Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 Universal Pictures comedy film starring W.C. Fields. Fields also wrote the original story, under the pseudonym "Otis Criblecoblis". Fields plays himself, searching for a chance to promote a surreal screenplay he has written, whose several framed sequences form the film's center.
The title is derived from lines from two earlier films. In Poppy (1936), he tells his daughter, "If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice: Never give a sucker an even break!" In You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), he tells a customer that his grandfather's last words, "just before they sprung the trap" were, "You can't cheat an honest man; never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump."
This was Fields's last starring film. By then he was over 60 years old, and alcohol and illness had taken its toll: he was much heavier than he had been six/seven years earlier when he had made eight films in the space of two years and was reasonably physically fit.
Fields hand-picked most of the supporting cast. He chose Universal's young singing star Gloria Jean to play his niece, and got two of his favorite comedians, Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn, to play supporting roles. Margaret Dumont, familiar as the Marx Brothers' matronly foil, was cast as the haughty 'Mrs. Hemogloben'. The zany film played to mixed reviews in 1941 but is today considered one of Fields's classics.
Summary
The film is presented as though it were a "real life" story, with Fields, Pangborn, and Gloria Jean playing under their real names. Early in the film, Fields is seen admiring a billboard advertising his previous film, The Bank Dick, and encounters various hecklers and minor calamities. His doting niece, Gloria Jean, is on her way to rehearse some songs at the studio of Esoteric Films, where she demonstrates her strong operatic voice. Meanwhile, Fields is on his way to the same studio, to read a script to Pangborn. He says his own name on-screen as he introduces himself to the receptionist: "I'm W.C., uh, Bill Fields."
He and Pangborn plow through the script, which comes to life in a series of surreal scenes. Fields and Gloria Jean are flying to Russia, on an airplane whose interior is more like a train, with upper and lower sleeping berths, and an open-air rear platform. Fields has run-ins with a couple of eccentric characters, featuring a remake of a scene from The Old Fashioned Way, in which he tangles with a large, angry man in the lower berth and manages to hit him with a mallet and convince him that someone else did it. At one point Gloria Jean asks "Uncle Bill" why he never married, and he answers, "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for!"
Fields jumps out of the plane after his flask falls out the open window, and his niece cries out in horror. But he lands safely in a "nest" high atop a cliff, a home populated by a cynical old woman and her naive daughter. Meanwhile, the plane lands, and Gloria Jean sings a traditional Russian song to a group of peasants. She reunites with Fields in the village, and they return to the "nest". Fields is about to marry the older woman (after learning she is wealthy) while one of the villagers is about to marry the daughter. Gloria Jean takes Uncle Bill aside and convinces him that this is a bad idea, and they make a swift exit.
At this point Pangborn has had enough of this crazy script and tells Fields to leave the studio. Fields goes to an ice cream parlor to drown his sorrows. In a rare aside to the camera, Fields remarks, "This was supposed to be a saloon, but the censor cut it out!"
When Gloria Jean learns Fields has been sent away, she tells the flustered Pangborn that if her uncle is fired, then she quits. She and Fields make plans to travel, and she goes into a shop to buy some new clothes. Fields is illegally parked and had also banged into the bumper of what turned out to be a police car. He is saved from tickets when the police car is called away on an emergency. Just then, a middle-aged woman asks for help getting to the Maternity Hospital where her daughter is about to give birth.
The woman gets into the car and Fields begins a wild chase through the streets and expressways of Los Angeles, an extended series of scenes augmented by stunt persons, sped-up film as with an old silent comedy, and closeups of Fields "driving" the car with rear projected chaos on the screen behind him. Driving down the road at simulated high speed, he tangles with pedestrians, cars, and a hook-and-ladder fire truck. His rider passes out, and Fields arrives at the hospital, wrecking his car in the process. The woman is quickly taken inside as the doctors think she is the pregnant one. Fields climbs out of the car, and tells Gloria Jean, who has just arrived in another car, that it's a good thing he had an accident or he'd never have arrived safely.
The final shot is a closeup of Gloria Jean, who smiles and says to the camera, "My Uncle Bill... but I still love him!"
Cast
Songs
Gloria Jean sings the following songs in this film:
External links
