W. C. Fields

W. C. Fields (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946) was an American comedian and actor. Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century—a misanthrope who teetered on the edge of buffoonery but never quite fell in, an egotist blind to his own failings, a charming drunk, and a man who hated children, dogs and women, unless they were the wrong sort of women. ("I'm very fond of children... girl children, around 18 or 20!")

Caricatures

Fields' face, complete with bulbous nose, rotund body and blustery, nasal voice have often been caricatured . A few examples:

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• Several contemporary cartoons contained Fields characterizations. http://members.aol.com/EOCostello/f.html
• The comic strip The Wizard of Id features an attorney called "Larsen E. Pettifogger", who is an obvious parody of Fields and even borrows from the character name "Larsen E. Whipsnade" that Fields used in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.
• After the Frito-Lay organization was pressured to pull their Mexican stereotyped character called the "Frito Bandito" in the late 60s, they substituted a Fields lookalike called "W.C. Fritos".
• Fields was easy to mimic. For example, Ed McMahon could do a perfect Fields, and invoked it on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from time to time.