DOTD For Thursday, January 29, 2026
A Drink To Celebrate A Professional Drinker
Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Breakfast Martini inspired by W.C. Fields birthday! On this day, January 29, 1880, William Claude Dukenfield, who you know as W.C. Fields, emerged from the womb.
Born in Darby, Pennsylvania, Fields apparently did not get along too well with his father and got in the habit of running away. He ended up embellishing the stories of his childhood and depicted himself as a runaway who lived by his wits on the streets of Philadelphia. Despite what he said, his childhood is believed to have been reasonably happy overall. He never got beyond grade school but developed a facility for juggling. He started doing performances and in 1898 he adopted a costume of a scruffy beard with shabby tuxedo and entered vaudeville as a “tramp juggler” using the name W.C. Fields. He was good at it: by the early 1900s he was often called the world’s greatest juggler. Unfortunately juggling and drinking do not generally mix well, so that stunted his development.
Fast forwarding through Broadway and silent movies, Fields’ first appearance in a major studio film was International House in which he played professor Henry R. Quail. The protagonist was flying his autogyro to Kansas City, got drunk and confused, and wound up in China. Hilarity ensued. This film was released only months before the repeal of Prohibition (see Drink of the Day, December 5, 2025). It nailed down his brand for good: an irascible, misanthropic drunk. The drinking part actually fit. There is a story that during Prohibition, W.C. Fields and a friend drove out to Long Island to pick up some bootlegged Irish whiskey. On the way back, three bottles in, they noticed that Long Island seemed awfully long. By the time they sobered up enough to focus they were apparently in Florida.
As Field’s film career took off, his drinking followed. One of his famous lines, “I exercise extreme control. I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast,” was true. That said, it’s also true that he tended to rise around 9AM and start the day with two martinis. He was well known to be soused on the movie set. He always brought a flask filled with gin to work but explained that it was pineapple juice. When a studio employee once refilled it with actual juice he took a swig and bellowed “Somebody’s been putting pineapple juice in my pineapple juice.” Let’s face it, he drank often and drank mostly martinis, saying “I work better with them inside me.” His staff estimated he drank about two quarts of liquor a day. As he once said, “What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?”
Despite saying “Now don’t say you can’t swear off drinking; it’s easy. I’ve done it a thousand times” our Fields kept at it the rest of his life, regardless of the cost, including a prominently red nose from alcoholic rosacea. In his last days of life, a friend visited his hospital room and was surprised to find him thumbing through a Bible. When asked what he, as a devoted atheist, was doing with a Bible, Fields reportedly replied, “I’m looking for loopholes.”
There’s no loopholes in today’s Drink Of The Day recipe - a Breakfast Martini is a simple drink, and as W.C. Fields would tell you, very satisfying.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
