JD'S Memes

Universal's censors initially objected to W.C. Fields' script for "The Bank Dick" (1940), and demanded many changes. Director Edward F. Cline suggested that Fields should go ahead and film it their way, ignoring the censors' changes, and that the front office wouldn't notice the difference. They didn't.
The bar Shemp Howard's character runs was originally called "The Black Pu$$y Cafe," but the Production Code Administration said the name couldn't be used. W.C. Fields protested because he'd got the name from his friend, British comedian Leon Errol, who owned a real bar in L.A. called the Black Pu$$y Cafe. Fields said that if the California Alcoholic Beverages Control Board didn't object to that as the name of a real bar, the Production Code Administration shouldn't mind it as the name of a fictional one. The Code authority was unmoved, so the signs on the bar in the film call it "Black Pu$$sy Cat Cafe"--but both Fields and another actor refer to it as the "Black Pu$$y Cafe" in the dialogue.
"Mahatma Kane Jeeves" (the pseudonym used by W.C. Fields as screenwriter) is a play on words from stage plays of the era. "My hat, my cane, Jeeves!" And in fact, at the end of the film his butler does hand him his hat and his cane.
"I like, in an audience, the fellow who roars continuously at the troubles of the character I am portraying on the stage, but he probably has a mean streak in him and, if I needed ten dollars, he'd be the last person I'd call upon. I'd go first to the old lady and old gentleman back in Row S who keep wondering what there is to laugh at." (IMDb)
Happy Birthday, William Claude Dukenfield!
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