My Little Chickadee

My Little Chickadee. 1940 Universal Pictures.
Starring: Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran, Ruth Donnelly, Margaret Hamilton, Donald Meek
Director: Edward F. Cline
Part of the first W.C. Fields Comedy Collection, or you can find it on Mae West: The Glamour Collection.

This one was written by Mae West, with W.C. Fields contributing an extended scene set in a bar. Universal opted to give them equal screenplay credit, trying to please all involved, but this angered West, who opted not to act again with Fields.

Mae West is Flower Belle Lee, a singer from Chicago traveling west to visit relatives when she gets mixed up in a stagecoach robbery with a masked bandit, who takes an interest in Flower Belle. He takes the singer with her, and after the stagecoach's other occupants report the crime upon arriving in a town called Little Bend, Flower Belle casually strolls into town. After the masked bandit shows up at the home of her Aunt Lou (Donnelly) and Uncle John (Willard Robertson) to visit Flower Belle, Mrs. Gideon (Hamilton), who was also on the stagecoach, reports this to the police. After being run up before the judge, Flower Belle is run out of town.

Flower Belle boards a train headed to Greasewood City, and it makes an unscheduled stop to pick up a conman named Cuthbert J. Twillie (Fields). Shortly thereafter, hostile Indians attack the train, and Flower Belle easily picks them off with two pistols. Flower Belle has no use for Twillie until she sees a stash of money in his possessions, and she decides to play up to him, believing him to be rich. The two of them have an impromptu wedding, officiated over by a gambler who looks like a minister.

At Greasewood City, Twillie is made sheriff by the saloon owner and town boss Jeff Badger (Calleia), who has ulterior motives. Flower Belle attracts attention from just about every male in town, which includes a returning masked bandit. Twillie enters Flower Belle's hotel room one night disguised as the bandit, and after being accused of the bandit, finds himself ready to hang. Flower Belle rescues him, having put two and two together, and realizing that Twillie was the bandit all along.

Recommended movie.