Hello, my name's Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And today, we're talking about the comedy legend, William Claude, Duke and Field.

Or perhaps you know him as Otis Cribble Cobblis or Mahatma Kane Jeeves.

No, we're talking about WC Fields. What I said was his actual name and what

Will said were his pseudonyms that he wrote his scripts under. One of the most popular comedians of his day,

a comedian who was rediscovered by college kids in the 60s and 70s, but also somebody who I feel like

in my lifetime has kind of diminished in stature. When I was a kid, W.C. Fields had no place in my comedy landscape. Like, my dad didn't talk about him. It was all about the Three Stooges, the Marks brothers. I was aware of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd. But W.C. Fields was someone that I probably only first heard about in context with stuff like the Simpsons.

Interesting, yeah. Well, I mean, when I was a kid, he didn't mean a lot to me either,

but I feel like he was more of a common cultural reference point.

Like the drunk kind of funny guy.

Yeah.

Maybe Homer Simpson is the one that like pushed him out, like the Simpsons and the Homer character. Yeah and I don't know today it seems like I almost never hear him referred to. Nope.

When the AFI did their list of the top 100 comedies, It's a Gift was on there. Would it be on there now? I think it's probably still would be because people voting for the AFI are old funny d'Uties anyway.

Well, you know, when you go on letterboxed, I would say pretty lukewarm reactions to some of these

movies.

I mean, like, he was in about 13 film for Paramount, and those are like the sound ones.

And I would say that maybe three of them are like great.

And it's a gift, and the bank dick are the main ones that

everybody talks about. And I think also some of his shorts are essential. People don't watch

shorts anymore though. Well, you know, they're great. But also there were just a lot of like individual

scenes and the rest of them. Oftentimes the rest of them would have stuff that is kind of boring.

Yeah, the classic, like, there's, you know, a love story to pad things out about two characters we don't care about. Let's get back to Fields doing the schick that he would do on stage. But Fields didn't mean a lot to you. He's somebody who, when I first saw him as a kid, I didn't really get him.

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