Hacker Cinema
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
1939 · Film · 76 min
Directed by Edward F. Cline, George Marshall
Fields plays "Larsen E. Whipsnade", the owner of a shady carnival that is constantly on the run from the law. Whipsnade is struggling to keep a step ahead of foreclosure, and clearly not paying his performers, including Bergen and McCarthy, who try to coax money out of him, or in McCarthy's case, steal some outright.
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3 comments on Hacker News
It’s ironic, isn’t it? The people who fall for this scam aren’t the honest ones. It’s the greedy and dishonest who get caught :D
Hence the old saying (and W. C. Fields movie title): You can't cheat an honest man.
W.C. Fields was a comedic genius, and brilliantly hid a lot of biting satire in overly obvious slapstick. He is so unfortunately forgotten today. The film "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" is 83 years old, and people still don't know what he was saying. I suspect he would have found it hilarious that his line is so thoroughly misunderstood.
Well, there is the classic W.C. Fields movie, "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man". It opens with a con where a cashier pretends to be distracted and acts like he is overcounting the change for a customer, who grabs the money and runs. But the ruse is to cover up the fact that the cashier actually short-changed the customer, who, if he had tried to protect the cashier from giving him too much change, would not have been cheated.