Awards & Honors

In 1992, The Bank Dick was voted a place on the National Film Registry.

This film was named one of the 50 greatest comedies of all time by Premiere magazine in 2006.

Critic Reviews: THE BANK DICK

"Showmen whose customers are addicted to yearning for the W.C. Fields of other years and/or the comedies that were Keystones are now in a position to promise them satisfaction of both those yearnings in one and the same filmÉ.Press-shown at the Hillstreet Theatre, Los Angeles, a cinema serving metropolitan and transient trade, where the audience laughed itself to the verge of hysterics."
- W.R.W., Motion Picture Herald

"It's a crazy-quilt pattern aiming for laughs, and achieves the purpose adequately. Several times, Fields reaches into satirical pantomime reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin's best effort in that line during Mutual and Essanay days. Directorial guidance by Edward Cline (graduate of the Keystone Kop school) smacks over every gag line and situation to the fullest extent."
- Walt, Variety

"The Bank Dick is the long-waited reward for the followers of cob-nosed comedian W.C. Fields. The reward is the more rewarding because his recent pictures were impeded by the disconcerting presence of irrelevant comics. In this one, the Sultan of Sloth finally achieves the kind of delightful outrage which has made his fan list long and faithful. There are 74 minutes of almost clear Fields -- as much a one-man show as the fences of cinema formula will allow."
- Time

"Éold Bill has the time of his life -- growling, feinting, being official and forever preserving his fly-blown dignity. No one who fancies madcap comedy can reasonably afford to miss the spectacle of Bill creeping up and pouncing upon a kid with a cap-pistol in the bank; or of Bill solicitously attending a bank examiner whom he has fed a 'Michael Finn'; or of Bill at the wheel of the car in which a desperate bandit is attempting to escape."
- Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

"When the man is funny he is terrific...but the story is makeshift, the other characters are stock types, the only pace discernible is the distance between drinks or the rhythm of the fleeting seconds it takes Fields to size up trouble coming and duck the hell out."
- Otis Ferguson

"Imperfect, but probably the best Fields vehicle there is: the jokes sometimes end in mid-air, but there are delicious moments and very little padding."
- Halliwell's Film & Video Guide

"W.C. Fields had virtually complete freedom in making The Bank Dick...and the film demonstrates his screen character in its most fully developed form...There is also an evocation of the classic silent film chase directed by Edward Cline, a graduate of the Mack Sennett school."
- The Oxford Companion to Film

"By far the best of Fields' last comedies, with the great man trundling through an impeccably loony scenario of his own devising...Totally ramshackle and marvellous."
- TimeOut Film Guide

Compiled by Frank Miller