Main Cast: W.C. Fields, Babe Kane, Arnold Gray, Elise Cavanna, Dorothy Granger
Release Year: 1932
Country: US
Run Time: 22 minutes
Plot
W.C. Fields stars as the subject of this classic comedy short, which he also wrote the screenplay for. The dentist is a misanthropic, absent-minded sort who keeps an office in the same house that he shares with his rebellious young daughter. One morning she announces that she has fallen in love with Arthur, the iceman. Fields won't have it, and scares the poor Romeo off when he tries to make his daily "delivery." The hubbub makes him late for his golf game. When he tees off, the ball knocks an elderly man out cold but he plays through regardless, trying to cheat wherever possible. Frustrated by a particularly difficult hole, Fields loses his temper and tosses all of his clubs (and the caddy) into a water trap. Back at the office, the dentist locks his daughter in her room to prevent her from eloping with the iceman, and takes out all his frustrations on his patients (whom he refers to as "buzzards" and "palookas"). An attractive young girl naively bends over to show where a little dog bit her, a sophisticated society dame is driven into bizarre contortions while Fields sadistically drills, and a strange "little fella" ends up with a mouth full of broken teeth and birds in his beard. Through it all, the dentist treats everyone with disdain, but his well-deserved comeuppance is on the way. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
Review
One of W.C. Fields' funniest short works, The Dentist delivers sly, antisocial laughs that are just as funny generations later as when they were first filmed. The picture was considered risqué at the time and still raises eyebrows, especially during an infamous bit with Elise Cavanna. The patient straddles the dentist and hangs from his torso as the drill bores deep into her molar, a hilarious and sinister scene rife with barely disguised sexual innuendos. The Dentist is full of wickedly bawdy humor like this, as well as Fields pouring out both physical and verbal abuse at the entire cast. Modern viewers who know W.C. Fields as little more than a familiar cultural archetype will be shocked by the magnitude of political incorrectness that the man was capable of, but what's more appealing is his razor-sharp timing and a riotous sense of the surreal. The Dentist is a thinking man's slapstick which celebrates rebellious spirit and a man's God-given right to bulldoze his way through life. Though he never takes a single drink onscreen, it's one of the purest distillations of Fields' distinctive comedy. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
The Dentist is a 1932 Americancomedyshort starring W.C. Fields. The film is one of four short films Fields made with the "king of comedy," Mack Sennett, at Paramount. Although Sennett was near the end of his career, he found good use of the new medium of talking pictures for comedy, as the film demonstrates. It was directed by Leslie Pearce from a script by Fields himself. The film has running time of 20 minutes and has been released on VHS and DVD.
Fields plays a dentist whose daughter desires to marry an ice-delivery man. He disapproves of this match, especially after she attempts to elope with her lover. Fields locks her up in an upstairs room, above his dental office, where she proceeds to stamp her feet, causing plaster chunks to fall as he attempts to treat his patients. Various patients with unusual physical traits (a tall "horse"-faced woman, a tiny, heavily bearded man) arrive at the office, and he attempts to use his dental drill on them without any apparent pain killer. With one of his patients (Elise Cavanna), he engages in an intimate wrestling match as he attempts to extract a painful tooth. Some of his comments are quite salty and it is clear that the studio deleted some of it.[citation needed]
Early in the short, Fields utilizes elements of the golf routine he developed for the Ziegfeld Follies.
