MY LITTLE CHICKADEE ***1/2
IDEA: After being driven out of town for not being "respectable" enough, a woman works toward her redemption by marrying a braggadocios conman.
BLURB: It may not be as naughty as her pre-Code work, but My Little Chickadee is pound-for-pound one of the funniest films in the Mae West catalogue. Taking elements of the Western milieux from Goin’ to Town and Klondike Annie, Edward F. Cline’s film sets the actress’s famous wanton loucheness against the moral hypocrisy of 19th-century settlers, whose far graver dissolution makes West’s Flower Belle Lee seem a saint in comparison. Of all the unscrupulous characters, nobody is more proudly so than W. C. Fields’ Cuthbert J. Twillie, a blowzy, drunken grifter who lumbers through the film boasting of his murderous exploits, abusing his Indigenous assistant, and scamming anyone in sight. That such a loathsome galoot is almost instantly appointed sheriff says all one needs to know about the ostensible civility of white colonial society. Despite the casual racism that still slips through - this is a 1940 Hollywood Western, after all - My Little Chickadee is quite pointed in its lampooning of phony “law and order” morality, as well as the intended role of marriage to chasten and control women. West and Fields wield their signature outsize personas like comedic steamrollers, memorably clashing as they issue bon mots with reliable, hilarious dexterity. The final line - a reversal of Fields’ patronizing terms of endearment followed by West’s defiantly sashaying hips - is the perfectly sassy capper.
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