While Whipsnade assumes a variety of disguises to evade the police - even donning drag as "Buffalo Bella" the bearded lady bareback rider - his daughter Vicky (Constance Moore) on the other side of the tracks is engaged in evasive measures of her own. Pursued by the rich, but shallow Roger Bel-Goodie (James Bush), who wants to marry her, and hounded by her brother Phineas (John Arledge), who encourages the financially lucrative union, Vicky runs off to the circus and into the welcoming embrace of her eccentric daddy. It is there that Vicky Whipsnade finds love in the unlikely guise of a dummy and his handler, the famous comedy "team" of Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen.
That perennial movie plotline - will love prevail? - provides the structure for You Can't Cheat An Honest Man but it's W.C. Fields' hilarious tomfoolery that keeps the film moving at a jaunty clip. Fields proves as agile at physical comedy (performing an Austin Powers-style naked stroll through the circus) as verbal repartee, flinging saucy insults with a knife-thrower's precision. Displaying his famous disdain for dogs and children, Fields sneers at a young whippersnapper tugging on his shirtsleeves, "you kids are disgusting...staggering around here all day reeking of popcorn and lollipops."
But all of You Can't Cheat An Honest Man's comedy isn't necessarily in such good fun. The film exhibits some of the unpleasant and racist typecasting of its day, from Charlie McCarthy appearing in blackface, to the butt-of-the-joke clowning of black character actor Eddie "Rochester" Anderson as Whipsnade's dim, obedient lackey "Cheerful."
Known for his singular comic creation of the cynical huckster with a weakness for whiskey (a personality trait drawn from Fields' own dipsomaniac proclivities) and a disdain for the kiddies, W.C. Fields has become one of the most memorable characters in the cinema's history and was embraced by the counter cultural movement of the early 1970s, who "dug" his selfish pursuits and unapologetic irreverence.
Trained on the vaudeville stage, William Claude Fields bridged the old entertainment form and the new one - of cinema - during his successful showbiz career. Traces of Fields' vaudeville training can be seen in You Can't Cheat An Honest Man (written by Fields under the name Charles Bogle). Direct from the music hall stage are the ludicrously-named characters, racist humor and the steady stream of comic vignettes strung together with the mere semblance of a plot.
Fields was as cantankerous off-screen as the characters he played. There was reportedly such tension between Fields and the film's director George Marshall, that another director, Eddie Cline, who had directed Fields in Million Dollar Legs (1932) was brought in to handle all of the scenes involving the star. Cline went on to direct Fields in what are considered three of his finest films The Bank Dick (1940), Never Give A Sucker an Even Break (1941) and My Little Chickadee (1940). Though the tension between Fields and Marshall was very real, the film also capitalized on the mock "feud" between wooden "woodpecker's snack bar" Charlie McCarthy and Fields begun on radio's popular "The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show" which cast McCarthy as the bratty, wayward son and Fields as his disgusted Pop.
Producer: Lester Cowan
Director: Edward F. Cline, George Marshall
Screenplay: W.C. Fields (story) (as Charles Bogle), Everett Freeman, Richard Mack, George Marion Jr.
Production Design: Jack Otterson
Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner
Costume Design: Vera West
Film Editing: Otto Ludwig
Original Music: Sam Perry (uncredited), Charles Previn, Frank Skinner (uncredited), Paul Van Loan (uncredited), Franz Waxman (uncredited)
Cast: W.C. Fields (Larson E. Whipsnade), Edgar Bergen (The Great Edgar), Constance Moore (Victoria Whipsnade), John Arledge (Phineas Whipsnade), James Bush (Roger Bel-Goodie III).
BW-76m.
by Felicia Feaster
