{"id":13769,"date":"2020-09-27T21:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T01:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=13769"},"modified":"2020-09-27T20:34:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T00:34:47","slug":"never-give-a-sucker-an-even-break-1941-edward-cline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/13769","title":{"rendered":"Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941, Edward Cline)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I mainly know W.C. Fields from Looney Tunes caricatures&#8230; his muttering insult comedy is pretty appealing.  Not just a harmless old man with a funny drunk routine &#8211; when he got creative control of a movie, it turned out mental.  He plays a screenwriter for studio boss Franklin Pangborn(!), living out the scenes he&#8217;s pitching, while Pangborn interrupts to say these are lousy ideas for a movie.<\/p>\n<p>Fields becomes infatuated with a rich woman in a mountaintop home &#8211; she&#8217;s played by Marx Brothers regular Margaret Dumont.  Unfortunately, the other thing he borrowed from the Marxes is the idea that a comedy should have terribly high-pitched singing.  Up-and-coming studio star Gloria Jean plays his niece, who performs painful <em>Snow White<\/em> scream-singing, and throwing in a shriek-whooping fake gorilla, the movie has unpleasant audio.  It ends with a really unexpectedly good car chase, at least!<\/p>\n<p><em>Fields unplugging his ears after a Gloria song<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/neversucker1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The Rival&#8221; Leon Errol with Dumont:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/neversucker2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/neversucker3.jpg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mainly know W.C. Fields from Looney Tunes caricatures&#8230; his muttering insult comedy is pretty appealing. Not just a harmless old man with a funny drunk routine &#8211; when he got creative control of a movie, it turned out mental. He plays a screenwriter for studio boss Franklin Pangborn(!), living out the scenes he&#8217;s pitching, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[416,2712,91,1739,1631],"class_list":["post-13769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1940s","tag-car-chase","tag-filmmaking","tag-gorilla","tag-wc-fields"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13790,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13769\/revisions\/13790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}