It's A Gift (1934) – One of W.C. Fields' Best

Review by Steve D. Stones


It's A Gift, from Paramount, is one of comedian W.C. Fields' best films. The funny gags in this film will have you rolling in the aisles. Watch for a hilarious shaving scene by Fields early in the film.

Fields plays a humble middle class New Jersey grocery store owner named Harold Bissonette who is constantly hounded by his overbearing wife Amelia, played by Kathleen Howard. After a blind man accidentally breaks his store front windows and a display of light bulbs, and a child spills a barrel of molasses on the floor, Bissonette decides he has had enough of the grocery business and sells the store. He has dreams of moving to California to start an orange grove business.

Bissonette's uncle Bean is ill and eventually dies from choking on an orange, which is ironic – since Bissonette dreams of running an orange grove one day. Bissonette receives some inheritance from Bean. Bissonette purchases a ranch in California where the orange grove business is prosperous.

To get some sleep from his constantly nagging wife, Bissonette goes outside on the second floor deck to sleep. Here he is tortured by an infant, played by Baby LeRoy, who pours grapes down a hole in the floor to hit Bissonette in the face as he tries to sleep. Bissonette is also pestered by an insurance salesman on the bottom floor. A milkman also arrives while loudly banging milk bottles. Will Bissonette ever get any sleep? The viewer really sympathizes with Bissonette's challenge to try to get some sleep during this long scene.

After informing his wife that he no longer owns the street corner grocery store, he makes plans to head out to west with his family to California to start his orange grove business. When the family arrives in California, they find a run down land with an old shack that is not in livable condition. This of course angers Amelia. Luckily, a race track owner arrives to offer to buy the property for $44,000 so he can build a race track on the land.

What I find particularly funny in this film is when Bissonette continually walks out on his wife in every scene when she nags at him. Instead of disagreeing with her and arguing, he simply agrees with her, but then walks out of the room when her back is turned on him. She continues to nag and nag, even long after Bissonette leaves the room. Bissonette seems to keep his cool with all the women in his life, even in the opening shaving scene with his daughter Mildred, who pushes him away from the bathroom mirror as he shaves.

For further information about the career and films of W.C. Fields, see author James L. Neibaur's book – The W.C. Fields Films, published by McFarland in March 2017. Happy viewing.

Art by Steve D. Stones

The W.C. Fields Films provides solid account of comic's career

Review by Doug Gibson

Genre author James L. Neibaur has done his usual, solid, well-researched, enjoyable recap of a film great with "The W.C. Fields Films," (here) recently published by McFarland, http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/ (800-253-2187).

Harry Langdon and Buster Keaton are among performers whom Neibaur has assessed. As with the others, the Fields book covers his films, chapter by chapter. Serving as bookends are an opening chapter on Fields' early life and work in vaudeville, and the final chapter covers his last years.

Neibaur is a talented enough researcher and writer to have the film chapters also provide a chronology of Fields' life. The plots, filmmaking intrigues, reviews, box office fates, cast reminiscing, also includes snippets of Fields' personal life, including his frequent health problems as he aged.

If you are a casual fan of Fields, like myself prior to reading this volume, you'll learn that he was a major vaudeville star who dipped his toes into films a little and then several years later, made the full leap, astutely realizing that was where the future, and money was. Some of the early silent films were remade in the sound era. A couple, both remade, that are on my list to see are "Running Wild" and "Sally of the Sawdust." (Remade as "Man on the Flying Trapeze" and "Poppy.")

Neibaur also notes that Fields struggled at times with silent films. Regretfully, some are lost, including all three of an ill-fated attempt to team Fields with comedian Chester Conklin. Ultimately, it was sound that moved Fields to higher stardom. Neibaur correctly points out that Fields' understated delivery of his lines became very popular with audiences. In fact, aside lines like Fields (in "The Bank Dick") muttering that he loves daughters, particularly those between 16 and 18, is dialogue that I don't think censors would have allowed less subtle actors to utter.

Fields' glory days were with Paramount, his shorts, including 'The Dentist" and films such as "It's' a Gift" and "Man on the Flying Trapeze," are classic gems. He had the ability to play a put-upon father, a conniving boozer father, a con man father and guardian, and still provide sympathy with audiences. Also, pairing Fields with a loud, overbearing spouse prone to overly loud proclamations was usually comic gold. Neibaur also notes Fields's care in determining the plots and dialogues of his films; a demand that perceptive directors usually followed.

Fields' is also an actor whose health deterioration one can track through his two decades of stardom. In "The Dentist," he's still relatively trim. By his last film, the offbeat, eccentric, original "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break," he's a bloated, obese man with a large, alcoholic red nose. His Paramount and Universal tenures were cut short by bad health and poor health practices. Tragedy always affected his health adversely, from friends' deaths to a toddler drowning in a pond on his property.

In his book, Neibaur includes Fields successful comeback with Universal, with films such as "My Little Chickadee," a must-see with Mae West (The two egos survived peacefully long enough to make a great film), "The Bank Dick," and "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break," a brilliant satire that Universal failed to understand, and played as a second-feature.

Prior to reading this book, I'd only seen Fields in "International House," which I bought to see Bela Lugosi," "The Dentist," "My Little  Chickadee," and "It's a Gift," a film I've seen at least 20 times. The "W.C. Fields Films" has a lot of company with other great books about Fields. It serves however as a great source to learn more about the unique vintage comedy star, one of the few silent veterans to prosper in the sound era.

Since I read this book, I've seen several more films with Fields. Some of my favorites include "It's a Gift," "Man on the Flying Trapeze," "The Bank Dick" and "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break."

The prolific Mr. Neibaur, by the way, will soon have a book out on the Universal monster films.

'The Dentist' is a very funny pre-code W.C. Fields short

By Doug Gibson

I had the opportunity to watch, again, this pretty fun 1932 Sennett comedy short, "The Dentist," starring W. C. Fields as a gruff, eccentric dentist and his travails with his daughter, who loves the ice man, his golf game, as well as some golf buddies and life in the dentist's office interacting with his pretty nurse and a few eccentric patients.

As mentioned, Fields is great. Only Fields can wave away concern about patient's pain with lines such as, "Oh, to hell with her," or "Have you ever had this tooth pulled before?" This is a film made just before the dreaded Hayes Code restricted Hollywood fare to a G rated-type fare. "The Dentist" is PG fare, with Field's mild growling, suggestive sarcasm, and in one particular one very sexually suggestive scene where dentist Fields burrows himself deep between a lady patient's very wide, very bare legs in order to force a tooth extraction. (A portion of the scene is shown above). The lady patient is played by willowly, Elise Cavanna, and she sort of looks like a sexier version of Carol Burnett. Although Fields' character has no romantic intentions, the scene is definitely played as a sexual satire. Cavanna's groans of pain contain more than a hint of passion, and after the tooth is extracted, she lies back in the chair, limbs splayed, with a countenance that hints of "afterglow."

I have recently learned that the scene between Fields and Cavanna was indeed a sexual spoof. It was a based on a popular stag film of the 1920s, called, "The Slow Fire Dentist." In the film, a dentist and a lady patient take things a good deal further than Fields and Cavanna. It's an interesting bit of film history and, as mentioned, it's a good bet "The Dentist" would never have been allowed to be screened had it been made a couple of years later.

Rumor has it that there's an even spicier version of "The Dentist" out there but I suspect the Turner Classic Movies print, which is shown at least once a year, is complete. The 20-minute film was directed by Leslie Pearce. If one wants to see Fields at his best in a feature film, I suggest 1934's "It's a Gift."

Blog log notes from Doug Gibson and Steve Stones

By Doug Gibson

One particularly fine possession I have is a 1960s-era long-playing vinyl of Disneyland's "Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House." Frankly, I'm not sure my record would work; it has scratches. Hence, I own an MP3 of the album. But I miss the scratchy hoary ambiance of "Chilling, Thrilling that I used to hear, until I discovered exactly that on YouTube.

As the Halloween season starts, enjoy that classic Disney Halloween tape, as it was meant to be enjoyed (above).

Thanks to TCM, watched hours and hours of classic early comedy shorts. Besides enjoying the best of well-known comics such as Laurel & Hardy and W.C. Fields, happily revisited the works of Harry Lngdon, Ben Turvin, Andy Clyde, Billy Bevan ...

Thanks to Steve, I have an old Goodtimes VHS copy of Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. I may review it soon. It's an amusing multi-murder mystery that is mostly Lou's show, as a bumbling bellhop. Karloff plays a red-herring swami in the flick. His performance is uninspired, as if he couldn't be bothered to go all out on a comedy. As usual, it never occurred to the idiot suits running Universal in 1949 to cast Lugosi in the title role. Bela had just re-energized Abbott and Costello's career with his great turn as Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. But the studio ignores Bela and hands a fat acting fee to Karloff, who couldn't be bothered to reprise his role in "... Frankenstein.'' Meanwhile, Lugosi's forced to scratch a living in summer stock and spook shows.

Sixty-plus years later, the only delayed consolation for Bela is that "... Meet the Killer" remains obscure. ad Lugosi been in it, his usual great performance would have made it a more popular option today.

We reviewed W.C. Field's great short, The Dentist, earlier this week. To end this post, here's a fragment section, courtesy of YouTube, of Fields in "A Mormon's Prayer," a silent from 1928.

W.C. Fields, The Dentist and an homage to a stag film

By Doug Gibson

I had the opportunity to watch, again, this pretty fun 1932 Sennett comedy short, "The Dentist," starring W. C. Fields as a gruff, eccentric dentist and his travails with his daughter, who loves the ice man, his golf game, as well as some golf buddies and life in the dentist's office interacting with his pretty nurse and a few eccentric patients.

As mentioned, Fields is great. Only Fields can wave away concern about patient's pain with lines such as, "Oh, to hell with her," or "Have you ever had this tooth pulled before?" This is a film made just before the dreaded Hayes Code restricted Hollywood fare to a G rated-type fare. "The Dentist" is PG fare, with Field's mild growling, suggestive sarcasm, and in one particular one very sexually suggestive scene where dentist Fields burrows himself deep between a lady patient's very wide, very bare legs in order to force a tooth extraction. (A portion of the scene is shown above). The lady patient is played by willowly, Elise Cavanna, and she sort of looks like a sexier version of Carol Burnett. Although Fields' character has no romantic intentions, the scene is definitely played as a sexual satire. Cavanna's groans of pain contain more than a hint of passion, and after the tooth is extracted, she lies back in the chair, limbs splayed, with a countenance that hints of "afterglow."

I have recently learned that the scene between Fields and Cavanna was indeed a sexual spoof. It was a based on a popular stag film of the 1920s, called, "The Slow Fire Dentist." In the film, a dentist and a lady patient take things a good deal further than Fields and Cannova. It's an interesting bit of film history and, as mentioned, it's a good bet "The Dentist" would never have been allowed to be screened had it been made a couple of years later.

Rumor has it that there's an even spicier version of "The Dentist" out there but I suspect the Turner Classic Movies print, which is shown at least once a year, is complete. The 20-minute film was directed by Leslie Pearce. If one wants to see Fields at his best in a feature film, I suggest 1934's "It's a Gift."