10

MONDAY

This being the video age, there are countless recorded hours of the young Drew Barrymore and Christian Slater for future historians to mull. Cruel to consider, then, that so little visual evidence of W.C. Fields’ acclaimed vaudeville career as a comic juggler survives. What bits remain are heartbreakingly tantalizing, but once he adopted his curmudgeon screen persona, Fields all but abandoned the more demanding practice. In conjunction with the exhibition “Celebrity Caricature in America,” the National Portrait Gallery is screening W.C. Fields: On Stage, On Screen, On the Air, a 1987 documentary that includes many silent-film clips of the comic genius. Return Tuesday for a celebration of the equally brilliant Stan and Ollie with a 1954 episode of This Is Your Life, which the boys wanted nothing to do with, and Laurel and Hardy: Rare Home Movies, which features their (literally) riotous tour of England, including Stan’s hometown of Tynemouth. At 12:30 p.m. at the National Portrait Gallery, 8th & F Sts. NW. Free. (202) 357-2700. (Dave Nuttycombe)