Sidney Fields

I wanted to say, though, we're talking about the script and the writer.

One thing I found out just last night when I was doing a little research was the original screenplay was written by Sid Fields.

and it bears actually no resemblance apparently to the final film except um i think in one of the rewrites one of the jokes toward the end of the film is lou becomes abbott that would have been kind of cool i don't know like where that would have come from obviously like you know, I don't know like where, you know, that would have originated, but that's kind of cool.

Also another guy that wrote a treatment on the film before Lee Loeb and Grant took over was a guy named Grant Garrett who wrote on cockeyed Cavaliers, the nitwits and the rainmakers.

And, uh, I wrote the script.

I had to run out and buy a typewriter and, and, and I got a book, uh, called Sid Fields, how to write a screenplay, you know, Sid Fields.

And I had the book and told you what the spacing was and, and where you put the thing.

Yeah.

The guild had over many decades fought for all these things like residuals and health insurance and all these things where the companies, you know, pay you a fair amount.

And so that, that, that's why I, I, I scrambled late at night when I was at Marvel and everyone went home, I'd stay there in my little office and write spec scripts.

I wrote, and that's, you know, again, Sid Fields right there.

Yeah.

From January 21st, 1948 on ABC, this is Abbott and Costello in Lou Inherits $800,000.

Bud Abbott is alongside Lou with Sid Fields as lawyer Melonhead.

Susan Miller is heard singing I'm in Love with Maddie Malnick leading the orchestra and Michael Roy announcing.

The search soon carries Lou and Bud as far as a Chinese laundry.