Mississippi (film)

Mississippi
Directed by	A. Edward Sutherland
Produced by	Arthur Hornblow Jr.
Written by	Francis Martin Jack Cunningham
Starring	Bing Crosby W. C. Fields Joan Bennett
Distributed by	Paramount
Release date(s)	1935

Mississippi (1935) is a musical comedy starring Bing Crosby, W. C. Fields, and Joan Bennett. The film was produced by Arthur Hornblow Jr. and directed by A. Edward Sutherland from an adaptation of a Booth Tarkington story by Herbert Fields and Claude Binyon. The screenplay was by Francis Martin and Jack Cunningham and the movie was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures.

This film has the distinction of being the only W. C. Fields film with a score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Also, it is the only film in which he costarred with Bing Crosby. Photographed by Charles Lang, the film featured art direction by Hans Dreier and Bernard Herzburn and was edited by Chandler House. The sound man was Eugene Merritt.

The original running time of this black-and-white film was 80 minutes. The film has been released on VHS and DVD as part of the W.C. Fields Collection (UK).

Story

Commodore Jackson (W. C. Fields) is the captain of a Mississippi showboat in the late nineteenth century. Tom Grayson (Bing Crosby) is engaged to be married and has been disgraced for refusing to fight a duel with Major Patterson (John Miljan).

Accused of being a coward, Grayson joins Jackson's showboat. Over the duration of the film, the behaviour of the meek and mild Tom Grayson alters as a consequence of the constant representation of him, by Commodore Jackson, as "The Notorious Colonel Steele", "the Singing Killer", and the constant attribution, by Jackson, of duelling victories by Grayson to unrelated corpses freshly dragged from the river beside the showboat as "yet another victim of the notorious Colonel Steele, the Singing Killer".

The film provides sufficient opportunities for Crosby to sing the Rodgers and Hart songs, including the centerpiece number, "Soon", while Fields gets to tell some outlandish stories. Crosby and Fields worked well together and there is one memorable scene in which Fields tries to tell Crosby how to act tougher. In the film, Crosby does a number of brilliantly engineered sight gags involving a chair and a bowie knife. Another highlight is Fields' remarkable story about his exploits among one notorious Indian tribe.

Cast

• Bing Crosby as Tom Grayson
• W. C. Fields as Commodore Jackson
• Joan Bennett as Lucy Rumford
• Queenie Smith as Alabam'
• Gail Patrick as Elvira Rumford
• Claude Gillingwater Sr. as General Rumford
• John Miljan as Major Patterson
• Edward Pawley as Joe Patterson
• Fred Kohler as Captain Blackie
• Five Cabin Kids as the Cabin Kids
• John Larkin as Rumbo
• Libby Taylor as Lavinia
• Theresa Maxwell Conover as Miss Markham
• Paul Hurst as Hefty
• And Harry Myers, Charles King, Jean Rouverol, Ann Sheridan, George Lloyd, J. P. McGowan, Francis McDonald, Stanley Andrews, Clarence Geldart, Forrest Taylor, Mabel Van Buren, Jack Mulhall, Arthur Millett, Fred Toones, James Burke, King Baggot, Mahlon Hamilton, William Gould, Matthew Betz, Warner Richmond^[1]

Reviews (excerpts)

• New York Times - "Amid an atmosphere of magnolia, crinoline, and Kentucky whiskey, the boozy genius of Mr. Fields and the subterranean croon of Mr. Crosby strike a happy compromise."
• Motion Picture Herald - "The [film] is a melodramatic and sometimes tense romance. Fields' comedy, in both dialogue and action, is good for its full quota of laughs."
• Variety - "Paramount obviously couldn't make up its mind what it wanted to do with the film; it's rambling and hokey. For a few minutes it's sheer farce, for a few moments it's romance. And it never jells...Fields works hard throughout the film and saves it, giving it whatever entertainment value it has."

Source

• Deschner, Donald, The Films of W.C. Fields (New York: The Citadel Press, 1966)

References

1. ^ Deschner, Donald (1966). The Films of W.C. Fields. New York: Cadillac Publishing by arrangement with The Citadel Press. p. 112.  Introduction by Arthur Knight

External links

• Mississippi at the Internet Movie Database
• Mississippi at AllRovi