The Dentist (GASP!) In Movies

I guess I'm on a roll.  (I just did an article on bosses in the movies.)  I saw my own dentist the other day, and was inspired again.  Believe me, he is nothing like the dentists I am highlighting today.   He gives the best novocaine shots in the business, but I still use the nitrous oxide in case he is having an off day.  Just a joke at your expense, Dr. S.!  His assistants are wonderful, but if they ever loom over me looking like this, I'll grab the high-speed drill and wave it around:

Our first dentist is the fabulously funny W.C. Fields in a 1932 short called, oddly enough, The Dentist.  Doctors of dentistry in that era must have been horrified that their patients might see this.  Fields is his usual comic genius ("Have you ever had this tooth pulled before?"), but the scene would have been nothing without the wonderful, very limber comedienne Elise Cavanna, who plays his unfortunate patient.  The full clip is 10 minutes long, but just forward it to 1.00 and watch until it hits 7:10.  Fields has to deal with his angry daughter for a few seconds during his work, but then he's back to the patient for the real show. It's one of the funniest 6 minutes you'll ever see:




Our second clip in my chosen trio of tooth-tuggers is one that most dentists have likely been bombarded with by patients, family, and friends about a million times.  Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors performs a song called Be A Dentist that should be required viewing for future generations of dental students who might not know about it.  Martin has already been introduced to us as a nasty kind of guy, and his true occupation and nature are revealed in the song:

Last, and unlike the first 2, is one of the most famous dentists in movie history.  It is not funny, was not meant to be funny, and is as far from funny as you can get.  It's the great Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man.  The dentist I went to at the time the movie came out was furious about it.  He was really concerned that his patients who were truly dentaphobic (I don't know if that is even a real word) might see it and let their teeth rot out of their heads before they ever came back to him.  Olivier plays an aging, escaped Nazi, dubbed the White Angel by his victims (a character based upon the real Doctor of Death, Josef Mengele),  He uses his dental skills to torture information out of Dustin Hoffman.  The scene is harrowing, to say the very least, and frankly a lot of the credit for that comes from the the quiet, almost soothing voice that Olivier uses in this tour de force performance.  I'm not going to post a clip of this one.  It's too disturbing to make readily available to someone who might otherwise take a second thought.  Plus, it really should be seen in the context of an incredible movie, not just as an isolated horror moment.

Let's see, how shall I leave you on a lighter note about Marathon Man?  I know -- Olivier and Hoffman were, of course, of two different generations of actors.  Olivier was a classically trained actor, and Hoffman came from the "feel it in your gut" modern style.  Hoffman had to do scenes where in the story he had not slept for 2 days and had been running for his life.  So, in real life, Hoffman stayed up for 2 days, did a lot of running and wore himself out.  He looked horrible and was exhausted when he came to film the scenes.  Olivier, as only he could,  looked at Hoffman and said "My dear boy, why don't you just try acting?"  Don't you love it!

Phobias about the dentist began a long time ago.  Those were the days when a slug of whiskey was all you got before the pliers came out:

Thank God for modern dentistry, eh?  So thank your dentist at your next visit.  However, I would not recommend this guy!