CHARACTER SKETCH: SID FIELDS OF DREAMS

'Make Room For Daddy'

"The Reunion"

Twenty years after they went their separate ways, three of Danny Williams' childhood friends came to New York so that they could all hang out together again.  Unbeknownst to Danny, they all went on to highly successful careers:

• Harry worked for NASA as a rocket scientist.

• Dr. C. Marion Patman (aka Charlie, aka "Fingers") was a highly successful surgeon who had performed state-of-the-art operations on some famous people.

• Joe Ferbus was a diplomat who at the beck and call of the President.  (When called away to return to Washington D.C., it was at the request of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.)

Even though he was a highly successful performer in night clubs, Danny Williams felt like a loser in comparison to his friends.  And while he was taking a nap the next day, he dreamt that he had the skills to save his friends from difficult problems in their own fields.  However, each dream was interrupted by his high school teacher, Miss Pelham, who would not let Danny forget that he only finished one year of high school.

There was another man in those dreams of Danny's......  

He worked the console at NASA.

He assisted as another surgeon during a tricky operation.  

And he was present at treaty negotiations with France.  

The other people in Danny's dreams were all based on people he knew in the waking world.  So why not the supporting players in his dreamscape?  And if so, who could this man have been to Danny?

Since Danny Williams was living in Manhattan, and that mystery man in his dreams was played by Bill Erwin, I'm going to claim that Danny put Sid Fields into his dream as several characters.

When we met Sid Fields, he was an irascible old codger in New York City who didn't have a single kind thing to say to anybody.  Despite all the whining and complaining by Sid, we never really learned any more about him than he had a son named Tim Fields.

Sid and Danny were basically the same age*, so it may be that they knew each other back in the fifties.  Maybe he worked in that nightclub where Danny performed?

Whoever he was in Danny's life, Sid Fields certainly made enough of an impact to be featured in three of the comic's dreams.  It's likely he was just as mean in his forties as he was as an old man.  (Just think what he would have said about Danny Williams' nose!)

BCnU!

* Danny Thomas was born in 1912, Bill Erwin in 1914.