You're Telling Me!

You're Telling Me! 1934 Paramount Pictures; owned and distributed to DVD by Universal Pictures.
Starring: W.C. Fields, Joan Marsh, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Louise Carter, Adrienne Ames, Kathleen Howard, George Irving
Director: Erle C. Kenton
Part of the W.C. Fields Comedy Collection, Volume 2 at Amazon.

The Great Man is a local optometrist and amateur inventor named Sam Bisbee. His daughter Pauline (Marsh) is in love with Bob Murchison (Crabbe), but his upper-class mother (Howard) wants nothing at all to do with Sam Bisbee. Even Sam's wife Bessie (Carter) doesn't hide her embarrassment at his insistance of being himself rather than putting on airs.

After a failed demonstration of his latest gadget, puncture-proof tires involving police intervention, Busbee contemplates suicide on a train ride home, but decides against it. He meets a woman (Ames) who he mistakenly believes is about to commit suicide herself, so Sam tries "talking her out of it" by telling her his own problems. Busbee doesn't realize that the woman is Princess Lescaboura, a royal visitor to the United States. Moved by Sam's story, she secretly decides to help him.

The next day, Sam's home town is shocked to hear that Princess Lescaboura is coming to town; specifically to see Sam. Sam immediately goes from clown to toast of the town, and everyone treats him with respect, including Mrs. Murchison. Thinking that this is just a sham dreamed up by the "princess", Sam quietly congratulates her.

Sam is the guest of honor at the opening of a new golf course, giving Fields the chance to reprise the routine in an earlier short film of his, The Golf Specialist. The president from the tire company arrives, having found Sam's puncture-proof tires (his car had been towed earlier, and he ended up shooting the tires of a police car instead), tested them, and they now want to do business with him. The president and Princess Lescaboura haggle over Sam's services until the tire company offers him one million dollars and a royalty on every tire sold, which he accepts.

The Busbees are now wealthy and respected, and Pauline marries Bob. However, Sam is still oblivious to the fact that his benefactor really is a princess.

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