Le dentiste

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.

I know the movie is a comedy short, but it didn't strike me as being terribly funny. Yet that's what I've come to expect of Fields' work. True, the movie had a number of amusing lines and situations, but I find it more interesting as a peek into American life in 1932. First, the Dentist had his office in his home. Second, his all-black dental equipment, common for the time, looked like instruments of torture. Third, he had an ice box in his kitchen, not a refrigerator -- though in upper middle-class fashion of the time, it had a white enamel exterior, not wood. Though I haven't viewed the film in a number of years, I also recall the interesting wearing apparel in the golf course scenes, most notably the knickers; the clubs had wood shafts; but the course itself appeared very contemporary. Then again, the tee-fairway-green structure of golf courses is pretty much the same today as it was more than 70 years ago. True, the sound quality is very crude, but this movie was made just five years after the very first film "talkie" amazed its audiences.

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.

Both on and off screen. I don't consider this particular short one of his best, but it is good. It seems a little slower than many of his other works in that his comebacks, etc. aren't fired off as quickly as I'm used to when it comes to his style of wit. But it has its moments, and there are enough of those to make it entertaining. One of those moments is due to the wonderful slapstick comic ability of Elise Cavanna. As a rather clingy dental patient, given her manner, looks and talent as an "acrobat", the only person I can think of to compare her with is Carrol Burnett. And she compares right well. Other cast members also help make this flick as good as it is. Such as Bud Jamison who, with his very familiar face, adds good comic backup. Of course there is that terrific line when, after Fields has been punched, and the iceman steps in to say, "I'd like to see you do that again!", Fields interjects ... Well, you watch it. Its worth the effort.

W.C. Fields plays the title role in this short, and he's not a dentist I'd want to visit but he's extremely funny. There are all sorts of classic throw away gags in here, from melting a heavy 50 pound block of ice on the stove down to ice cube size to make it easier to carry, to a man with a huge beard, in which the dentist can't seem to find his mouth. Trying to pull a tooth from a society matron, he and the patient assume every possible position as he attempts to get the tooth out. At one point he's carrying her around while hanging onto the tooth with pliers. Ouch! While this is going on, he's also trying to stop his daughter from going out with the ice man, by locking her in her room. Very inventive and still very funny.