W.C. Fields & Louise Brooks in It’s The Old Army Game in 35mm in Somerville, MA

It’s The Old Army Game (1926), starring W.C. Fields & Louise Brooks, will be shown at the Somerville Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts (north of Boston) on Sunday, April 6th at 2:00 pm. And what's more, this rare 35mm screening will feature a live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapis. More information about this event can be found HERE.

It’s the Old Army Game was Brooks’ fourth film; it reunited her with Fields, the film’s star. The two had worked together the prior year in the Ziegfeld Follies. Today, It’s the Old Army Game is largely remembered as a starring vehicle for Fields — a comedic great. It is also recalled for the fact that not long after the film wrapped, Brooks married the film’s director, Eddie Sutherland.

When the film debuted in nearby Boston in July 1926, the  Boston Globe stated "Fields is very funny in every scene," while describing Brooks as the "perfect flapper."

Here's what the Somerville Theater website says about the event: "W. C. Fields plays a misanthropic, small-town pharmacist whose lovely shop assistant (Louise Brooks) gets him involved in a phony real estate scheme. The film is regarded as a high point of Fields’s silent filmography. The story was later revised and revamped in the talkies The Pharmacist (1933) and It’s a Gift (1934).

Supplying music will be silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis, who specializes in creating live scores for silent film screenings at venues around New England and beyond.

In the tradition of theatre organists of the 1920s, Rapsis improvises each film’s score on the spot, making up the music as the movie is screened. Rapsis uses a digital synthesizer to create the texture of a full orchestra. 35mm print courtesy the Library of Congress

Here's a bit of trivia: It’s the Old Army Game marked the first film appearance of Elise Cavanna, who plays the nearsighted woman in search of a stamp. (She is the first character seen in the film.) Cavanna started as a dancer (who reportedly studied under Isadora Duncan) and stage comedian before entering films in 1926. She appeared in another Brooks’ film, Love Em and Leave Em (1926), as well as four other films with Fields, most notably The Dentist (1932), where her scenes as a writhing patient in a dentist chair were deemed so risqué they were edited out of later television broadcasts.

More about It’s the Old Army Game can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on the It’s the Old Army Game (filmography page). 

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2025. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.