It's the old army game
Although the comedy is necessarily more physical and energetic this is the Fields' film that set the pattern for his subsequent film career. It has a strange desperate pre-Depression quality and has been described as "one of the most nihilistic and violently misanthropic of all silent comedies." The majority of the gags were based on Fields' vaudeville acts at the Ziegfield Follies. It also set the standard for Fields' continuing unpleasant encounters with children. W.C. is Elmer Prettywillie, proprietor of the town's drugstore. Louise Brooks is in a main supporting role as his salesgirl. The film opens with Fields awakened in the dead of night to sell a two cent stamp and ends with a gross family picnic and a reversal of the Florida land scam. The title comes from the pea and walnut shell sleight-of-hand
VHS Video, English, [n.d.]
Happy Video, [s.l.], [n.d.]