Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Edward F. Cline
Produced by	Jack Gross[1]
Screenplay by	John T. Neville Prescott Chaplin
Story by	"Otis Criblecoblis" (W. C. Fields)
Starring	W. C. Fields Gloria Jean
Music by	Charles Previn Frank Skinner
Cinematography	Charles Van Enger
Edited by	Arthur Hilton
Production company	Universal Pictures
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	October 10, 1941 (1941-10-10) (US)
Running time	70-70.5 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English

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 61 years old, and alcohol and illness had taken their toll: he was much heavier than he had been six or seven years earlier when he had made eight films in the space of two years and was reasonably physically fit.

Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging, and his choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and the resulting film, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), is a masterpiece of absurd humor in which Fields appeared as himself, "The Great Man". Universal's singing star Gloria Jean played opposite Fields, and his cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn served as his comic foils. But the film Fields delivered was so surreal that Universal recut and reshot parts of it, then quietly released both the film and Fields. Sucker was Fields' last starring film.

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. It has been called "a thinly disguised attack on the Hollywood studio system."^[2]

Plot

At Hollywood's Esoteric Pictures studios, W. C. Fields, playing himself, is seen admiring a billboard advertising his previous film, The Bank Dick. He encounters various hecklers and minor calamities. His doting niece, Gloria Jean, also playing herself, is on her way to rehearse some songs at the studio, where she demonstrates her classically trained coloratura soprano. Fields himself is also there to pitch a script to Franklin Pangborn, playing a producer named "Mr. Pangborn".

Fields and Pangborn read through the script, which comes to life in a series of scenes: Fields and Gloria Jean are flying to an exotic location on an airplane, which Fields specifies has an open-air rear observatory platform. Fields has run-ins with a couple of eccentric characters 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." The next day, 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 beautiful, young, naive girl (Susan Miller) and her cynical mother (Margaret Dumont). 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" when Fields learns the older woman is wealthy. Fields is about to marry her when Gloria Jean takes him aside and convinces him that this is a bad idea, and they make a swift exit.

At this point, Pangborn has had enough of the absurdity of the 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 scene is supposed to be in a saloon, but the censor cut it out!"

At the studio, 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 a police car. Just then, a middle-aged woman (Kay Deslys) asks for help getting to the Maternity Hospital, where her daughter is about to give birth. Fields volunteers, the woman gets into his car, and Fields speeds through the streets and expressways of Los Angeles, where he tangles with pedestrians, cars, and a hook-and-ladder fire truck. When his passenger passes out, Fields drives even more urgently. He arrives at the hospital, wrecking his car in the process, and his passenger is shaken but unhurt. Gloria Jean, who has just arrived by taxi, asks Uncle Bill if he's all right. He replies, "Lucky I didn't have an accident. I'd never gotten here." Gloria Jean smiles and says to the audience, "My Uncle Bill... but I still love him!"

Cast

Sources:^[3][1]

Cast notes:

• Carlotta Monti, who plays Pangborn's receptionist, was Fields' mistress.^[4] She later wrote an autobiography which was made into the 1976 film W. C. Fields and Me, which starred Rod Steiger and Valerie Perrine.^[1]

Songs

Gloria Jean sings the following songs in this film:

• "Estrellita" ("Little Star") - in Spanish, music and lyrics by M. M. Ponce^[1]
• "Voices of Spring"
• "Hot Cha Cha"
• ""Очи чёрные" ("Ochi chyornye" or "Dark Eyes") - in Russian, traditional Russian folk song

Production

Fields' preferred title for the film was "The Great Man", which had also been his original title for The Bank Dick, but this title was once again rejected by Universal.^[4][2] When the title was changed, Fields was afraid that "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" would not fit on theater marquees, and it would be abbreviated to "W. C. Fields - Sucker".^[2]

Fields' first version of the script was only 12 pages long, so the studio told him to expand it, which Fields' did, to 96 pages. This was still not enough, so Fields hired John T. Neville and Prescott Chaplin to expand it. This version came in at 156 pages. ^[2] This was the version of the script which was rejected in April 1941 by the Hays Office because it was "filled with vulgar and suggestive scenes and dialogue" and had "innumerable jocular references to drinking and liquor," the producer was referred to as a "pansy", and Fields ogled women's breasts and legs.^[1] The censors also objected to "all dialogue and showing of bananas and pineapples" which they felt was "a play upon an obscene story."^[2] A revised script was approved two months later.^[1] The studio hired a number of writers to continue work on the script, none of them billed, but Fields hated their version, calling it "the worst script I ever read." He was inclined to "throw it in their faces", but director Edward F. Cline told him not to, that they would shoot Fields' own script, and the studio would be none the wiser, which turned out to be the case.^[2]

Fields was paid $125,000 for his performance, and $25,000 for his original story for the film, which was to be the last of his four picture deal with Universal, and, indeed, the last film he would star in; afterwards.^[1] Fields' health was in decline due to a lifetime of heavy drinking, and he often had to recuperate in his dressing room between takes.^[4] Universal did not renew his contract, as they had Abbott and Costello under contract and felt they did not need Fields, who was unpopular at the studio. Fields died five years after the release of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break..^[5]

Critical reception

Upon release, The New York Times said, "We are not yet quite sure that this latest opus is even a movie – no such harum-scarum collection of song, slapstick and thumbnail sketches has defied dramatic law in recent history. We are more certain that at its worst the film is extravagantly bad, no less that William Claude is wonderful," further stating, "Yes, some parts of the film you will find incomprehensibly silly. Probably you also will laugh your head off."^[6]

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

• Never Give a Sucker an Even Break at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Never Give a Sucker an Even Break on IMDb
• Never Give a Sucker an Even Break at the TCM Movie Database