Poppy (1936)

For my money W.C. Fields was the supreme comic genius of American cinema. Poppy, made at Paramount in 1936, is not quite in the same league as masterpieces like The Bank Dick but it’s still quite entertaining.

Fields usually played either a henpecked husband or a swindler (and in my view he was funniest as a swindler). In this case he’s a carny huckster and all-round con-man but Professor Eustace P. McGargle is a rogue with definite charm.

His travelling companion and partner-in-crime is his beautiful daughter Poppy (Rochelle Hudson).

Arriving in yet another small town and looking for easy pickings the Professor stumbles across what could be the biggest and most lucrative con of his entire career - passing off his daughter as an heiress. Poppy on the other hand has found true love but can she really expect a respectable young man with prospects to marry a carnival girl?

That’s the sum total of the plot. The romantic melodrama part of the story is exceedingly threadbare and threatens to slow things down unnecessarily but it’s made bearable by Rochelle Hudson’s charm and spirit and by the genuine and surprising affection between father and daughter.

Really the movie is mostly an excuse for Fields to strut his stuff in a series of comic set-pieces, which he does with considerable style and success. The talking dog routine gets things off to a good start. Fields’ anarchic musical performance is a particular highlight.

Eustace P. McGargle is a terrific character, perfectly suited to Fields’ style of comedy. He’s not just a rogue - he enjoys being a rogue. You can’t help wondering if he manages to pull off his big coup whether he could ever really be happy living in comfortable respectability. It seems unlikely. Swindling is in his blood and he loves the challenge.

Lynne Overman as crooked attorney Eddie G. Whiffen and Catherine Doucet as the Countess DePuizzi provide adequate comic support although needless to say it’s Fields who gets most of the laughs.

Poppy started life as a Broadway musical. Fields was the star and his performance provided the basic template for so many of his later great performances. Poppy was filmed twice. The 1925 silent version, Sally of the Sawdust, was directed by D.W. Griffith. The 1936 sound version was helmed by A. Edward Sutherland. Fields starred in both movie versions so Professor McGargle must count as being just about his most enduring role.

In this movie Fields gets to deliver one of his most famous lines when he offers Poppy the only fatherly advice he can think of - “Never give a sucker an even break.”

Poppy is one of no less than seventeen movies in Universal’s superb Region 2 W.C. Fields Collection boxed set, which includes pretty much all of his great feature films. A must-have set for Fields fans. Poppy gets a very satisfactory transfer.

Poppy has some good moments although the romance angle does drag a little. The movie only comes alive when Fields takes centre stage. This one is really for hardcore Fields fans. If you haven’t yet discovered the magic of W.C. Fields then there are better films to start with, with The Bank Dick being the obvious choice.

Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)

Man on the Flying Trapeze is a delightful 1935 W.C. Fields comedy from Paramount. Any W.C. Fields movie is a treat and this one is particularly good.

Fields could play shady characters with a great deal of aplomb but he was equally good as sorely set-upon losers. In this film he’s henpecked husband Ambrose Wolfinger. His life has been an endless series of disappointments and indignities since his ill-advised second marriage to Leona (Kathleen Howard). He only married her for the sake of his daughter Hope (Mary Brian) but the marriage was a very unfortunate mistake. Leona is the wife from Hell and her mother, Mrs Neselrode (who lives with them), is an even worse horror. Mrs Neselrode hates Ambrose with a burning passion and devotes her life to making him as miserable as she possibly can. Completing Ambrose’s catalogue of woes is his smarmy, vindictive layabout brother-in-law Claude who also lives with them.

Ambrose is a memory expert working for a film of woolen merchants. His job is to collate information on the firm’s clients and to feed this information to the notoriously forgetful Mr Malloy (Oscar Apfel).

On this particular day all Ambrose wants to do is to go to a wrestling match. He has a ticket for a front-row seat but somehow he has to persuade Mr Malloy to give him the afternoon off. He manages this by telling Malloy that his mother-in-law Mrs Neselrode has passed away and that he has to attend the funeral. It’s a rather innocent deception, especially given that he hasn’t taken a day off in the twenty-five years he’s worked for the company. An innocent deception it might be but fate will conspire to make him pay for it, and make him pay over and over again. Every possible misfortune that could occur does occur for poor Ambrose.

The day had already started badly, as we see in the film’s inspired opening sequence, with burglars singing in the cellar. This sets up a series of gags that are milked to the limit but still manage to keep on getting funnier.

This is pretty much the way this film works. It’s a series of lengthy extended comic routines, extended so much that they might easily have run out of steam without a comic genius like Fields with the ability to find and exploit to the maximum every possible opportunity to keep the laughs coming. The fact that Fields is equally brilliant at verbal and physical humour also helps.

Ambrose Wolfinger’s life is such a series of disasters that the danger here is that the movie could end up being more sad than funny. That danger is neatly avoided by Fields. Every insult that life throws at Ambrose is shrugged off. His response to misfortune is sublime indifference. He’s not really a loser because he refuses to even notice, much less acknowledge, defeat. And of course we suspect that eventually his luck will change, as it does.

Fields is at the absolute top of his game here. He gets some fine support from the rest of the cast. Grady Sutton is particularly effective as the oily sponger Claude.

As usual Fields takes his co-writing credit under an assumed name, in this case Charles Bogle. While Clyde Bruckman gets the directing credit Fields apparently took over the directing of the film midway through.

Man on the Flying Trapeze is not quite as screamingly funny as Fields’ later masterpiece The Bank Dick nor does it have the magnificently surreal quality of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break but it’s still a consistently very funny movie.

Man on the Flying Trapeze is included in the Region 2 17-movie W. C. Fields Collection boxed set - a superb set that offers outstanding value for money. The transfer is extremely good.

Highly recommended.

My Little Chickadee (1940)

Universal must have thought they had a surefire winner on their hands with their 1940 comedy My Little Chickadee. Bringing together two outrageous comic talents in the larger-than-life persons of Mae West and W. C. Fields - what could go wrong? In fact it worked spectacularly well for them at the time - the movie was a box-office bonanza for the studio. Despite its contemporary success My Little Chickadee seems to be regarded with mixed feelings these days, even among fans of the two stars.

Mae West was responsible for the screenplay, with Fields adding a couple of scenes and much of his own dialogue. The problem of course was that unsurprisingly Mae West saw the film as a Mae West film, while equally unsurprisingly Fields saw it as a W. C. Fields film. In spite of its success the two stars never worked together again. This was to be West’s last successful movie. The career of W. C. Fields was also drawing to a close although he followed up My Little Chickadee with what is probably his greatest film, The Bank Dick.

The setting is the Wild West. This suited Mae West who always preferred the fashions of the 19th century. She plays Flower Belle Lee, who has just been run out of town by the local guardians of morality. Her troubles are partly the fault of the infamous Masked Bandit, with whom she has been seen in compromising circumstances.

On the train taking her out of town she runs into Cuthbert J. Twillie (W. C. Fields). She forms the totally mistaken impression that he is a wealthy man so she agrees to marry him. It’s more than a whirlwind romance - they are married there and then, by a preacher who just happens to be on hand. What Twillie doesn’t know is that the preacher is no preacher at all. 

On arrival in Greasewood City Flower Belle attracts the romantic attentions of the town’s leading citizen, Jeff Badger (Joseph Calleia). He might be the leading citizen but he’s far from respectable, in fact he’s quite a rogue but that’s the kind of man Flower Belle likes. Cuthbert J. Twillie has meanwhile been made Sheriff of Greasewood City, thanks to his boastful accounts of his heroic role in defending the train from the attacks of hordes of Indians. 

The plot offers both West and Field ample opportunities to strut their stuff and mostly it allows them both to concentrate on doing what they do best.

The Production Code cramped West’s style quite a bit although she still manages to get away with a certain amount of trademark Mae West outrageousness. Fields displays his ability to combine superb visual humour with delightfully acerbic verbal gags.

This movie is perhaps just a trifle too long at 83 minutes but in general it keeps the gags coming at a respectable pace. 

I personally find that a little bit of Mae West goes a long way so the fact that she has to share her screen time with Fields doesn’t bother me. I’m much more of a fan of W. C. Fields and to my way of thinking this movie is at its best in the scenes dominated by Fields. It’s not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as Fields’ best movies but he still has some great moments.

If you haven’t yet experienced the delights of the comedy of W. C. Fields this film is probably not the best place to start - The Bank Dick, The Old Fashioned Way, It’s a Gift and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break are all better and funnier films. And it’s certainly not Mae West’s best movie. 

Those who demand political correctness from their movie entertainment will be in serious danger of apoplexy while watching this movie. 

My Little Chickadee is available on DVD individually, in the Mae West Glamour Collection boxed sets and in several boxed sets devoted to the movies of W. C. Fields. My copy was included in the wonderful 17-movie Region 2 W. C. Fields boxed set. The transfer is very good but there are no extras.

My Little Chickadee is a long way from being the best of the movies of W. C. Fields but it’s still thoroughly enjoyable and far better than its modern reputation would suggest. Recommended.

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)

Although he would make a few more film appearances in bit parts Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (made at Universal in 1941) was W. C. Fields’ last major movie and his last starring role. It is his most bizarre and outrageous movie and in some ways his best.

The screenplay is credited to John T. Neville and Prescott Chaplin, based on an original story by Otis Criblecoblis (one of Fields’ many writing pseudonyms). Given that neither Neville nor Chaplin ever did anything else comparable to this I think it’s a fair assumption that what we see on the screen is largely the product of Fields’ own imagination. It’s certainly difficult to believe that he wasn’t responsible for most of the dialogue which has all the Fields signatures.

There is virtually no plot. It’s more like an extended comedic stream-of-consciousness that pushed the boundaries of cinematic comedy further than they’d ever been pushed before.

Fields plays a screenwriter and comic actor named W. C. Fields who is trying to get his latest screenplay accepted by producer Franklin Pangborn (played by Franklin Pangborn). At the same time he is trying to further the career of his niece Gloria Jean (played by Gloria Jean). She’s rehearsing a part in a new musical. 

A large part of the movie consists of a film-within-a-film. As Fields pitches his screenplay we see it come to life. And it’s a strange and wondrous fantasy concoction that owes more to the surrealists than to Hollywood. In the film-within-a-film Fields plays a character named W. C. Fields who along with his niece Gloria Jean (played by Gloria Jean) gets into a series of wildly absurd adventures that would have done credit to Baron Münchhausen. He falls out of an aircraft and lands on a bed on top of a mountain. This is the home of the very strange Mrs Hemogloben (Margaret Dumont) and her daughter Ouilotta Hemogloben. After having her heart broken Mrs Hemogloben retired to her mountaintop eyrie with her baby daughter Ouilotta who has lived there all her life and has never set eyes on a man.

There’s also an extended sequence with Gloria Jean finding herself in a fantasy Russian village. We also see Fields and Gloria Jean ascending to Mrs Hemogloben’s mountaintop home in a basket, which provides the opportunity for more comic set-pieces. There’s also a guy in a gorilla suit, a couple of monkeys and a stuffed budgerigar. Having been told that she is exceedingly rich Fields romances Mrs Hemogloben until Gloria Jean points out that even if he gets her money he’ll be getting Mrs Hemogloben as well. That brings him to his senses.

Even when we return to reality from the film-within-a-film things are just as crazy. The whole thing culminates in one of the greatest chase scenes in movie history. There’s absolutely no need whatsoever for this sequence which has no relationship to anything else in the movie. It’s there because it’s outrageous fun. Nothing in this movie has to make any sense. Fields and Gloria Jean both break the fourth wall at times to address the audience directly, which makes the movie a film-within-a-film-within-a-film.

In-jokes abound. The first scene in the movie features Field looking at a movie poster for a W. C. Fields movie. This movie is so self-referential that it makes the whole of postmodernism positively redundant.

It’s possible that Fields, then aged 61 and enjoying indifferent health, was aware that this might be his last movie. If so it can be read as an affectionate farewell to Hollywood and the magic of movies. It’s as if Fields is telling us that it’s all been fantastic fun and now he wants to go out with a blast. There are those who see this as a bitter-sweet movie but really it’s much more sweet than bitter. Fields exits the limelight at the absolute top of his form and with the most audacious movie of his career.

You don’t expect to be talking about the special effects in a W. C. Fields movie but this one is an exception. The wildly surreal nature of the movie requires some quite elaborate special effects which are executed with wit and skill.

Edward F. Cline directed several of Fields’ late movies and he knows how to handle his star - let him do whatever he wants to do. There’s no point in trying to tell a comic genius how to do comedy.

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is included in the magnificent Region 2 17-movie W. C. Fields Collection boxed set. The transfer is on the whole an excellent one. The movie has also been released individually on DVD in Region 1.

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a wildly inventive surreal comic masterpiece. Very highly recommended.

It’s a Gift (1934)

Made at Paramount in 1934 It’s a Gift is another delightful W. C. Fields comedy.

When W. C. Fields wasn’t playing a con-man he was usually playing a hen-pecked husband and Harold Bissonette is about as hen-pecked as a husband can be.

Harold runs a grocery store but he is prone to getting involved in outlandish get-rich-quick schemes, much to the fury of his wife Amelia (Kathleen Howard). Harold now has his heart set on buying an orange grove in California. Amelia has made it clear that she will not stand for this but Harold has learnt that the best way to deal with such situations is to tell her nothing but go on with his plans.



Harold’s daughter Mildred (Jean Rouverol) doesn’t want to go to California because that would mean leaving her boyfriend. His son Norman (Tommy Bupp) is on his side but he has a tendency to talk too much and reveal Harold’s plans.

The Bissonettes are waiting for Harold’s Uncle Bean to die and leave Harold a substantial legacy. In fact he stands to inherit enough money to buy that orange ranch, which is just what Amelia is worried about. She’s determined to keep an eye on Harold. Harold is equally determined that he’s going to grow oranges in California.



Mildred’s boyfriend is a real estate agent and he’s the one trying to sell the orange ranch to Harold. When he finds out that the ranch is worthless he tries to tell Harold not to go through with the deal but Harold won’t listen. Sure enough when they get to California they find that Harold has bought a dilapidated shack and a patch of weed-choked wasteland. It seems that Harold has done it again, that another of his get-rich-quick schemes has ended in disaster and that this time he’s going to be in more trouble with Amelia than ever before.  But fate is about to step in, in a most unexpected way.

Fields is in splendid form. His genius consisted in the fact that he was equally strong at both verbal and visual humour and he had a knack for coming up with stories (most of his movies being based on his own stories) that displayed his comic gifts to perfection. Kathleen Howard is wonderful as the incredibly domineering and thoroughly formidable Amelia.



This movie features some absolutely superb comic set-pieces. The sequence involving the blind man (played by Charles Sellon) creating havoc in Harold’s grocery store is superlative. There’s also a terrific scene where Harold tries to get some sleep on the porch. It’s both extremely funny and extremely clever, being shot in such a way that we see the action on all three floors of the apartment building where the Bissonettes reside.

While Harold is often the victim in this movie the humour (unlike so much of the comedy of today) never seems truly cruel. No matter how bad things get for Harold we always have the sneaking feeling that somehow he’ll come out on top. The gags come thick and fast and there’s not a minute of the 68-minute running time that doesn’t include at least one laugh.



There are those who prefer Fields in con-man roles rather than in hen-pecked husband mode but personally I think he’s equally funny either way.

This is one of the 17 W. C. Fields movies in Universal’s sensational value-for-money W. C. Fields Movie Collection boxed set. The transfer is more than satisfactory.

It’s a Gift really is a gift - a gift for the viewer. It’s an opportunity to see one of the greatest cinematic comics of all time at the peak of his form. That’s an opportunity not to be missed. Highly recommended.

The Old Fashioned Way (1934)

The Old Fashioned Way, released by Paramount in 1934, sees W. C. Fields perfectly cast as The Great McGonigle, the actor-manager of a travelling theatre troupe. The troupe is always just one step ahead of its creditors but McGonigle knows a thousand ways to avoid paying his bills.

The troupe arrives in a small town where McGonigle discovers that the Widow Pepperday (Jan Duggan) is the town’s richest inhabitant. And she’s stage-struck. This is too good an opportunity to miss so McGonigle romances her and promises to put her in the play. But first she has to sing for him thus setting up one of the film’s funniest scenes (suffice to say that Cleopatra Pepperday’s enthusiasm for music far outweighs her talent).



McGonigle’s daughter Betty (Judith Allen) has problems of her own, with the lovesick young Wally Livingston following her (and the troupe) from town to town. Wally is both lovesick and stage-struck. His father is a wealthy and very respectable businessman who certainly doesn’t want his son throwing away his future by going on the stage. Wally however is determined to be an actor and is equally determined to win Betty’s heart. His father arrives on the scene and his expected confrontation with Betty McGonigle has an unexpected conclusion.

The Great McGonigle is kept busy rehearsing his troupe while trying to stay out of the clutches of the town’s sheriff (who loves Cleopatra Pepperday and thinks McGonigle is trying to steal his girl) and also trying to avoid the attentions of the sheriff of the town the troupe has just left (who wants McGonigle to pay the debts he ran up there).



Fields provided the story himself (which was turned into a screenplay by Garnett Weston and Jack Cunningham) and it undoubtedly draws on his own experiences as a travelling performer. Fields even gets to do his juggling act, including the cigar box-juggling routine from his own vaudeville days, and this is one of the film’s highlights.

Fields is delightfully funny, of course, but towards the end he gets a chance to show his serious acting chops as well in some surprisingly moving scenes. He gets good support from the rest of the cast with Cleopatra Pepperday’s apparently never-ending rendition of The Seashell Song being another comic highlight.



Fields was always at his best playing a con artist of some kind or other and The Great McGonigle is one of his best creations. He’s as dishonest as they come and we love him for it.

Director William "One-Shot" Beaudine got his nickname from his extreme reluctance to do retakes and his ability to crank out B-pictures at an astonishing rate (he has 371 directing credits on the IMDb). When you’ve got W. C. Fields in full flight the last thing you need is a director trying to be clever. All you need to do is point the camera at Fields and keep it in focus. Beaudine was certainly capable of doing that.

The movie includes a play-within-a-movie as The Great McGonigle and his troupe stage an outrageous melodrama for the locals. The play, The Drunkard, gives Fields the opportunity to strut his stuff as a melodrama villain.



This is one of 17 (yes, 17!) W. C. Fields movies included in Universal’s outstanding value-for-money W. C. Fields Movie Collection boxed set. The transfer is quite satisfactory.

The Old Fashioned Way is not just a treat for fans of this outstanding comic genius but also a joy for anyone who loves movie homages to the great lost days of show business. Highly recommended.

The Bank Dick (1940)

The Bank Dick, released by Universal in 1940, is perhaps surprisingly the first W. C. Fields feature film that I’ve seen. After this I will certainly be wanting to watch others!

Field wrote the screenplay himself (under the delightful pseudonym Mahatma Kane Jeeves). You might expect that he’d keep all the good lines for himself but in fact he’s quite generous, allowing the other players to have their moments.

Fields is Egbert Sousè (he and his family are always insisting on that accent on the “e”) and his philosophy in life seems to be centred on the avoidance of work. It’s not that he doesn’t wish to provide for his family. He simply doesn’t want to resort to such a desperate measure as work. When he accidentally captures (or appears to capture) a dangerous bank robber he finds himself with a job - as a bank detective. It seems likely to involve very little work and Sousè certainly intends to make sure of that.

Sousè’s eldest daughter Myrtle (Una Merkel) wants to marry the amiable if less than brilliant bank employee Og Oggilby. Sousè manages to persuade Og to “borrow” five hundred dollars from the bank in order to buy shares in a beefsteak mine. Unfortunately the bank examiner picks this time to make a surprise visit to the bank. That will mean prison for Og, but Sousè has plans to prevent the bank examiner from setting eyes on the books. There will also be another bank robbery but that’s pretty much it for the plot. It’s more than enough.

There is a brief subplot early on that sees Sousè landing a job as a movie director. This affords Fields the opportunity for some inspired craziness.

The comedy is a mixture of slapstick and verbal comedy. Ordinarily I don’t much enjoy slapstick but I have to admit that I loved all the comedy in this film, both the physical and the verbal kind.

Franklin Pangborn as the determined bank examiner who finds himself Sousè’s victim and Grady Sutton as Og Oggilby provide Fields with very able comic support.

Of course much of the humour comes from Fields playing the well-established Fields comic persona. Interestingly, Fields is as often the butt of the jokes as the instigator. It’s impossible not to love W. C. Fields and he really is in full flight in this movie. If you don’t happen to love Fields then unfortunately this movie is not for you. But if you do enjoy his humour then you’ll find this movie utter bliss.

The Metrodome Region 2 DVD provides a very acceptable transfer and is ludicrously cheap. There is also a Region 1 DVD from Criterion which is ludicrously expensive.

Humour is a very personal thing but I found this to be one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Highly recommended.