comedy film
starring W.C. Fields. Fields also wrote the original story, under the pseudonym "Otis Criblecoblis". Fields plays himself, searching for a chance to promote a surreal screenplay he has written, whose several framed sequences form the film's center.
The title is derived from lines from two earlier films. In Poppy (1936), he tells his daughter, "If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice: Never give a sucker an even break!" In You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
(1939), he tells a customer that his grandfather's last words, "just before they sprung the trap" were, "You can't cheat an honest man; never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump."
This was Fields's last starring film.
[to a pretty girl] Hi ya tootie-pie. Everything under control? [the girl's boyfriend punches him] All five of 'em hit me at once.
[after a waitress pours water in his lap] No extra charge for the cold shower I hope.
I don't know why I ever come in here - The flies get the best of everything.
[about a large Turkish passenger] Do you travel as one person or do you get a party rate of ten?
[offering a cure for insomnia] Get plenty of sleep. That's what the doctor told me.
[after falling from a plane, and landing on a mattress] Why didn't I think of that parachute? What a bump!
[to Gloria Jean] Don't you want to live in this beautiful nest, have a personal maid, wear a diaphanous gown, and eat regularly?
I feel as though somebody stepped on my tongue with muddy feet.
There's no sense arguing with a woman.
Lucky we didn't have an accident...We'd never have made it.