My Little Chickadee (1940) - film review

Saloon bar singer Flower Belle Lee is on her way to visit her relatives in Lower Bend when her stagecoach is halted by a masked bandit.  Having despoiled the coach, the bandit flees, taking Flower Belle with him.  When the singer turns up in town a few hours later, apparently unharmed, the townsfolk are suspicious.  Then, when she is seen having a midnight tryst with the bandit, Flower Belle is banished from the town for improper conduct.  On the train to Greasewood City, Flower Belle meets con artist Cuthbert J. Twillie and, seeing that he has bag filled with banknotes, agrees to marry him on the spot.   On arriving in Greasewood, the seductive Miss Lee immediately attracts the attention of the town’s big man, Jeff Badger.  To get rid of Twillie, Badger has him made sheriff of the town, knowing that no one stays in the post long before he is gunned down...

With both their careers on the wane by the late 1930s, Mae West and W.C. Fields each found a new lease of life when they agreed to appear in this raunchy comedy western, which proved to be a massive box office hit.  By all accounts, the two performers loathed each other, West’s dislike for her co-star being fuelled when Universal gave him equal credit for the screenplay which she had mostly written. West also disapproved of Fields’ heavy drinking.  There is no trace of this backstage antagonism on screen and the two stars work together surprisingly well, probably because they make such a stark contrast.  Whilst Fields trips over the scenery and has fun playing the loveable rogue, West flutters her eyelashes, drops the occasional double entendre soaked epigram and conquers every red blooded male within a ten mile radius.    

Among the film’s many highlights are the scene in which Fields gets into bed with a goat (thinking it is his other half in a fur coat) and another in which the shapely Miss West gets a class of schoolboys to stand to attention and explains the meaning of subtraction.  There’s very little to the plot and not all the jokes hit their mark but the sheer pleasure of seeing these two cinema icons on screen together makes us blind to these shortcomings.  It is a pity that this is the only time when Fields and West worked together. They could have been a sensational double act.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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