My Little Chickadee.
Directed by Edward F. Cline.
Starring Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran and Margaret Nolan. Black and white. 83 mins. Part of the ten film/ six disc Mae West In Hollywood Blu-ray box set out now from Indicator/ Powerhouse Films.
This glorious comedy western is a beautiful meeting of minds. Or maybe it is an artfully contrived accommodation of egos. Either way, it works. West and Fields star together and even get married but mostly go their own way and do their own thing. The script is credited to the two stars and, though it's much debated, the story goes that they each wrote their own parts. It's also claimed that the pair hated each other, in which case it was an inspired marriage of convenience because they play off each other perfectly.
Seven years on from She's No Angel, West is a far more natural screen presence. She is also more convincing as a sex siren. Rather than revealing negligees this time she is much more covered up. She looks like a grown-up Shirley Temple in a Little Bo Peep costume; an outrageous look but very effective. There's not a lot of plot to this, but what there is she has to carry and she makes light work of it. Her single musical interlude is a bit disappointing but she is funny. The one-liners aren’t that great on paper but she makes them work.
Fields though is inspired. He's more mumblefish than the '56 class of the Actors Studio so after about 10 minutes I had to put on the subtitles to try and catch everything. It's worth it, even written down his best line have a subtlety that may need a second or two for you to grasp: "During one of my last treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. Compelled to live on food and water for several days." That's one for the ages, as is his response to the enquiry that they heard he buried his last wife, "I had to. She'd died."
(I feel no guilt for giving away his punchlines. They look good written down but that doesn’t prepare you for hearing him deliver them.”)
Fields aficionados are apparently a little sniffy about this and maybe some of his other films are more wildly inventive and have more physical comedy but as a carnival procession of killer one-liners, this is Groucho level. Supposedly, by this time the Hays Code was clamping down on their excesses but even so Fields manages to get in a routine about beating up a woman and a bestiality gag where West nearly tricks him into having sex with a goat.
Directed by Edward F. Cline.
Starring Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran and Margaret Nolan. Black and white. 83 mins. Part of the ten film/ six disc Mae West In Hollywood Blu-ray box set out now from Indicator/ Powerhouse Films.
This glorious comedy western is a beautiful meeting of minds. Or maybe it is an artfully contrived accommodation of egos. Either way, it works. West and Fields star together and even get married but mostly go their own way and do their own thing. The script is credited to the two stars and, though it's much debated, the story goes that they each wrote their own parts. It's also claimed that the pair hated each other, in which case it was an inspired marriage of convenience because they play off each other perfectly.
Seven years on from She's No Angel, West is a far more natural screen presence. She is also more convincing as a sex siren. Rather than revealing negligees this time she is much more covered up. She looks like a grown-up Shirley Temple in a Little Bo Peep costume; an outrageous look but very effective. There's not a lot of plot to this, but what there is she has to carry and she makes light work of it. Her single musical interlude is a bit disappointing but she is funny. The one-liners aren’t that great on paper but she makes them work.
Fields though is inspired. He's more mumblefish than the '56 class of the Actors Studio so after about 10 minutes I had to put on the subtitles to try and catch everything. It's worth it, even written down his best line have a subtlety that may need a second or two for you to grasp: "During one of my last treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. Compelled to live on food and water for several days." That's one for the ages, as is his response to the enquiry that they heard he buried his last wife, "I had to. She'd died."
(I feel no guilt for giving away his punchlines. They look good written down but that doesn’t prepare you for hearing him deliver them.”)
Fields aficionados are apparently a little sniffy about this and maybe some of his other films are more wildly inventive and have more physical comedy but as a carnival procession of killer one-liners, this is Groucho level. Supposedly, by this time the Hays Code was clamping down on their excesses but even so Fields manages to get in a routine about beating up a woman and a bestiality gag where West nearly tricks him into having sex with a goat.
