On Screen -- You're Telling Me! (1934)



Howard, Ames, and Fields


"You're Telling Me!" is a very funny film starring one of the greatest comedians ever, W.C. Fields.  "Samuel Bisbee" is an oddball inventor who likes to drink and lives in a small town.  He's married and has a beautiful daughter and like any parent, only wants the best for his little girl.  Up to this point his inventions (I'm not going to tell you what they are, you have to see them to believe them) have mostly been a flop, until he invents and tries to market a puncture-proof tire.

When his daughter decides she's going to marry into the richest family in town, the "Murchisons", what could go wrong?.  Everything, that's what.  Did I mention that Sam likes to drink?  Mrs. Murchison calls off the engagement because she doesn't think the Bisbees' are a worthy enough family to have her son marry into.  Sam, wanting to make a name for himself and make his family proud,  goes into the city to market his puncture-proof tire and of course things don't go exactly as planned.  Among other things, Sam then proceeds to shoot the tires off of a police car,  he attempts to commit suicide, and wrangles with an ostrich. 

On his way home from the city a despondent Sam meets "Marie" on the train and thinks that she's going to kill herself and proceeds to talk her out of it.  Marie who is actually a princess decides to repay Sams' kind gesture and pays a visit to the Bisbee household, much to the chagrin of the Murchisons' and just about everyone else in town.  Watch for Sam swinging a golf club at the opening of a new golf course.

W.C. Fields stars as "Sam Bisbee", Louise Carter as "Mrs. Bisbee", and a lovely Joan Marsh stars as Sams' daughter "Pauline".  Adrienne Ames is striking and sophisticated as "Princess Lescaboura", Kathleen Howard, a familiar face in Fields' films, costars as "Mrs. Murchison", with a post-Tarzan and pre-Flash Gordon Larry "Buster" Crabbe as "Bob Murchison".