IT’S A GIFT

Wednesday, November 23 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

IT’S A GIFT
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod • 1934
CFS comedic hero W.C. Fields stars as Harold Bissonette (pronounced Biss-on-AY!), an incompetent grocer and put-upon family man with lofty dreams of owning an orange ranch in sunny California. The film begins with a quiet but side-splitting scene of mild domestic hell in a shared bathroom (“You want me to cut my throat? Keep that up.”) and what follows is an unrelenting 68 minutes of Fields being terrorized and debased by nearly everyone and everything he encounters, including his wife, his children, his neighbors, his customers, his dog, and a coconut. Directed by Norman McLeod (who’d previously directed Fields as Humpty Dumpty in the stunningly weird pre-Code Alice in Wonderland), and co-starring Kathleen Howard as Mrs. Biss-on-AY and Baby LeRoy in his usual role as a devil child, it’s a perfect film for anyone who’s ever had to pry themselves mentally or physically out of a trash can, or just wants to laugh at someone else doing it. Which is to say, all of us! (RL)
68 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from Universal
Preceded by: W.C. Fields in “The Dentist” (Leslie Pierce, 1932) – 22 min – 16mm