The Bank Dick
| The Bank Dick | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Edward F. Cline |
| Written by | Mahatma Kane Jeeves (W. C. Fields) |
| Starring | W. C. Fields |
| Music by | Charles Previn |
| Cinematography | Milton R. Krasner |
| Edited by | Arthur Hilton |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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72 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Bank Dick (released as The Bank Detective in the United Kingdom) is a 1940 comedy film. Set in Lompoc, California, W. C. Fields plays a character named Egbert Sousé who trips a bank robber and ends up a security guard as a result. The character is a drunk who must repeatedly remind people in exasperation that his name is pronounced "Sousé – accent grave [sic] over the 'e'!", because people keep calling him "Souse" (slang for drunkard). In addition to bank and family scenes, it features Fields pretending to be a film director and ends in a chaotic car chase. The Bank Dick is considered a classic of his work, incorporating his usual persona as a drunken henpecked husband with a shrewish wife, disapproving mother-in-law, and savage children.
The film was written by Fields, using the alias Mahatma Kane Jeeves (derived from the Broadway drawing-room comedy cliche, "My hat, my cane, Jeeves!"), and directed by Edward F. Cline. Shemp Howard, one of the Three Stooges, plays a bartender.
In 1992, The Bank Dick was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Hard-drinking family-man Egbert Sous'e's strained relations with his family is shown by wife & mother-in-law giving him lip about his drinking, smoking, and taking money out of his younger daughter's bank. When he tries to brain his younger daughter with a concrete urn, he is interrupted by his older daughter introducing him to her fiance,Og Oggilby. He makes a crack about Og's name.
Egbert Sousé talks his way into a temporary job directing a movie-shoot. While on his lunch break, he accidentally thwarts an attempted bank robbery from the bank where his prospective son-in-law, Og, has a job as a teller. The grateful bank president gives Sousé a job as a bank-detective. Sousé convinces Og to steal five hundred dollars from the bank to invest in stock in a questionable mining company. Og hopes to return the money to the bank four days later, when he expects to receive his annual bonus, but the bank examiner, One J. Pinkerton Snoopington, shows up the day Og steals the money, and says he intends to audit the bank immediately. Sousé invites him to a saloon and nobbles him with knockout drops. However, although Snoopington is very ill, he is nonetheless determined to proceed with the audit.
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