Directed by: Clyde Bruckman

Starring: W. C. Fields, Rosemary Theby, George Chandler, Richard Cramer, Ernie Alexander

STORY

Somewhere in the frozen wilderness of Canada's Yukon lives the Snavely family, surrounded by snow, isolation and enough melodrama to fill several lifetimes.

Mr. Snavely, played by the incomparable W. C. Fields, lives with his wife in their remote cabin while mourning the fate of their son Chester, who left home for the temptations of the big city.

And what caused Chester's downfall?

One fatal glass of beer.

At least that's the story.

Snavely solemnly recounts the terrible warning of what can happen when an innocent young man takes that first sip. Chester ignored his father's advice, tasted the forbidden beverage and promptly descended into a life of crime and disgrace.

Now Chester is coming home.

After serving time in prison, the supposedly ruined young man returns to his parents and the frozen wilderness, giving the Snavely family an opportunity for a reunion worthy of the grandest stage melodrama.

Except nothing in The Fatal Glass of Beer is meant to be taken seriously.

Fields and director Clyde Bruckman are gleefully parodying the overwrought morality plays and melodramas that warned audiences about the terrible consequences of alcohol, vice and leaving the safety of home. Every emotion is exaggerated. Every tragedy is treated as monumental. Every cliché is pushed until it becomes ridiculous.

And then there's the snow.

Again and again, Snavely opens the cabin door, looks outside and announces:

"It's not a fit night out for man nor beast!"

And again and again, a handful of snow smacks him directly in the face.

The joke is obvious.

You know it's coming.

And somehow it gets funnier every time.

At barely twenty minutes, The Fatal Glass of Beer is pure W. C. Fields — absurd, dry, strange, wonderfully quotable and completely willing to destroy every sentimental convention it can find.

The film isn't really warning us about beer.

It's making fun of every movie, play and temperance lecture that ever did.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
FIRST — IT'S ACTUALLY 1933

Despite copies and listings that sometimes identify The Fatal Glass of Beer as a 1931 film, the W. C. Fields short was produced and released in 1933.

It was one of several comedy shorts Fields made for producer Mack Sennett during a remarkable period when one of America's greatest stage comedians was transforming himself into one of Hollywood's most distinctive comic stars.

"IT AIN'T A FIT NIGHT OUT FOR MAN NOR BEAST!"

This is the line everybody remembers.

Fields repeatedly looks out into the miserable Yukon weather and declares that it isn't a fit night out for man nor beast.

Then comes the snow.

The repetition is the joke. Fields and director Clyde Bruckman let the audience know exactly what's coming and then keep returning to it anyway.

It became one of the most famous routines associated with the film and one of those wonderful examples of Fields turning anticipation itself into comedy.

THE SNOWBALL GAG WAS DELIBERATELY RIDICULOUS

Nobody watching the movie is supposed to believe that the snow is accidentally hitting Fields.

That's precisely why the gag works.

The artificiality becomes part of the joke. Fields is parodying not only melodrama but the very conventions of filmmaking and theatrical performance.

Every time he approaches that door, the audience knows the universe is waiting to hit him in the face again.

And Fields behaves as though this remains a completely unexpected outrage.

W. C. FIELDS TAKES ON TEMPERANCE

The title itself parodies the old temperance melodrama tradition in which one drink could supposedly begin an inevitable descent into drunkenness, crime, disgrace and ruin.

Chester's entire downfall is blamed on his first glass of beer.

Fields takes that moralistic premise and stretches it into absurdity, creating a wonderfully sarcastic attack on the idea that human behavior can be reduced to such simplistic lessons.

A PARODY OF THE OLD-FASHIONED MELODRAMA

The comedy works especially well when you understand what Fields was attacking.

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century audiences were extremely familiar with melodramas involving innocent children leaving home, falling into temptation, disgracing their families and eventually returning for an emotional reunion.

The Fatal Glass of Beer takes virtually every one of those conventions and turns it upside down.

The tearful reunion?

Ridiculous.

The moral lesson?

Ridiculous.

The noble frontier family?

Definitely ridiculous.

Fields isn't performing a melodrama.

He's dismantling one.

MACK SENNETT WAS BEHIND IT

The film was produced by legendary comedy pioneer Mack Sennett, one of the most important figures in early screen comedy.

Sennett had founded Keystone Studios and helped develop the careers of an extraordinary number of silent-film comedians, including Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and the performers associated with the famous Keystone Cops.

By the time Fields worked with him, Sennett had already helped shape the language of movie comedy.

Putting W. C. Fields together with Mack Sennett meant combining two generations of American comic history.

CLYDE BRUCKMAN KNEW COMEDY

Director Clyde Bruckman had an extraordinary comedy résumé.

He worked with some of the greatest comedians in movie history, including Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges.

Bruckman's understanding of visual comedy was particularly valuable with Fields, whose humor could move effortlessly between verbal wit and perfectly timed physical absurdity.

FIELDS WAS ALREADY A LEGEND BEFORE HOLLYWOOD

W. C. Fields didn't need movies to make him famous.

Long before becoming a screen star, Fields had built an extraordinary career in vaudeville and on Broadway. He began as a brilliant comedy juggler and eventually developed the distinctive comic personality audiences still recognize today.

By the time of The Fatal Glass of Beer, Hollywood wasn't discovering an unknown comedian.

It was figuring out how to capture an established American comic genius on film.

THE YUKON WASN'T EXACTLY THE YUKON

Fields' frozen Canadian wilderness isn't interested in documentary realism.

The exaggerated cabin, snow and frontier atmosphere are part of the parody. This is the Yukon as imagined by old melodramas and adventure stories — a perfect environment for Fields to mock heroic frontier clichés.

The artificiality only makes the film funnier.

AINTOID: "MAHATMA KANE JEEVES"

At one point Fields calls for his dog with the wonderfully absurd phrase:

"Mahatma Kane Jeeves!"

It became so closely associated with Fields that years later he used Mahatma Kane Jeeves as one of his famous comic pseudonyms.

Say it aloud.

"My hat, my cane, Jeeves."

That's W. C. Fields.

AINTOID: FIELDS LOVED STRANGE NAMES

Fields became famous for bizarre character names and equally bizarre pseudonyms.

Over his career audiences encountered names such as Egbert Sousé, Ambrose Wolfinger, Larson E. Whipsnade and Professor Eustace McGargle.

Even the family name here — Snavely — sounds exactly like it belongs inside the strange comic universe of W. C. Fields.

Language itself was one of his favorite toys.

AINTOID: ONE OF FOUR SENNETT SHORTS

The Fatal Glass of Beer belongs to the celebrated group of short comedies Fields made for Mack Sennett in 1932 and 1933.

The others include The Dentist, The Pharmacist and The Barber Shop.

These shorts helped establish the screen version of Fields that audiences would soon see in feature films — irritable, pompous, suspicious, verbally brilliant and forever surrounded by a world apparently designed specifically to annoy him.

AINTOID: THE JOKE IS THAT EVERYONE PLAYS IT STRAIGHT

One of the smartest things about The Fatal Glass of Beer is how seriously the characters behave.

Fields doesn't constantly wink at the audience.

The characters approach Chester's terrible downfall, the family's suffering and the frozen wilderness with the gravity of a genuine tragedy.

That's exactly what makes it funny.

The more seriously everyone treats the ridiculous situation, the better the parody becomes.

AINTOID: SHORT FILM, HUGE COMEDY LEGACY

The movie lasts only about twenty minutes.

Yet nearly a century later, people still quote it.

That's an extraordinary achievement for a little two-reel comedy made in 1933.

No elaborate spectacle.

No enormous cast.

No epic running time.

Just W. C. Fields, a cabin, a spectacularly silly melodrama and some extremely well-timed snow.

AINTOID: THE OFFICIAL RELEASE

The Fatal Glass of Beer was released in the United States on March 3, 1933.

So although the film is sometimes mislabeled 1931, the correct year for the W. C. Fields comedy is 1933.

DATE RELEASED

March 3, 1933

COUNTRY RELEASED

United States