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By PAUL BRENNER
W. C. Fields as the
reprobate rapscallion Larson E. Whipsnade, exhorts
the crowd in "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" --
one of the five hilarious W. C. Fields films in
the 5-disc "W. C. Fields Comedy Collection" from
Universal Home Video -- by stating the obvious:
"You can't cheat an honest man. Never give a
sucker an even break and never smarten up a
chump." One can almost hear the words coming from
the mouths of Universal executives, eager to
fleece the shills waiting in line for the DVD
release of Fields's great films. And here in this
set, the saps and the dupes have their snake oil.
As one of the mugs anxious to see Fields on DVD,
one can grouse about the lack of inclusion of "The
Man on the Flying Trapeze" or "Never Give a Sucker
an Even Break" in the collection, but with
"International House," "You Can't Cheat an Honest
Man," "My Little Chickadee" and, particularly,
"It's A Gift" and "The Bank Dick" a sap can't be
too disappointed.
But what turns a sap into a schmuck is Universal's
shoddy presentation of the goods. First, the
prints of the films look to be the same
un-restored versions seen another lifetime ago
when the films were in release on laserdisc.
Second, the special features are paltry and
pathetic -- an old and ragged episode of Biography
and three grainy trailers. Last but not least, the
mark's face becomes agape when the realization
sets in that each disc houses one Fields film and
that the films run from 69 minutes to 84 minutes.
Surely, there is enough space on the DVDs for
other Fields films, or shorts or, hell, anything
(Edgar Bergen radios shows, Fields footage, even
stray clips of Rod Steiger from the god-awful
"W.C. Fields and Me"). (I would have recommended
that Criterion should have offered Universal
advice on how to stack a DVD, except their own
release of "The Bank Dick" was equally pathetic).
Despite the trashy presentation of the films,
there still are the films themselves. And
pretending to comment upon them as if I have just
purchased five VHS videos, I will note each film's
positive points, while continuing to give
Universal an obscene hand gesture behind my back.
"International House" from 1933, is one of the
first of Fields's Paramount features. The
enterprise is a typical example of 1930s Paramount
synergy, populating the slim plot with Paramount
contract players from film, radio, and recording.
A light "Grand Hotel" parody, the story centers
upon a group of characters that zero in on the
International House in Wu Hu, China, where Dr.
Wong (Edmund Breese) is planning to demonstrate
his new invention -- television. The cast of
eccentrics includes Rudy Vallee, Stuart Erwin,
George Burns and Gracie Allen, Colonel Stoopnagle
and Budd, Cab Calloway (singing his infamous tune
"Reefer Man"), Baby Rose Marie, Franklin Pangborn,
Sterling Holloway, Bela Lugosi, and Peggy Hopkins
Joyce (the 1930s version of Paris Hilton). Fields
doesn't arrive on the scene until halfway through
the film, which, until that point is kept afloat
with Burns and Allen banter. When Fields appears,
as Professor Quail, heading to International House
is an "auto gyro" (i.e. helicopter), tossing out
empty beer bottles at the populous on the ground,
the film becomes his own. Fields's best remarks
concerns a knee jerk reaction to seeing Rudy
Vallee on the television singing to his megaphone
("How long's this dog fight go on?") to an "insert
joke here" subliminal remark concerning Fields
tending to Peggy Hopkins Joyce's pussy cat during
a wild chase scene with Fields's as the driver and
Joyce in the passenger seat complaining that she
can't sit comfortably.
"It's A Gift" may well be Fields's best film. In
this virtually plotless gem, Fields is Harold
Bissonette from Wappinger Falls, New Jersey. A
beleaguered middle-aged man marginalized by his
own family, Bissonette barely gets through a day
without being put through the wringer by his
nagging wife ("You have absolutely no
consideration for anybody but yourself. I have to
get up in the morning and get breakfast ready for
you and the children. I have no maid, you know.")
and his loving children (after his son badgers him
and sarcastically taunts, "What's the matter?
Don't you love me anymore?" and Fields raises his
arm to hit his kid, his wife intervenes, shouting
"Don't you strike that child!" Fields responds,
"Well, he not going to tell me I don't love
him."). As if his family wasn't enough to drive a
man to drink, there's also his job running a
grocery store. Particularly when dealing with Mr.
Muckle, as a nasty, ill-tempered blind and deaf
man ("the house detective over at the Grand
Hotel") who wrecks Fields's store. Fields
helpfully leads Mr. Muckle out of his store and
into oncoming traffic. Taking the day off after
having his store destroyed, poor Bissonette can't
even take a nap on his back patio, what with Baby
Leroy dropping ice picks down a hole in the floor
above Bissonette and almost stabbing him in the
head, or an obnoxious insurance salesman looking
for a Mister Carl LaFong (Capital "L," small "a,"
capital "F," small "o," small "n," small "g"). The
film hasn't aged one bit since 1934 and is just as
hilarious, particularly for men of a certain age
who can feel the anguish of Bissonette with their
very souls. But there is a strain of optimism in
the film, succinctly told by Fields after an irate
character declares that Bissonette is drunk:
"Yeah? And you're crazy. I'll be sober tomorrow
and you'll be crazy for the rest of your life."
"You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" comes from
Universal in 1939. Fields's Paramount contract was
terminated in the mid-30s due to Fields's ever
increasing drinking problem, but Fields rebounded
on the radio as a foil for Edgar Bergen (the
ventriloquist with the movable lips) and his
wooden friend Charlie McCarthy. So, it was a
shoe-in for Fields in his first Universal release
to be pared with his radio nemesis. And to be
sure, Fields's remarks to Charlie McCarthy are
classics -- "You must come down with me after the
show to the lumber yard and you can ride piggyback
on the buzz saw" or "I shall send over a couple of
pet beavers to romp with you." As Larson W.
Whipsnade, the ringmaster of the Circus Gigantus,
Fields is at his nastiest and most unsympathetic.
Fields's cartoonish braggadocio is imported direct
from radio and this is the guise of Fields in most
of his Universal films. Instead of a harassed
family man, Fields is the con man extraordinaire.
This character is carried over into his next film,
"My Little Chickadee," where his character is
teamed with another over-the-top and over-blown
comic legend, Mae West. Fields and West co-wrote
this western parody about West (as Flowerbelle
Lee) caught having an affair with The Masked
Bandit and forced to leave town until she proves
herself respectable and married. She latches onto
phony gambler Cuthbert J. Twillie (Fields),
convinces town folk that she is married to him and
convinces Twillie that he brilliantly held off an
attacking band of Indians at gunpoint (when it was
really Flowerbelle) and Twillie is then made
sheriff. If you think this sounds curiously like
the plot of the Bob Hope and Jane Russell farce
"The Paleface" (made by Paramount eight years
later), well, you'd be right. Both West and Fields
are at their best with memorable cracks but the
best goes to Fields: "Is this a game of chance?"
"Not the way I play it."
"The Bank Dick" is Fields straight, no chaser. If
"It's a Gift" is not the best Fields film, then it
is certainly this one. "The Bank Dick" combines
the two strains of Fields into the towering
character of Egbert Souse (accent over the "e"),
another beleaguered husband who could care less
about his family of female torturers. He puts up
with the constant insults and then sneaks off to
The Black Pussy Cat Café, where he can belt down
boilermakers. Since the screenwriter (Fields under
one of his greatest pseudonyms, Mahatma Kane
Jeeves) is not as interested in striking back at
the family unit, a strain of loose slapstick
anarchy makes itself felt. As a result, the
happenstance plotline and the incredibly fake and
nonsensical climactic chase scene in "The Bank
Dick" distinguish it from Fields's previous
vehicles. Here Fields is at his peak, commanding
the screen like a John Barrymore, another famed
Hollywood alcoholic who was also at the end of his
rope by 1940. Surrounded by thick-headed comic
foils such as Grady Sutton and Franklin Pangborn,
Fields is free to provoke comic mayhem at will --
it says a lot about the comic whirlwind engendered
by the film that the most subdued comic presence
in the film is Shemp Howard. And nowhere else has
the distinctive brand of self-serving Hollywood
pomposity been captured so succinctly and so
truthfully. At the Black Pussy Cat, Fields regales
a movie producer about his filmmaking experience
by bragging, "In the old Sennett days, I used to
direct Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Buster
Keaton. I can't get the celluloid out of my
blood...At nights I used to tend bar." |
