By Edward F. Cline, 1940.
Starring Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran, W.C. Fields, Margaret Hamilton, George Moran, Mae West.
Rating: 7.5/10, 6.5/10.
"She Done Him Wrong" was the first Mae West movie I ever saw, and I fell instantly in love. A few days later, I watched "My Little Chickadee," and it was as if the magic was gone.
OK, not gone. I enjoyed the hell out of this movie, too. Not nearly as much, though. Perhaps it was the addition of W.C. Fields that I didn’t like—Fields is hilarious, but I’m not sure how well the two mix. Or perhaps two doses of Mae West in a week is one dose too much, which is entirely possible. Or maybe it was the fact that this movie, at an hour and a half, was half an hour longer than "She Done Him Wrong," and the longer time was just not flattering to the style. Or...or maybe this movie wasn’t as good. Or maybe it was the nasty things with Indians upsetting me (it’s a Western). Or maybe it’s the fact that just the day before I’d seen a different Western comedy from the same year—that being "The Marx Brothers Go West." It was probably a little bit of all of them.
Regardless, "My Little Chickadee" finds both Mae West and W.C. Fields at the tops of their games. Consider this line, from Mae: "I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it." Classic Mae West, and brilliant, too. Think about the innocuous word "generally," in that line, and think about how much less interesting the line would be without it.
There are other great gags, too—a confusing (in the sense of "how in the hell did they think of that?") sequence with a goat, the several appearances of Margaret Hamilton (best known as the Wicked Witch of the West) as a local busybody, often accompanied by the same music that did so in The Wizard Of Oz.
Even so, though, I couldn’t fully enjoy this film, certainly not the way I did "She Done Him Wrong." I heartily recommend both films to anyone who doesn’t know Mae West at all, but I’d say the other is the way to go if there’s a choice.
By the way, congratulations on reading my 100th movie review!