W. C. Fields was the stage name for William Claude Dukenfield, a brilliant and highly original comedian. A former vaudeville star, Fields was never comfortable working in the motion picture studio system and began writing his own scripts and story outlines almost out of self-defense. Having entertained himself by reading Mark Twain, William Shakespeare, and particularly Charles Dickens, Fields crammed his scripts with Dickensian humor, outrage, and caricatures bearing such names as Cuthbert J. Twillie, Cleopatra Pepperday, Marmaduke Gump, Ouliotta Hemogloben, and Hookallockah Meshobbab. Even the pseudonyms he adopted for his work--Charles Bogle, Otis Criblecoblis, and Mahatma Kane Jeeves--had the same flavor. Improvisation was commonplace in his movies, and the major contribution of Fields as writer was to anticipate the structure that would work best for Fields as performer; he advised one studio, "I write my scripts short and they develop on the set, which I have found...