As the years tick by, it seems that modern audiences have less and less time for the comedies of the earlier decades of motion pictures. Certainly here in the UK you'd be hard-pushed nowadays to find any of the output of Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers or Laurel & Hardy on television. As for Harold Lloyd or Harry Langdon - forget it.
W C Fields has, perhaps, never enjoyed a particularly strong following on this side of the Atlantic but even so, there was a time when his films would populate the TV schedules. That time seems past and Fields is unquestionably becoming something of an obscurity. The image of an ageing, obese comedian fell out of favour when audiences turned their backs on once-popular stars of more recent times such as Benny Hill and Bernard Manning and the liquor-loving lechery of W C Fields in this context is unlikely to find much support.
Fields oughtn't be so casually dismissed. He was a strong identifiable and quite unique character on screen, and a comedian with a sharp repartee who knew his craft. "Never Give A Sucker An Even Break" dates from the latter stages of his career as ill health was beginning to take a grip of him, but his wit is still on top form and he is still able to engage in a surprising amount of physical comedy.
The film betrays the notion that it had a rather turbulent production. The original script apparently contained scenes that are not even alluded to in the finished picture, which would have expanded upon the relationship between Fields and his niece (played by Gloria Jean). Several actors who allegedly shot scenes for this film are wholly absent from the final cut. And at one point even Fields himself breaks the fourth wall to actually tell the watching audience of a scene which was excised at the behest of the censors! What we are left with is a slightly disjointed mess. The plot, such as it is, involves Fields visiting a film studio to try and sell his latest script to a producer. Along the way we are treated to glimpses of the rather chaotic life at the studio where Fields' niece is employed as an up-and-coming star.
As the producer reads through Fields' rather far-fetched story idea, the events in the script are related through live action so we actually get to 'see' the movie as Fields' character envisaged it, albeit with interruptions from the producer.
This story-within-a-story approach is novel for the time, and is an interesting mirror of the true genesis of "Never Give A Sucker An Even Break", but it is also rather limiting. The 'Esoteric Studios' plot is simply too weak to hold up a feature film and is far more the sort of situation you'd expect to find in a Three Stooges short subject.
Much more interesting is the 'inner story', that is the plot of Fields' script that the producer reads, which concerns Fields falling out of an aeroplane and landing in the isolated mountain-top residence of a man-hating woman and her beautiful daughter who has grown to adulthood without even being aware of the existence of men. The arrival of Fields in this situation is ripe for comedy and has great potential, but that potential is barely tapped as too many possibilities are spurned and Fields leaves the scene all too quickly.
Fields is easily the most interesting character in this film. Unfortunately too many of the others are found wanting and the sequences where Fields is absent suffer badly because they rely on weak comedy from others (notably Franklin Pangborn as the film producer, and juvenile double-act Butch and Buddy) and rather superfluous musical scenes in which the very capable Gloria Jean sings numbers which are badly dated now.
The film ends rather abruptly after a lengthy car chase sequence which again has little relevance to the plot, and seems contrived to give the film a more spectacular conclusion, but in reality it's not a conclusion at all - whilst Fields' character was determined to reach a specific destination the rather thin plot, sadly, was not going anywhere and so the film just - well, ends.
W C Fields has, perhaps, never enjoyed a particularly strong following on this side of the Atlantic but even so, there was a time when his films would populate the TV schedules. That time seems past and Fields is unquestionably becoming something of an obscurity. The image of an ageing, obese comedian fell out of favour when audiences turned their backs on once-popular stars of more recent times such as Benny Hill and Bernard Manning and the liquor-loving lechery of W C Fields in this context is unlikely to find much support.
Fields oughtn't be so casually dismissed. He was a strong identifiable and quite unique character on screen, and a comedian with a sharp repartee who knew his craft. "Never Give A Sucker An Even Break" dates from the latter stages of his career as ill health was beginning to take a grip of him, but his wit is still on top form and he is still able to engage in a surprising amount of physical comedy.
The film betrays the notion that it had a rather turbulent production. The original script apparently contained scenes that are not even alluded to in the finished picture, which would have expanded upon the relationship between Fields and his niece (played by Gloria Jean). Several actors who allegedly shot scenes for this film are wholly absent from the final cut. And at one point even Fields himself breaks the fourth wall to actually tell the watching audience of a scene which was excised at the behest of the censors! What we are left with is a slightly disjointed mess. The plot, such as it is, involves Fields visiting a film studio to try and sell his latest script to a producer. Along the way we are treated to glimpses of the rather chaotic life at the studio where Fields' niece is employed as an up-and-coming star.
As the producer reads through Fields' rather far-fetched story idea, the events in the script are related through live action so we actually get to 'see' the movie as Fields' character envisaged it, albeit with interruptions from the producer.
This story-within-a-story approach is novel for the time, and is an interesting mirror of the true genesis of "Never Give A Sucker An Even Break", but it is also rather limiting. The 'Esoteric Studios' plot is simply too weak to hold up a feature film and is far more the sort of situation you'd expect to find in a Three Stooges short subject.
Much more interesting is the 'inner story', that is the plot of Fields' script that the producer reads, which concerns Fields falling out of an aeroplane and landing in the isolated mountain-top residence of a man-hating woman and her beautiful daughter who has grown to adulthood without even being aware of the existence of men. The arrival of Fields in this situation is ripe for comedy and has great potential, but that potential is barely tapped as too many possibilities are spurned and Fields leaves the scene all too quickly.
Fields is easily the most interesting character in this film. Unfortunately too many of the others are found wanting and the sequences where Fields is absent suffer badly because they rely on weak comedy from others (notably Franklin Pangborn as the film producer, and juvenile double-act Butch and Buddy) and rather superfluous musical scenes in which the very capable Gloria Jean sings numbers which are badly dated now.
The film ends rather abruptly after a lengthy car chase sequence which again has little relevance to the plot, and seems contrived to give the film a more spectacular conclusion, but in reality it's not a conclusion at all - whilst Fields' character was determined to reach a specific destination the rather thin plot, sadly, was not going anywhere and so the film just - well, ends.