Rent My Little Chickadee (aka The Lady and the Bandit) Online DVD & Blu-ray Rental

Rent My Little Chickadee (1940)

3.5 of 5 from 58 ratings
1h 20min
  • General info
  • Available formats
Synopsis:
Having been revealed as the lover of the 'Masked Bandit', Flower Belle Lee (Mae West) seeks respectability in a bogus marriage to the seemingly wealthy Cuthbert J. Twillie (Fields). They check into a hotel where Flower Belle, insisting on separate rooms, discovers Twillie's bankroll to be worthless. She charms saloon-owner Jeff Badger (Joseph Calleia) who, to dispose of Twillie, has him appointed Sheriff. Flower Belle also attracts newspaperman Wayne Carter (Dick Foran), while continuing to see the Masked Bandit. Twillie masquerades as the bandit, is taken for the real thing and faces hanging.
Actors:
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Directors:
Producers:
Lester Cowan, Jack J. Gross
Writers:
Mae West, W.C. Fields
Aka:
The Lady and the Bandit
Studio:
Universal Pictures
Genres:
Action & Adventure, Classics, Comedy
Collections:
Paramount's Laughing Thirties, A Brief History of Film..., Top 10 Films About Trains: Westerns and War Movies, Top Films
BBFC:
Release Date:
05/05/2008
Run Time:
80 minutes
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Subtitles:
English Hard of Hearing
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Full Screen 1.33:1 / 4:3
Colour:
B & W
BBFC:
Release Date:
13/12/2021
Run Time:
84 minutes
Languages:
English LPCM Mono
Subtitles:
English Hard of Hearing
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Full Screen 1.37:1
Colour:
B & W
BLU-RAY Regions:
B
Bonus:
  • Mae West (1982): television movie biopic directed by Lee Philips, starring Ann Jillian as West, and co-starring James Brolin, Piper Laurie, and Roddy McDowall
  • Mae West at UCLA (1971): archival audio recording of the great performer in conversation at the University of California, Los Angeles
  • Appreciation of 'My Little Chickadee' with Dr Harriet Fields, granddaughter of W C Fields (2021)
  • Appreciations by academic and film historian Lucy Bolton and critic and author Christina Newland of West's unique star persona (2021)
  • Three Walter Lantz animations featuring caricatures of West and W C Fields: She Done Him Right (1933), The Merry Old Soul (1933), and Hollywood Bowl (1939)
  • Original Theatrical Trailer
  • Image Galleries
  • World and UK premieres on Blu-ray

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Reviews (1) of My Little Chickadee

Double Act. - My Little Chickadee review by Steve

Spoiler Alert
30/05/2025

By 1940, Mae West’s popularity was in decline, another victim of the production code. WC Fields was still somewhere near his peak, but clearly not in a good place physically. And apparently they were not on friendly terms… but they gave each other a late career box office boost in this sassy comedy-western.

Mae scores top billing as the risqué blonde courted by a masked bandit. She pretends to marry Fields, who (naturally) plays an alcoholic, libidinous conman. They co-wrote the screenplay which is funny and full of the sketches and gags they had polished since vaudeville.

My favourite belongs to Fields: ‘During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days’. They make an ideal double act, though Mae is scarcely an actor; she sashays through the role, intimately intoning her innuendoes.

That was her schtick and it’s immortal, but not very cinematic. Fields is a more diverse performer and while his scenes are funny, they have pathos and humanity. This is a pantomime yet there is also the sadness of the grotesque; the burlesque queen and the rogue are now old, but unable to change.

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