Is An Edgar Bergen / Charlie McCarthy Scene Chopped Out?

I have the 10-movie DVD set of Fields films. In my print of this film, which runs 78+ minutes (the length according to IMDb), there seems to be a scene chopped out at roughly 45 minutes.

Edgar and Charlie are sitting in the anchored balloon, and Fields comes out of his trailer, notices they are up there, and tells an underling to do something, presumably involving a rough prank against them. He asks the guy to chop some wood. (What that has to do with harming Edgar and Charlie, we have no idea.) Then suddenly we are in a new scene, with Bergen and McCarthy back on the ground, with no explanation -- and both of them have black eyes! The two of them allude to the circumstances which gave them the black eyes, but it's impossible to reconstruct what happened from the remarks, and impossible to tell if what happened had anything to do with the cryptic instructions Fields gave the circus hand. One has the feeling that at least one scene, and possibly two or three, are missing.

There is no skip on the counter on my DVD -- none of the minutes are missing. Was this then the way the film was shown in 1939, or was there a longer version that the IMDb has no knowledge of? As it stands, it looks as if a scene (or more) was deliberately cut out -- or possibly filmed and lost before release, or possibly never filmed. Whatever happened, it's a major continuity error, very unprofessional for 1939, that year of great films.

Since my DVD set has no extras -- and thus no commentaries on any of the films -- I am at a loss to figure out what might be in the missing scene(s). Has anyone heard anything about this problem? Any Fields experts out there?