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What did you rate 'Never Give a Sucker an Even Break' (1941)?


This certifiably insane W.C. Fields flick gives lots of time to Franklin Pangborn, Leon Errol and Margaret Dumont; and the young Gloria Jean is a charmer with a beautiful voice (though many Fields fans would prefer her gone). The nonsense plot parodies movies of the time in a way no one else could or would. Fields himself, though ill and old, is at his most hilarious.

I rated this a 10, which I don't give too often. What did you rate this? And what do you think of it?


... Justin

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[deleted]



My ratings for those films:

The Bank Dick: 9
It's a Gift: 10
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: 10
Man on the Flying Trapeze: 8
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man: 7


...Justin

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Everyone is leaving out Your Telling Me. I recently saw it for the first time and it really is one of Fields best.

Never Give a Sucker has its moments but lacks the emotional darkness that makes Fields best films so funny. (And do we really need cutesy sound effects to tell us that the broken hat falling down the hatstand is funny?)

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You're Telling Me is hilarious. I rated it 8/10... I love Never Give a Sucker for a number of reasons, but the main one is that it's so dumbfoundingly weird.


...Justin

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I wish the entire movie could have had the momentum and insanity of the second act - the movie within a movie. That was just inspired lunacy, weirder than almost anything the Marx Bros. ever put on film. It's too bad they seemed either short on material or desperate to launch Gloria Jean here, because the brilliance is so clumsily padded, but the centerpiece portions were gold. If there was a way to somehow tack that into The Bank Dick - it would be the best comedy of the 40s, bar none. As for my rating - I give the first act a generous 7 for the Fields material, the glorious second act a 10, and the big chase finale a 9. Whole shebang gets a 9 from me, mostly based on the movie within a movie.

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That movie-within-the-movie is astonishing. It's so weird and arbitrary and yet, paradoxically, so unerringly right. Fields never makes a false move - or if he does, it somehow seems right, too.


...Justin

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I gave it a "10." This is the kind of movie that a "10" was invented for.

Everybody is hilarious! Gloria Jean, Buddy and Butch, Franklin Pangborn, Leon Errol, Margaret Dumont, the bad ape-suit, Jody Gilbert as the big waitress!

The first time I saw it was at a special screening at the Bing Theater at the LA County Museum of Art. So much fun! Hundreds of people laughing their heads off!

Janet! Donkeys!

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Fields is the main attraction, but how could anyone object to Gloria Jean? She was wonderful in the film and sang wonderfully. You just had to love her chemistry with Fields. You could just see how much she admired him.

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