The Bank Dick, released as The Bank Detective in the United Kingdom, is a 1940 American comedy film starring W. C. Fields. Set in Lompoc, California, Fields plays Egbert Sousé, a drunk who accidentally thwarts a bank robbery and ends up a bank security guard as a result.

Plot

In a somewhat frowsy home in Lompoc, Egbert Sousé, a hard-drinking, henpecked family man, has strained relations with his slattern wife and waspish mother-in-law over his drinking, smoking and habit of taking money from the piggy bank of his youngest daughter, Elsie Mae and replacing it with IOUs. Sousé prefers to spend his days reading detective stories and patronizing his favorite saloon, the Black Pussy Cat Café, run by Joe Guelpe. Sousé is on his way to the saloon when Elsie Mae bounces a ketchup bottle off of his head; Sousé attempts to hit her with a potted palm tree but is interrupted when Myrtle, his eldest daughter arrives and introduces him to her fiancé, Og Oggilby, who is employed as a bank teller.