I'm only suggesting

I decided to continue making my way through the W.C. Fields box set I picked up some time back, and this time out watched You're Telling Me! (the exclamation point is in the title, as you can see).

Fields plays Sam Bisbee, an inventor who doesn't have the best of home lives, as he's got a wife (Louise Carter) who is hen-pecking him to death. He's also got an adult daughter Pauline (Joan Marsh) who is in love with young Bob Murchison (Buster Crabbe, who as you can see is billed with his real name and nickname). The only problem is that the Murchisons are rich and the Bisbees are from the "other side of the tracks" (the tracks joke is literally made several times), and Mrs. Murchison (Kathleen Howard) doesn't approve of the wedding at all, even threatening to disinherit Bob.

Bisbee sees his chance to make good with one of his inventions, a puncture-proof tire, a pretty big thing in those less technically advanced days. He gets an offer to demonstrate the tire, but he parks in a no-parking zone and the car gets moved, so when he goes to do the demonstration, he does it on the wrong car, sedans apparently all looking alike in the mid 1930s. He's lost his car and his hopes at his daughter's happiness, so on the train home, he contemplates suicide.

However, he eventually decided against it and while walking back to his seat, he walks into a compartment that the Princess Lescaboura (Adrienne Ames) is using with her entourage, she being on a goodwill tour of America. She's deeply unhappy that she wasn't able to marry the man she wanted, so she's not certain what to do with her life. Bisbee, not knowing she's a princess, talks her out of any thoughts of suicide, and suggests that the only thing that could help his daughter is a fairy princess. Lescaboura being a princess, you can put two and two together....

It might be a surprise, but I'd consider You're Telling Me one of the better Fields movies I've seen, which I think has to with its having a pretty coherent plot. That, and the plot is surprisingly dark for Fields; the idea of a Fields character legitimately contemplating suicide was something I certainly hadn't expected. Fields and Ames do legitimately well in their scene together in the train compartment. Of course, there's a lot of comedy, too. The two big sequences bookended the film and to me were the weakest part of the movie, largely because they didn't drive the plot. In between, there's some of the oddball inventions, and Fields with an ostrich on a leash.

My copy of You're Telling Me! is on a cheap box set Universal put out, and even if the movie was medicore you couldn't beat it for the price.