A mí no me engaña nadie

Making a Comeback to the Screen After a Three Year Break to Rest and Retain His Control Over Drink, W.C. Fields Finds Himself Able, Although Maybe a Step Slow, to Perform and Write the Script. While Not At the Top of His Game, Fields Manages Quite Well as Scribe and His Acerbic Way of Charming Audiences.

He Brings Along Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, the Two Wooden Dummies. Fields Had Kept His Hand In on the Radio During His Movie Break and had Cultivated a Running Feud on the Airwaves that Proved Quite Popular. So it was Only Natural that They Help W.C. with His Return to the Silver Screen.

They Did Prove Adequate and Perhaps Made the Picture More Popular with the Kiddies and the Circus Backdrop Also Helped with the Younger Set. W.C. Fields Humor was Strictly Speaking "Adult" in Nature, So This was a Bit Different but a Good Contrast. Some May Say that This is Diluted Fields, but Considering the Aging Comedian was on Shaky Ground, it Didn't Hurt the Film that Much.

The Film as a Whole has Enough of Fields to Make it Worthy of His Other Work. The Ping Pong Match, the Circus Shenanigans, and the Wordsmith Fields Fills the Film with Puns, Odd Sounding Words and Phrases, and Some Delirious Sight Gags, Like the Alligator Pit.

The Movie was a Good Comeback for Fields, Although One Could Sense there Weren't Many Good Years Left as the Decade Closed. In the Thirties Though, W.C. Fields was a Top Draw and a Genius of the Genre.

Note…W.C. Fields made one more bona fide classic…The Bank Dick (1940).

You Can't Cheat An Honest Man finds widower W.C. Fields running a second rate circus and trying to stay one step ahead of the law as he's creditors just about every place he goes. His children, John Arledge and Constance Moore attend a really posh Ivy League type school and you sympathize with Fields because you know this why he's probably not paying his bills. One also can speculate what his wife must have put up with back in the day.

Moore on a visit to Dad's show falls for the ventriloquist sideshow performer Edgar Bergen. But Bergen doesn't really get along with Fields or I should say his alter ego Charlie McCarthy doesn't.

The Fields-McCarthy feud was legendary on radio and it might seem hard to fathom how a ventriloquist could entertain on radio. But the characters he created were so powerful and had such a hold on the minds of the public that they were real. Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd were characters in their own right, they almost but not quite gained separate identities away from Edgar Bergen.

Anyway on Bergen's show, Bill Fields was a frequent guest and the repartee between Fields and McCarthy is still classic. Even without knowing that background, today's audience can still enjoy You Can't Cheat an Honest Man because the comedy is eternal.

There's not much of a plot except for Moore loving Bergen, but being ready to marry snobbish James Bush to help her father in his financial troubles. I'm sure you can figure out how that goes, especially when prospect in-laws Thurston Hall and Mary Forbes meet Fields at a little clambake they're throwing.

The circus offers a range of opportunity for some great gags including trying to pry Charlie McCarthy out of an alligator, an elephant who gives Fields showers on command and of course sawing Charlie in half during a magic act.

Still it's the repartee between Fields and Bergen and another of the unforgettable characterizations that Bill Fields brings us which makes You Can't Cheat An Honest Man a comedy classic.

For some reason, I've never cared much for Edgar Bergen. It wasn't the fact that he wasn't a very good ventriloquist. I think it was a kind of smugness in his personality. Still, as he plays associate comedian to W. C. Fields, his banter with Charlie McCarthy pretty much matches Fields' shtick. This involves a crummy circus with Fields as the proprietor, one step ahead of the creditors and another ahead of the law. Fields sometimes does the clueless thing, but he is usually in control, and he does have a kind of code. This isn't one of my favorites but just try to keep up with the one liners.

YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN (Universal, 1939) directed by George Marshall, is a circus movie, and with W.C. Fields in the lead, accompanied by the support of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, along with an assortment of oddball characters, ranging from another dummy named Mortimer Snerd, to human numskull Grady Sutton, plus circus attractions of the world's largest midget and smallest giant, one should expect this madcap comedy to be none other than a circus. In spite of its backdrop, where much of it takes place, there's no man on the flying trapeze nor Sally of the Sawdust or clowns juggling bowling pins, yet, Fields provides several opportunities clowning around by not taking it's title seriously. He is far from being an honest man and actually does most of the cheating, not in the illicit sense, but as a circus impresario who holds back salaries from his employees and cheating his paying customers of their change.

The story actually concerns Larson E. Whipsnade (W.C. Fields), the manager of a circus, who is heavily in debt of $3500, and in a comedic way, is at wits end with his troupe and constantly one step ahead of the sheriff. His problems are further complicated when Vicki (Constance Moore), his attractive daughter, becomes interested in the Great Edgar (Bergen), but in order to help their father out of his financial difficulties and from being arrested, Phineas (John Arledge), her brother, arranges for Vicki to marry Roger Bel-Goodie (James Bush), the son of society snobs (Thurston Hall and Mary Forbes), who may have money but not her love.

The supporting cast consists of circus performers Blacaman and Princess Baba playing themselves; Edward Brophy as Corbett; Arthur Hohl as Burr; Eddie "Rochester" Anderson as Cheerful, the crap-shooting handyman; and several Fields staff players including Grady Sutton, Jan Dugan and Bill Wolfe in smaller roles, plus Evelyn Del Rio, who would go on to play Fields' brat of a daughter in the upcoming comedy, THE BANK DICK (1940), seen here as a crying girl annoys Whipsnade about her "lost" dog. Children and animals continue to make good comedy props for Fields in this one.

The movie itself comes is a sort of mixed blessing for some considering how comedy routines shift from Fields to the antics of Bergen and McCarthy. The ventriloquist and his dummies acting like humans certainly will appeal to younger children than Fields, yet the older kids or adults with minds of children could find the Bergen, McCarthy and Snerd exchanges quite intrusive. While the Fields comedies of the past focused solely on his character, he doesn't have the entire movie nor does he share much screen time with Bergen and McCarthy in spite of their current popularity of verbal insults on radio. The story itself, written by Fields, under the assumed name of Charles Bogle, is slight with some situations unresolved, but the verbal exchanges and comedy routines are first rate. Standouts include Fields taking a shower behind a circus tent as his elephant Queenie acquires water from a bucket and sprays upon his command of "Give Queenie!"; Fields staging a ventriloquist act sporting a false mustache as none laughing spectators look on with blank expressions; and if those scenes don't provoke laughter, then the climatic ping-pong game at the society party certainly will. Watch how character actress Jan Duggan catches the ball.

YOU CAN'T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN has become a favorite on commercial television for many years, and later on cable channels, including American Movie Classics from 1995 to 1998, and Turner Classic Movies where it made its premiere in June 2001. Take notice that the prints available on these mentioned cable channels are not from the original 1939 release but from reissue copies with an entire different background during its introduction elevating Eddie "Rochester" Anderson's name (of Jack Benny radio fame) from bottom billing to co-starring status, thus reducing co-stars Bergen, McCarthy and Constance Moore further down the list. Video prints, from MCA Home Video, however, have become available with its original theatrical opening credits.

For his debut at Universal Studios after many years at Paramount, W.C. Fields comes off to a good start. It's may not be perfect but the laughs are there. Several comedy routines from previous Fields comedies are repeated here, and in many ways, much improved. The feud between Fields and "smart mouth" McCarthy continue to become highlights. McCarthy to Fields: "Is that a tomato or your nose?" McCarthy eventually gets his from Whipsnade (Fields) in one scene where the child-like dummy finds himself inside a live crocodile. After watching this, the circus may never be the same again, thanks to the one and only Larceny Whipsnake, better known as Larson E. Whipsnade, profession, "Honest Man." (**1/2)

It is true that Edgar Bergan and Charlie McCarthy were far more effective in their national audience on radio than in the movies. This was due to the close-up affect of cinematography on Bergen's face - he could not hide the fact that his lips moved a little. When on a stage in a nightclub or in vaudeville he'd be too far away to be seen moving his lips. Not so on film.

But Bergan and McCarthy put ventriloquism on the map. Their act and radio show took the art of throwing one's voice and brought a biting humor to it, giving the dummy a real personality: a wise guy little man, with an eye for the ladies and an eye for making trouble for people he did not like (among whom was Fields). The feud of McCarthy and Fields mirrored the contemporary feud of Fred Allan and Jack Benny, except that Allan and Benny were both real. But on radio Charlie was as real as "Uncle Claude" was, so the fact that it was a block of wood that was manipulated fighting a real life man did not matter. The public just loved Charlie reminding Fields of his alcoholism, in particular his large red nose. And the public loved the threats of Fields to give Charlie a ride on a buzz saw.

Because of the strong personality of McCarthy, a movie audience even today looks at this film and tends to ignore Bergen's slight lip movements. Charlie is the real personality of interest, not Edgar - here playing a hard working young man who would like to marry Vicki Whipsnade (Constance Moore) but is resigned that she wants to marry a wealthy young wastrel instead. Bergen could act (look at his performance in I REMEMBER MAMA, as Ellen Corby's boyfriend/husband, and his comic scene there with Oskar Homolka regarding the dowry). But he did not have to act as Bergen here - all he had to do was let Charlie do his job (and, for that matter, let Mortimer Snerd do his work too in two scenes). The tricks used by the director to have scenes where Charlie appears without Bergan are just even more effective, as they enhance the idea of an independent comic personality coming out of the dummy.

For Fields there are many choice moments too. His walk, supposedly naked after a shower, across the circus grounds - hidden behind people carrying items, or elephants and other animals, until a lady screams and faints (and Fields is finally physically revealed to the audience) is a gem. So is his wrecking the Bel-Goodies engagement party, first by his mad ping pong match, and then by his insistence of telling the story of how his life was saved once by an intelligent rattlesnake (not realizing that Mrs. Bel-Goody hates even the mention of snakes). His interactions with the circus staff, with the idiotic Grady Sutton, with labor union organizer Edward Brophy, and with the various people buying tickets for the circus, or for that matter mispronouncing his name as "Larceny Whipsnake" are priceless. So is his own attempt at ventriloquism: he does it so you can't see his lips move, but you just can't believe he is throwing his voice. Well he is throwing dust or something else at that moment.

But it is his running confrontations with McCarthy, some of which he actually loses (he has one where he has to bribe Charlie at one point to keep quiet) that maintains the audience's attention. The film is one of Fields' best ones, and deservedly retains it's popularity to this day.