 3, 2014 at 10:39 am
Wow. That’s worth remembering.
I saw The Comic an age ago, and looked at some frame-grabs recently, thinking of watching it for this thing. And I couldn’t bring myself to do it — the whole look of it was so flat and dreadful. Just think about the fact that, for his Steve Martin vehicles, Reiner had the same cameraman as Martin Scorsese, at roughly the same period. Now, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is appropriately handsome, but that’s parodying a specific look. A formidable cinematic anti-talent is at work on the others. I
Now, I find the SM films enjoyable, but I couldn’t face a 20s period movie shot like that, with added 70s-ness, for cheap. I couldn’t do it! Maybe with a stiff drink inside me…
May 3, 2014 at 4:01 pm
May 3, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Enter Warner Bros. Entertainment, armed with scissors and a big stick. “This video … bocked on copyright grounds.”
May 4, 2014 at 1:29 am
Van Dyke was a huge fan and a personal friend of Laurel; Reiner was at the very least a great admirer. Think there might be a story in why they made the bitter “Comic” (which really seems to be a grim reading of Keaton’s life, down to Van Dyke’s old man makeup and voice) instead of doing a Stan Laurel biopic.
In one of the Laurel biographies, there’s an anecdote of the elderly Laurel seeing a newspaper item listing his various marriages / remarriages. He said something to the effect it had the makings of a great Charlie Chan movie. Maybe, as a friend, Van Dyke didn’t want to risk highlighting the less happy aspects of Laurel’s life.
Also, rights may have come into it. By that time I think Stan & Ollie’s widows, working with Larry Harmon, had legally claimed the rights to the characters (Reiner said they had to pay somebody else — presumably Roach — for permission to do a Laurel and Hardy sketch on the Dick Van Dyke Show). A matter of terms, or their concerns over how L&H would be portrayed?
May 4, 2014 at 3:08 pm
What I can’t quite work out is why the eventual portrait was so acid. Keaton seems a very genuine person to me, and DVD’s character was anything but. So it becomes the story of a jerk who loses everything, which I suppose should be edifying but somehow isn’t. As I recall, DVD is very good in it though.
May 5, 2014 at 6:13 am
Some theories come up in this article from The Onion AV Club:
http://www.avclub.com/article/ithe-dick-van-dyke-showi-the-return-of-happy-spang-52628
The writer analyzes an episode about a former comedy writer — and, in passing, “The Comic” — as the work of comic talents fretting about comedy passing them by. It notes that Van Dyke and Reiner left their smash hit series expecting to conquer Hollywood, but despite a lot of good work they never came near topping that first success (Although Van Dyke did it at least commercially with two big family musicals).
Perhaps, in telling a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God story, they felt the need to make their anti-hero deserve everything that happened to him. They could then reassure themselves that steady hard work and upright lives would protect them from watching themselves on TV in crummy apartments.
As it stands, Van Dyke and Reiner are enjoying happy third acts. But there’s still the sense neither went as far as they should have.
May 5, 2014 at 8:43 am
True — nothing to complain about, but not mega-success. I think Reiner made essentially a mistake concentrating on directing. His comic skills obviously found a good outlet that way, but he was never any good visually (the bleak comedy of Where’s Poppa? didn’t need to look so goddamn BROWN).
DVD hit Hollywood just when family entertainment was in decline. That’s the only explanation I can think of. And he didn’t have sex appeal. And most TV stars seemed to have trouble making in in movies.