Classic Cinema: "W.C. Fields - 6 Short Films"

August 18, 6:25 PMClassic TV ExaminerDoug Krentzlin

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           George Chandler & W.C. Fields in The Fatal Glass of Beer (Paramount)

“[W.C. Fields’] ability to sense the crippling pettiness of daily life was nothing less than magical and his art was never purer than in the four shorts he made for Mack Sennett in 1933,”
-- Andrew Bergman, “We’re in the Money: Depression America and its Films.”

W.C. Fields was one of the funniest and sharpest American humorists since Mark Twain. Like other comics, such as Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, Fields did his best work in short subjects.

There are numerous collections of Fields’ two-reelers available because they are all in public domain, but the best DVD compilation is the one issued by The Criterion Collection called W.C. Fields – 6 Short Films. All of the shorts are taken from excellent prints. The only flaw, surprising for Criterion, is that the print of The Dentist is a reissue that has been supplemented with annoying and unnecessary “wacky” music and sound effects.

The earliest short in the collection Pool Sharks (1915), Fields’ film debut, is interesting mainly as a historic curio. His first talkie The Golf Specialist (1930) is much better. Fields plays con man Effingham Bellweather who is wanted for such crimes as “eating spaghetti in public” and “teaching the facts of life to an Indian.” The bulk of the film has Fields recreating his celebrated “golf game” stage routine.

The gems of the collection, however, are the four shorts produced by Mack Sennett and distributed by Fields’ future employer Paramount Pictures. Written by Fields, these films represent his unique humor at its most cutting and undiluted.

The Dentist, starring Fields in the title role, is the first of these breathtakingly funny short subjects. Made before the 1934 Production Code went into effect, The Dentist features many jokes that were cut by censors in later years, most notably the sequence where Fields and the female patient (Elise Cavanna) whose tooth he is trying to extract assume several suggestive positions.

The Fatal Glass of Beer, in which Fields plays a Yukon pioneer, is the masterpiece of the set. Directed by Clyde Bruckman (who also worked extensively with Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges), The Fatal Glass of Beer features arguably the funniest running gag in the history of the movies. Every time Fields looks outside a door or a window and says, “And it ain’t a fit night out for man or beast,” he gets a faceful of obviously fake snow. (Maybe it doesn't sound funny, but you have to see it.)

In The Pharmacist and The Barber Shop, Fields plays his familiar role of a henpecked husband. (The wife in both films is the aforementioned Elise Cavanna.) Also, both shorts have similar climaxes in which Fields’ business establishment is invaded by gun-toting bandits.

The Barber Shop is a prime example of Fields’ contempt and distrust of small town Americana. The setting is Felton City (Felton was Fields’ mother’s maiden name), a rustic burgh populated by rubes who boast that that the town has “a public library and the largest insane asylum in the state.”