The Bank Dick ***** (1940, W C Fields, Grady Sutton, Franklin Pangborn, Shemp Howard) – Classic Movie Review 1271

The old sourpuss W C Fields invigorates the caustic vintage 1940 comedy The Bank Dick. He also wrote the nifty screenplay under the daft pen name of Mahatma Kane Jeeves.

The ever-grouchy, hard-drinking old sourpuss W C Fields greatly invigorates director Edward F Cline’s delightfully caustic vintage 1940 comedy The Bank Dick. The star also wrote the nifty screenplay under the superbly daft pen name of Mahatma Kane Jeeves, which apparently derives from the Broadway drawing-room comedy cliché ‘My hat, my cane, Jeeves!’

Fields plays the California small town of Lompoc’s happiest citizen, the hard-drinking Egbert Sousé, an old souse if ever there was one. The character is a drunk who repeatedly reminds people in exasperation that his name is pronounced ‘Sousé – accent grave over the e!’, because people keep calling him souse (drunkard).

His life of ease is spoiled when he foils a bank heist  by mistake and becomes the town hero. The bank president awards him the post of special bank guard, and his mind turns to ways of exploiting the situation.

Fields gleefully, if not cheerfully, inhabits his habitual screen persona as a drunken henpecked husband with a shrewish wife, a disapproving mother-in-law and unpleasant kids. In addition to the bank and family scenes, the movie features Fields pretending to be a film director and ends in a chaotic car chase.

A comedic Fields day for all the star’s many, many fans, The Bank Dick has several classic sequences, a big car chase climax and room for plenty of comedy action from some great character actors, high among them Grady Sutton as the daffy future son-in-law, Franklin Pangborn as an accountant and Shemp Howard, one of the Three Stooges, as Joe the bartender.

With some inspired, fondly remembered scenes and funny dialogue, and few dull patches to hold it back, The Bank Dick is a near perfect comic gem, with the mordant star on his finest form.

Some sample dialogue runs like this: Egbert Sousé (Fields): ‘Was I in here last night, and did I spend a 20 dollar bill?’ Joe the bartender (Shemp Howard): ‘Yeah!’ Egbert: “Oh, boy, is that a load off my mind. I thought I’d lost it!”

Hilariously, the puritanical British changed the title to The Bank Detective for its release in the UK, proving just what dicks people can be.

It reunites Fields with his director on My Little Chickadee, also 1940, and they went on to make Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) together.

W C Fields’s real name was William Claude Dukenfield – no wonder he called himself Mahatma Kane Jeeves or Otis Criblecoblis (as the story writer of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.

Also in the cast are Jack Norton, Cora Witherspoon, Jessie Ralph, Russell Hicks, Reed Hadley, Pierre Watkin, Al Hill, George Moran, Bill Wolfe, Pat West, Harlan Briggs, Fay Adler Pat O’Malley, Billy Mitchell, Eddie Dunn, Emmett Vogan, Eddie Acuff, Mary Field, Margaret Seddon and Richard Purcell.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1271

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