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.

This was my first view of NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK--and although one can quibble with the long, long title for a breezy comedy of this sort--you can't say the film doesn't provide a number of well-deserved laughs.W.C. FIELDS brings his insanely constructed script to director FRANKLIN PANGBORN who, despite his protestations over the silliness of many of the scenes, keeps reading it. We see the movie-within-the-movie taking shape on the screen and can well understand Pangborn's protests. However, it's insanely funny, especially since the story is peppered with talent like LEON ERROL, MARGARET DUMONT, IRVING BACON and others.GLORIA JEAN is featured prominently as Fields' niece and given plenty of opportunity to show that she had a talented way with operatic ditties. The rehearsal scene with Pangborn as workers continue construction on a set being readied for the next day, leads to some of the funniest moments in the whole story.The film ends with a mad car chase to get what Fields supposes is a pregnant woman to a nearby hospital--hilariously staged with split second timing and some truly dangerous stunts. The chase and various other set pieces, along with all the witty one-liners from Fields delivered in his usual dry manner, are enough to keep you highly amused throughout.

So many great comedians retired when they were past their heights: Chaplin never quite adjusted to the sound era; Keaton went from substandard vehicles to sad cameos; Laurel and Hardy went on in B pictures until age took the joy out of their slapstick.Fields, on the other hand, made what was arguably his funniest film, "The Bank Dick," next to last, and saved his most thorough insanity for his final shot, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break." While not as funny as its predecessor, nor "It's a Gift," an earlier masterpiece, his last movie is a glorious kick in Hollywood's pants.Fields plays The Great Man (himself, naturally) pitching a script to Franklin Pangborn, who although also going by his own name has been somehow promoted to producer. Fields used Pangborn in other films as the embodiment of humorless, easily-shocked Society, in all its prim priggishness; it's revealing that here Pangborn becomes Hollywood too. Doubtless W.C.'s feelings about the movie industry at that point were much the same as they were about the social order: too many rules, not enough fun. His script of course, is utter hogwash: a bizarre Munchausen tale about gorillas on mountaintops, 90 proof goat's milk, and himself diving sans parachute from an airplane (which rather puzzlingly possesses an open-air observation deck) to rescue a fallen bottle of liquor.Even outside the movie studio enemies are all around: insolent children, a sarcastic waitress ("There's something awfully big about you," she comments, apropos his nose; he waits until she bends over a counter to respond, "There's something awfully big about you too."), scornful policemen, and of course the "real" movie business behind the scenes. (Fields bellies up to an ice-cream counter, darkly informing the camera, "This scene used to be set in a saloon.") Presumably these last are the geniuses responsible for saddling him a singing starlet, Gloria Jean, who gets just enough screen-time to be safely irrelevant, one more strange distraction in a movie completely full of them.Other, more welcome presences include Leon Errol, as a romantic rival of sorts, and the redoubtable Margaret Dumont, presumably on loan from the Marxes. She famously never "got" Groucho; what in God's name must she have thought of Fields?Thus the greatest comic iconoclast of his time makes his final bow, with a flourish. If it's not laugh-out-loud funny as his previous movies, it's weird, exhilaratingly pointless, and, thoroughly and wonderfully his own.

Without doubt, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" is Fields at his absolute best. The "plotline" is so completely beyond belief that it provides the nearly perfect vehicle for Fields' unique and irreverent style with its constant stream of sight gags and one-liners. His mumbled verbal interactions with Madame Hemoglobin (Margaret Dumont) and the "tiny waitress" in the café (Jody Gilbert) are as memorably irreverent as anything he had done previously and are worth listening to closely to fully appreciate. The constantly changing scenes and situations in this film provide ample opportunity for his verbal and visual "charms" to be fully utilized, and in my opinion this is his finest and most consistently funny effort. If you haven't seen this film, give it a viewing or two. If you are a true Fields fan, you'll enjoy it as much as or more so than any of his other more well-known offerings.