# Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 American comedy film directed by Edward F. Cline and starring W. C. Fields, Gloria Jean, and Leon Errol. Fields also wrote the original story, under the pseudonym Otis Criblecoblis. Fields plays himself, promoting an extravagant screenplay he has written. As he describes the script to a skeptical producer, the often surreal scenes are shown. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures. In some international releases it was known by the alternative title What a Man!
The title is derived from lines from two earlier films. In Poppy (1936), he tells his daughter "If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice: Never give a sucker an even break!" In You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), he tells a customer that his grandfather's last words, "just before they sprung the trap", were "You can't cheat an honest man; never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump."
During his Hollywood career, Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging and his choice of supporting players. Pleased with the success of his previous film, The Bank Dick (1940), Universal finally gave him the chance, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break was the result. Fields himself cast most of the supporting actors. He chose Universal's young singing star Gloria Jean to play his niece and hired two of his favorite comedians, Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn, to play supporting roles. Margaret Dumont, best known as the matronly foil for the Marx Brothers, was cast as the haughty Mrs. Hemogloben. Fields was paid $125,000 for his performance and $25,000 for his original story.

## Plot

At the Hollywood studios of Esoteric Pictures, Fields, playing himself, is seen admiring a billboard advertising his previous film The Bank Dick (1940). He encounters various hecklers and minor calamities, including a rude, sassy diner waitress (Jody Gilbert), whom he calls "Blimpy Pie." His devoted niece (Gloria Jean) is on her way to rehearse some songs at the studio, where she demonstrates her classically trained coloratura soprano. Fields is also on the premises to pitch his surreal movie script to an Esoteric producer (Franklin Pangborn).
Pangborn reads through the script, which comes to life in a series of scenes. Fields and Gloria Jean are flying to an exotic location on an airplane, which Fields' script specifies has a unique open-air, rear observation deck. Fields has run-ins with a couple of eccentric characters in which he tangles with a large, angry man in the lower berth and manages to hit him with a mallet and convince him that someone else did it. At one point, Gloria Jean asks Uncle Bill why he never married, and he answers "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for." When Fields's accidentally drops his flask out of the plane, he jumps after it, eventually catching up to it. He lands safely in a clifftop home occupied by a beautiful, young, naive girl (Susan Miller) who has never seen a man and her protective, cynical mother, Mrs. Hemoglobin (Margaret Dumont). After the plane lands, Gloria Jean receives a phone call from Fields directing her to the Russian village at the bottom of the cliff where she sings the Russian song, "Ochi Chernye" to a group of peasants. She is reunited with Fields in the village, where he learns that Mrs. Hemoglobin is very wealthy. Fields returns to Mrs. Hemoglobin's "nest", and finds a rival suitor (Leon Errol), who is also after her money. Fields disposes of him by kicking him over the cliff. Fields is about to marry Mrs. Hemoglobin when Gloria Jean takes him aside and convinces him that this is a bad idea and they make a swift exit.
At this point, Pangborn has had enough of the absurd script and tells Fields to leave the studio. Fields goes to an ice cream parlor to drown his sorrows. Breaking the fourth wall, Fields remarks to the audience, "This scene is supposed to be in a saloon, but the censor cut it out!"
Back at the studio, when Gloria Jean learns Fields has been sent away, she tells the flustered Pangborn that she will quit if her uncle is fired. She and Fields make plans to travel, and she goes into a shop to buy some new clothes. Just then, a middle-aged matron (Kay Deslys) asks for help getting to the maternity hospital, where her daughter is about to give birth. Fields volunteers, thinking the matron is in distress, and she takes the back seat of his car. He speeds her through the streets and expressways of Los Angeles, where he tangles with pedestrians, cars, and a hook-and-ladder fire truck. When his passenger passes out, Fields drives even more urgently. He arrives at the hospital, wrecking his car in the process, with his passenger shaken but unhurt. Gloria Jean, who has just arrived by taxi, asks Uncle Bill if he's all right. He replies "Good thing I didn't have an accident. I'd never have gotten here." Gloria Jean smiles and says to the audience "My Uncle Bill...but I still love him!"

## Cast

* W. C. Fields as The Great Man, W. C. Fields/Uncle Bill
* Gloria Jean as His Niece, Gloria Jean
* Leon Errol as His Rival, Leon
* Billy Lenhart and Kenneth Brown as His Hecklers (as Butch and Buddy)
* Margaret Dumont as Mrs. Hemogloben
* Susan Miller as Ouilotta Delight Hemogloben
* Franklin Pangborn as the producer, Mr. Pangborn
* Mona Barrie as the producer's wife, Mrs. Pangborn
* Charles Lang as the young engineer, Peter Carson
* Anne Nagel as Madame Gorgeous, Gloria Jean's mother
* Nell O'Day as salesgirl
* Irving Bacon as Tom, the soda jerk
* Jody Gilbert as the waitress
* Minerva Urecal as Mrs. Pastromi, the cleaning woman
* Emmett Vogan as Steve Roberts, engineer
* Carlotta Monti as Pangborn's receptionist
Uncredited:
* Leon Belasco as Gloria Jean's accompanist
* Dave Willock as Johnson, the movie director
* Jack Lipson as the Turkish plane passenger
* Claud Allister as the British plane passenger
* Kay Deslys as Mrs. Wilson, visiting the hospital
* Michael Visaroff as a Russian peasant
* Richard Alexander as a burly man
Sources:
Cast notes:
* Carlotta Monti, who plays Pangborn's receptionist, was Fields' mistress. She later wrote an autobiography that was made into the 1976 film W. C. Fields and Me, which starred Rod Steiger and Valerie Perrine.

## Songs

Gloria Jean sings the following songs in this film:
* "Estrellita" ("Little Star") - in Spanish, music and lyrics by M. M. Ponce
* "Voices of Spring" -- music by Johann Strauss II, with special lyrics in English
* "Hot Cha Cha"—nonsense song by Universal's musical director Charles Previn
* ""Очи чёрные" ("Ochi chyornye" or "Dark Eyes") - in Russian, traditional Russian folk song

## Production

Fields' preferred title for the film was The Great Man, which also had been his original title for The Bank Dick, but this title again was rejected by Universal. When the title was changed, Fields was afraid that "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" would not fit on theater marquees, and it would be abbreviated to "W. C. Fields - Sucker".
Fields' first version of the script was only 12 pages long. The studio told him to expand it, which Fields' did, to 96 pages. This was still not enough, so Fields hired screenwriters John T. Neville and Prescott Chaplin to expand it. This version came in at 156 pages. This was the version of the script that was rejected in April 1941 by the Hays Office because it was "filled with vulgar and suggestive scenes and dialogue" and had "innumerable jocular references to drinking and liquor," the producer was referred to as a "pansy", and the Fields character ogled women's breasts and legs. The censors also objected to "all dialogue and showing of bananas and pineapples", which they felt was "a play upon an obscene story." A revised script was approved two months later. The studio hired a number of writers to continue work on the script, none of them billed, but Fields hated their version, calling it "the worst script I ever read." He was inclined to "throw it in their faces", but director Eddie Cline told him not to—he would shoot Fields's own script, and the studio wouldn't know the difference, which was the case. Fields did sneak in one scene that got around The Breen Office's edict that a "raspberry sound" could not be made onscreen. Fields used a fruit peddler with a squeaky wheel on his cart.

## Aftermath

After the positive reception of Fields' previous Universal picture, The Bank Dick, the studio had touted The Great Man as one of its major features of the year, to be released during the holiday season of 1941. "That was the plan until the studio heads saw the film," reported Gloria Jean's biographers. "In late September they conveniently forgot about their bonded schedule, changed the title from The Great Man back to Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, and moved the release date up to October 10, placing the Fields film among a succession of lesser releases... Universal, deciding that this would be Fields's last picture at the studio, gave a choice November release date to Olsen and Johnson instead. Sucker became a non-event." Parts of the film were reshot without Fields's participation, and the film was re-edited and rearranged into a crazy-quilt of comedy sequences. "By keeping the film as nonsensical as possible, like [Olsen and Johnson's] Hellzapoppin', Universal could bridge Fields's chaotic continuity and gloss over his occasional absences." The outrageously zany film played to mixed reviews but is today considered one of Fields's classics. It has been called "a thinly disguised attack on the Hollywood studio system."
Upon release, columnist Ted Strauss in The New York Times wrote "We are not yet quite sure that this latest opus is even a movie – no such harum-scarum collection of song, slapstick and thumbnail sketches has defied dramatic law in recent history. We are more certain that at its worst the film is extravagantly bad, no less that William Claude is wonderful...Yes, some parts of the film you will find incomprehensibly silly. Probably you also will laugh your head off."
This movie was Fields's last starring role. By this time, he was 61 years old and in declining health, and a lifetime of alcoholism had taken its toll. Fields often had to recuperate in his dressing room between takes. He was planning his next film for Universal, with Gloria Jean and Anne Nagel from the cast of Sucker planned to star with him, but after the lukewarm performance of Sucker, Universal dropped him. The studio had the increasingly popular Abbott and Costello under contract and no longer needed Fields.