20's-Era Peacetime Warriors

The Cock-Eyed World (1929) Is An Early-Talking Shell Burst

Picture Play was typical of fan magazines, being one of a bushel that ranged in cost from a dime to upwards of a quarter. Most content revolved round life of the stars and studios, while columnists gave action account of specials opening along the Main Stem. One that made history in summer 1929 was The Cock-Eyed World, which struck Fox’s Roxy like a comet and did “a new world’s peak intake for a motion picture” (Film Daily). This was money likes of which no one in the industry had seen before, attendance records fallen like ninepins off a perfect strike. Picture Play’s “The Bystander” wrote of joining lines for a week’s vain effort at seeing The Cock-Eyed World. She'd finally faint of hunger and be taken to the Roxy’s “hospital quarters” (yes, they had such a facility, fully staffed). The columnist then snuck off a recovery bed and into the auditorium, where at last the coveted smash was hers to enjoy. I report this extreme in hopes of being believed, inasmuch as I rely on account from a periodical that trafficked regular in hyperbole. Truth not to be doubted is massive hit that was The Cock-Eyed World, it stranger than fiction because few of even dedicated buffs know the film today, let alone have seen it. Opportunity is at hand to put that right, for The Cock-Eyed World streams at Amazon, Vudu, and You Tube, a Fox bouquet to what few are stalwart enough to give two hours and three or five dollars to experience this most fascinating of early talk relics. I’ve viewed twice, lost part of a first try to sleep, but emerge in full conviction that here is possibly the top-kick of peacetime service shows, a classic to be sought and savored.

How much in demand is general ribaldry smattered with dirty jokes? It must still pay, for look at glut of R-rated comedies  among us. The Cock-Eyed World was a most inside peek to barracks yet made. And unlike What Price Glory?, to which it was a sequel, this one talked. In fact, The Cock-Eyed World may be the loudest feature that came out in 1929. There’s little contact with enemies because most of combat goes on between enlistees Flagg and Quirt, names we’d know as well as family members given backtrack of almost a century. There was no war on, but then again, as Victor McLaglen tells it, there’s always a war someplace, with the US invariably horning in. To Sgt. Vic’s (as Flagg) reckoning, “big business” is behind every shot fired, wherever a site of struggle, for those same monied interests are supplying munitions for whoever pays, making war a non-stop engine to which we must stay committed. Flagg gives no complaint; he’ll take this world of men under arms as he finds it, and never mind politics as to particulars. He and Edmund Lowe’s Sgt. Quirt are in for the scrap, the no-place-for-long, and women served the same way. How much of soldiering was conducted by a same code, and how much still? Flagg and Quirt know immorality of war too well, certainly enough to realize futility of resisting it.

Director Raoul Walsh was ideal for The Cock-Eyed World, being a straight-ahead man whatever a changing world around him. He’d do a photo-finish on Flagg-Quirt attitude as late as Marines, Let’s Go! in the 60’s, a show so retro that an appalled Jack Kennedy said No! to Walsh helming PT 109, a to-come account of JFK’s war service over which he reserved some rights of approval. Walsh may have passed best-if-served-by status, but in 1929 and perfect timing that was The Cock-Eyed World, he held by far a truest wand to tell what a mass mob wanted. You had to know someone was doing something spectacularly right when theatres accustomed to closing by eleven were staying lit for two more shows after midnight to which every seat was filled (ask Milwaukee’s Strand Theatre management). Walsh stages much of The Cock-Eyed World like insides of a brothel. Lili Damita is the tropic noise who somehow has her dress hiked up in every scene played, her among “mamas” the troop preys on from Russian snows, back to New York with stops at Coney Island, then to Santiago where natives are killed off for no reason other than Flagg-Quirt being told by faceless authority to go and kill them off. For Walsh, it is the going and the whoring and the killing that are the stories worth telling --- all the rest can “shove off” as a blunt end title instructs us to do (yes, instead of “The End,” The Cock-Eyed World says “That’s All – Shove Off.” Is it a wonder people loved this film?)

Sgt. Flagg On The Wire For a Date --- He Doesn't Care With Whom

Flagg/McLaglen points to bombing planes at one point and shouts, “Up there is where the next war will be!,” his notice to us of coming air supremacy plus implements built to “kill, wound, maim, and destroy.” The Cock-Eyed World is a litany of bawdy conversation overheard and smutty jokes told against bacon-frying Movietone track of a primitive day, Fox’s process keen for synchronization, but noisy with impurities common to recording dialogue on film. That may actually have enhanced roughhewn romp this was. Everyone paying ways in, or ones collecting those admissions and trying to keep sound equipment off the fritz, knew sound for cock-eyed transition it was, and would remain so, until kinks were ironed out. In a meanwhile, The Cock-Eyed World was yards ahead of most early talkers, however leisurely we find it today. Exhibitor’s Herald World lauded the “bawdy humor” as something a public wanted, calling their embrace “a perfectly normal and healthy instinct,” not unlike “fancy stories” told “around a locker room.” The Cock-Eyed World should be better known and higher regarded for the priceless glimpse it gives of fighting men where wars were chased from port to port, slivers of history hardly a footnote now. The Cock-Eyed World isn’t available on DVD, but is well worth seek-out on streaming options.

How Many Director's Photos Got Into Ads?

A Show For You, Boys! was siren call from showmen to conventioneers out for rowdy good times. "Hot Mamas and Hot Soldiers" were right up alley of American Legionnaires in town for their annual convention, Strand ads above emphasizing male appeal of  The Cock-Eyed World. The Roxy had led winking ways, their historic success an endorsement for The Cock-Eyed World as nerviest of so-far talkies. If "precode" had a beginning, or roots, or whatever, this may have been it, at least from merchandising standpoint. The Roxy had seen average weekly business rise from $102,411.00 in 1928 to $107,302.91 in 1929. The Cock-Eyed World took $173,391.00 for a first week, with even more the following frame. At the end of four weeks, it had surpassed $650K, which was very near the film's negative cost of $661K, in one theatre. Nothing else the Roxy ran during 1929 came close to this.  Ads shown here illustrate the phenomenon, each played to the film's randy strengths. Note particularly the one at left celebrating Raoul Walsh for having directed "with such force and vitality that the screen seems alive," his the participation most responsible for The Cock-Eyed World's success. This one surely made Walsh cock-of-the-walk at Fox. Small wonder he was entrusted with epic that would beThe Big Trail. There were sequels to The Cock-Eyed World, a first losing money (Women Of All Nations), then another that squeaked by (Hot Pepper). The Cock-Eyed World is a must for early talk explorers, Walsh devotees, and seekers after raunch as screens then dared, but seldom would in decades to come.

Much more Raoul Walsh at Greenbriar Archive: The King and Four Queens, The Tall Men, Background To Danger, The World In His Arms, Desperate Journey, Me and My Gal, The Naked and The Dead, War-Torn Flynn Teams With Walsh, The Big Trail, White Heat, They Drive By Night, Big Brown Eyes, and A Distant Trumpet.