YOU CAN’T CHEAT AN HONEST MAN, W.C. Fields daft, frequently hilarious entry for 1939, wasn’t one of the fabled year’s big hits (a modest $1,100,000 gross tagging 166th place), but with a few caveats it’s overall a hoot. George Marshall (who aced Destry Rides Again that year) got the director’s job but he and Fields weren’t compatible, so the truculent star insisted on Edward F. Cline to steer his scenes; Cline went on to try to direct Fields in My Little Chickadee, The Bank Dick and Never Give A Sucker An Even Break.

‘Larsen E. Whipsnade’ (Fields) runs a circus, and basically runs numbers on everyone within barking distance; conned customers, clamoring constables and  especially his ventriloquist act, with Edgar Bergen and wooden sidekicks/alter egos ‘Charlie McCarthy’ and ‘Mortimer Snerd’ mouthingplaying themselves. Whipsnade interferes in Bergen’s tentative courtship of daughter ‘Vicky’ by trying to pair her off with a snitty millionaire. Realizing the rich fellow is as shallow as his family (the ‘Bel-Goodie’s’), Whipsnade employs chaos as a cure-all.

The wacky script is credited to Edward Freeman (The Glass Bottom Boat), Richard Mack and George Freeman Jr., but how much they did vs. the routines and ad-libbing from Fields and Charlie/Bergen is up to debate. Two elements give pause to one degree or another. One is how much you can stand Edgar Bergen’s simpering and his carbon-dated ‘skills’ at ‘voicing’ his dead-eyed dummy extensions. That quease is mitigated by the plus factor that his timing (especially with sarcastic McCarthy) was excellent and their dueling/dicing repartee often witty. At the time (and for a long while to come) the weird combo of dollish man & mannish doll was wildly popular. The other uneasy stumble for modern viewers is the insertion (consider the era) of some racial jokes that are best left in the history bin. Even so, since those involve Fields with the great Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson, it may be that there was a subtext of “isn’t this stuff ridiculous” at work, since the peerless Anderson was no-one’s fool but a marvelous foil. Ask Benny.

Blacaman, 1902-1949

At any rate, the unctuous material (again, consider the time) flies by fast enough (the Bergen bits get too much play) in the wake of a plethora of funny sight gags and one-liners that ripple thru 78 often riotous minutes. Besides the insults, pratfalls, word mangling, a ping pong game, a hot air balloon and a chariot, gasp over the lion-taming insanity and crocodile antics of the maniac and “animal hypnotist known as ‘Blacaman’.

With John Arledge, James Bush, Mary Forbes, Thurston Hall, Grady Sutton, ‘Princess Baba’, Charles Coleman, Edward Brophy and Irving Bacon.

click to enlarge & edify