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The Old Fashioned Way, It’s a Gift,

The Bank Dick

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1934, 1940 / 71, 68, 72 minutes / 1.33:1

Starring W.C. Fields, Judith Allen, Kathleen Howard, Franklin Pangborn

Directed by William Beaudine, Norman McLeod, Edward Cline

W.C. Fields divided the country into factions—con men and those who would be conned. Throughout his career the comedian played both parts, the hustler and the rube, but America loves its rogues— it’s his card shark persona that decorates theater lobbies and postage stamps to this day. For such a divisive figure his audience was diverse—for better or worse, ticket buyers of all shapes and sizes saw something of themselves in dreamers and frauds like The Great McGonigle, Harold Bisonette, and Egbert Sousé, three of The Great Man’s most memorable incarnations. Thanks to a flurry of new Blu rays from Kino Lorber, those bigger-than-life characters are back and still tilting at windmills in The Old Fashioned Way,...

Okay, it's not earth-shaking, but So Young, So Bad (1950) kept me watching, sometimes goggling. It's the penultimate film of quota quickie master Bernard "Mad" Vorhaus, who made cheap and often very skilled work in the U.K., moved to the U.S. and made The Amazing Mr. X, a really stylish and entertaining thriller shot by the great John Alton, then made this, and got blacklisted the following year. He had already left the U.S., having seen the way the wind was blowing, but aside from shooting second unit on William Wyler's Roman Holiday, Vorhaus made only one more movie, an Italian flick called Finishing School which seems to be impossible to get at present. He went into house renovation back in the U.K. and did alright at it, I believe.So, one doesn't necessarily expect earth-shaking from a B-movie talent like Vorhaus, but he was capable of splendid work,...

Jean Rouverol Butler, an actress turned screenwriter who was blacklisted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and fled to Mexico with her husband, died Friday at the age of 100, according to a funeral notice posted by her family. Rouverol Butler’s introduction to showbiz came at an early age. Her mother, playwright Aurania (Ellerbeck) Rouverol, was the creator of Andy Hardy and many films for MGM. At 17, the young Rouverol was discovered in true Hollywood style while in a high school production. Her first professional acting role was as W.C. Fields’ daughter in “It’s a Gift” (1934), and...

Jean Rouverol, who played W.C. Fields' daughter in It's a Gift and then became a screenwriter who was blacklisted in Hollywood and driven with her husband to self-exile in Mexico, has died. She was 100.

Rouverol died Friday at a nursing home in Wingdale, N.Y., Rick Lertzman, co-author of the 2015 book The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In recent years, Rouverol had been living with actor Cliff Carpenter, who also had been blacklisted, in Pawling, N.Y. He died in 2014 at age 98.

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Above: Gregory La Cava (seated, right) directs Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert and a blonde Joan Bennett.

New artistic director Chris Fujiwara's Gregory La Cava retrospective at Edinburgh International Film Festival (six films, followed by six films at Edinburgh Filmhouse after the Festival) has brought to light several obscure titles from the great Hollywood director. For instance, I heard several of the lucky few crammed into the sweaty confines of Filmhouse 3 declare the silent comedy Feel My Pulse (1928) to be their favorite experience of the fest. But Private Worlds (1935), the penultimate film shown, is pretty fascinating too.

For one thing, it demonstrates La Cava's ability to work outside the screwball comedy genre for which he was most celebrated (although the film is far from humorless). The cast, which includes Claudette Colbert, Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea and Joan Bennett, could certainly have filled out a romantic comedy to perfection (Colbert and...