W.C. Fields Pens One of His Best-Known Vaudeville Sketches

Entertainer who began as a juggler, then became a star of Vaudeville and the musical/ comedy stage. Though he made silent comedy films as early as 1915, it took the advent of sound to provide the proper medium for his distinctive voice, and he instantly became one of Hollywood’s best known comedians. He wrote most of his own skits and screenplays, often under crazy names like Otis Cribblecoblis.

The following Autograph Manuscript Signed, 11 separate pages 4to, 1922, is an astonishing rarity, being Fields’ original manuscript for his noted vaudeville sketch “10,000 People Killed.” The sketch is about a family at the dinner table listening to the radio and hearing of an earthquake in San Francisco where the wife’s mother lives. It is full of Fieldsian wit and often black humor. Radio (called the “wireless” back then) was in its very infancy. The earliest broadcasts were made in 1920 and 1921, but the broadcast band was not adopted until 1922, marking the latter year as the first in which widespread broadcasting could occur. Obtaining a radio became a hot subject, so a skit about it was extremely topical. Early radios had multiple components and getting one hooked up required a lot of wires. Fields jokes about this, wondering why the invention is called the wireless when there are wires everywhere. The family in the sketch consists of Mr. and Mrs. Shugg and their baby daughter, and the scene takes place in an apartment filled with wires leading to the radio. Mrs. Shugg starts the action telling the baby to keep away from the radio, tripping over a wire and saying “Damn.”

The baby replies “Oh. You said a bad word.” Mrs. Shugg says she meant to say “dash,” then after tripping over another wire is about to swear again but changes whatever it was she was going to say to “Oh – Pussy Willow,” a very typical Fields’ form of profanity which was suggestive but could pass the censor. The radio continues to broadcast advertisements no matter what station she turns to, finally driving her to distraction with the famous “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” ad, whereupon she says “That’s the kind of fellow that would go to hell for a pretty girl.” Fields also considers several alternative things for her to say, such as “He must be an animal lover” or “Why don’t you spend a nickel and go to the Bronx and see all the animals?”

The animal lover line won out in the final printed version. Mr. Shugg finally comes home, and after losing his hat twice to the various wires all over the room, discusses the foibles of the radio and its uninteresting programs with Mrs. Shugg. Two suggestions for listening include “Oh, we are going to hear Mrs. Wiffin sing oogie woogie wah wah at the broadcasting station at Upper Sandusky…Let’s get the broadcasting station at Pasamaquadie…,” thus citing two of the favorite places whose names he thought amusing. Mr. Shugg sees the baby holding her coffee cup (typical of Fields to have a baby drinking coffee) and says “Look how she holds her cup. That’s the proper way to drink coffee – hold your finger over the spoon like that – then it can’t fall out” (rather than taking the spoon out before drinking like normal people would). The baby having eaten the canary’s food and water and, finally, the canary, the radio is heard again, first advertising “Little Rambles on Prohibition by William Jennings Bryan” (which would be the absolute last thing the hard-drinking Fields would ever want to hear), on which Mrs. Shugg comments “That guy makes me sick.” Field’s sentiments exactly, though Mr. Shuggs adds “…it’s a great thing for the country.”

Mrs. Shuggs replies “Yes, but we live in the city.” One can imagine Fields saying this very thing. Then the radio announces “10,000 people killed,” and starts to buzz, losing the signal. Mrs. Shugg is convinced that the announcement is of an earthquake in San Francisco where her mother lives, and thinking that what she heard on the radio must be authoritative, screams that her poor mother is killed. Mr. Shugg tries to re-assure her, “How do you know it’s an earthquake. It may only be a tidal wave.” Finally the radio indeed confirms that the 10,000 killed were in San Francisco, setting off further screams from Mrs. Shugg. The sketch ends with Mr. Shugg saying “My poor mother in law in Frisco. She must be killed,” while the stage directions note that he is dancing for joy in back of Mrs. Shugg.

The autograph manuscript ends with this, but the corrected typescript shows that Fields added “My poor mother in law killed. It took an earthquake to do it,” which he corrected from “It would take an earthquake…” There is also a subsequent typescript of five pages, with over 200 words in Field’s hand, and many crossouts. Part of what he added was a story on the radio about a man with no arms who chops wood, holding the axe in his mouth and turning somersaults, but this was not included in the final version. There are also two later, uncorrected typescripts, and a copy of the final version of this sketch taken from the book W.C. Fields by Himself (1973).

An incredibly important piece of American comic history, in fact important enough for the final version to be included in his biography. Both the manuscript and typescript indicate, because of different colored inks and pens used, that Fields carried this with him, writing as he went along. This was typical for him. He once sold for $25,000 a story line he scribbled on the back of an envelope. Anyone who is familiar with Fields’ inimitable voice can hear him perfectly in everything he has written here, using essentially the same humor as in the scripts he authored for his great films, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. The manuscripts are housed in a clothbound folder, which in turn is in a slipcase, with “10,000 People Killed * W. C. Fields’ Manuscripts” printed in gold on the leather spine.