Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

This is possibly the last gasp of vaudevillian humor in movies, and to my mind the best beyond the early Marx brothers movies — which were just filmed acts.

But this is something quite different, firmly a film, a folded film, the kind I like.

The deal is simple. Fields at this time was an unreliable drunk whose humor was considered outdated. He could only get a movie financed if he was able to use it to feature a young actress whose presence is completed unrelated to what he wants to do.

So. Fields writes and makes a movie about what? Himself as an unreliable drunk who cannot get a movie made unless it features a young girl. A third of the movie is a traditional Fields movie, with mistaken punches, punchline gags and his obnoxious humor. A car chase.

A third of the movie is more of the same, except focused on the storyline of Fields going over his script. The producer keeps denigrating the story.

And the final third is the movie he makes, with fantastic effects.

All three of these have Fields being Fields and Gloria Jean shoehorned in, in the most intensionally jarring ways with musical numbers and endearing face shots.

Whether you like Fields' humor is a matter of taste. I do like it because it is so honest. This isn't an act: he really was drunk and belligerent, closing down production frequently. But whether you like the humor or not, you have to admire the way this thing is constructed. It is all about jumping among these three narrative stances, and the movie within the movie within is all based on plot devices that feature jumping among scenarios.

This was, in my opinion an influential movie in furthering the notions of folded narrative in film.

Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.

Never Give A Sucker An Even Break was W.C. Fields's last starring film and last one that he had complete creative control. All of his future film work would be guest appearances and specialties.

This film is as anarchistic as anything the Marx Brothers ever did, in fact it anticipates Monty Python by over 30 years. Most of it is Fields relating an idea for a screenplay to studio head Franklin Pangborn. This is where it gets positively surreal.

To cement the Marxian connection Fields gets to pay court to Groucho's favorite foil Margaret Dumont. But the relationship here is totally different. Margaret is always the butt of Groucho's bon mots half of which she confessed herself went over her head. With Fields as with other women like Kathleen Howard who henpecked him previously, the women dominate and Fields gets his points across, but mostly with pantomime and facial expression.

The film is also to showcase Universal's backup teenage soprano Gloria Jean. Remember at this time before Abbott&Costello score a hit with Buck Privates, Deanna Durbin was their number one star. But the best way to keep a star under control was to have a replacement waiting in the wings. That was Gloria Jean's function. She had done well with Bing Crosby in a film the previous year, If I Had My Way, that allowed a far better expression of her talents. She had a pleasing soprano voice and Fields lowered the cynicism quotient in his scenes with his 'niece'.

Still Never Give A Sucker An Even Break is a Bill Fields film all the way. Too bad this was the last film to give his talents full range.

W.C. Fields movies are always filled with his unique brand of humor, none more so that than "Sucker". If you see only one Fields film this should be it. The chase scene at the end is one of the best from the 1940's and still holds up decently today.

Without doubt, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" is Fields at his absolute best. The "plotline" is so completely beyond belief that it provides the nearly perfect vehicle for Fields' unique and irreverent style with its constant stream of sight gags and one-liners. His mumbled verbal interactions with Madame Hemoglobin (Margaret Dumont) and the "tiny waitress" in the café (Jody Gilbert) are as memorably irreverent as anything he had done previously and are worth listening to closely to fully appreciate. The constantly changing scenes and situations in this film provide ample opportunity for his verbal and visual "charms" to be fully utilized, and in my opinion this is his finest and most consistently funny effort.

If you haven't seen this film, give it a viewing or two. If you are a true Fields fan, you'll enjoy it as much as or more so than any of his other more well-known offerings.

Fields adds a commentary on the indignities of old age to his repertoire. Often more somber than his reputation -- and all the funnier because of it -- Fields here plays a version of himself trying to sell a script to a movie studio. So we see a drawling, slow-moving older fellow in the humiliating position of pitching an idea to a producer who isn't necessarily honored or interested. Fields's script is, of course, ridiculous, just as his ideas in real life must have seemed crazy to many a studio executive. We "see" the script played out as the producer reads it, giving Fields a chance to go through his paces -- delightful, as usual, even if his obviously failing health makes it melancholy at the same time. Leaving the meeting with his tail between his legs, Fields is lovingly embraced by his niece, Gloria Jean, who contrary to what you might think, is wonderful. Her love for her uncle, and all his eccentricities, is endearing throughout. What can one say about the Keystone Kops-like windup, except that they probably had to tack a conventional finish onto a very unusual movie? This was Fields's final full-length performance, as if he knew the end was near. A sad and funny sign-off by the best comedian in movie history.