After making My Little Chickadee (1940), W.C. Fields signed a new contract with Universal Pictures that gave him complete artistic control over his films. Then he took his time finding his first project. As executives grew impatient they suggested a new version of LeRoy Clemens' play Alias the Deacon, which they had filmed twice before and were preparing to re-make. Fields felt the role of a cardsharp in the old West was too similar to My Little Chickadee, however, and turned them down. At the same time, he said he was working on his own script, set in the present day, that would feature him as the kind of hard-drinking, misanthropic family man he had played in such classics as It's a Gift (1934) and Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935). When he assured them the film would be less expensive, they not only agreed to wait, but granted him a small writing allowance.

Fields submitted his plot treatment in January 1940 along with a request that the studio borrow Ann Sothern and Mickey Rooney from MGM. He got neither of them. He also requested Grady Sutton, with whom he had worked on three other films, as his comic foil. When Universal persisted that they wanted one of their own contract players in the role, he had to threaten to quit to get his way.

Once the script for The Bank Dick was completed in July, Joe Breen of the Production Code Administration, the industry's self-censoring board, submitted his objections in a letter that rivaled the screenplay for length. Among his pettier complaints was the suggestion a doctor's instructions to take two pills "in a glass of castor oil for two nights running" was toilet humor because of the medicine's reputation as a laxative. Fields offered to change it to cod-liver oil, then kept the original. A bigger battle raged over the name of Fields' favorite watering hole in the film, The Black Pussy Cafe and Snack Bar. Breen thought it a dirty joke, even after Fields claimed he had named it after comedian Leon Errol's bar in Santa Monica. Finally, Fields agreed to make it The Black Pussy Cat Cafe, but that name only turned up on the sign outside the bar room. Whenever it was referred to in the dialogue, it remained The Black Pussy Cafe.

When Universal executives received Fields' script, they complained that it was too short for a feature. He assured them he had kept the script short to allow room for improvisation and physical bits that would be developed on the set. Nonetheless, they assigned a series of script doctors to work on it. Each time he received a new script, Fields refused to work with it, pointing out that in each case the "critic" assigned - he refused to refer to them as "writers" - had actually changed his script completely. He also made the case that "When the star finally appears upon the screen and if it is a dud the critic's name will not be mentioned or condemned. I am the one who will take it on the chin." After receiving three unacceptable re-writes, Fields went over the executives' heads to Universal President Nate Blumberg. Blumberg ordered that the film be made with Fields' original script, reminding his underlings that anything else would violate the star's contract.

Fields gave some of his characters "ticket names," names that reflect their characters or occupations. In addition to his hard-drinking character's being named Souse, the bartender is named Joe Guelpe and the bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington. The movie director's name, A. Pismo Clam, is a tribute to the town of Pismo Beach, CA, noted for its succulent clams. Ironically, Pismo Beach is not that far from Lompoc, CA, whose name Fields borrowed for his small-town setting.

by Frank Miller