SOURCE: "W.C. Fields: The Copyrighted Sketches," in Journal of Popular Film and Televisen, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer, 1986, pp. 65-75.

In the following essay, Gehring provides a review of two dozen short comic sketches written and copyrighted by Fields during a twenty-year period.

While doing research on America's greatest native-born comedian (see W. C. Fields: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 1984), the author happened upon Fields's seemingly forgotten copyrighted sketches at the Library of Congress.¹

Between 1918 and late-1930, Fields copyrighted twenty-three separate comedy documents on sixteen subjects (some sketches were copyrighted more than once when changes were made). While generally written for the stage, several of the sketches, or variations of them turned up later in the comedian's films.

Though once housed individually by title in the Copyright Division of the Library of Congress, the documents are now available as one collection, the "W. C. Fields Papers," in the Manuscript Division...