The Bank Dick (1940) / I'm No Angel (1933)

W.C. Fields and Mae West - both might as well live in the Looney Tunes stable. For while they may seem at first pass like one-note performers, walking (in West's case, sauntering) from situation to situation and movie to movie without any change of pitch, they are in fact perfect comic creations, as engineered and perfected as any Foghorn Leghorn or Wile E. Coyote. In this example, the characters don't change; it's the circumstances around them that are forced to catch up.

Watching W.C. Fields in The Bank Dick and Mae West in I'm No Angel, virtually back-to-back, is a lesson in the star-driven aesthetics of 1930's Hollywood. It's tough to cry foul when a movie like Adam Sandler's Chuck and Larry opens up to big box office; the idea of the franchise comedy that exists entirely on the shoulders of an unchanging star-performance is after all the cornerstone of the movie business. Both W.C. Fields and Mae West delivered very little in the way of innovative storytelling or edgy filmmaking; these stars came fully packaged and audiences came to the theatre knowing what to expect. Much of their films are bits from the stage re-invented for the movie camera. Everything seems free and loose on film, but has been rehearsed and perfected through years of stage performance.

Both actors represent hopeless and incorrigible vice: Fields is the perpetual drunk, at his best on the bar stool and literally looking for any opportunity to catch up with a snoot of liquor; West, on the other hand, is sex personified. Every line out of her mouth (even if the words are harmless) is a come-on, dripping double-entendre and practically daring the men on-screen to meet the challenge. In fact, West's lusty dialogue seems so cougar-ish that I had to check IMDB to be sure - yes indeed, Mae West was already 40-years-old when she made I'm No Angel, only her third Hollywood film. No young, vamp-ish starlet West exists on celluloid. She hit Hollywood fully-cougared up.

The Bank Dick and I'm No Angel both coast on a remarkable amount of charm, light on their feet at every turn. Plots are secondary; I was reminded of the free-form narrative of The Simpsons by the manner in which the movies drift from plot point to plot point, the only real propellant being the comedy that ties everything together. In The Bank Dick, W.C. Fields plays Egbert Sousé ("accent grave" on the "e" as he reminds everyone), a man always in search of the easiest route to the bar stool. Pushed by his wife and mother-in-law into finding a job, he stumbles through a bank robbery, foils the would-be thieves and lucks his way into the position of Bank Watchman. Any W.C. Fields synopsis could be completed with hijinks ensue.


I'm No Angel might be the more plot-driven of the two (if such a distinction is possible): Mae West's Tira finds herself in a tough situation after her would-be fiancee assaults a new suitor. Desperate for money and eager to distance herself from the crime, she agrees to be a lion tamer in a circus where she finds fame and more willing rich suitors than she's seen before in her life. In West's case, the film is almost solely about flirting and sexually-charged banter. She approaches the men in the film like W.C. Fields approaches his drinks: the more the better and who has time to take count.

Both films are at their best when their stars are given the room to do what they do best. In the case of The Bank Dick, there is a clear shift of gears whenever W.C. Fields finds himself back at The Black Pussy, his bar of choice. On the bar-stool, any degree of performance is invisible. What you see is what you get and the dialogue from Fields over an open bottle is the best the movie has to offer: "Take off your hat in the presence of a gentleman!" For West, her charms and mannerisms work best when there's a man in the room falling over himself to impress her. While I have to confess that it's difficult to see her appeal now (she is so campy in her come-ons as to be ridiculous), the movie settles into a very comfortable groove whenever she is given the runway she needs to flirt mercilessly.


While it may be enough to recommend either The Bank Dick or I'm No Angel just for the chance to watch Fields and West in top form, it's the dialogue of the films that makes them pure candy. The sharp and delicious dialogue of a 1930's movie is an art unto itself (something lovingly kept alive by the Coen Brothers in the 21st Century).

To make the case, a few gems from W.C. Fields:

"Don't be a luddy-duddy! Don't be a mooncalf! Don't be a jabbernowl! You're not those, are you?"

"The jockey was a very insulting fellow. He referred to my proboscis as an adscititious excrescence. I had to tweak his nose."

"My uncle, a balloon ascensionist, Effingham Hoofnagle, took a chance. He was three miles and a half up in the air. He jumped out of the basket of the balloon and took a chance of alighting on a load of hay...Had he been a younger man, he probably would have made it. That's the point. Don't wait too long in life."

In Mae West's case, it's the rich and easy talk of the period: lots of "dames" and "honeys" are thrown about, all delivered with the dry, corner-of-the-mouth manner for which West is famous. [Someone in the film even goes so far as to reference getting the "high-hat", an expression for a screw-job that I naively believed to be an invention of the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing.]

In the manner of all great cartoon creations, I can't imagine that there is a ton of difference from one W.C. Fields or Mae West film to another, though I am happy to see that there are still a handful more movies from each to come in this Monday Project. Nevertheless, it's clear why they were both such monumental stars in their respective periods: there's something to be said about watching stars of this type doing what they do best. The trick is that it doesn't look like they are working at all.

[Special Note: I can't tell you how happy I am that Blogger's Spellcheck functionality highlighted both luddy-duddy and jabbernowl as possible spelling mistakes.]