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.