W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

W. C. Fields "We'll have to take you to a hospital for some tests," the physician said to Fields, who was in his dressing room surrounded by worried members of the company. "The hell with it," cried Fields, nervously remembering the four guineas. "Take them in here." "But we have equipment at the hospital," insisted the doctor, as he removed a glass of medicinal rye from the patient's fingers. "Then bring it over," said Fields. "I'm not leaving the room." Instead of taking X rays, as he wished to do, the physician and several assistants from a piano factory brought in a fluoroscope and stripped the patient to his waist. It was a pretty scene, one which might have tried the humanity of Hippocrates. Fields, wearing a straw hat and standing more or less behind the fluoroscope, carried on a high, senseless monologue about the benefits of disease and the perfidy of doctors, while the company giggled and the physician and the manager pleaded for co-operation. "Can you stand over a little to your left, Mr. Fields?" the physician would say. "We've only got the end of one collarbone in the picture." " — down there in the New He-brides group," said Fields, resuming an anecdote he'd started a minute before, "and came down with a painful rash in the region of my latissimus dorsi " "To the left, Bill," said the manager. "That's your right — you're out of the picture entirely now." "Had this rash in the region of my latissimus dorsi/' said Fields to the company, "and they called in a native witch doctor " "Could the patient stop thrashing his arms?" called out the doctor in a querulous voice. "It seems to give a shimmying eff " ioo