Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (Universal, 1941), directed by Edward Cline, stars the legendary comic, WC Fields, in his final starring role. While Fields' catchphrase title might indicate a circus story or one about a man cheating at cards, it's actually a satire on Hollywood, in fact, Fields poking fun of himself. In spite of some Hollywood in-jokes, two or three separate stories for the price of one, along with site gags lifted with some alterations taken from earlier Fields comedies to assure guaranteed belly laughs, this is probably the strangest comedies ever made, even for Fields, and it's funny. Actually, for a movie without a real story, it's quite funny. It even features teenage soprano Gloria Jean acting as Fields' niece. She's not really funny but adds that certain charm into the story, even when frequently saying to herself or looking directly to the camera, "My Uncle Bill, and I still love him." She takes time out to sing a couple of songs, either straight through or with interruptions by others, and even with that, it's still funny. In short, for a movie that bears no resemblance to a movie, it's very funny.

From an original story by Otis Griblecoblis (guess who that is), the scenario revolves around W.C. Fields playing himself as he goes to Esoteric Studios for a conference with production head (Franklin Pangborn playing himself), to present a screenplay he has written for his next production. After Pangborn reads through the script (in which Fields, Jean and Leon Errol enact their roles through add in sequences for the movie audience), he finds it an insult to a man's intelligence, even his, for that the story, consisting of Fields traveling on an airplane with his niece, consisting of compartment beds, later to jump overboard from an observation deck to retrieve his liquor bottle that has fallen, landing unharmed on the mountaintop where lives the middle-aged Daisy Hemogloben (Margaret Dumont), the richest woman in the world, and her youthful daughter, Ouliotta (Susan Miller), who has never seen a man, which leads Fields to teach her a kissing game. Because Mrs. Hemoglobem is worth millions, Fields finds himself competing with Leon Errol for her hand in marriage. After the script is rejected, Fields drives away from the studio with Gloria, drops her off at a drug store, which is followed by Fields' assisting a middle-aged woman he believes to be in labor, on a mad drive through the streets over to the maternity hospital. If this lengthy car chase involving police cars and fire trucks looks familiar, much of it was reused for the Abbott and Costello comedy, IN SOCIETY (1944).

Many years following the initial release of NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, WC Fields still has loyal fans who continue to love "Uncle Bill" as Gloria Jean does in the story. Sadly, age has caught up with Fields, looking older than his 62 years, being physically heavier and reciting his lines in a slower manner than usual, but in spite of these handicaps that marked the end of his career in a leading role, Fields proves to still be capable in being funny, even through a story without a plot tied together with a series of sight gags, ranging from Fields' encounter with a snooty waitress (Jody Gilbert) in a diner, to dealing with two mischievous boy actors named Buddy and Butch (Kenneth Brown and Billy Lenhart), to one of the funniest car rides ever put on film.

Soundtrack includes Gloria Jean singing "Estrellita" and Johann Strauss's "Voices of Spring," Russians singing "Ochye Tchornia" and Susan Miller doing a jive number to "Comin' Through the Rye."

Others in the cast include Mona Barrie Pangborn's wife; Charles Lang as Peter Carson, the engineer; and in smaller roles, from Carlotta Monti to character actors Irving Bacon and Bill Wolfe. Anne Nagel, who appears in the opening scene as Gloria Jean's mother, Madame Gorgeous, was originally supposed to have a scene where she is killed in a trapeze fall while working in a circus film, leaving Fields as Gloria Jean's guardian, but this piece ended up on the cutting room floor, leaving no explanation in the final print to the disappearance of Gorgeous and Fields' sudden guardianship of Gloria Jean.

NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK should make a good double feature with THE BANK DICK (1940) mainly due to certain similarities, such as Fields starring in both, each having the same opening and closing musical score, as well as the Fields introduction in the story as he's standing on the street looking at the billboard advertisement that reads W.C. Fields in THE BANK DICK.

Of the handful of movies made throughout the 1940s to feature Gloria Jean, NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK is the only one to have survived on the television markets the longest, solely because it has WC Fields, whose comedies have become legendary. A delightful young actress/singer, Gloria Jean was quite popular in her day but as fate would have it, with each passing decade, much of her film work, mostly second features, are hardly shown anymore. Although Gloria Jean is largely forgotten by today's standards, at least there is a movie of hers to still be in circulation today, and it's this one. Available on either video cassette and/or DVD format, NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, which formerly played on the American Movie Classics cable channel from 1995 to 1999, followed by its Turner Classic Movies debut in 2001, continues to be a funny movie as well as a confusing one. What was the story about? We'll never know for sure. Our Uncle Bill ... and we still love him. (***)

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 was a pioneer of the American cinema. As such, he was a true original who not only acted, but also wrote most of the material for his films. Mr. Fields left an important body of work for us to watch, laugh and admire.

His "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" was his last film. The film, although a bit dated, still has some sparks thanks to Mr. Fields, playing the Uncle Bill of the story. The film, directed by Edward C. Cline, still has a lot of laughs.

The film is a satire about the movie industry that Mr. Fields knew so well. Mr. Fields takes us behind the cameras to show us the craziness that is associated with making films. Of course, it is somewhat exaggerated as we don't believe what goes on at some of the Esoteric Studios.

Aside from Mr. Fields, Gloria Jean plays his niece, the sweet voiced girl appearing in one of the films in production. Also, Leon Errol, Margaret Dumont and some old pros are seen doing their best.

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.

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.