W.C. Fields is an American original, the curmudgeonly master of wit and good, mean fun. In this collection of madcap classics, the famously top-hatted Fields unleashes his unique comic zing, proving himself the king of the one-liner. This special DVD collection includes The Bank Dick, My Little Chickadee, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, It’s a Gift and International House. The W.C. Fields Comedy Collection is Fields at his finest, and a must-have for anyone who loves to laugh!For anyone who loves classic comedy, the W.C. Fields Comedy Collection is absolutely essential. Film for film, this may be the best DVD showcase ever devoted to a single comedian, including all five of Fields’s acknowledged classics in a sturdy, beautifully designed library-quality slipcase. One could easily lament the relative lack of bonus features (it would have been nice to have some vintage Fields radio shows and newsreel footage), but the inclusion of A&E’s 1994 Biography documentary W.C. Fields: Behind the Laughter is sufficiently informative about Fields’s life, career, irascible personality, and tragic alcoholism. That’s all that’s really needed when the films themselves are so timelessly entertaining, and they’re all remarkably pristine in sound and image quality. The best way to appreciate Fields’s evolving screen persona is to view these films in chronological order: In International House (1933), Fields was merely one of many Paramount stars of screen and radio (including Rudy Vallee, Burns & Allen, Bela Lugosi, Sterling Holloway, and manic bandleader Cab Calloway), but he handily steals the show, invading a Shanghai hotel in his airplane/helicopter and delivering the classic line (to Franklin Pangborn), “Don’t let the posy fool ya!” It’s one of Paramount’s best all-star revues.
It’s a Gift (1934) is a remake of Fields’s 1926 silent It’s the Old Army Game, and was the first sound feature devoted to Fields’s inimitable talent. As beleaguered husband and would-be orange farmer, Fields revives vintage routines from Vaudeville and Broadway, and his first encounter with Baby LeRoy is comedy gold. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939) features Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and Fields’s classic, still-hilarious ping-pong routine, while 1940′s My Little Chickadee matches Fields (as “Guthbert J. Twillie”) with Mae West, whose unforgettable on-screen banter with Fields shows no sign of their notorious off-screen animosity. In his raucous masterpiece The Bank Dick (also 1940), Fields is “Egbert Souse,” lowly bank guard, unlikely hero, and manic driver in perhaps the greatest slapstick car-chase scene ever filmed. Despite the regrettable absence of Fields’s final starring feature Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, this classy five-disc set is a veritable cornucopia of comedy, offering ample proof of Fields’s comic genius through classic one-liners, physical routines, memorable costars, and perfect bits of business that never grow old. –Jeff Shannon
Buy “W.C. Fields Comedy Collection “ For Only $41.17
March 5, 2010
#1
This is simply blackmail. I want to buy “It’s a Gift” but don’t want to be roped into it by having to purchase the other films. So I’ll wait until it comes out by itself and the same with all the films mentioned in everyone’s reviews.
March 5, 2010
#2
The dvd that I had only contained one film on it – It’s A Gift. It was not this collection. So that is the only movie I will be reviewing here.
I generally don’t like humor that relies on everything going wrong for the protagonist. I don’t sit and laugh as everything goes wrong, and I don’t understand why that is considered humor in the first place. I see nothing funny about it.
There is an element of that in It’s A Gift, but fortunately, the entire movie isn’t based on that. There are a number of scenes that had me rolling. Many of the scenes, though done in 1934, are just as funny now as they were then.
One of those scenes was when W.C. Fields, father, was shaving in the bathroom, facing the mirror, when his teenage daughter blithely took the mirror over to do her lipstick and hair, paying no attention to her father at all.
Poor father, poor patient father, was reduced to trying to shave by any reflection of his face that he could get, and it was really funny. Underneath it all was his attitude that a female, not even his own daughter, could be answered back. He was such a gentleman in some ways, and it was cute to see.
The poor man was so henpecked by his overbearing bear of a wife. And yet in his way he wore the pants in the family, despite all the guff he silently took from her. He made all of the financial decisions, even selling his business and home in New Jersey and buying a worthless piece of land in Cali.
I’d say the worst scene of the movie was the one in which a customer in Fields’s grocery store continually bullied him about buying kumquats. I found that scene stupid rather than entertaining. Some moron screaming for kumquats.
I found the ending to be a very pleasant surprise. The entire movie seemed to be setting us up for another failure for our hero, but he acquitted himself extremely well at the end, even impressing his shrewish but, in the end somewhat submissive, wife.
This movie is definitely worth watching. Fields plays a very likeable and memorable character, likeable more than anything else for his tolerance and forbearance with the women in his family, who really tend to step all over him.
It’s cute the way he treats his son. He speaks roughly with him, and seems to have the attitude that males are to be treated one way, females another, and yet the little boy has no fear of him and gets away with murder, because he never really gets punished for anything. His mom wouldn’t allow that to happen, even if Fields would, which is doubtful.
March 5, 2010
#3
Critical comment on which is W.C. Fields’ best movie is oddly divided, which is why it was worth posting this review. Halliwell and the Time Out Guide love The Bank Dick, but it’s a bore – inept in pacing and thin on good gags (there’s only so much mileage you can get out of funny names). This is NOT Fields at his best, any more than the similarly over-rated She Done Him Wrong is first-rate Mae West. On the other hand, neither of our big pundits seem to much like You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, but with genuinely charming ventriloquism – Candice Bergen’s dad Edgar and his astonishingly lifelike ‘boss’ Charlie MacCarthy – a hilarious stretch where a strong man goes on search of Charlie (thrown either to the lions or the crocs by Fields’ Larson E Whipsnade) and a virtuoso ping-pong sequence (none of these commended by the chief reviewers), it’s probably the most consistently funny Fields vehicle. It’s a Gift clunks, but has good moments; My Little Chickadee will tickle you if you have even the softest spot for Mae and W.C.
The package is nicely presented, but I’d only want to see two of these films (+ a scene or two from It’s a Gift) again.
March 5, 2010
#4
Yes, _It’s a Gift_ is a great film. But everything else in this package is Fields at his second- or third-best. Of course Fields isn’t as easy to package as the Marx Brothers, about whom you really can say that all their Paramount films are good and most of their MGM films are bad. Still: how about _The Man on the Flying Trapeze_? And if you’re going to package _It’s a Gift_, why not include _It’s the Old Army Game_? That’s an early silent version of _It’s a Gift_, remarkable for co-starring Louise Brooks.
March 5, 2010
#5
A must have for WC fans. All these films are great. My only problem is I’m still having trouble finding the WC/Bing Crosby film Mississippi. This is an underated almost forgotten film in which WC plays a river boat captain and gives a great monolouge about fighting the indians.
Good Stuff! Buy it and whoever owns mississippi PLEASE put it out on DVD.