About IT'S A GIFT (1934)

 A long time ago, when I was a little boy growing up in Southern California, Saturday mornings were my favorite mornings. I'd get up early, have of bowl of Kellogg's corn flakes or Trix, read the back of the box the way Dad read The Los Angeles Times, and prepare to watch morning TV with its buffet of cartoon features. In those days, there were no early morning weekend news shows. So, CBS would air features that were fine for family viewing. These features were mainly classic films -- Buster Keaton films, Eddie Cantor musicals from the 1930s, plus Laurel and Hardy movies. I loved those -- and sometimes Mom would watch them with me. Laurel and Hardy made me laugh so hard that my sides ached. Another film that aired was the 1934 W.C. Fields comedy, IT'S A GIFT. I never watched that one until decades later when my best friend introduced me to it one day when I was visiting him in San Francisco. The both of us howled with laughter. We'd watch it again during my future visits to San Francisco and laugh out loud like a couple of kids watching cartoons.

I watched it again over the weekend -- by myself -- and it still broke me up laughing. Here's the story: W.C. Fields plays the middle-aged owner of a modest grocery store in New Jersey. He's a henpecked family man with two kids and an overbearing, bossy wife who looks like she should be onstage in an opera, wearing a breastplate and belting out something by Wagner. He inherits some money when an uncle dies and dreams of using it to move to California to buy an orange ranch. This was when Southern California was famous for its orange groves. The wife, of course, is against this idea. She puts on airs as if she's in the town's high society. His name is Harold Bissonette. The wife prefers to pronounce their last name Bis-oh-nay -- as if it's French.

This comedy highlights the W.C. Fields skills at physical comedy. The movie is like a TV sitcom that runs 1 hour and 5 minutes. That's the length of IT'S A GIFT. You like the henpecked Harold. You even like his clueless wife who never stops talking. When she constantly says to him, "Are you listening to me?"....you wish he'd say "Anyone within a 5-mile radius of this house is listening to you."

One thing that stands out to me about old classic is that hip comedians in sitcoms in the 80s were trying to be "edgy." W.C. Fields did "edgy" 50 years earlier. Harold, in his store, overwhelmed by an irritated customer who demands "I want 10 pounds of kumquats!" while he sees the cranky, blind and hard of hearing Mr. Muckle enter and knock items over gets me every time, He practically wrecks the store while Harold pleads "Sit down, Mr. Muckle. Sit down, honey."

Kathleen Howard is perfect as Mrs. Bis-oh-nay. She went to play the strict, narrow-minded housekeeper who gets slugged by Barbara Stanwyck in the Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper comedy, BALL OF FIRE.

Harold and his family do drive out to California. When all seems lost, there is a happy ending. I found this clip that will give you a taste of 1934's IT'S A GIFT.