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"Wonderful turn" and "Those fellows are certainly getting off some good ones up there." After the show, Fields went to Ziegfeld and offered to incorporate Wynn into the act in that form for the rest of the run. Wynn was said to have turned the opportunity down.
On the whole, Fields got along amicably with his colleagues, even those of whom he was most jealous. He enjoyed arranging pranks to embarrass them. Will Rogers, in dressing-room conversations with Fields and others, often spoke of an old pal of his named Clay McGonigle, from Glaremont, Oklahoma. McGonigle had a nickname for Rogers, not entirely printable, over which Rogers frequently chuckled. Before one performance around Thanksgiving time, Fields sent a note to Rogers' dressing room, using the nickname and saying, "I'm in town and will be out in front watching the show — your old pard, Clay McGonigle." Rogers was tickled to death; he addressed the majority of his remarks to the absent McGonigle and larded them heavily with personal reminiscence. He kept looking around and waiting for some kind of response — a laugh or a cowpuncher's yip — but none was forthcoming. Nevertheless, he continued to play to McGonigle throughout the evening, to the intense mystification of the audience and the annoyance of the director.
After the show, Rogers dropped into Fields' dressing room and said, "I don't understand it. I didn't hear a peep out of old Clay. I'd better go find him." He dressed hurriedly and hung around the theater door, then spent most of the night combing saloons and railroad stations. He was much chagrined next day, repeating, "I sure can't understand what happened to old Clay." When somebody tipped him off that Fields had sent the note, he said, "I'll get even with that vaudeville ham if it takes me the rest of my life." But as far as anybody knows, he never did.
Fields' relationship with Ziegfeld was one of the oddest in
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