Six of a Kind

Six of a Kind (1934)

Six Comedy Aces in This Deck. The Cards are Scratched for Fun!

The Whinneys share expenses for their trip to Hollywood with George and Gracie and their great Dane. A clerk in Whinney's bank has put fifty thousand dollars in a suitcase, hoping to rob Whinney on the road, but instead Whinney takes another road and is himself arrested in Nevada.

Date of release
1934-02-09
TMDB
5.9 / 10 (14)
Runtime
1h 2m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Leo McCarey

Casting

Interesting facts

Six of a Kind is an American 1934 pre-Code comedy film directed by Leo McCarey and starring Charles Ruggles, Mary Boland, W.C. Fields, George Burns, and Gracie Allen.

Production

Director Leo McCarey, who had apprenticed as a third-assistant to filmmaker Tod Browning during the silent era, had also been schooled in managing Browning's alcohol consumption on the set. During the filming of Six of a Kind, McCarey had to contend with the notoriously hard-drinking W. C. Fields.

Fields registered a complaint with Paramount executives that his character, Sheriff "Honest John" Hoxley, did not appear until late into the screenplay, providing him with less material than the other players. McCarey placated Fields by allowing him to enlarge his role by ad-libbing. Thorton Delehanty of The New York Post noted the impact on W. C. Fields' performance:

Mr. Fields himself, if left to his own devices, can win our unqualified recommendation for any picture he is in, and the current film he is in provides him generously with elbow room."

Film historian Wes D. Gehring observes that "despite limited screen time, Fields steals the show."

Gehring adds that the struggle for primacy between McCarey and Fields during Six of a Kind may have prompted studios subsequently to "hire two directors for his pictures—one for the volatile comedian, and one for everyone else."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended