Review - Wild and Woolly

December 3, 2023
 
Wild and Woolly – U.S., 1917
 

It seems strange to admit this, but for most of my time spent watching movies, the career of Douglas Fairbanks had been a blind spot. Sure, I had seen The Thief of Bagdad, but that had been as an avid fan of Anna May Wong, not as one eager to discover one of film’s first superstars, and subsequently, I did not pursue Fairbanks’ other films. My curiosity was eventually piqued by a plot summary of his film The Half-Breed and by Bosley Crowther’s inclusion of Fairbanks’ Robin Hood in his 1967 book The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion Pictures. While neither of those films earned rave reviews from me, his performances in them were enough to rope me in.
 
John Emerson's Wild and Woolly was Fairbanks’ seventeenth film, and while already a star, he had yet to make the swashbuckling, heroic films that would ultimately make him a legend. However, he was well on his way to establishing himself as a romantic superhero. Just a year earlier, in The Matrimaniac, he (and a reluctant priest) had gone through a series of physical challenges just to be able to marry the love of his life over the objection of her traditional father (a common theme in early silents), and his role in Flirting with Fate had audiences awe-struck upon seeing his physically challenging attempts to elude a hit man he’d regrettably hired to whack him. It may not always have made sense that his characters were suddenly able to do such acrobatic moves, but there’s no denying their impressiveness.
 
In Wild and Woolly, he plays Jeff Hillington, the son of Collis J. Hillington, who, in this film at least, was responsible for taming the Wild West with the railroad. In fact, the film begins with a series of comparisons between the West as it was in the olden days – replete with cowboys, shoot-ups, and wagons - and as it is today – “ruined” by technology. Jeff, we soon learn, has a massive obsession with the Wild West and his room is practically a shrine to the days he idolizes. It is here where he practices the “cowboy” skills he has so often seen romanticized in Hollywood movies (using real bullets!). At one point, he lassos the family butler and later offers some modern businessmen some of his tobacco block. He even looks at an actress on a poster for the latest Hollywood western and proclaims her the kind of woman he wants to marry. All of this gets him the reputation of being a nut.
 
Early scenes are fun, even though they make Jeff more akin to the kind of man-child that Harry Langdon played so often in his career than a full-fledged character who just happens to have an unusual interest. The film further stretches believability when it shows Jeff playing in his room alone atop a life-size toy horse with the same amount of energy as a genuine cowboy likely showed during an actual competition or stampede. As for how he acquired the impressive horseback-riding skills he later displays, we can only surmise that it has something to do with the fact that his father is extremely wealthy and that he appears to have a lot of free time on his hands.
 
The film kicks into high gear upon the introduction of two plot threads. The first involves a mine in a small Arizonan town that comes to the attention of Jeff’s father (Walter Bytell) and his decision to send Jeff to investigate it. The second has to do with the greedy schemes of a Caucasian Indian Agent named Steve Shelby (Sam De Grasse), whose nefarious activities have made him rich but wary about hanging around dodge too much longer. When word of Jeff’s impending arrival and his fascination with the West reaches the mining town, the residents decide to recreate those special times in an attempt to win his support for the mine (which, curiously, he never actually visits), while Shelby decides to use Jeff’s visit to pull off a final heist and then skedaddle out of town with a young lady named Nell (well played by Eileen Percy) who couldn’t care less about him, thus setting the stage for an actual western adventure. This part of the film is highly entertaining, as Jeff is an unsuspecting participant in a series of staged events right out of a movie screenplay, including a train robbery and the rescuing of a damsel in distress.
 
The film is of course a product of its time, and some contemporary viewers will likely object to what could be interpreted as stereotypical portrayals of nameless antagonistic Native Americans. However, I chose to see their role as the result of the unique circumstances of this particular tribe. It isn’t a stretch to conceive of their alcoholism and eagerness to attack the town as being the results of Shelby’s efforts to enrich himself at all costs, for what better way to bend people to one’s will than to deprive them of basic necessities and make them dependent on an addictive substance? Seen in this light, the only real villains are Shelby and his partner in crime, Pedro (Charles Stevens). Much less explainable is the exaggerated fractured English in the intertitles, again an unfortunate and distracting product of their time.
 
Still, as with many silent films, Wild and Woolly remains charming and entertaining, despite such elements. Fairbanks plays naiveté and innocence rather well, and his stunt work remains impressive. The cast seems to be having a ball in the scene in which the town stages events from the past, and Fairbanks and Percy are convincing as a pair of young people falling in love steadily. It is said that many silent films had musicians near the set playing music designed to help actors express emotions more clearly. For this film, I’ll bet it was Elger’s “Salut d’Amour.”  (on DVD as part of Flicker Alley’s box set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer)
 
3 and a half stars
 
*Wild and Woolly is a silent film.
*Eileen Percy appeared in 72 films from 1917 – 1943. I look forward to seeing more of her performances.