The goat-bearded tall man who stuck his thumb in the goat-bearded short man's eye died this week in Beverly Hills. He was Lewis Maurice Fields, 74, known to two generations as the aggressive half of Weber & Fields, the greatest knockabout comedy team in theater history.
Sputtering, barrel-bellied Joe Weber and sputtering, gangling Lew Fields got each other and the English language in Dutch on and off for over half a century. Born the same year on Manhattan's lower East Side, they threw an act together when they were ten years old and stormed the beer gardens of the Bowery. They were...