The team split up in the 1930s, and Fields obtained work in Hollywood as a writer, contributing jokes for Rudy Vallee on the radio and Eddie Cantor in films.
[1] Although he knew them from their burlesque days, Fields began working with Abbott and Costello in 1944, first in the film In Society (1944) and as a writer/performer on their radio series, where he introduced his Professor Melonhead character.
Fields also played small parts in the Abbott and Costello movies Mexican Hayride, Little Giant, and The Naughty Nineties.
Fields played the hot-tempered, bald-headed landlord of the rooming house where Abbott and Costello lived.
The ensemble cast included Hillary Brooke as a neighbor and love interest of Lou Costello's, Gordon Jones as Mike the Cop, who was a dimwitted comedic foil for the boys, Joe Besser as Stinky Davis, a 40-year-old man dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, and Joe Kirk (Costello’s brother-in-law) as Mr. Bacciagalupe, an Italian immigrant caricature who ran different small businesses, depending on the episode.