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W. C. Fields
note of the German population in St. Louis, and recalled his workouts at the Wintergarten. But his receptions there, he reflected, had all been gay. He pondered the bleak plains of Kansas, the arid habits of its people, the high voltage of its divinity, and he got no answer. With regard to Washington, he knew, somehow, that the answer was rooted deep in politics. He evolved, at last, a theory, simple and obvious but probably foolproof. Knocked down to its essentials, it was that the people of Washington, accustomed to the incomparable slapstick on Capitol Hill, found lesser comedians a bore. In general, Fields considered that cities, despite the three he had trouble with, provided more fertile ground for stage humor than rural areas. There was an excellent reason for this : city people, at that time, were familiar with more of the world than country folk and could understand a wider variety of allusion. For a while, Fields encountered some embarrassing silences in the small towns with a routine involving subway straps. Conversely, he had many bad moments in New York, during a season when he was using a few lines, by tossing off the word "switchel bucket," which struck him as funny. Of this mishap he said, "I finally learned that the average New Yorker would have to go to the dictionary to find out what a switchel bucket was, even though Calvin Coolidge was someday to present one to the Prince of Wales."
Like most comedians, Fields compiled a list of "locals" — neighborhood place names that were good for a laugh in cities where he played. He later explained this to a Paramount publicity man, Teet Carle, by saying, "In every big city there is always one surefire laugh, and that lies in hanging some piece of idiocy upon the people of a nearby city or town. I did not mean to imply any disparagement of those towns, but it's a fact that some names just sound funny to people's ears. When I was a boy in Philadelphia, I made that discovery myself. We had a great time at the
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