It’s a Gift ***** (1934, W C Fields, Baby LeRoy, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol) – Classic Movie Review 7396

In perhaps his finest comedy, a deliciously on-form W C Fields plays a henpecked New Jersey general store owner called Harold Bissonette, who is having a hard time, what with Baby Dunk (Baby LeRoy), the annoying little boy on the floor above, the irritating insurance salesman (T Roy Barnes) on the floor below and his snobby, reproving, overbearing wife Amelia Bissonette (Kathleen Howard) – ‘That’s ‘Bee-soh-nay’.

Still, there could be a better life. Harold takes his family by car to California, where he has bought an orange ranch via the mail, but all he finds is a run-down shack and a withered tree, and then his car collapses.

Director Norman Z McLeod’s 1934 Paramount Pictures black and white comedy It’s a Gift is not so much a movie as really just an excuse for a series of vaudeville knockabout gags, but that is all right because they are hilarious.

Comedically speaking, Fields flirts with danger – playing opposite a child (Baby LeRoy) and a blind character (Charles Sellon as blind customer Mr Muckle)  – and still gets his triumphant laughs.

A remake of his 1926 silent It’s the Old Army Game starring W C Fields and Louise Brooks, It’s a Gift is cheaply made but exuberantly performed, pacily directed and funny throughout.

Fields wrote the story as Charles Bogle, from the 1925 play The Comic Supplement by J P McEvoy.

But Fields was tired of Baby LeRoy, who was now getting second billing, and this was their last of three films together. McLeod recalled: ‘Fields had a phobia about the baby. He not only hated infants in general, but he believed that Baby LeRoy was stealing scenes from him. He used to swear at the baby so much in front of the camera that I sometimes had to cut off the ends of the scenes in which they appeared.’

It’s a Gift also features Jean Rouverol, Julian Madison, Tom Bupp, Tammany Young, Morgan Wallace, Charles Sellon, Josephine Whittell, Diana Lewis, Spencer Charters, Guy Usher and Dell Henderson.

When the developer angrily claims that Harold Bissonette is drunk. Harold replies: ‘Yeah, and you’re crazy; and I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll be crazy for the rest of your life!’

It’s a Gift is written by Norman Z McLeod, runs 75 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, is written by Jack Cunningham, based on a story by W C Fields (as Charles Bogle), from The Comic Supplement by J P McEvoy, is shot in black and white by Henry Sharp, and is produced by William LeBaron.

Baby LeRoy [Ronald Le Roy Overacker], who was the youngest film actor to get star billing, allegedly had his milk spiked with gin by W C Fields during a difficult shooting day on Tillie and Gus. He was born on 12 May 1932 and died on 28 July 2001. He is best known for his three Fields films: Tillie and Gus (1933), The Old Fashioned Way (1934) and It’s a Gift (1934).

It is Fields’s 16th sound film, and his fifth film in 1934.

McLeod directed Fields as Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland (1933).

The cast are W C Fields as Harold Bissonette, Baby LeRoy as Baby Elwood Dunk, Kathleen Howard as Amelia Bissonette, Jean Rouverol as Mildred Bissonette, Julian Madison as John Durston, Tommy Bupp as Norman Bissonette, Tammany Young as store employee Everett Ricks, Morgan Wallace as Kumquats customer Jasper Fitchmueller, Charles Sellon as blind customer Mr Muckle, Josephine Whittell as Mrs. Dunk, Diana Lewis as Betty Dunk, Dell Henderson as Californian neighbour Charles Abernathy,  T Roy Barnes as Insurance Salesman, Spencer Charters as Park Guard, Jerry Mandy, James Burke, Edith Kingdon, The Avalon Boys and Billy Engle.

The art direction is by Hans Dreier and John B Goodman.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7396

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