''It's a Gift'' is a 1934 American
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
starring
W.C. Fields
WC or wc may refer to:
* Water closet or flush toilet
Arts and entertainment
* ''W.C.'' (film), an Irish feature film
* WC (band), a Polish punk rock band
* WC (rapper), a rapper from Los Angeles, California
* Westside Connection, former ...
. It was Fields's 16th sound film, and his fifth in 1934 alone. It was directed by
Norman McLeod, who had directed Fields in his
cameo as
Humpty Dumpty
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. ...
in ''
Alice in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...
'' (1933).
The film concerns the trials and tribulations of a grocer as he battles a shrewish wife, an incompetent assistant, and assorted annoying children, customers, and salesmen. The film reprises routines honed by Fields from his career over the years 1915–1925. Fields often tried to recapture sketches that led to his stage success onto film; skits such as "The Picnic", "A Joy Ride", and most famously, "The Back Porch" are all featured in ''It's a Gift''.
Lesser known than some of Fields' later works such as ''
The Bank Dick
''The Bank Dick'', released as ''The Bank Detective'' in the United Kingdom, is a 1940 American comedy film starring W. C. Fields. Set in Lompoc, California, Fields plays Egbert Sousé, a drunk who accidentally thwarts a bank robbery and ends up ...
,'' the film is perhaps the best example of the recurring theme of the
Everyman
The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them.
Origin
The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...
battling against his domestic entrapment. Historians and critics have often cited its numerous memorable comic moments. It is one of several
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...
in which Fields contended with child actor
Baby LeRoy
Ronald Le Roy Overacker (May 12, 1932 – July 28, 2001), better known by his stage name Baby LeRoy, was an American child actor who appeared in films in the 1930s. When he was 16 months old, he became the youngest person ever put under term ...
.
Plot
After he inherits some money, Harold Bissonette (mispronounced by his pompous wife as "biss-on-ay") decides to give up the grocery business, move to California, and run an orange ranch. Despite his family's objections and the news that the land he bought is worthless, Bissonette packs up and drives out to California with his nagging wife Amelia, self-involved daughter Mildred, and bothersome son Norman. As they pass several prosperous orange groves, his wife softens and figures he made a good purchase. The information about the orange grove is confirmed; his barren plot contains only a tumbledown shack, and a tumbleweed. Disgusted, his wife and family are walking out on him. As he sits down on the car's running board, the car collapses under his weight.
Just when Harold is about to lose all hope, though, his luck takes a dramatic turn; a neighbor informs him that a developer is desperate to acquire his land to build a grandstand for a race track. Finally standing up for himself, and to his nagging wife, Harold holds out for a large sum of money (including a commission for the friendly neighbor), as well as a demand that the developer buy him an orange grove like the one in the brochure he has been carrying throughout the film. The film ends with Harold sitting at an outdoor breakfast table squeezing orange juice into a glass, while his happy family takes off for a ride in their new car. The now-contented Harold pours a flask of booze into the small amount of orange juice in the glass.
The film is a chronicle of the "many titanic struggles between Harold Bissonnette and the universe. There will be battle of wills between father and daughter, between male and female, between man and a variety of uncontrollable objects."
The plot is almost secondary to the series of routines that make up the film. Over the course of the picture, Harold fails to prevent a blind customer named Mr. Muckle (and Baby LeRoy) from turning his store into a disaster area; attempts to share a bathroom mirror with his self-centered, high-pitched, gargling daughter; has a destructive picnic on private property; and in the film's lengthy centerpiece, is driven to sleep on the porch by his haranguing wife, and is kept awake all night by neighbors (including further trouble with the mother of the baby who caused damage in his grocery store), salesmen, and assorted noises and calamities.
A well-known, and often somewhat misquoted Fields comment occurs at the climax of the film, as Harold is haggling with the developer, who angrily claims that Harold is drunk. Harold responds, "Yeah, and you're crazy; and I'll be sober tomorrow and ... you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!"
Cast
*
W.C. Fields
WC or wc may refer to:
* Water closet or flush toilet
Arts and entertainment
* ''W.C.'' (film), an Irish feature film
* WC (band), a Polish punk rock band
* WC (rapper), a rapper from Los Angeles, California
* Westside Connection, former ...
as Harold Bissonette
*
Kathleen Howard
Kathleen Howard (July 27, 1884 – April 15, 1956) was a Canadian-born American opera singer, magazine editor, and character actress from the mid-1930s through the 1940s.
Biography
Howard was born in Clifton Hill, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Cana ...
as Amelia Bissonette
*
Jean Rouverol
Jean Rouverol (July 8, 1916 – March 24, 2017) was an American author, actress and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s.
Life and career
Rouverol was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of pl ...
as Mildred Bissonette
* Julian Madison as John Durston
* Tommy Bupp as Norman Bissonette
*
Tammany Young
Tammany Young (September 9, 1886 – April 26, 1936) was an American stage and film actor.
Early life
Born in New York City, Young appeared on Broadway in ''The Front Page'' (1928) by Ben Hecht and ''The New Yorkers'' (1930) by Herbert Fields ...
as Everett Ricks, store employee
*
Baby LeRoy
Ronald Le Roy Overacker (May 12, 1932 – July 28, 2001), better known by his stage name Baby LeRoy, was an American child actor who appeared in films in the 1930s. When he was 16 months old, he became the youngest person ever put under term ...
as Baby Elwood Dunk
*
Morgan Wallace
Morgan Wallace (born Maier Weill, July 26, 1881 – December 12, 1953) was an American actor. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1914 and 1946, including W.C. Fields' ''It's a Gift'' (1934) Introduction by Arthur Knight where he pe ...
as Jasper Fitchmueller,
Kumquat
Kumquats (; zh, 金桔), or cumquats in Australian English, are a group of small fruit-bearing trees in the flowering plant family Rutaceae. Their taxonomy is disputed. They were previously classified as forming the now-historical genus ''Fortun ...
s customer
*
Charles Sellon
Charles A. Sellon (August 24, 1870 – June 26, 1937) was an American stage and film actor.
Sellon appeared in more than 100 films and stage acts between 1901 and 1935. He played the blind Mr. Muckle in W. C. Fields' comedy ''It's a Gift'' ...
as Mr. Muckle, blind customer
*
Josephine Whittell
Josephine Whittell (born Josephine Cunningham; November 30, 1883 – June 1, 1961) was an American character actress of silent and sound films.
Early years
Whittell was born on November 30, 1883 in San Francisco, California to Charles and S ...
as Mrs. Dunk
*
Diana Lewis
Diana Lewis (September 18, 1919 – January 18, 1997) was an American film actress and a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player.
Early years
The daughter of vaudeville performers, Lewis was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She attended Fairfa ...
as Betty Dunk
*
Dell Henderson
George Delbert "Dell" Henderson (July 5, 1877 – December 2, 1956) was a Canadian-American actor, director, and writer. He began his long and prolific film career in the early days of silent film.
Biography
Born in the Southwestern Ontario city ...
as Charles Abernathy, Californian neighbour
*
T. Roy Barnes as Insurance Salesman
*
Spencer Charters
Spencer Charters (March 25, 1875 – January 25, 1943) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 220 films between 1920 and 1943, mostly in small supporting roles.
Biography
Charters was born in Duncannon, Pennsylvania. Until ...
as Park Guard
Additional cast:
Jerry Mandy
Jerry Mandy (June 5, 1892 – May 1, 1945) was an American film actor. He appeared in 114 films between 1923 and 1945. He was born in Utica, New York and died in Hollywood, California from a heart attack.
Selected filmography
* ''North Sta ...
,
James Burke, Edith Kingdon,
The Avalon Boys The Avalon Boys were a quartet of singers popular in the 1930s. They appeared in a number of comedy films and had a memorable role in Laurel and Hardy's '' Way Out West''.
Members
*Chill Wills (bass)
*Art Greene
*Walter Weyland Trask (guitar), b. ...
and
Billy Engle
Billy Engle (May 28, 1889 – November 28, 1966) was an Austro-Hungarian Empire-born American film actor. He appeared in more than 250 films between 1917 and 1957. He was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and died in Hollywood, California ...
.
Additional production credits
* Art direction by
Hans Dreier
Hans Dreier (August 21, 1885 – October 24, 1966) was a German motion picture art director. He was Paramount Pictures' supervising art director from 1927 until his retirement in 1950, when he was succeeded by Hal Pereira.
Hans Dreier was born i ...
and
John B. Goodman
Reception
A contemporary review from 'Argus' in ''
The Literary Digest
''The Literary Digest'' was an influential American general interest weekly magazine published by Funk & Wagnalls. Founded by Isaac Kaufmann Funk in 1890, it eventually merged with two similar weekly magazines, ''Public Opinion'' and '' Current O ...
'', 1935, declared: "It is clumsy, crude, and quite amateurish in its appearance. It merely happens that a great comedian appears in it and has a free hand in his brilliant clowning, with the result that defects become unimportant, and the film emerges as a comedy delight."
The film has a rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
In 2010, this film was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...
by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film is recognized by
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees.
Leade ...
in:
* 2000:
AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #58
See also
*
1934 in film
The following is an overview of 1934 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Top-grossing films (U.S.)
The top ten 1934 released films by box office gross in North America are as follows:
...
*
List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, a film has a rating of 100% if each professional review recorded by the website is assessed as positive rather than negative. The percentage is based on the film's reviews aggregated by the webs ...
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*''It's a Gift'' essay by Daniel Eagan In America's Film Legacy, 2009-2010: A Viewer's Guide To The 50 Landmark Movies Added To The National Film Registry In 2009-10, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011, pages 44–4
{{DEFAULTSORT:It's A Gift
1934 films
1934 comedy films
American black-and-white films
Films directed by Norman Z. McLeod
American comedy films
Films set in California
United States National Film Registry films
Paramount Pictures films
1930s English-language films
1930s American films