The Fields of "The Dentist" is far from the Fields of The Bank Dick, but this distance is illustrative of Fields' acting ability. He didn't simply play the same character in each movie. His characters had some of the same basic traits, but Fields varied the amount of cynicism and ill-temperedness. With "The Dentist," the needle on the nastiness meter tilts toward the top of the scale. In "The Pharmacist," however, the meter drops to less than half, and with "The Barber Shop," it drops near the bottom of the scale.
As in The Bank Dick, "The Pharmacist" places Fields in a less-than-blissful domestic situation. He's henpecked by his wife and his daughter is a constant irritant (she attempts to eat the pet canary!), but he's relatively harmless. His profession forces some civility upon him. He waits on customers with a fair modicum of patience. But the customers are insufferable. One customer orders a box of cough drops and expects it to be delivered 18 miles outside of town. Another customer orders a stamp: "Gimme the one in the middle!" Fields gladly cuts the stamp out of the sheet.
"The Barber Shop" places Fields in a slow-paced environment with less troublesome customers. He seems to genuinely like his son, and they have a good relationship. But his wife is a different story entirely. He purses her lips and complains constantly. Fields submits to the daggers that her eyes cast. Any chaos in "The Barber Shop" is a result of Fields' ineptness rather than ill-temperedness or nastiness. "I didn't recognize your face when you first came in," he says to a customer. "No, it's all healed up since I was in here last," says the customer. This Fields is a blowhard who tells whopping fibs. Attempting to impress a manicurist with his manliness, he says, "I belong to the Bare-Handed Wolf Chokers Association." But when pressed he'll tell the truth: "I'm the worst barber in town!" Precisely because this Fields isn't as ill-tempered as the Fields of "The Dentist," everything works out in the end. As in The Bank Dick, he even becomes a hero (momentarily anyway).
The other three shorts on this DVD move away from domestic situations. In "The Golf Specialist," Fields is a huckster/con man on vacation at a resort. Still sporting the same mustache that he wore in his silent era shorts, Fields wears a sport coat and tie. This is one of the few Fields characters to dally with the upper classes. The short's most famous sequence finds Fields attempting to tee off on the first hole of a golf course, but he's constantly interrupted by his caddie. However, the comedy's first sequence contains some of the funniest material, as when Fields wrestles with a child over a box of money.
"The Fatal Glass of Beer" takes Fields away from civilization. Most of the film takes place in a wooden cabin far north in Canada. A snow storm rages outside: "It ain't a fit night out for man or beast," says Fields several times, and each time a blast of snow (clearly thrown by someone just off camera) smacks him in the face. The short's title comes from an absurdly melancholy and sentimental song that Fields plays upon his dulcimer. Created as a parody of folksy melodrama, "The Fatal Glass of Beer" bear little resemblance to Fields' other work.
"The Pool Sharks" is noteworthy for being the oldest short collected on this disc. Filmed in 1915, it features a surprisingly slim Fields wearing his then-trademark mustache. The action is much more manic here than you'll find in any of Fields' sound era shorts. The opening sequence features a bit of eye poking that would have made The Three Stooges jealous. The bulk of the screen time is devoted to a game of pool, with many of the jokes (uncharacteristically for a Fields' comedy) coming from stop-motion photography that shows the pool balls magically rolling around the table.
The video transfer for The Bank Dick is in excellent shape. It was created from a 35mm fine-grain master, and the sound was created from a 35mm optical track. The quality of the transfers for the comedies on W.C. Fields: 6 Short Films varies from film to film. Most were created from 35mm picture negatives. However, in some cases 35mm composite prints were also used. "The Dentist" was a victim of editing required by the Hays Code, so while the bulk of the film still exists in a decent 35mm composite duplicate picture negative and a 35mm optical soundtrack negative, two excised scenes (as well as the opening and closing credits) have been restored from lesser materials--a 16mm composite duplicate negative. The difference in the quality of the prints is immediately apparent, with the 16mm materials offering inferior contrast and sharpness. But it's great to be able to see "The Dentist" again in its entirety.
