During his absence, he recorded a brief speech for a radio broadcast. His familiar, snide drawl registered so well with listeners that he quickly became a popular guest on network radio shows. Although his radio work was not as demanding as motion-picture production, Fields insisted on his established movie star salary of $5,000 per week. He joined ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on "The Chase and Sanborn Hour" for weekly insult-comedy routines. Fields would twit Charlie about his being made of wood:  When Fields would refer to McCarthy as a "woodpecker's pin-up boy" or a "termite's flophouse", Charlie would fire back at Fields about his drinking:  Another exchange: During his recovery from illness, Fields reconciled with his estranged wife and established a close relationship with his son after Claude's marriage in 1938. Fields' renewed popularity from his radio broadcasts with Bergen and McCarthy earned him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1939. His first feature for Universal, "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man", carried on the Fields–McCarthy rivalry. In 1940 he made "My Little Chickadee", co-starring with Mae West, and then "The Bank Dick" in which he has the following exchange with Shemp Howard, who plays a bartender:  Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging, and his choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and the resulting film, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" (1941), was a masterpiece of absurd humor in which Fields appeared as himself, "The Great Man". Universal's then-popular singing star Gloria Jean played opposite Fields, and his cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn as his comic foils. Typically, the finished film was sufficiently surreal that Universal recut and reshot parts of it and ultimately released both the film and Fields. "Sucker" was Fields' last starring film. Fields fraternized at his home with actors, directors and writers who shared his fondness for good company and good liquor. John Barrymore, Gene Fowler, and Gregory La Cava were among his close friends. On March 15, 1941, while Fields was out of town, Christopher Quinn, the two-year-old son of his neighbors, actor Anthony Quinn and his wife Katherine DeMille, drowned in a lily pond on Fields' property.