You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
February 18, 1939
Universal
Comedy
DVD
B

While this movie has some definite faults, including that it bears more than a passing resemblance to The Old Fashioned Way and Poppy, I had a good time watching it, finding it superior to Fields's Paramount movies.  It helps that I not only thought Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were funny (Mortimer Snerd, not so much), but I thought that Bergen made a surprisingly sweet romantic lead, speed-courting Fields's loyal-nineteenish-daughter-du-jour, here played by Constance Moore, who does a fine job.  (Why her brother has a Southern accent was beyond me though.)  And seeing Charlie and Fields go head to head in their insults was fun.  Fields himself, here as Larson E. Whipsnade, is funnier than in the previous movies I've viewed, whether making a rich woman faint at the mere mention of snakes, startling spinsters at the circus when he seems to be nude, or dealing with people (kids included) who seem to be more dishonest than he is!  There isn't any completely honest man in the movie, but there is a title-drop early on, one that also includes the phrase "Never give a sucker an even break."  Since this is at least the second mention in his movies, its eventually becoming a title feels inevitable.

There's also Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, whom I always felt was the best thing about The Jack Benny Show.  He has a certain dignity, even when dealing with annoying bosses, as here.  I will admit that I wasn't sure how to take the racism of Whipsnade, as when he refers to a group of blacks as "Ubangis," which Anderson corrects to "coloreds."  And there's a scene where Charlie does black-face!  I do give the writers points for the "Bella Schicklgruber" joke, on the eve of World War II.

Edward F. Cline, who is uncredited (except at IMDB) for codirecting, also directed The Bank Dick, which features Evelyn Del Rio, Edward Thomas, Bill Wolfe, and that minor gem Jan Duggan (Cleopatra Pepperday in The Old Fashioned Way, the ping-pong-loving Mrs. Sludge here).  It also offers Grady Sutton, who has a much smaller role here than as Fields's brother-in-law in Man on the Flying Trapeze.

Tiny Jones was in Double Wedding.  Edmund Mortimer and Frank O'Connor were in previous films and would shortly be in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and At the Circus respectively.  Leyland Hodgson also appears in Castle.  Grace Goodall and Beryl Wallace would go on to The Women, Delmar Watson and Frank Jenks to His Girl Friday, Si Jenks and Otto Hoffman to My Little Chickadee, Sam Harris and Arthur Yeoman to Citizen Kane.  Florence Wix, who was a party guest in Day at the Races and would be one again in High Society, is a wedding guest here.  Another party guest, Russell Wade, would be a party guest again in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante.  Ethelreda Leopold (as Blonde at Party) would soon be a manicurist in The Wizard of Oz.  And Bergen & McCarthy's last appearance would be in The Muppet Movie, which is dedicated to them.