Million Dollar Legs │ Universal Vault Series
Courtesy of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
by CHAD KENNERK
Pre-Code curiosity Million Dollar Legs delivers the kind of comedic lunacy often associated with the Marx Brothers. Written by a young Joseph L. Mankiewicz and directed by Edward F. Cline, the 1932 Paramount release shares a comedic kinship with Duck Soup and also happens to star Susan Fleming, the future Mrs Harpo Marx. A kind of Mel Brooks before Brooks or Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker before ZAZ, with a dash of Monty Python thrown in, Million Dollar Legs feels ahead of its time. Loosely inspired by the real-life arrival of the 1932 Summer Olympics (which will incidentally return to Los Angeles in 2028), the small fictional country of Klopstokia enters the games as a means of escaping bankruptcy.
Alongside Duck Soup and 1941’s Hellzapoppin', Million Dollar Legs is about as close as Golden Age Hollywood gets to Dada, the avant-garde movement that rejected traditional narrative structures and logical storytelling. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the future writer-director of All About Eve, had lived in both Paris and Berlin and was likely familiar with Dada’s mockery of power and society. Rooted in the idea that the rational world was an illusion, Dadaists would appreciate Klopstokia, an entirely illogical society where the chief exports, imports and inhabitants are goats and nuts. To completely dismantle individual identity, every man in the country is named George, and every woman is named Angela. The presidency – held by W.C. Fields – is not decided by votes or policy but purely by physical dominance via impromptu wrestling matches.
The oft-forgotten Jack Oakie, a huge star of his day, takes top billing as travelling American brush salesman Migg Tweeney, who literally falls for the president’s daughter Angela (Susan Fleming) in a fun meet-cute involving his sample case. “Gee, I’d like to meet you,” he tells her. When bankruptcy threatens the country, Migg suggests that Klopstokia enter the Olympic Games, since every citizen seems a born athlete with otherworldly physical abilities. Without much more of a plot to speak of, characters drift in and out vaudeville style, with Fields getting a lot out of a bit with a top hat and vamp Lyda Roberti getting away with the sizzling ‘coochie’ dance number ‘It’s Terrific (When I Get Hot)’ as the showgirl Mata Machree.
The romantic leads express their profound passion by singing a Klopstokian love song, which in the Dada tradition consists entirely of gibberish syllables rather than real words. It’s put to the tune of ‘One Hour with You’, the theme of the Lubitsch film of the same name. Abrupt jumpcuts throughout suggest a longer original runtime, likely cut to appease the censors. The original print behind the transfer here is less than stellar, with some flickering, lines, and a general lack of clarity. As a little-known, unrestored film from the early 1930s, it still looks great in high definition. The disc is bare-bones, but it’s great that Universal has seen fit to give these early Paramount titles a home on Blu-ray.
Million Dollar Legs is available on Blu-ray 21 April from the Universal Vault Series.
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