You’re Telling Me! *** (1934, W C Fields, Joan Marsh, Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe, Adrienne Ames, Kathleen Howard, Louise Carter) – Classic Movie Review 9780

Director Erle C Kenton’s 1934 comedy You’re Telling Me! stars W C Fields as Mr Sam Brisbee, an optician despised in his small town, particularly by his wife Bessie/ or Abigail (Louise Carter), for his failed inventions (like his keyhole finder for drunks), who becomes a local hero through a kindly Spanish princess, Princess Lescaboura (glamour queen Adrienne Ames).

You’re Telling Me! is a sidesplitting talkie remake of Fields’s 1926 silent comedy So’s Your Old Man, which he uses as an ideal peg to hang brilliant routines like his renowned golfing sketch, taken from his stage act, and previously seen in Fields’s 1930 short The Golf Specialist, his first sound short. Fields is again on top form, and a ripe crew of actresses in Kathleen Howard, Louise Carter, Nora Cecil, Elise Cavanna, Florence Enright, Josephine Whittell, Dorothy Vernon, and Isabel La Mal have a good old time harassing henpecked Fields in the film.

The screenplay by J P McEvoy, Walter DeLeon and Paul M Jones is based on the short story Mr Brisbee’s Princess by Julian Leonard Street, who won the 1925 O’Henry prize for comedy for it.

Also in the cast are Joan Marsh, Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe, Adrienne Ames, Kathleen Howard, Louise Carter, Kathleen Howard, Tammany Young, Dell Henderson [Del Henderson], James B ‘Pop’ Kenton, Robert McKenzie, Nora Cecil, George Irving, Eddie Baker, Dorothy Bay, Harold Berquist, Elise Cavanna, Hal Craig, Alfred Delcambre, Vernon Dent, Billy Engle, Florence Enright, Al Hart, Isabel La Mal, Edward LeSaint, George McQuarrie, Edmund Mortimer, James C Morton, Frank O’Connor, George Ovey, Lee Phelps, William Robyns, Jerry Stewart, Frederick Sullivan, John M Sullivan, and Josephine Whittell.

Kathleen Howard, famous for pairing as Fields’s shrewish wife in both It’s a Gift (1934) and Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935), makes her initial appearance with him here as Mrs Murchison.

Fields used Charlie Bogle, the name of one of his cronies in the film played by Robert McKenzie, as a pen name for four of his screenplays.

Though credited as Bessie, Louise Carter’s character is called Abigail in the film.

You’re Telling Me! is directed by Erle C Kenton, runs 68 minutes, is made by Paramount, is written by J P McEvoy, Walter DeLeon and Paul M Jones, is shot in black and white by Alfred Gilks, is produced by William LeBaron, is scored by Arthur Johnston, and is designed by Hans Dreier and Robert Odell.

Adrienne Ames’s film career lasted from 1929 to 1940, appearing in about 30 films, the best-known of which is You’re Telling Me!. She later worked as a radio commentator, but died on 31 May 1947 of cancer, aged 43.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9780

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