It’s a Gift (1934): “California, Here I Come!”

Posted on January 4, 2024 by 4 Star Films

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It’s a Gift is built out of the framework of the domestic lifestyle. This is where it gets its comedy. Take for exhibit A an early sequence. Harold Bissonette (pronounced bis-on-ay) tries to shave with a straight edge despite the interference of his daughter. It leads him to resort to using the reflection of a can and then a mirror suspended from the ceiling dangling around the room.

He follows it around taking intermittent swipes at his gullet covered with shaving cream quite unsuccessfully. It’s a wordless sequence that’s a wonderful escalation of utter absurdity. Because it bubbles with human invention and though Fields takes it further than seems necessary, that’s part of the fun — watching him keep it going.

For any of this comedy to function, there must be a suffocating bulwark around Fields in the form of his family. He has a perfectly henpecked, windbag of a wife (Kathleen Howard) berating him incessantly. His cackling kid’s either gliding around on his roller skates or leaving them lying around so they can be tripped over. His daughter is simply boy-crazy.

Put them together and it’s a perfect combustion engine for his comedic shtick. He has dreams of leaving his corner drugstore for an orange grove in California. If his uncle keels over like he’s supposed to maybe he’ll be left some inheritance.

For the time being, he has the daily grind, which isn’t much better than his home life. A huffy man demanding kumquats. There’s a blind and deaf fellow with an ear horn who’s a walking booby trap. The stock of light bulbs never had a chance. Even his oafish shop hand is hopeless; riding his bicycle indoors, falling asleep, failing to keep a wayward baby from spreading molasses all over the shop floor. You name it. It happens to him.

W.C. Fields becomes a vehicle of antagonism and all the ires of the world seem to be directed at him. This is the source of giddy delight in the comedy strung out over the progression of loosely connected scenes. Could it be he can never catch a break or maybe he’s just enough of a doddering fool to never warrant one?

Normally the image of the comedian is sculpted as a hater of mutts and tykes. It’s true this ornery image makes him all the more human. Here in this movie, it feels strikingly different because he’s effectively accosted on all sides even as he’s just lying around minding his own business. He’s allowed no peace.

One of the ripest gags is set out on the back porch one morning. Fields is trying rather unsuccessfully to get some shuteye, thwarted by an uncooperative couch, a milkman rattling his morning stock of “sleigh bells,” and about anything else you might possibly imagine. Don’t forget a rolling coconut exuding 10 times its decibel level — it’s practically a bowling ball as it thunks down the steps. Likewise, babies are infernal creatures out to get him and wage war against his comforts, no fault of his own.

It’s also one of the most visibly cinematic scenes in which we get this stratified sense of comedy as if it’s from the old two-reeler days of the silent era. Though, here, the sound is such a vital element. That’s what sets it apart.

Then, the needle drops on “California Here I Come” to send the move in motion again. He’s gone and put his money into his dream. He done and bought an orange grove on a whim, loading up the jalopy and taking the wife and kids out west.

With it comes camping and sprawling West coast estates with rolling greens and statues. In fact, a witty passing gag has Fields crashing into the lawn ornament while his wife exclaims, “It’s the Venus de Milo” now in mint condition having been decapitated a la real life.

They make themselves at home on the private land. Their ensuing picnic is replete with sandwiches and meats wrapped in paper, feather pillows, feisty dogs, and sprinkler systems. By the time they leave the premises, it looks a bit like a ravaged water park gone awry. It’s an example of incremental chaos all conjoining into this culminating mayhem.

In the end, Bissonette is duped with what looks to be a precursor to Green Acres‘ Haney Place. In the immortal words of Bette Davis, “What a dump.” It’s a shack falling apart at the seams. His wife is indignant, ready to walk out on him, and he’s left to sit on the front stoop. What a dismal place to be in if this is truly the end. We only have minutes left after all.

But the cinematic world of W.C. Fields is an absurd space where only moments later all his miseries are turned on their head. Soon he’s sitting on the veranda pulling Oranges straight off the tree to squeeze into his own juice. It’s an outrageous joke scenario and a lampooning of idealized California culture, but in the face of The Grapes of Wrath and other such images, it’s a welcomed relief. If only every Tom, DIck, and Harry who took his family plunking out to the west coast struck it rich like this. It really is a comedy…That is until he sees the property taxes he owes.

3.5/5 Stars

Million Dollar Legs (1932): Klopstokia and The 1932 Olympics

Posted on January 2, 2024 by 4 Star Films

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“All the women here are named Angela. And all the men are named George.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” – Jack Okey and Susan Fleming

This kind of laissez-faire, anything-goes mentality is one of the obvious strengths of Million Dollar Legs‘ comic tableau. There need not be a given rationale behind what it does and with this brand of laxity, there is an empowerment to do anything it so desires.

Thus, the narrative opens in a far-off Eastern European land called Klopstokia. Their chief exports, imports, and inhabitants are goats and nuts! If it’s not evident already the movie looks like it might be an equally oddball companion piece to Duck Soup.

It’s hard not to see its shared space and that’s mostly on a perfunctory level (and because of the fact Susan Fleming married Harpo Marx). One must also note it came first to precede the L.A. Olympics, though it’s not too hard to believe the Mankiewicz brothers did conceive the movie as a vehicle for the crown princes of anarchy.

Since this is not the case, Million Dollar Legs is ripe for rediscovery propping up some other stars who are sometimes less remembered. They didn’t get them, but Herman and Joseph working with director Edward F. Cline wrangled together an absurdist universe for the likes of Jack Okey. He might be most famous to modern audiences for parodying Mussolini in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator.

Here he’s front and center, an itinerant brush salesman, who happens upon the nation on business only to fall head over heels for the country and its people — one person in particular — her name is, of course, Angela (Susan Marx). They brush each other off rather seductively as her kid brother (Dickie Moore), a begrudging and silent cupid, does his best to keep them apart.

But she also has a connection to the country’s fearless leader. Her father is the President (and also W.C. Fields) with his hat and a dictaphone perfect for bad-mouthing his subordinates on his daily carriage ride to the office. He’s the broadest, most formidable name in the movie.

He makes a daily show of his brawn arm-wrestling his sneezing cabinet including such hoodwinked bumblers as Hugh Herbert and Billy Gilbert. The President is oblivious to their conspiratorial endeavors because frankly, even with their secret cache of spies, they hardly seem likely to hurt a fly. One of their spies out in the field, no less, is a pantomiming, cross-eyed man in black portrayed by Ben Turpin.

However, despite their impotence, they agree to call upon the woman who men can’t resist — the ultimate vamp and a caricature of the Dietrich archetype — Mata Macree (Lyda Roberti). What are her plans? To seduce the entire Klopstokia Olympic team in their bid for the 1932 Olympics! It has no import aside from meeting narrative expectations.

So everyone piles onto the ocean liner, including the President, Migg, and his best girl Angela. The movie’s apex might come when W.C. Fields on one side and his cabinet on the other start yanking the wall back and forth as Okey tries to woo his girl with the gibberish national anthem. It’s delightfully absurd both in the immediate visuals and the auditory accompaniment.

The Olympics aren’t much different with the Klopstokian contingent in a shambles before Angela rallies them jumping from the high dive to have it out with the duplicitous mata hari once and for all. Then, her father shows off his feats of strength in the weightlifting competition against his rival cabinet member. All pretense of logic is gone. Just go with it. Take it for what it is.

The final baton is taken up by the speedy Major-Domo who zips past the competition as a last-second entry coming from behind on the urging of Angela on a motorbike. Truthfully, I’m still trying to figure out who owned the pair of million-dollar legs. For my money, it’s the galloping Major-Domo

What’s not up for contention is Million Dollar Legs as an intriguing vessel of comedy functioning as a kind of cultural time capsule. Not only does it help chart the famed Mankiewicz brothers before the heights of their future successes, it’s also a contemporary commemoration of the L.A. Olympics. Marx Brothers or not, it might just be worth a look as a historical curio.

3.5/ Stars