Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 Universal Pictures comedy film starring W. C. Fields. Fields also wrote the original story, under the pseudonym "Otis Criblecoblis". Fields plays himself, searching for a chance to promote a surreal screenplay he has written, whose several framed sequences form the film's center. This was Fields's last starring film. By then he was 61 years old, and alcohol and illness had taken their toll: he was much heavier than he had been six/seven years earlier when he had made eight films in the space of two years and was reasonably physically fit.