The first of five W.C. Fields films directed by Eddie Sutherland was It’s the Old Army Game. To shoot exteriors in February, 1926, Paramount sent the production unit to Ocala, an inland farming town in Florida. About six miles away was Silver Springs, which was advertised as having “one hundred and fifty natural springs issuing from the porous Ocala limestone and flowing into a common basin.” The basin was filled with tropical fish, surrounded by tropical plants and flowers. This iridescent beauty was viewed from a glass-bottomed motorboat, which Eddie used for a love scene between William Gaxton and me. The citizens of Ocala, hoping to make Silver Springs a rich tourist attraction, welcomed our company as a means of publicizing their project. We were treated to so much Southern hospitality that the script got lost and the shooting schedule wandered out of sight. Nobody in Ocala seemed to have heard of Prohibition. And if ever there was a company that needed no help in the consumption of liquor it was ours. Eddie and Tom Geraghty (the writer) drank; William Gaxton, Blanche Ring, the crew and I – everyone drank. Bill Fields, apart, drank his private stock with his girlfriend, Bessie Poole; his manager, Billy Grady; and his valet, Shorty. We were a week over schedule, and LeBaron was wiring to us “All second cameraman’s rushes tilted. What are you doing? Sober up and come home,” when Eddie decide that the picnic sequence absolutely must be shot on Mrs. Stotesbury’s lawn. (…) Not having seen It’s the Old Army Game, I know only that it did not make money.
Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1982