W.C. Fields Comedy Collection

A unique performer who enjoyed a successful stage career before turning to the movies, W.C. Fields was unlike any other screen comedian. He always played characters with the same traits: caustic, cynical, sarcastic, skeptical, and generally unpleasant. He almost always exhibited a fondness for the grape, a disdain for authority, and a dislike of children. Fields was the one movie madcap who could get away with kicking a toddler in the seat of his diapers. Unsurpassed in the dry delivery of dialogue and the employment of comic “takes” (reactions), he was also unusually nimble, thanks to his early career as a juggler, and incorporated this skill into eye-popping bits--usually just throwaways--that focused on his dexterity. This five-movie collection represents Fields at his very best; indeed, each of the quintet is a recognized classic. International House (1933) is not, strictly speaking, a Fields vehicle; it's an all-star revue whose other participants, unfortunately, are totally forgotten today. But that doesn't affect the timelessness of W.C.'s delightful turn as a tipsy troublemaker who arrives on board an ocean liner via autogyro (forerunner of the helicopter). It's a Gift (1934) casts Fields as a small-town grocery-store clerk who also happens to be a henpecked husband. In addition to sparring with scene-stealing Baby LeRoy (on the receiving end of the aforementioned foot), he tangles with a blind man looking for someone named “Carl LaFong.” You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), Fields' first film for Universal, pits him against ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (and dummy Charlie McCarthy), with whom W. C. was then feuding over the radio airwaves. His two 1940 releases are often considered his best: The Bank Dick casts him as a bank guard who quite inadvertently foils a robbery and becomes a hero (a totally superfluous but hilarious subplot finds him mistaken for a movie director), while My Little Chickadee, a period piece set out West, teams Fields with the irrepressible Mae West--a pairing that results in some of the funniest dialogue exchanges ever committed to celluloid. This distinctive performer--who also wrote many of his starring vehicles under bizarre pseudonyms such as “Mahatma Kane Jeeves”--is one of relatively few who can be legitimately described as “inimitable,” and watching these five film classics (featuring reasonably decent transfers overall) amply demonstrates why. DVD extras include an A&E Biography episode on Fields. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (E. Hulse)