It's a Gift (1934)

Moderately entertaining Paramount comedy, starring W.C. Fields, as Harold Bissonette, Kathleen Howard as wife Amelia, Jean Rouverol as daughter Mildred, and Jimmy Bupp as the young son, Norman. The story begins in N.J., where W.C. operates a small grocery store. W.C. is trying to shave, when Mildred butts in to hog the mirror, putting on lipstick and fixing her hair. W.C. says nothing, merely trying to accommodate the interruption by various means. Heading for breakfast, he slips on Norman's errant roller-skate. At breakfast, the family talks about Uncle Bean's inheritance, and W.C.'s idea of how best to use it, by buying an orange farm in California. Amelia and Mildred don't like the idea of pulling up roots and moving to the other side of the country, especially when W.C. has no experience growing oranges. Mildred's boyfriend, John introduced W.C. to the available farm he feels(unjustly) comfortable buying. Meanwhile, W.C. has assorted problems at his grocery store, which provides some humor. Then, after Amelia bothers W.C.,so that he can't sleep, he goes out on the porch, to sleep on the swinging couch. But, various noises and bothersome people(including a pesky insurance salesman!) interrupt his sleep there, providing more humor. W.C. sells his grocery store, and the family heads west in their roomy, but roofless, car. When camping, W.C. can't figure how to set up a complex folding chair, thus throws it on the campfire. Chill Wills and The Avalon boys serenade the Bissonettes with "On the Wabash, Far Away".In California, they sneak into a private estate to have a picnic. WC hits and breaks a statue of Venus de Milo, with little regret. After setting out their food, W.C. checks a sundial and declares that it is wrong by 10 min. Amelia is sarcastic that W.C. considers his watch more perfect than the sun. Actually, both could be correct, in their own way, depending on the longitude of their location. The family trashes the area around their picnic spot with paper and tin cans, and feathers from an heirloom pillow that a stray dog, along with W.C., tore up. Finally, the manager comes and shoos them away, after some indignant backtalk.They arrive at their 'orange grove', which turns out to be but a weed patch. The 'ranch house' is a broken down shambles. The others say they won't stay here, nor help fix it up. W.C. sits down on the car dashboard, to think things over, and the car implodes into a tangle of metal and rubber. But, just when things looked completely hopeless, they are extricated from their situation. I'll let you see the movie to find out how.

It's a Gift (1934) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Classic comedy has a grocery store owner (W.C. Fields) wanting to grow oranges and he gets his shot when a family member dies and leaves him some money. Disregarding his nagging wife (Kathleen Howard), he packs his family up to move then to California where things don't go as planned. This is an often time hilarious little picture that doesn't really follow any type of story structure as instead of getting a straight story we're pretty much offered several small sequences but all of them funny. The best is without question Mr. Muckle, the blind man who makes a mess inside of Fields' store. This certainly isn't politically correct but that's part of the reason it's so charming. Seeing Muckle ruin the store while another customer is going off about why he's getting special attention is priceless as is the follow up scene where Mucke tries to cross the road with countless cars flying by. Another very funny sequence is at the home of Fields where he's trying to shave but the mirror keeps moving on him. Every scene in the film builds up like these, just small bits but for the most part they all get plenty of laughs. Fields is at his very best here as is comebacks are priceless and he's got a nice supporting cast to work with. Fields is (obviously) at ease with the material as he goes from one situation to the next without any problems. Howard nearly steals the film each time she's on screen as the evil wife who can't shut up long enough to catch her own breathe. The supporting cast is fine as well, although I must admit that I'm not sure why Baby LeRoy got to be so popular.

There are enough sight gags and brilliant lines of dialog to keep your average college film class busy all year. While it's true that "It's a Gift" has many classic comedy moments, the scene that makes this film special to me is a poignant one. It's late in the story: Harold (Fields) realizes that his dream of owning an orange grove in California has literally crumbled in front of him. His wife and kids have left him. His one lifeline, the family car, has fallen to pieces. With his world in ruins, Fields sits on the front stoop of his "ranch house". And the last friend he has in this world, a dog, comes up and licks his face. It's been fifty years since I first saw this film and that scene still brings tears to my eyes.

116: It's a Gift (1934) - released 11/17/1934, viewed 9/6/08.BIRTHS: Carl Sagan, Charles Manson.KEVIN: There are probably earlier films of W.C. Fields we could've started with, but we were just too damn lazy to add them to the list. So we first meet the plump, red-nosed, curmudgeonly underdog at age 53 in his purported masterpiece, 'It's a Gift.' As an actual movie, the film is put together pretty poorly. Comic vignettes are strung together loosely, transitions are almost nonexistent, and the lack of music is far too noticeable. But the comic vignettes themselves, containing some of Field's best gags, are always hilarious. It's rare to see a comic actor in this period playing a family man. Of course, it would be hard to imagine a guy of Field's age and complexion as a romantic lead like his other comic contemporaries. Field's bumbling grocer is tormented by his shrewish wife, annoying kids, and every person he meets in a series of gags that seem more based on the actual experiences of a veteran family man, rather than spilling out of the gag-writers' factory. There are times where Fields' bad luck and getting blamed for every stupid thing that happens (even stuff that's obviously not his fault) strains belief, even in the midst of a comedy. Anyway, this is definitely a must see, but I'm sure it would play far better if watched by a large company of viewers than by any individual.DOUG: Welcome to the world of W.C. Fields, where all the women are nagging shrews, all the children are unwieldy brats, and the hero is a clumsy, boorish, impatient and obstinate old man. Most of the comedians of the era have protagonists that are everymen and/or cartoon characters, getting into extraordinary situations through mostly no fault of their own and showing some pluckiness as they overcome adversity. Fields, however, seems to wind up in situations, mostly his fault, that he could get out of if he possessed even the slightest bit of finesse. Case in point: the film's first sustained gag sequence, in which Fields foolishly lets his daughter into the bathroom so she can do her hair while he's in the middle of shaving, leaving him to struggle to find a steady reflection to finish his job instead of just, you know, ASKING HER to hang back for a couple of minutes. This continues throughout the movie, which is little more than a collection of episodes showing Fields constantly besotted by forces determined to drive him mad. He tries in vain to escape his awful wife by sleeping on the porch amid a parade of noise; he attempts to run his grocery store while handling a grouchy customer, a neighbor's demon child, a ballistic blind man, and a half-wit assistant he should have fired long ago; and he drives his rickety old car into a private estate for a picnic, promising that the KEEP OUT sign is just to scare the hobos away. A unique brand of comedy to be sure, one that I'm surprised got past the Hays Code in any measure, so definitely recommended.Last film: The Gay Divorcée (1934). Next film: Imitation of Life (1934).