W.C. Fields in "It's the Old Army Game" (1926)

Elmer Prettywillie (W. C. Fields) is a small town druggist/general store owner whose customers are eccentric at best and rude and demanding at worst. They include a man who wants "a nice, clean two-cent stamp" from the center of a massive sheet of them.
Prettywillie's sole joy is his pretty clerk, Mildred Marshall (Louise Brooks) but not her homely maiden aunt, who has an unrequited crush on him.
Attempting to sleep on an outdoor back porch, Prettywillie is disturbed by a series of noisy peddlers, including a surly ice man who insists Prettywillie heft his own heavy, rapidly melting block of ice. A neighbor then insists Prettywillie watch her bratty baby; whom Prettywillie cheerfully attempts to smother to stop its crying. The baby eventually gets hold of a large mallet and knows exactly what to do with it. Prettywillie ends up destroying the back porch when he accidentally discharges a shotgun.
Later, Prettywillie and family stage a picnic on the front lawn of a private estate, and order the owner of the house to clean up their unholy, paper-strewn mess.
Real estate hustler George Parker (William Gaxton) arrives in town and becomes smitten with Marshall. Marshall talks Prettywillie into letting Parker sell real estate out of the store. When New York City police arrive and take Parker away in connection with a previous "bad deal", Prettywillie is left to face the wrath of the investors.
Prettywillie makes a quick trip to New York City, hoping to locate Parker. Not used to city traffic, he drives the wrong way on a one-way street and has various parts of his car sheared off. He hires a mule to pull the car. The mule refuses to budge. Prettywillie tries to give the mule a hot foot,and only succeeds in burning up what's left of the car.
Returning home in defeat, Prettywillie gives himself up at the police station, but he learns a developer has re-bought the lots at a high price, enriching the town and making him a hero. When the maiden aunt arrives, Prettywillie locks her in a cell and makes a hasty retreat. Meanwhile, Parker and Marshall have eloped on a train.
This film's highlights include our hero's repeatedly thwarted attempts to take a nap on his back porch, a rather nasty confrontation with an obnoxious baby in a stroller, a very messy picnic on the lawn of a ritzy estate, and traffic difficulties filmed on location in midtown Manhattan.
A 1926 American black & white silent comedy film directed by Eddie Sutherland
starring W. C. Fields and Louise Brooks, and co-stars Sutherland's aunt, the stage actress Blanche Ring in one of her few silent film appearances. William Gaxton is best known for his stage performance in the Gershwin musical "Of Thee I Sing."
Louise Brooks is the center of attention, and really shines anytime she's on screen. She has that something special about her. In the ice cream soda scene at the beginning, just watching her sitting on that stool in the middle of the firemen is such an engaging visual. Those eyes. She's gorgeous. In the scene where Fields is trying to get something out of a lady's eye, Brooks isn't really even in it. She's watching the events from above. But her smile is mesmerizing and infectious. You could feel her joy in what she's watching.
The film was shot mainly at Paramount's Astoria Studios facility in Astoria, Queens, and in Manhattan, and is preserved complete in the Library of Congress. A few outdoor scenes were filmed in Ocala, Florida, and Palm Beach, Florida. Behind schedule at the time, the picnic sequence was shot on the lawn of El Mirasol, a Palm Beach mansion owned by Wall Street investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury.
The film is based on the revue "The Comic Supplement" by Joseph P. McEvoy and Fields, and included several routines from Fields' stage plays. Large sections of the film, including the "picnic" and "sleeping on the porch" scenes, were incorporated into Fields' classic talkie film "It's a Gift" (1934).
Heavy on the sentimental melodrama, this is less a comedy film, and more a film with comic scenes. Fields was never at his best in the silent film medium. He never really became a comedian until the talkies, where his films were trimmed of melodrama and his famous rasping voice finally gave him a personality. His decades-long stage career was spent mainly as a silent juggler.
Fields started filming a his stage routines in 1915 as shorts but was not successful. He landed a small but effective role in Marion Davies' "Janice Meredith" (1924). The following year he finally landed a starring role in a feature film "Sally of the Sawdust", a version of his stage hit "Poppy." He appeared fairly regularly through the end of his silent films in 1928.
The "army game" in the title is in reference to a shell game, a confidence trick which Fields’ character observes being played. "It's the old army game," he says, sagely.
This is not "classic Fields", but worth taking a look at for comedy from the silent era, and W.C. Fields completists.