It's a Gift

Infobox_Film
name = It's a Gift


caption = Theatrical poster to "It's a Gift" (1934)
imdb_id = 0025318
writer = Jack Cunningham
starring = W.C. Fields
Kathleen Howard
Jean Rouverol
Julian Madison
director = Norman Z. McLeod
producer = William LeBaron
distributor =
released = November 17, 1934
runtime = 73 min.
language = English
country = USA
budget =

"It's a Gift" is a 1934 comedy film starring W. C. Fields.

Observations

Considered by many to be Fields' best and funniest film, it concerns the trials and tribulations of a grocery store owner as he battles a shrewish wife, an incompetent assistant, and assorted annoying children, customers, and salesmen.

Lesser known than some of Fields' later works such as "The Bank Dick," the film is perhaps the best example of the recurring theme of the Everyman battling against his domestic entrapment. Film buffs, historians, and critics have often cited its numerous memorable comic moments. It is one of several Paramount Pictures in which Fields contended with child actor Baby LeRoy.

Plot summary

After he inherits some money, Harold Bissonette decides to give up the grocery business, move to California and run an orange grove. 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 and bothersome kids, Norman (Tommy Bupp) and Mildred (Jean Rouverol). All the terrible premonitions turn out to be true; his barren plot contains only a tumbledown shack and a dead tree. However, just when Bissonette is about to lose all hope, he lucks out and sells his land to an eager developer for a huge sum of money, as well as a lush orange grove.

The plot, however, is secondary to the series of routines that make up the majority of this film. Over the course of the picture, Bissonette fails to prevent a blind customer from turning his store into a disaster area, tries to share a bathroom mirror with his self-centered, high-pitched gargling daughter, is driven to sleep on the porch by his haranguing wife (but is kept awake by neighbors and salesmen), and has a destructive picnic on private property.

At a climactic point in the film, Fields is haggling with someone over the price of a piece of land. His antagonist angrily claims that Fields is drunk, to which he replies: "Yeah, and you're crazy. But I'll be sober tomorrow, and "you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!"

See also

* 1934 in film