Le dentiste

THE DENTIST (Paramount, 1932), directed by Leslie Pearce, stars the legendary comic WC Fields in his first of four 20 minute comedy shorts produced by Mack Sennett, which ranks one of his best reproduced vaudeville comedy supplements ever put on film. Raunchy and very naughty, this comedy short pulls no punches, which is why this one has stood up well among Fields' other short subjects. As in the best of Fields' domestic comedies, he has a disfunctional family, but in this case he the disfunctional one, an absent-minded father (possibly a widower since there is no wife present)with a grown daughter (Marjorie "Babe" Kane) in love with Arthur, the ice man (Harry Bowen).

THE DENTIST begins at home where the Dentist (WC Fields) is reading his newspaper at the breakfast table while his daughter tries to put in a big chunk of ice into the ice box. He gets a telephone call from Charlie Frobisher (Bud Jamison) to come out for a game of golf. The first half of the comedy short focuses on Fields' trials and tribulations in trying to win his hand of golf, ending in frustration as he throws his caddy (Bobby Dunn) into the pond, along with his golf clubs and bags. The second half fades into the dental office where the dentist, with the assistance of his nurse (Zedna Farley), must encounter his scheduled appointments with numerous character patients, including a screaming woman with a tooth ache who had been bitten in the ankle by a dog, "It's fortunate it wasn't a Newfoundland dog that bit you," quips Fields as he views her while she bends down to show him her scar; followed by a male patient in the waiting room who quietly walks out after hearing some screams; and highlighted by another woman patient (Elsie Cavanna) who must submit to the drill followed by the dentist trying to yank the bad tooth out of her mouth as she is being dragged about with her bad tooth still attached to the Dentist's pliers. At the same time, his daughter, who is locked in her bedroom upstairs by her father so not to run away and marry the ice man, stubbornly stumps her feet repeatedly on the floor, causing the plaster from the ceiling to fall into the patient's open mouth. In spite of his unsympathetic nature, this dentist continues to acquire more patients as well as patience.

A crude comedy in every sense of the word, but one that has become famous over the years and worth reviewing because of it. Even Fields' spoken dialogue, which he had written, includes lines such as, "Oh, the hell with her," which he tells his nurse after listening to a lady patient groaning in pain with her tooth ache. Even during the golf game earlier in the story, Fields nearly tells his caddy what he can do with the rule book. One of the most famous lines, however, has Fields asking his patient, "Have you ever had this tooth pulled before?" Dialogue and scenes like these must have caused a furor with the censors at the time of its release, especially the use of that motory sounding drill, which gets the biggest laughs from its viewers.

Also in the cast are: Billy Bletcher as the Russian patient; Dorothy Granger as Miss Peppitone; and Emma Tansey as the old lady at the golf course, among others.

For many years, THE DENTIST had become a public domain title, and distributed on video cassette through various distributors, often featured with two other WC Fields shorts as THE GOLF SPECIALIST (RKO, 1930) and THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER (1933). These have also been a favorite on commercial and cable television as fillers between feature films during the late night hours. Recently, all of Fields' sound comedy shorts have been restored to better picture and sound quality, and these clearer prints were packaged through Public Media Home Vision Video in the late 1990s. While it's great to see these comedy gems in sharp focus, along with other ad ons such as Fields' ten minute silent short, POOL SHARKS (1915), THE PHARMACIST (1933) and THE BARBER SHOP (1933), the only disappointment in turn happens to be THE DENTIST. The reason being that although restored, THE DENTIST not only includes new background music, which is nowhere to be heard during the storyline in its original print, except for during the opening and closing credits, but the movie itself has been slightly shortened with the raunchy dialogue substituted by different lines or covered up by intrusive underscoring, which takes away from the film's original intent. At present, the censored and cleaned up print, possibly from a reissue after the production code had taken effect, is the one used when shown on American Movie Classics in 2000, and on Turner Classic Movies in June 2001 when the station honored WC Fields as its "star of the month." To see THE DENTIST, uncensored and in its full glory, it would be best to locate an older video copy dating back to the 1980s. Nonetheless, with the exception of it weak ending, the uncensored version to THE DENTIST ranks the best of the four Fields/Sennett comedy shorts for Paramount, and should be seen to be believed.

I am probably not the biggest fan of W.C Fields. I find his comedy a bit difficult to comprehend at times and his character in his films was usually far from affable. In most of his films, he usually had some rather devious ulterior motive up his sleeve and sought to deceive those around him. To be fair to the comedian though, he is on very good form in this comedy short, "The Dentist" from 1932. Like most comedy shorts, the story is kept fairly streamlined. Fields plays the dentist of the film who attempts to juggle his professional commitments with those of his personal ones. The results are very funny and the timing is very natural. The comedian is probably more comfortable with dialogue than with slapstick. I remember this comedy short when it came out on video back in the late 1980s, along with the other shorts W.C Fields made.

The Dentist (1932)

*** (out of 4)

W.C. Fields gets to shine in this pre-code Paramount short where he plays the title role. The film starts off as the dentist learns that his daughter is wanting to date an ice delivery man, which of course he wants no part of. After a disastrous round of golf the dentist returns to his office where several strange characters wait. THE DENTIST is perhaps one of Fields' best known shorts for a number of reasons. Of course, one of the more notorious reasons is all the sexual innuendo that happens once the final portion of the film happens. I'm not going to spoil these scenes but they are quite funny and especially the dialogue where Fields pretty much just insults them right to their faces. The stuff dealing with the golf was also quite funny and especially the sequence where the actor just completely loses it and begins throwing everything into the water. There are several scenes in the film where people have their teeth damaged in a wide variety of ways so those scared of the men in white will certainly want to stay away from this thing even though it is a comedy. There's no question Fields is at the top of his game because everything from his line delivery to the way he walks is just perfect.

The Dentist was the first of four Mack Sennet shorts that W.C. Fields made in between his feature films with Paramount. In this one he extracts a bit of humor.

Actually before he gets to the office Fields gets in a round of golf where he beans a player still on the green ahead of him. Fields was never the most patient or polite of people and he neither asked if he could play through or yelled 'FORE'. Nothing changes I might add for professional people in 80 or so years, still golf before business.

When he gets to the office he has some real tussles with patients. I can see where Bob Hope got some of his ideas for his Painless Potter character from The Paleface. One scene was truly provocative as Fields with back to camera gets between a seated woman patient's legs in his efforts to extract a tooth. Elsie Cavenna the patient had some shapely legs and she did appear in a few more films with Fields.

No way in a few years that one would have gotten past the omnipresent Code. But now we can laugh and enjoy as the rest of Bill Fields's body of work.

In ill-humour after a bad golf game, W.C. Fields takes his ire out on a series of dental patients and his daughter who has taken up with the iceman. If you can, try to obtain an uncut version of this comedy classic as there are some unusually off-colour lines and scenes for a short of this time period. Fields is best here, just allowed to chatter to himself. His shorts bear repeat watchings just to catch more of what he says. I have always considered him much more of a verbal comedian than a slapstick physical comedian and it truly did take the advent of sound to display his talent to their fullest. If the scene where Fields is pulling the woman's teeth looks a little suggestive to you, it is loosely based on a well-known (at the time) stag smoker film that was made in the 1920s called "The Slow Fire Dentist" which featured that dentist pulling a woman's tooth standing between her legs , her getting tangled in his coat, and being under heavy sedation. Not an exact match, of course (the stag film dentist gets a lot luckier than W. C. ever did in any movie!) but enough to see an influence. One of Fields' most famous shorts, and rightfully so! Recommended!