Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), W.C. Fields' final starring vehicle, is one of his best and funniest films. It's his most anarchic and freewheeling film, his equivalent to the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers (1932) and Laurel and Hardy's Block-Heads (1938), as well as his wildest and most out-there film since "The Dentist" (1932). It's also his most slyly referential film, a movie about the process of moviemaking, and one with a metafictional, ironic edge.
Rather than playing one of his usual henpecked husbands or wisecracking con men, in this film Fields plays comedian and movie star W.C. Fields, and much of the film involves him trying to pitch a script to the studio. Being Fields, he of course has to endure the abuse of nasty waitresses, irate studio heads, and hostile children, but he's supported all the way by his steadfastly loyal niece Gloria Jean (played by actress Gloria Jean). (The loving, loyal young woman is just as much of a key Fields archetype as the nagging houseife: other characters of this type appear in Man on the Flying Trapeze [1935] and Poppy [1936].)
Given that much of the film is devoted to a film-within-a-film which serves as a visualization of Fields' script, that means its plot structure is even looser than that of the typical W.C. Fields film. It's also even sillier and loopier than his typical work, and throws all notions of logic and coherence out the window. When Fields jumps out of an airplane he lands outside of a house on a mountainous cliff, and meets a sexy young woman who's never seen a man in her life. Her mother, played by frequent Marx Brothers straight woman Margaret Dumont, is an old hag with bushy eyebrows, and her pets include a saber-toothed Great Dane and a gorilla who lives on the side of the cliff. (In a typically Fieldsian touch, her name is Mrs. Hemoglobin.) Although Fields lands in Russia, a nearby village looks like it's either in Mexico or the Old West, and when Fields drinks some goat's milk it renders his breath flammable.
The studio head is outraged when he reads the script. (I've read that the Universal executives felt the same way about this film: Fields had recently signed a contract with them, and they let him go after the film was released.) He says, "This script is an insult to a man's intelligence- even mine." (There's many a terrible film I'd say the same about.) The studio head (played by Franklin Pangborn, who Fields slipped a mickey to in The Bank Dick [1940]) has some of the best lines of the film. Here are some other gems:
"It's impossible, inconceivable, incomprehensible- and besides that, it's no good."
"Do you actually think I'm a dope? Now, don't answer that."
The referential, metafictional nature of the film extends beyond the film-within-a-film. An early scene shows Fields gazing at a billboard for his previous film, The Bank Dick, which two young boys make derisive remarks about. (The entire conceit of Fields playing himself is a unique one, something which no other screen comic of the time had done.) When Fields goes into an ice cream parlor, he turns to the camera and says, "This scene's supposed to be in a saloon, but the censor cut it out."
Fields is known for including a lot of jokes about drinking and alcohol in his films, and this film has some of his best booze-based humor. In the film-within-a-film, when he drops a bottle of liquor from the deck of an airplane he dives down after it. This line to Gloria Jean is one of the great Fields lines: "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I'm indebted to her for." When he sees Dumont's gorilla, he remarks, "Suffering sciatica! Last time it was pink elephants." After breaking a bottle of liquor, he says, "What a catastrophe." This line is also a gem: "Drown in a vat of whiskey. Death, where is thy sting?"
A Fields film isn't a Fields film without some kind of hostile or aggressive behavior on his part. When a boy conks him on the head with a brick, Gloria Jean picks it up and prepares to hurl it back at him. However, Fields admonishes her to stop and count to ten. When she does, he says, "Okay, now let 'er go, you got a good aim."
The final scene, in which Fields drives a woman to maternity hospital, is the wildest and most madcap scene in any of his films, even more so than the climax of The Bank Dick. Fields drives like a maniac, gunning it and driving all over the road: he causes bedlam as he veers all over the place and other cars try to keep from hitting him. (One of the best moments involves his car being lifted into the air by the ladder of a fire truck, which later deposits him in the parking lot of the maternity hospital.)
It's a sad truth that many of the classic comedians of the '20's and '30's didn't go out at the top of their game: after leaving Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy made lousy films like Great Guns (1941) and The Big Noise (1944), and the Marx Brothers' salad says were over after A Day at the Races (1937). Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, on the other hand, ends Fields' career on a high note, and serves as a fitting swan song for him.
