Six of a Kind

Comedy can date more rapidly than drama, generally. Certainly, the comedy of Burns and Allen (while still unique) is of its era. In fact, they perfected their act in their 50s TV series -- which is still delightful if you can find it.

But the value of "Six of a Kind" is more an artifact of particular players forever captured on film. Mary Boland is always excellent and she's wonderful here (but at her best a few years later in "The Women"). Charlie Ruggles essentially played the same role all his career and nobody plays Charlie Ruggles better. Alison Skipworth is barely utilized at all, here.

It's the preservation of W.C. Fields' immortal "Honest John" routine from vaudeville that earns "Six of a Kind" its place in film history. It's difficult to imagine how this routine worked from the distance of a stage. But on film it's a miracle of comic construction, timing, delivery and skill (yes he actually ricochets that billiard ball off the far end of the table where it bounces back and hits his forehead). The routine is hypnotic and hysterical, and perfectly pitched for film.

I watched Six of a Kind for W.C. Fields - he's only in it for around 10 minutes and has one long scene, the infamous pool sequence he made famous in vaudeville, and several other great moments. The reamaining 55 minutes are also delightful, thankfully, mostly due to the hilarious Charlie Ruggles as the bumbling banker J. Pinkham Whinney. He is everyone's foil. He stutters and stumbles about to our pleasure. Also, his comedy partner, Mary Boland plays his wife, Flora. Joining in the proceedings are George Burns and Gracie Allen. Boland is particularly funny near the beginning and near the end, but Gracie and Ruggles use up most of the picture. Gracie's funny, quite, but she can also get tiring. And poor George Burns has absolutely nothing to do except repeat Gracie all the time. I don't remember laughing at him once (although he has one great scene with Ruggles, where Ruggles tries desperately to get George to take Gracie and leave him and his wife alone for a while, and one with Fields, where he asks Fields to sell him a sweater; that bit is exclusively Fields', though). The situation is constantly funny: the Whinneys are going to drive to California, but to help them with expenses, George and Gracie are recruited. 8/10.

The plot's pretty lame, George and Gracie are okay (a few shining moments, but nothing spectacular), and the jokes aren't all that outstanding, but there is a five minute sequence with W.C. Fields attempting to shoot pool that is one of the funniest five minutes ever put to celluloid. I howled at this scene as I have rarely howled at anything in my life. The entire movie is worth a watch for this scene alone.

But George and Gracie's are not among them. The movie is fun and the pool table scene with WC Fields has to be among the funniest I have ever seen but Gracie and George are more irritating than comical in their roles, partly from script deficiency and partly from their interpretation. I gave it a 7 out of 10 for the rest of the cast, WC is a treasure of comedic timing and energy in this one.

The idea in this is to take three comedy teams and combine them in one movie. The gimmick is that these represent three radically different types of humor. What happens usually is people find some things funny and ignore the others. Scan through these IMDb comments and you will see grace fall on different players in this.

The Fields poolplaying routine is priceless. I've seen it before but cannot recall where. But its inserted into this project without reference to anything else. Incidentally, it works as well as it does because there is a watcher in the frame, a deadpan face that is every bit as valuable and practiced as the actor.

That's indicative of how the experiment fails as a whole. If you know "Mad Mad Mad World," you'll know a successful example where comedic methods actually do bump up against each other and generate something resonant, rich, higher.

In this case however, the comedic models take turns. Isn't as effective.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.