Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) – E. Cline

Is it funny?  Or is it just bizarre?  Or is it funny because it is just plain bizarre?  If you walked into this film without knowing anything about W. C. Fields, how would you make sense of it?  Here we find Fields on the “Esoteric Films” lot, playing himself and pitching his next film project to a producer (played by Franklin Pangborn, also playing a version of himself).  So, we see what Fields does in Hollywood (e.g., he stands under a billboard for “The Bank Dick” trying to attract compliments, he eats at a greasy spoon) and we get to see a re-enactment of the script that he describes (which finds him chaperoning his niece, Gloria Jean, to Mexico but falling out of a plane and landing on top of a mountain owned by Margaret Dumont).  There isn’t really a plot to speak of but instead a series of set-ups that allows Fields to mumble his usual snide asides under his breath, to sneak a few drinks, to try to achieve maximum advantage for himself with minimum effort, to drive like a maniac, and so on.  In other words, this is the same Fields that audiences had grown to know and love.  Pure ridiculousness and with some very odd musical numbers (by young teen Gloria Jean) thrown in.  In some ways, the film is all reaction shots – odd things happen and everyone reacts - -with the chief one being the final word from Gloria: “My Uncle Bill….But I Still Love Him!”  This turned out to be Fields’ final picture as a star and despite his cantankerous, subversive, persona (or because of it), he remains one.