Phineas V. Lambert

 Contained within my W.C. Fields box set is If I Had A Million, a Depression-era portmanteau from 1932 in which various strangers are bequeathed a million dollars by an eccentric tycoon. Its tone varies wildly and on purpose. One recipient is a former vaudevillian played by Alison Skipworth who now runs a tea room, and spends her million on a series of cars which she and husband Fields proceed to total by slamming into motorists who've rubbed them up the wrong way.

Alison Skipworth and W. C Fields emerge from ther latest purchase.

 Another recipient is a convict about to be sent to the electric chair, who knows a better lawyer would have saved his life if he'd only been able to afford one, and can't now quite process that the cheque in his hand has arrived too late.

Noboby in this episode is credited.

 It's an extraordinary film, which might be why its owners never allowed the copyright to lapse, and why I can't now post the above clip on youtube. The episode follows directly on from Gene Raymond (above centre) being dragged screaming to the chair. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and starring Charles Laughton, it is at two minutes by far the shortest episode in the film, and it is perfect, and it knows it, and that's one of the things that makes it perfect.

Alison Skipworth again, painted by Frank Markham Skipworth (1854-1929)

 
 I received some charity out of the blue today myself, as I explain in the introduction to today's episode of Defoe, whose title "The New Undertaking" is not as obviously a pun as I'd like: