Man on the Flying Trapeze

Man on the Flying Trapeze also released as The Memory Expert is a 1935 comedy film starring W. C. Fields as a henpecked husband. As with his other roles of this nature, Fields is putupon throughout the film, but triumphs in the end.

At the start of the film, two burglars, played by Tammany Young and Walter Brennan, break into Ambroses cellar late at night, get drunk on his homemade applejack, and start singing On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away Ambrose is forced to handle the situation, and he winds up being arrested for distilling liquor without a license. This is done on the order of the night court judge hearing the case. He forgets about dealing with the burglars. While on the way to the night court Ambrose talks about the wrestling match scheduled for that day and demonstrates an unbreakable hold on the neighborhood watch policeman who arrested the burglars. The policeman throws him into the street. When he asks Ambrose if he hurt him, Ambrose asks him how someone could be hurt by being dropped on his head.The next day, Ambrose falsely tells Malloy that Cordelia had died from drinking poisoned liquor, and asks for the afternoon off to attend the funeral in fact, he wants to go to see the big wrestling match. Malloy, touched by Ambroses tale, lets him go for the day, and Ambroses immediate supervisor, Mr. Peabody Lucien Littlefield, tells all the other employees the tragic news so they can pay their respects to the family. In fact, Ambrose does not explicitly say that his motherinlaw died from poisoned liquor. Rather, when his employer asks him how she died, he begins to improvise a story. He says she was taken with a chill and that he poured her a drink. Then Malloy interrupts him and, assuming it was the liquor that killed her, says excitedly that he has read in the paper recently of many instances of people dying from poisoned liquor. Ambrose is too timid to contradict him. ........

Source: Wikipedia