The Bank Dick (1940)

Directed by Edward F. Cline. Starring W. C. Fields, Grady Sutton, Franklin Pangborn, Cora Witherspoon, Una Merkel, Russell Hicks, Evelyn Del Rio, Jessie Ralph, Shemp Howard, Pierre Watkin, Dick Purcell.

W. C. Fields at his gut-busting best playing Egbert Sousé, another in his long line of hilariously misanthropic, smart-mouthed drunks; this one inadvertently thwarts a bank robber’s getaway and is offered a position as a “bank dick”, per the argot of the underworld. He spends far less time handling crooks, however, than dropping by his regular saloon to account for twenty dollars he thought he “lost” or trying to put one over on a bank auditor (Pangborn). Hardly a wasted moment here, operating on a tottering rhythm which keeps the wisecracks swinging like delayed haymakers, and some of the slapstick bits are as funny as the line deliveries. Every attack on little Del Rio is a riot, and never forget that if you refer to his “proboscis as an adscititious excrescence”, you deserve to get your nose tweaked. As usual, Fields’ story credit is under a pseudonym, but instead of “Charles Bogle”, this time it’s “Mahatma Kane Jeeves”.

83/100