Passez muscade

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.

One of Fields' best (is there anything that's not?), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is basically his swan song. Never again would he star in a motion picture. And it is a glorious swan song, nearly as funny as his greatest film, The Bank Dick. It may even be his second best film, although several fight for that position: The Old-Fashioned Way, It's a Gift, You're Telling Me, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, etc.

In a somewhat mournful way, the plot revolves around Fields, playing himself, trying to sell a script to a producer played by Franklin Pangborn (a bit confusing, seeing he retains his real name; Franklin Pangborn was an actor, though, not a producer). The film Fields wants to make is a lot like many other classic comedies: a bunch of gags strung together in a haphazard fashion. Part of the joke is that the plot doesn't exist as such. Tastes were changing at the time, and Pangborn is flabberghasted at the nonsensical plot. The funniest moments of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break take place as Fields' own screenplay plays out.

Like a lot of classic comedies, this one is also part musical, but unlike those same comedies, the music in this film isn't painful to sit through (I'm lookin' at you, Marx Brothers!). It's actually quite marvelous. The songs are sung by Gloria Jean, a teenager playing Fields' niece. She is beautiful and a wonderful singer. She's also quite funny when the film gives her that chance (her audition for Pangborn is gold). Also joining the cast is the Marx Brothers' favorite foil, Margaret Dumont, playing a woman who hates men so much she brought her daughter up on top of a steep precipice to raise her without the impediment of that gender.

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.

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.

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. (***)