Universal Studios Home Video presents

W.C. Fields Comedy Collection (1933-1940)

"Godfrey Daniels, what's going on here now?"- Larson E. Whipsnade (W.C. Fields) in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

Stars: W.C. Fields, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Franklin Pangborn, Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, Mae West
Other Stars: Rudy Vallee, Bela Lugosi, Baby LeRoy, Eddie Anderson, Margaret Hamilton, Shemp Howard, Una Merkel
Director: Edward Sutherland, Edward Cline, George Marshall, Norman McLeod

Manufacturer: Deluxe
MPAA Rating: Not Rated for (mild comic violence, innuendo, drug use, pre-Code naughtiness)
Run Time: 06h:10m:55s
Release Date: 2004-11-09
Genre: comedy

Style Grade	Substance Grade	Image Transfer Grade	Audio Transfer Grade	Extras Grade
A	B+	B+	B-	B-

 

DVD Review

W.C. Fields was one of the most recognizable faces (and voices) in Hollywood during the 1930s. His film output on DVD has been severely restricted until now, with only one of his features and several of his short subjects having been released. Universal takes a big step towards rectifying that deficiency with this set of five of Fields' best feature films.

For unknown reasons Universal presents the pictures in reverse chronological order, but that has the benefit of putting two of his most well-known big studio films at the forefront. The Bank Dick (1940) features Fields as Egbert Sous�, a hard-drinking ne'er-do-well who accidentally stops a bank robber and ends up as guard for the bank. His prospective son-in-law is a bank employee whom Fields convinces to "borrow" $500 of bank money in order to buy stock in a worthless mine. But bank inspector J. Pinkerton Snoopington (Franklin Pangborn) is on his way and Fields must do everything he can to divert examination of the books. This is classic Fields, written under his improbable pseudonym Mahatma Kane Jeeves, displaying his affection for Dickensian silly names. Fields gets in a few bits of vaudevillian shtick, supported by Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges, and ably caps it all off with an excellent car chase that features memorable stunt work for the period. Though at this point Fields was cultivating a character as a caricature of himself, it's nonetheless a very funny and entertaining caricature.

Speaking of caricatures, the 1940 film My Little Chickadee also featured Mae West, in a famous pairing of Hollywood hams. West is featured as Flower Belle Lee, a woman of dubious reputation in the Old West, who is forced out of town for carrying on with a mysterious Masked Bandit. She can only achieve respectability by marrying, and she finds a suitable mark in Cuthbert J. Twillie (Fields), who attempts without success to consummate his relationship with the rubenesque West. There's plenty of comic action and innuendo sprinkled through the screenplay jointly written by Fields and West. Both stars would vanish from the scene shortly thereafter, but this duo certainly makes a big impression with dozens of quotable lines from this unforgettable picture.

One of the biggest oddities of the radio era was the success of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen on the radio, with dummies Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. A long-running feud between McCarthy and Fields made for classic radio comedy, and that feud is transplanted into You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939). This film marked Fields' triumphant return to the screen after a long period of drying out and a severe spinal injury suffered during the filming of Poppy (1936). Fields is Larson E. Whipsnade, the debt-ridden operator of a circus that features The Great Edgar (Bergen) and his dummies prominently. No opporunity for friction between the comic and the dummy is missed, especially since Bergen is romancing Whipsnade's daughter (Constance Moore). Adventures with a runaway balloon seem to be a comment on Fields' losing out on the title role of The Wizard of Oz (1939). There's a fair amount of racial humor and blackface comedy in this film, all of which seems to be intact (and without PC comment) in this presentation. Bergen's artistry is evident not so much in his voice-throwing (his lips can be seen moving readily) but in how he animates his dummies to distract the eye away from himself; the dummies have well-developed personalities, which cannot be said for the rest of the supporting cast.

It's a Gift plays rather like what one might have seen had Fields been involved in television situation comedies. Starring as Harold Bissonette, Fields is a grocer with dreams of owning an orange grove in California. An inheritance allows him to realize those dreams, only to be conned into purchasing a ruin. The comedy primarily comes from Fields' persecution by the inevitable henpecking wife and relations and his irascibility at small annoying children (including frequent foil Baby LeRoy). Much of the film is taken up with the family's trip to California, making it an uneasy comic counterpoint to The Grapes of Wrath. The story is interrupted by a series of sight gags straight out of the silent era, such as general store antics derived from Chaplin, Keaton, and Arbuckle, and a lengthy segment wrestling with a hammock. These feel a bit like padding to those familiar with their antecedents, though Fields' personality gives them a degree of freshness.

The last film on the set is also one of the funniest. Usually all-star comedies turn out to be lame at best, but that's not the case at all with International House (1933), one of Fields' earlier sound features. A gang of energy companies and journalists have converged on the International House hotel in Wu-Hu, China, to learn more about the radioscope invention of Dr. Wong (Edmund Breese). George Burns and Gracie Allen star as the doctor and nurse in the hotel, while a still-reputable Bela Lugosi is the heavy, looking to steal the invention. Fields arrives in his autogyro about halfway through the festivities, insulting everyone, drinking heavily, and making sex jokes at will. This picture demonstrates just how well Fields flourished in the pre-Code atmosphere (which includes scantily clad dancers in a mind-boggling number), and by comparison how stunted his later films were by the restrictions he faced. But the funniest segments involve Burns and Allen with Gracie's inspired daffiness provoking plenty of hearty laughter. Most notable is a tag-team segment with Burns and Franklin Pangborn taking turns feeding Allen straight lines; it feels improvised and anarchic, and ranks among the most hilarious scenes ever committed to celluloid. This makes for an excellent capper to the set, and one hopes that other Fields films (such as Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Man on the Flying Trapeze, Tillie and Gus, The Old-Fashioned Way, as well as the literary adaptations of David Copperfield and Alice in Wonderland) will follow shortly for a very welcome second volume.

Rating for Style: A
Rating for Substance: B+

 

Image Transfer

	One
Aspect Ratio	1.33:1 - Full Frame
Original Aspect Ratio	yes
Anamorphic	no

Image Transfer Review: The original full-frame picture looks quite good overall. The bit rates are quite high, running at 7 to 8 Mbps. It helps that multiple films aren't crowded onto a single disc, as Universal tends to do lately with such sets. Grain is fairly heavy and tends to be a bit sparkly, perhaps the result of artificial sharpening, though there's not a lot of edge enhancement obvious otherwise. The source prints are relatively clean, with excellent greyscale throughout and good black levels. The Bank Dick looks to be the same source material as on the Criterion disc, with most of the speckling and frame damage cleaned up; the result renders that bare-bones disc completely dispensable.

Image Transfer Grade: B+
 

Audio Transfer

	Language	Remote Access
Mono	English	no

Audio Transfer Review: The soundtracks in 2.0 mono are acceptable given the age of these films. The Bank Dick is fairly clean (apparently the same as the Criterion audio transfer) but the others have varying degrees of significant hiss and noise throughout. Not pristine but acceptable, considering.

Audio Transfer Grade: B- 

Disc Extras

Static menu
Scene Access with 90 cues and remote access
Subtitles/Captions in English, French, Spanish with remote access
3 Original Trailer(s)
3 Documentaries
Packaging: Digipak
Picture Disc
5 Discs
1-Sided disc(s)
Layers: single

Extras Review: The most significant extra is a worthwhile one: the 1994 Biography episode Behind the Laughter that gives a quick (45m:06s) once-over to Fields' career as the world-famous juggler in vaudeville who gradually incorporated comedy into his act to the point that it utterly took over. Rod Steiger and Ed McMahon are amongst the notable talking heads interviewed, though few of Fields' own contemporaries were still around to give their perspective. It's certainly worthwhile. Realart rerelease trailers for International House, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man and My Little Chickadee make a welcome appearance, though the absence of trailers for the other two is lamentable. All five features get a standard 18 stops, which is more than sufficient for pictures of such brevity.

Extras Grade: B-
 

Final Comments

Five of Fields' best, in reasonably good transfers, with the bonus of a substantial documentary makes this a recommended purchase.

Mark Zimmer 2004-11-22