W. C. Fields

[stoutfellow]

PvP Online has recently been featuring a character who is clearly intended to evoke W. C. Fields, and the latest installment has me struggling with my memory. Which Fields movie is it in which he wears a... bib-thingy (no doubt pewtergryphon, among others, knows the name for it) which keeps springing loose and slapping him in the face?

Comments

[gryphons-lair.livejournal.com]

If it's the item I'm thinking of, it's called a shirt front. Sort of like a waist-length dickey that's been starched to death. There were removable collars and cuffs, too. You'd change the collar and cuffs (and shirt front) every day, instead of the whole shirt, thus reducing the size of your laundry bill. Some of them were washable (starched linen) and some were disposable. I'd guess Mr Field's was one of the then-cutting-edge celluloid ones, which were advertised as guaranteed not to go limp no matter how hot or damp it got.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Thank'ee. "Shirt front", eh? Where do they come up with these names?

[gryphons-lair.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read "Gaudy Night"? If so, you may remember that Harriet & the Bursar had a running joke about the college's male guests' shirtfronts, centering on the phrase "Hard or soft?" *g*

Mr Field's may not have been celluloid, but it was undoubtably of the "hard" variety.