From Andy’s Collection:It’s a Gift (1934)

68 min. Starring W.C. Fields. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod.

Andy Warhol, an obsessive collector, owned many films by various directors – some in 16mm, some on VHS video.  In this ongoing, occasional series, screenings of this material will give some insight into the eclectic tastes and interests of this artist who was the ultimate watcher of everything.

This movie is often regarded as the best of W.C. Fields, who is reported to have written or improvised all of his own dialogue and material, much of it based on his early Ziegfeld Follies vaudeville sketches. Fields plays an underdog New Jersey shopkeeper beset by a nagging wife, snotty kid, cranky customers, noisy neighbors, and other persistent annoyances of life.  Planning to overcome these by going to California to find a better life, he buys an orange grove.  It’s needless to say that his mishaps only get worse, all bemoaned by Fields in his classic incomparable delivery.