Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

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.

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.

I watched this one first from the second of Universal's W.C. Fields Box Set because of its almost legendary status for being "completely insane", as Leonard Maltin so aptly puts it; incidentally, the film also turned out to be The Great Man's last starring vehicle (based on his own story, credited to Otis Criblecoblis). It's amazing how Fields' essentially unlikable personality has endured over the years: he's the only actor who has made a career out of constantly dwelling on his vices, i.e. the "golden nectar", and pet hates (especially children). Besides, his comic style is so personal as to be incoherent at times - but that's part of his genius: who else could come up with such a bizarre line as "How'd you like to hide the egg and gurgitate a few saucers of mocha java?" and make it sound so utterly hilarious through his unique delivery?

While self-references such as abound in this film weren't uncommon in the old Hollywood, not to mention its anything-goes attitude revolving around a wisp of plot - think Universal's own HELLZAPOPPIN' (1942), for instance, with Olsen & Johnson - Fields was the only one among the great comedians who was willing to experiment in this way; in fact, some of the cast members (including the star) play themselves and, at one point, Fields is even seen admiring the poster of his latest success THE BANK DICK (1940) while two boys exclaim to one another what a bummer it was!

The end result is perhaps patchy overall but often uproarious nonetheless: there are too many pauses for song - though Gloria Jean herself is pretty and charming, and the jive rendition of "Comin Thru' The Rye" by a girl who has been sheltered from the world all her life is an inspired touch. Among Fields' comic foils in the film are Franklin Pangborn (as a flustered studio head), Marx Bros. regular Margaret Dumont (playing the grande dame even in her mountaintop retreat) and Leon Errol (as Fields' rival for the hand of wealthy man-hating Dumont). Incidentally, the receptionist in Pangborn's office is played by Carlotta Monti - Fields' then-companion.

The film's best scenes and gags include: the diner sequence with Fields exchanging insults with a heavy-set waitress; the disruption of Gloria's rehearsal of a musical number, over which Pangborn presides, by the set construction crew; Pangborn reading Fields' surreal script (in which, among other things, he dives off an aeroplane - whose interior and rear deck resemble those of a train's - after the gin bottle he accidentally drops, and again from a parapet when Dumont suggests that they kiss!); Dumont's fanged mastiff (an equally fake-looking gorilla also turns up here); and, of course, the classic and brilliantly-sustained chase finale (which was later lifted for the Abbott & Costello vehicle IN SOCIETY [1944]). The dialogue is equally great - including one of the star's best-remembered lines: "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once: she drove me to drink - that's the one thing I'm indebted to her for"; he even throws in a dig at the censor, when a scene that was supposed to take place in a bar had to be reset to a soda fountain!

P.S. At the end, Gloria leaves with Fields and he tells her that he had promised her mother he would take care of the girl; the mother, a trapeze artist, appears at the beginning of the film but her death scene (to which this brief exchange refers) was subsequently deleted.

By the way, I'm again baffled by the fact that I've yet to come across any online review for this wonderful set; also, I'm personally not bothered by the Collection's relatively high price-point - considering that we're getting, at least, 4 comedic gems (besides, by having only one film per disc, we don't risk the freezing issues which plagued Universal's Abbott & Costello Franchise releases and which have so far kept me from purchasing them).

Imagine handing a studio executive a script in which your hero falls out of the open window of an airplane while chasing a whiskey bottle and lands atop a mountain where Mrs. Hemoglobin lives with her daughter (who has never seen a man) and her pet gorilla...this is part of a script which Fields hands to Director Franklin Pangborn in the film (and which we see enacted) and the same script Fields himself wrote under the pseudonym of Otis Criblecoblis.

If zany, off-the-wall, slightly surreal humor appeals to you (mixed with some irrelevant musical numbers from Gloria Jean that Universal probably forced Fields to include as part of his financing bargain), this cinematic oddity may be your ideal afternoon of fun--half the best lines are half-thrown away by Fields, so it pays to listen closely and enjoy The Great Man towards the end of his career, unfettered by convention and often very funny. No one has ever approached the distinctive comic style of this off-the-wall social critic, and with political correctness guiding most studio fare, it is doubtful that anyone will.

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.