The Fatal Glass of Beer

This early short subject, beloved to some of us; really shows one of the great qualities that would set his (best) comedy apart: he was strange. Not exactly verbal comedy, nor really slapstick, W.C. seemed to create his own oddball universe much like, but never quite, ours.

I loved this short from the first time I saw it as a kid, and I think it's one of a kindness really makes it his best (though others are quite funny.) Mack Sennett wanted something more in the way of conventional slapstick; Feilds had to fight for this; which is in part a spoof of sentimental wilderness poetry about Alaska.

Nobody liked it at the time. Fields himself said, "maybe it's not good. But I like it." Thank Godness he stuck by his guns and went on to create his own one of a kind comedy world.

I grew up during the '60s, when Fields was in vogue as a rebel along the lines of Bogart or Brando. Nevertheless, I didn't find myself laughing nearly as much at his feature films "The Bank Dick", "My Little Chickadee", or "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" as at those of Keaton or the Marx Brothers. It wasn't until the '90s that I happened across this short, which finally convinced me that Fields was a comic genius.

With its absurd juxtaposition of dulcimer, Mountie, Salvation Army girl, wayward son, snow, tambourine, dachshund, bonds, the Yukon, student quarrymen, and unfit nights, this short has more laughs in it than any of Fields's features.

I'd say more, but I have to go milk the elk.

They say that W.C. Fields was unique among comedians, and I'm not going to argue. 'The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933),' generally ranked among his best efforts, wasn't as consistently hilarious as I'd been hoping, but one does certainly recognise that Fields had a style that was all his own. The film opens in the frozen Yukon goldfields, where a prospector sits huddled in the primitive shelter of a wooden hut – I immediately thought of Chaplin in 'The Gold Rush (1925),' but then the characters started speaking and the spell was broken. The loose plot concerns a simpleton prospector whose son travelled to the city and was consumed by the bottle, eventually winding up in prison for three years. It all unfolds in mock seriousness, with every character shamelessly hamming their lines to the camera in broad, ridiculous accents. From Fields' apparent contempt for his own storyline, I'd say he was satirising a type of film that was relatively common in the early sound era, the sort of sombre morality tale about the corruption of the Big City on impressionable rural minds.

Perhaps Fields' type of comedy takes some getting used to, and his absurdist style of wit might easily be misconstrued as sloppy or stilted. Are those rear projections supposed to look so ridiculously fake? I'd like to think so, but, then again, I've seen many movies where obviously-bogus backgrounds have been used with a completely straight face. A lot of the time, Fields' lack of subtlety works perfectly. There's absolutely no reason why getting hit in the face with snow after saying "and it ain't a fit night out for man nor beast" should be funny the sixth time around, but I laughed every time it happened. There's also a droll self-referential moment when Fields chokes on the artificial snow and declares, "tastes more like cornflakes." Even so, while good for the occasional chuckle, 'The Fatal Glass of Beer' feels oddly sparse in terms of laugh-out-loud jokes, and I certainly wasn't rolling in the aisles. Straight afterwards, I watched Buster Keaton's 'Cops (1922),' and that actually did have me laughing my head off – but that'd be opening a whole new can of worms, wouldn't it?

I grew up a fan of The Three Stooges...basically thinking that there was "no other comedy prior to 1960 besides them". Since that time, I still believe the Stooges, especially Shemp-era material, is the greatest comedy of all time. In the 1990's I came to appreciate the genius of Tim Moore & Spencer Williams. I have almost every episode of "The Amos 'n' Andy Show" and now consider them just a hair below the Stooges in terms of comic creativity.

Honesty needs to come into play here as I reveal that I had never seen a full W.C. Fields short or feature in my life prior to this year. My introduction to him was "The Fatal Glass Of Beer" and I am amazed at this short! Whereas most of the clips that I had ever seen of Fields turned me off from ever wanting to see anything else, this short makes me want to view his entire body of work.

If I had to make a short, this is probably what it would turn out to be like!

When I first saw this film I was wondering if it would be a spoof of Chaplin's "Gold Rush." However it's totally different. Fields is excellent and the film has a very good moral! ;-) I love the very sad song he sings which doesn't seem to have a rhyme in it.

One warning however, for DVD fans. The version I have was on a cheap DVD (along with "The Dentist" and "Golf Specialist"). Apparently, the company did a very bad job of porting the film over to digital because the soundtrack of every film is off by about 2 seconds. So the dialogue & sound effects are very mismatched. There is another company that puts out a DVD which is better quality but apparently while the overall quality is better, the version of "The Dentist" is censored & has cheezy music added in.