The parts of the movie that feature W.C. Fields are hilarious, but I've never quite gotten the appeal of Mae West, and I still don't (although a gay co-worker told me that she was his favorite actor, and I guess I could understand it in that particular instance, as West always resembled a truck driver in drag). Obviously, acting styles were very different in the days this picture was made, but West drawls out her "punch line" and then stands around for several seconds, looking up into the air and rotating her hips, as if she can imagine the movie theatre audience laughing out loud. Me? I wasn't laughing.
Supposedly, the relationship between Fields and West was respectful but guarded, as each expected the other one to try and hog the limelight. In my opinion, though, it was an uneven match, as Fields was a comedic genius, and West's appeal was extremely limited. An enjoyable enough picture, I suppose, but not really a classic.
Side note: When I was in L.A. years ago, I tried to get a photo of W.C.'s gravesite, but he's buried inside one of Forest Lawn's (the Glendale location) Mausoleums, and the staff there allows no one to enter who isn't a family member, much less take a photograph. That policy always seemed ridiculous to me--- this was a cemetery, after all, not Fort Knox--- but I doubt it's gotten any easier since Michael Jackson has been buried there. I was lucky enough to get photographs of Humphrey Bogart's last resting spot, as well as Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Larry Fine, and Chico Marx. But W.C., Lon Chaney Sr., Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow I had no luck with.
Mae West is buried in an enormous Mausoleum on the Brooklyn-Queens border (there are numerous cemeteries in that area, and I believe the one she is buried in is called Cypress Hills). It's not a great location, and many of the windows in the Mausoleum had been broken by vandals over the years. A friend and I went there years ago, and you had to ring a buzzer to gain admittance to the mausoleum. A guy came riding up in a car, unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and showed us West's final resting place. While we took pictures, the guy who admitted us...he came across like a grandson of Leo Gorcey...kept saying, "Why ya wanna take pictures? It ain't nothin' but a slab! A piece a stone! Why ya wanna take a picture of a stone with some words carved in it? Hah? I don't get it!" When we had finished, he locked the place up again and rode away muttering, "Stones! Nuttin' but stones!"
