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W. C. Fields
ber 1 6, 19 15, to the critic of the Detroit News, who observed, when the show reached his town on its winter tour, "Incidentally, Mr. Fields is losing some laughs in the pool game because Ed Wynn, who is funny, too, is cutting up at the same time." The blowoff took place in Boston, not long afterward. As Fields manipulated his wavy cue, Wynn sneaked beneath the table and the battle was joined. To Fields' dismay, his laughs began to come in the wrong places. He continued to play, collecting off-center guffaws and trying to find out why. "The first thing any comedian does on getting an unscheduled laugh is to verify the state of his buttons ; the second is to look around and see if a cat has walked out on the stage," Alva Johnston once wrote. Fields checked both of these possibilities and found no cause for alarm. Then he saw a quick movement under the table and stepped back for an examination. Wynn, all unaware, was "catching flies," as the theatrical phrase goes, or stealing laughs by means of funny facial expressions, gestures, and other antics. Fields returned to the table and continued his act. "I was waiting until I got his head in a particularly good lie," he later said to a friend, dropping into the handy golfing idiom.
The chance came about midway in the scene. Fields, accelerating his action, was piling up laughs, and Wynn, to keep pace, was working like a dog below decks. On all fours, he made the mistake of thrusting his head out about a foot too far. With the juggler's ready eye and co-ordinated muscle, Fields shifted nimbly into his backswing. His cue whistled through a half-circle and met the objective with the woody "glunk" so dear to the golfer's heart. Wynn keeled over with a hoarse sigh, and Fields resumed at the billiard table, to tremendous applause. As the act progressed, Wynn, struggling toward consciousness, gave vent to an occasional loud groan, and each time the audience howled with joy, the members making such comments to their neighbors as
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