McLeod’s It’s a Gift is a testament to W.C. Fields’s comic skill at making a picnic an utterly messy war zone.
On their way west to California, the Bissonettes pronounced bis-on-nay and stopped for picnic lunch. Blithely ignoring a “Private Property Keep Out” sign, Harold mistakes a private estate for a park. Speeding onto the lawn, he wrecks a statue of Venus de Milo, and from then on, the picnic is an anthology of antic disasters. 
When daughter Mildred spreads newspaper for a picnic cloth, it’s only a matter of time before the sheets blow away. Discarded sandwich wrapping adds to the litter. When Harold opens a can of tomatoes with a hatchet, the can explodes. Wrestling with the dog for a pillow creates a feather storm. When son Norman turns on the garden sprinklers, Harold thinks it’s raining and opens the umbrella, “It’s raining… maybe it’s a sun shower…maybe it’s a cloudbust,” he says.
At last, the property owner arrives and orders the family out. “Don’t argue with them, dear,” says his wife, Amelia. Following her order, Harold guns the accelerator and knocks over a sprinkler before escaping without further incident.
Featured Image: Umbrella offers protection from a garden sprinkler. Harold Bissonette (W.C. Fields), his wife Amelia (Kathleen Howard), and daughter Mildred (Jean Rouval)
See McLeod, Norman Z. It’s a Gift. Screenplay by Charles Bogle (aka W.C. Fields) and J. P. McEvoy, 1934
*Also see W.C. Field’s three-day picnic excursion posted elsewhere.