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 The Dentist is W.C. Fields' first of four 20
minute comedy shorts produced by Mack Sennett, which ranks one of his best
reproduced vaudeville comedy supplements ever put on film. Raunchy and
very naughty, this comedy short pulls no punches, which is why this one has
stood up well among Fields' other short subjects. As in the best of
Fields' domestic comedies, he has a dysfunctional family, but in this case he
the dysfunctional one, an absent-minded father (possibly a widower since there
is no wife present) with a grown daughter (Marjorie "Babe" Kane) in love with
Arthur, the ice man (Harry Bowen).
The Dentist begins at home where the Dentist (W.C. Fields) is reading his
newspaper at the breakfast table while his daughter tries to put in a big chunk
of ice into the ice box. He gets a telephone call from Charlie Frobisher
(Bud Jamison) to come out for a game of golf. The first half of the comedy
short focuses on Fields' trials and tribulations in trying to win his hand of
golf, ending in frustration as he throws his caddy (Bobby Dunn) into the pond,
along with his golf clubs and bags.
The second half fades into the dental office where
the dentist, with the assistance of his nurse (Zedna Farley), must encounter his
scheduled appointments with numerous character patients, including a screaming
woman with a toothache who had been bitten in the ankle by a dog. "It's
fortunate it wasn't a Newfoundland dog that bit you," quips Fields as he views
her while she bends down to show him her scar; followed by a male patient in the
waiting room who quietly walks out after hearing some screams; and highlighted
by another woman patient (Elise Cavanna) who must submit to the drill followed
by the dentist trying to yank the bad tooth out of her mouth as she is being
dragged about with her bad tooth still attached to the dentist's pliers.
At the same time, his daughter, who is locked in her bedroom upstairs by her
father so she doesn't run away and marry the ice man, stubbornly stamps her feet
repeatedly on the floor, causing the plaster from the ceiling to fall into the
patient's open mouth. In spite of his unsympathetic nature, this dentist
continues to acquire more patients as well as patience.
A crude comedy in every sense of the word, but one that has become famous over
the years and worth reviewing because of it. Even Fields' spoken dialogue,
which he had written, includes lines such as, "Oh, the hell with her," which he
tells his nurse after listening to a lady patient groaning in pain with her
toothache. Even during the golf game earlier in the story, Fields nearly tells
his caddy what he can do with the rule book. One of the most famous lines,
however, has Fields asking his patient, "Have you ever had this tooth pulled
before?" Dialogue and scenes like these must have caused a furor with the
censors at the time of its release, especially the use of that motory sounding
drill, which gets the biggest laughs from its viewers.
Also in the cast are: Billy Bletcher as the Russian patient; Dorothy Granger as
Miss Peppitone; and Emma Tansey as the old lady at the golf course, among
others.
For many years, The Dentist had become a public domain title, and
distributed on video cassette through various distributors, often featured with
two other WC Fields shorts as The Golf Specialist (RKO, 1930) and The
Fatal Glass of Beer (1933). These have also been a favorite on
commercial and cable television as fillers between feature films during the late
night hours. Recently, all of Fields' sound comedy shorts have been
restored to better picture and sound quality, and these clearer prints were
packaged through Public Media Home Vision Video in the late 1990s. While
it's great to see these comedy gems in sharp focus, along with other add-ons such
as Fields' ten minute silent short, Pool Sharks (1915), The Pharmacist
(1933), and
The Barber Shop (1933), the only disappointment in turn
happens to be The Dentist. The reason being that although restored,
The Dentist not only includes new background music, which is nowhere to
be heard during the storyline in its original print, except for during the
opening and closing credits, but the movie itself has been slightly shortened
with the raunchy dialogue substituted by different lines or covered up by
intrusive underscoring, which takes away from the film's original intent.
At present, the censored and cleaned up print, possibly from a reissue after the
production code had taken effect, is the one used when shown on American Movie
Classics in 2000, and on Turner Classic Movies in June 2001 when the station
honored
W.C. Fields as its "star of the month." To see The Dentist
uncensored and in its full glory, it would be best to locate an older video copy
dating back to the 1980s. Nonetheless, with the exception of its weak
ending, the uncensored version to The Dentist ranks the best of the four
Fields/Sennett comedy shorts for Paramount, and should be seen to be believed. |
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