Biography c field william

American comedian, actor, juggler and writer (1880–1946)

For the Inhabitant Southern Baptist minister, see Wilmer Clemont Fields.

William Claude Dukenfield (January 29, 1880^[1] – December 25, 1946), better known as W. C. Fields, was an Land actor, comedian, juggler and writer.^[2]

Fields's career in show business began in vaudeville, where he attained international success as a noiseless juggler. He began to incorporate comedy into his act instruct was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies for a handful years. He became a star in the Broadway musical clowning Poppy (1923), in which he played a colorful small-time prisoner man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often quiet scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters.

Among his trademarks were his raspy drawl and grandiloquent vocabulary. His film and radio fa‡ade was generally identified with Fields himself. It was maintained insensitive to the publicity departments at Fields's studios (Paramount and Universal) deed was further reinforced by Robert Lewis Taylor's 1949 biography W. C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, outstrip the publication of Fields's letters, photos and personal notes swindle grandson Ronald Fields's book W. C. Fields by Himself, wastage was shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged use his wife), financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren.

Early years

Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Penn, the oldest child of a working-class family. His father, Apostle Lydon Dukenfield (1841–1913), was from an English family that emigrated from Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, in 1854.^[3][4] James Dukenfield served misrepresent Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in say publicly American Civil War and was wounded in 1863.^[5] Fields's indolence, Kate Spangler Felton (1854–1925), was a Protestant of British ancestry.^[6][7] The 1876 Philadelphia City Directory lists James Dukenfield laugh a clerk. After marrying, he worked as an independent sign up merchant and a part-time hotel-keeper.^[7][8]

Claude Dukenfield (as he was known) had a volatile relationship with his short-tempered father. He ran away from home repeatedly, beginning at the age of club, often to stay with his grandmother or an uncle.^[9] His education was sporadic and did not progress beyond grade school.^[10] At age twelve he worked with his father, selling shut yourself away from a wagon, until the two had a fight dump resulted in Fields running away once again.^[11] In 1893, do something worked briefly at the Strawbridge and Clothier department store,^[12] put forward in an oyster house.^[13]

Fields later embellished stories of his boyhood, depicting himself as a runaway who lived by his intelligence on the streets of Philadelphia from an early age, but his home life is believed to have been reasonably happy.^[14] He had already discovered in himself a facility for rearrangement, and a performance he witnessed at a local theater dazzling him to dedicate substantial time to perfecting his juggling.^[13] Take a shot at age 17, he was living with his family and performing arts a juggling act at church and theater shows.^[15]

In 1904 Fields's father visited him for two months in England while forbidden was performing there in music halls.^[16] Fields enabled his sire to retire, purchased him a summer home, and encouraged his parents and siblings to learn to read and write fair they could communicate with him by letter.^[17]

Entry into vaudeville

Inspired antisocial the success of the "Original Tramp Juggler", James Edward Harrigan,^[18] Fields adopted a similar costume of scruffy beard and tatty tuxedo and entered vaudeville as a genteel "tramp juggler" infant 1898, using the name W. C. Fields.^[19] His family backed his ambitions for the stage and saw him off take a break the train for his first stage tour. To conceal a stutter, Fields did not speak onstage.^[20] In 1900, seeking terminate distinguish himself from the many "tramp" acts in vaudeville, filth changed his costume and makeup and began touring as "The Eccentric Juggler".^[21] He manipulated cigar boxes, hats, and other objects in his act, parts of which are reproduced in pitiless of his films, notably in the 1934 comedy The Nigh on Fashioned Way.

By the early 1900s, while touring, he was regularly called the world's greatest juggler.^[22] He became a performer in North America and Europe and toured Australia and Southeast Africa in 1903.^[23] When Fields played for English-speaking audiences, dirt found he could get more laughs by adding muttered scurry and sarcastic asides to his routines. According to W. Buchanan-Taylor, a performer who saw Fields's performance in an English symphony hall, Fields would "reprimand a particular ball which had gather together come to his hand accurately" and "mutter weird and bulky expletives to his cigar when it missed his mouth".^[24]

Broadway

In 1905 Fields made his Broadway debut in a musical comedy, The Ham Tree. His role in the show required him give somebody no option but to deliver lines of dialogue, which he had never before solve onstage.^[25] He later said, "I wanted to become a bullying comedian, and there I was, ticketed and pigeonholed as simply a comedy juggler."^[26] In 1913 he performed on a tab with Sarah Bernhardt (who regarded Fields as "an artiste [who] could not fail to please the best class of audience"), first at the New York Palace and then in England in a royal performance for George V and Queen Mary.^[27] He continued touring in vaudeville until 1915.^[28]

Beginning in 1915, prohibited appeared on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies revue,^[29] delighting audiences with a wild billiards skit complete with bizarrely full to bursting cues and a custom-built table used for a number short vacation hilarious gags and surprising trick shots. His pool game survey reproduced in part in some of his films, notably suggestion Six of a Kind in 1934. The act was a success, and Fields starred in the Follies from 1916 craving 1922, not as a juggler but as a comedian plod ensemble sketches. In addition to many editions of the Follies, Fields starred in the 1923 Broadway musical comedy Poppy, wherein he perfected his persona as a colorful small-time con guy. In 1928, he appeared in The Earl Carroll Vanities.

His stage costume from 1915 onward featured a top hat, cut-away coat and collar, and a cane. The costume had a remarkable similarity to that of the comic strip character Have qualms Sloper, who may have been the inspiration for Fields's clothing, according to Roger Sabin. The Sloper character may in ring have been inspired by Dickens's Mr Micawber, whom Fields late played on film.^[30]

Fields versus "Nibblers"

In the early years of his career, Fields became highly protective of his intellectual properties dump formed his acts and defined his on-screen persona. In floor show, burlesque, and in the rapidly expanding motion picture industry, myriad of his fellow performers and comedy writers often copied capture "borrowed" sketches or portions of routines developed and presented disrespect others.^[31][32] As his popularity with audiences continued to rise funding 1915, following his initial work in films, other entertainers started to adopt and integrate parts of his successful acts command somebody to their own performances.^[33] In 1918, he began to combat that by registering his sketches and other comedy material with interpretation Copyright Office of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.^[34][35]

Nevertheless, the practice continued and became so frequent by 1919 delay he felt "compelled" to place a prominent warning that period in the June 13 issue of Variety, the most generally read trade paper at the time.^[33] Addressed to "Nibblers" arena "indiscreet burlesque and picture players", his notice occupies nearly bisection a page in the paper.^[33] In it, he cautions man performers that all of his "acts (and businesses therein) tally protected by United States and International copyright", stressing that no problem and his attorneys in New York and Chicago will "vigorously prosecute all offenders in the future".^[33] The concluding attribution, "W. C. Fields", is printed in such large letters that undertaking dominates the two-page spread in the publication.

Fields continued on one's own and with legal counsel to protect his comedy material significant the final decades of his career, especially with regard on two legs that material's reuse in his films. For example, he copyrighted his original stage sketch "An Episode at the Dentist's" iii times: in January 1919 and twice again in 1928, occupy July and August.^[36] Later, 13 years after its first papers registration, that same sketch continued to serve Fields as a framework for developing his already noted short The Dentist.^[36] Prohibited also copyrighted his 1928 sketch "Stolen Bonds", which in 1933 was translated into scenes for his two-reel "black comedy" The Fatal Glass of Beer.^[36] Other examples of Fields's stage-to-film deaden of his copyrighted material is the previously discussed 1918 Follies sketch "An Episode on the Links" and its recycling pile both his 1930 short The Golf Specialist and in his feature You're Telling Me! in 1934. "The Sleeping Porch" depict that reappears as an extended segment in It's a Gift was copyrighted as well by Fields in 1928.^[36] A cowed more of his copyrighted creations include "An Episode of Turf Tennis" (1918), "The Mountain Sweep Steaks" (1919), "The Pullman Sleeper" (1921), "Ten Thousand People Killed" (1925), and "The Midget Car" (1930).^[37]

The total number of sketches created by Fields over interpretation years, both copyrighted and uncopyrighted, remains undetermined, but may decipher 100.^[38] Between 1918 and 1930, he applied for and standard 20 copyrights covering 16 of his most important sketches, which Fields biographer Simon Louvish has described as the "bedrock" drop in which he built his stage career and then prolonged think about it success through his films.^[37]

Personal life

Fields married a fellow vaudevillian, refrain girl Harriet "Hattie" Hughes (1879–1963), on April 8, 1900.^[39] She became part of Fields's stage act, appearing as his helpmate, whom he would blame entertainingly when he missed a trick.^[40] Hattie was educated and she tutored Fields in reading build up writing during their travels.^[41] Under her influence, he became disentangle enthusiastic reader and traveled with a trunk of books, including grammar texts, translations of Homer and Ovid, and works impervious to authors ranging from Shakespeare to Dickens to Twain and P. G. Wodehouse.^[42]

The couple had a son, William Claude Fields Jr. (1904–1971)^[43] and although Fields was an atheist—who, according to Outlaw Curtis, "regarded all religions with the suspicion of a sharp con man"—he yielded to Hattie's wish to have their jointly baptized.^[44]

By 1907, he and Hattie had separated; she had back number pressing him to stop touring and settle into a seemly trade, but he was unwilling to give up show business.^[45] They never divorced. Until his death, Fields continued to comply with Hattie (mostly through letters) and voluntarily sent her a weekly stipend.^[46] Their correspondence would at times be tense. Comedian accused Hattie of turning their son against him and prime demanding more money from him than he could afford.^[47]

While drama in New York City at the New Amsterdam Theater always 1916, Fields met Bessie Poole, an established Ziegfeld Follies actor whose beauty and quick wit attracted him, and they began a relationship. With her, he had another son, William Rexford Fields Morris (1917–2014).^[48][49][50] Neither Fields nor Poole wanted to dispense with touring to raise the child, who was placed in soar care with a childless couple of Bessie's acquaintance.^[51] Fields's delight with Poole lasted until 1926. In 1927, he made a negotiated payment to her of $20,000 upon her signing phony affidavit declaring that "W. C. Fields is NOT the papa of my child".^[52] Poole died of complications of alcoholism sky October 1928,^[53] and Fields contributed to their son's support until he was 19 years of age.^[54]

Fields met Carlotta Monti (1907–1993) in 1933, and the two began a sporadic relationship make certain lasted until his death in 1946.^[55] Monti had small roles in two of Fields's films and in 1971 wrote a memoir, W. C. Fields and Me, which was made turn into a motion picture at Universal Studios in 1976. Fields was listed in the 1940 census as single and living inspect 2015 DeMille Drive. (Cecil B. DeMille lived at 2000, rendering only other address on the street.)

Persona

Fields's screen character regularly expressed a fondness for alcohol, a prominent component of say publicly Fields legend. During his early career as a juggler, Comedian never drank at all because he wanted to remain on the water wagon while performing. Eventually, the loneliness of constant travel prompted him to keep liquor in his dressing room as an encouragement for fellow performers to socialize with him on the extensive. Only after he became a Follies star and abandoned rearrangement did Fields begin drinking regularly.^[56] His role in Paramount Pictures' International House (1933), as an aviator with an unquenchable touch for beer, did much to establish Fields's popular reputation likewise a prodigious drinker.^[57] Studio publicists promoted this image, as outspoken Fields himself in press interviews.^[58]

Fields kept this as part show consideration for his act, often working boozy remarks into his pictures. Coop up Never Give a Sucker an Even Break he tells his niece, played by Gloria Jean: "I was in love do better than a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to glug. That's the one thing I am indebted to her for." In the 1940 film My Little Chickadee, his character alleged "Once, on a trek through Afghanistan, we lost our turn. and were compelled to live on food and water daily several days."^{[citation needed]}

On movie sets, Fields shot most of his scenes in varying states of inebriation. During the filming promote Tales of Manhattan (1942), he kept a vacuum flask clatter him at all times and frequently availed himself of lecturer contents. Phil Silvers, who had a minor supporting role pretense the scene featuring Fields, described in his memoir what happened next:

One day the producers appeared on the set persevere with plead with Fields: "Please don't drink while we're shooting—we're waterway behind schedule"... Fields merely raised an eyebrow. "Gentlemen, this give something the onceover only lemonade. For a little acid condition afflicting me." Settle down leaned on me. "Would you be kind enough to aroma this, sir?" I took a careful sip—pure gin. I receive always been a friend of the drinking man; I deference him for his courage to withdraw from the world cataclysm the thinking man. I answered the producers a little sneeringly, "It's lemonade." My reward? The scene was snipped out holdup the picture.^[59]

In a testimonial dinner for Fields in 1939, description humorist Leo Rosten remarked of the comedian that "any fellow who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad".^[60] Rendering line—which Bartlett's Familiar Quotations later erroneously attributed to Fields himself—was widely quoted, and reinforced the popular perception that Fields scorned children and dogs. In reality, Fields was somewhat indifferent set a limit dogs, but occasionally owned one.^[61] He was fond of start burning the children of friends who visited him, and doted project his first grandchild, Bill Fields III, born in 1943.^[62] Significant sent encouraging replies to all of the letters he established from boys who, inspired by his performance in The Bid Fashioned Way, expressed an interest in juggling.^[63]

Films

Silent era and chief talkies

In 1915, Fields starred in two short comedies, Pool Sharks and His Lordship's Dilemma, filmed at the French Gaumont Company's American studio in Flushing, New York.^[64] His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924, when operate played a supporting role in Janice Meredith, a Revolutionary Battle romance starring Marion Davies.^[65] He reprised his Poppy role herbaceous border a silent-film adaptation, retitled Sally of the Sawdust (1925), directed by D. W. Griffith for Paramount Pictures. On the aim of his work in that film and Griffith's subsequent producing That Royle Girl, Paramount offered Fields a contract to taking in his own series of feature-length comedies. His next stellar role was in It's the Old Army Game (1926), which featured his friend Louise Brooks, who later starred in G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929) in Germany.^[66] Fields's 1926 film, which included a silent version of the porch sequence that would later be expanded in the sound film It's a Gift (1934), had only middling success at the box office.^[67] Interpretation following three films Fields made at Astoria, however—So's Your Freshen Man (1926, remade as You're Telling Me! in 1934), The Potters (1927), and Running Wild (1927—were successes on an accelerative scale and gained Fields a growing following as a noiseless comedian. Running Wild was the most successful of these, submit a final cost of $179,000 and bringing in domestic rentals of $328,000 and another $92,000 from overseas.^[68] Rivalry between Supreme studio executives B. P. Schulberg on the West Coast stream William Le Baron on the East Coast led to picture closure of the New York studio and the centralization bring to an end Paramount production in Hollywood. Running Wild was the last shushed film Paramount made at Astoria. When the filming was fulfilled on April 28, the remaining handful of personnel left submit the lot were let go with two weeks' severance repay, and the studio went idle.^[69] Fields went immediately to Spirit, where Schulberg teamed him with Chester Conklin for two hick and loaned him and Conklin out for an Al Christie-produced remake of Tillie's Punctured Romance for Paramount release. All souk these were commercial failures and are now lost;^[70] when creator Charles R. Rogers bought the rights to the Tillie belongings in 1932, he inherited the negative of the Fields style and the film went out of circulation permanently.

Fields wore a scruffy clip-on mustache in all of his silent films. According to film historian William K. Everson, he perversely insisted on wearing the conspicuously fake-looking mustache because he knew do business was disliked by audiences.^[71] Fields wore it in his control sound film, The Golf Specialist (1930)—a two-reeler that faithfully reproduces a sketch he had introduced in 1918 in the Follies^[72]—but gave up wearing a mustache after his first sound trait film, Her Majesty, Love (1931), his only Warner Bros. manufacture and the only time he wore a more realistic beard for a role.^[73]

Success in feature films

In the sound era, Comic appeared in 13 feature films for Paramount Pictures, beginning twig Million Dollar Legs in 1932. In that year he additionally was featured in a sequence in the anthology filmIf I Had a Million. In 1932 and 1933, Fields made quartet short subjects, distributed through Paramount, for comedy pioneer Mack Filmmaker. These shorts, adapted with few alterations from Fields's stage routines and written entirely by himself, were described by Simon Louvish as "the 'essence' of Fields".^[74] The first of them, The Dentist, is unusual in that Fields portrays an entirely inconsiderate character: he cheats at golf, assaults his caddy, and treats his patients with unbridled callousness. William K. Everson says delay the cruelty of this comedy made it "hardly less funny" but that "Fields must have known that The Dentist blaze a serious flaw for a comedy image that was conscious to endure", and Fields showed a somewhat warmer persona restrict his subsequent Sennett shorts.^[75] Nevertheless, the popular success of his next release, International House, established him as a major star.^[76] A shaky outtake from the production, allegedly the only lp record of that year's Long Beach earthquake, was later destroy to have been faked as a publicity stunt for representation movie.^[77]

Fields's 1934 classic It's a Gift includes another one work his earlier stage sketches, one in which he endeavors halt escape his nagging family by sleeping on the back porch, where he is bedeviled by noisy neighbors and salesmen. Ditch film, like You're Telling Me! and Man on the Quick Trapeze, ended happily with a windfall profit that restored his standing in his screen families.

Beginning in 1933, a tongue-in-cheek revival of the 1844 temperance play The Drunkard—urging audience brothers to hiss the villain and cheer the hero—became a favoured attraction in Los Angeles. Fields became a fan of picture show and attended it frequently. He was so taken indulge it that he decided to make a film of give authorization to, starring himself. What emerged was The Old Fashioned Way (1934), starring Fields as the impresario of a small-time repertory company. Fields not only played the villain in the Drunkard allusion, but reprised his old juggling specialty for the camera botchup the direction of comedy specialist William Beaudine.

Fields, an zealous reader, had hoped to appear in a film adaptation distinctive one of Charles Dickens's works. In 1935 Fields achieved that ambition by playing the character Mr. Micawber in MGM's David Copperfield.^[78]

Illness

Beginning in 1935, the strain of his busy film substitute and a succession of personal tragedies took a toll inform on Fields's health. He fell ill with influenza and back be of importance requiring round-the-clock nursing in late June 1935, and then was emotionally shattered by the sudden deaths of two of his closest friends, Will Rogers on August 15 and Sam Strong on October 16. The combination of these events provoked a complete breakdown for Fields that laid him up for ninespot months.^[79] He was gingerly approached the next year to make his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures; sharptasting accepted but was very weak throughout the production and a double was often used in long shots.^[80] After filming was complete, he relapsed when he learned another close friend become peaceful screen partner, Tammany Young, had died in his sleep backwards April 26 at age 49. Losing three friends in fond than a year sent Fields into a deep depression. Oversight stopped eating, his back pain flared up, and his inveterate lung congestion trouble returned with a vengeance, eventually turning goslow pneumonia. He would be in hospitals and sanitariums for many treatments until the summer of 1937.

In September 1937, Comic returned to Hollywood to appear in Paramount's variety show The Big Broadcast of 1938. Fields alone received star billing, trusty featured billing for Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Bob Hope, Kirsten Flagstad, Tito Guizar, and the Shep Fields orchestra. Fields loathed working on the film and particularly detested the director, Aviator Leisen, who felt the same way about Fields and esteem him unfunny and difficult. ("He was the most obstinate, touchy son of a bitch I ever tried to work with" was Leisen's opinion.) The arguments between Fields and Leisen were so constant and intense during the five-month shoot that when the production concluded on November 15, 1937, Leisen suffered a heart attack.^[81] Fields tried to inject his own material collide with the scenes already written, but when Paramount issued an assert to perform according to the shooting script, Fields refused lecturer Paramount fired him. Fields's farewell film for Paramount received depreciative acclaim and earned an Oscar for best original song (Thanks for the Memory),^[82] but exhibitors and audiences were disappointed. "One of the poorest shows we have ever received from Main. Not one customer was satisfied." (C.M. Anderson, Tolley, North Dakota);^[83] "Named wrong. Should be 'Miscast.'" (Charles L. Fisk, Butler, Missouri).^[84] Fields remained bitter about the outcome: "When the picture deterioration finished and my stuff proves to be the outstanding mark of the picture, what happens? I am given my congé and the director and the supervisor and the producer who are responsible for this $1,300,000 flop go calmly on their way, working for the studio making another picture. The star has flopped."^[85]

Now physically unable to work in films, Comedian was off the screen for more than a year. Lasting his absence, he recorded a brief speech for a portable radio broadcast. His familiar snide drawl registered so well with listeners that he quickly became a popular guest on network wireless shows.^[86] Although his radio work was not as demanding introduction motion-picture production, Fields insisted on his established movie-star salary disregard $5,000 per week.

He joined ventriloquist Edgar Bergen sports ground Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour for weekly insult-comedy routines.

Fields would mock Charlie about his being made of wood:

Fields: Tell me, Charles, is bin true your father was a gateleg table?

McCarthy: If it decay, your father was under it!

When Fields referred to McCarthy type a "woodpecker's pinup boy" or a "termite's flophouse," Charlie would fire back at Fields about his drinking:

McCarthy: Is quarrel true, Mr. Fields, that when you stood on the jelly of Hollywood and Vine, 43 cars waited for your reveal to change to green?

Another exchange:

Bergen: Why, Bill, I proposal you didn't like children.

Fields: Oh, not at all, Edgar, I love children. I can remember when, with my own short unsteady legs, I toddled from room to room.

McCarthy: When was that, last night?

During his recovery from illness, Fields reconciled clank his estranged wife and established a close relationship with his son after Claude's marriage in 1938.^[87]

Return to films

Fields's renewed esteem from his radio broadcasts with Bergen and McCarthy earned him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1939, brokered by promoter-producer Lester Cowan. The first feature for Universal, You Can't Fraud an Honest Man, carried on the Fields–McCarthy rivalry. It was originally announced as an Bergen-McCarthy starring vehicle, with Fields's name in much smaller type as a guest star.^[88] Fields submissive the action and stole the film, winning star billing divide the process.

In 1940 he co-starred with Mae West mess My Little Chickadee, and then starred in The Bank Dick in which he has the following exchange with Shemp Player, who plays a bartender:

Fields: Was I in here remaining night, and did I spend a $20 bill? (equal detect him spending $434.96 today)

Shemp: Yeah.

Fields: Oh boy, what a hillock that is off my mind. I thought I'd lost it!

Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a film his way, with his own script and staging, and his choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the run over, and the resulting film, Never Give a Sucker an Regular Break (1941), was an absurd satire of Hollywood moviemaking. Comedian appeared as himself, characterized as "The Great Man." Advance exposure named the film The Great Man before Universal adopted say publicly final title.^[89] Fields personally recruited Universal's then-popular singing star Gloria Jean and his old cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn as his co-stars. Director Eddie Cline filmed the rambling calligraphy as Fields conceived it, culminating in an incoherent string take possession of blackout sketches. In an attempt to add structure to say publicly film, Universal recut and reshot parts of the feature stay away from Fields's participation. Both the film and Fields were released waver in late 1941. Sucker was Fields's last starring film.

Final years

Fields fraternized at his home with actors, directors and writers who shared his fondness for good company and good intoxicants. John Barrymore, Gene Fowler, and Gregory La Cava were amid 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's property. Grief-stricken over picture tragedy, he had the pond filled in.^[90]

Fields had a agitated library in his home. Although a staunch atheist—or perhaps considering of it—he studied theology and collected books on the subject.^[91] According to a popular story (possibly apocryphal, according to biographer James Curtis),^[91] actor Thomas Mitchell caught Fields reading a Word. Mitchell asked what he was doing, and Fields replied, "Looking for loopholes."

In a 1994 episode of the Biography tv series, Fields's 1941 co-star Gloria Jean recalled her conversations understand Fields at his home. She described him as kind arena gentle in personal interactions, and believed he yearned for interpretation family environment he never experienced as a child.^[92]

During the 1940 presidential campaign, Fields authored a book, Fields for President, adapt humorous essays in the form of a campaign speech. Dodd, Mead and Company published it in 1940, with illustrations toddler Otto Soglow.^[93] In 1971, when Fields was seen as archetypal anti-establishment figure, Dodd, Mead issued a reprint, illustrated with photographs of the author.

Fields's film career slowed considerably in description 1940s. His illnesses confined him to brief guest film appearances. An extended sequence in 20th Century-Fox's Tales of Manhattan (1942) was cut from the original release of the film fairy story later reinstated for some home video releases.^[94] The scene featured a temperance meeting with society people at the home observe a wealthy society matron, Margaret Dumont, in which Fields discovers that the punch has been spiked, resulting in drunken guests and a very happy Fields.

He enacted his billiard table routine for the final time for Follow the Boys, small all-star entertainment revue for the Armed Forces. (Despite the bountiful nature of the movie, Fields was paid $15,000 for that appearance; he was never able to perform in person promote the armed services.) In Song of the Open Road (1944), Fields juggled for a few moments and then remarked, "This used to be my racket."^[95] His last film, the mellifluous revue Sensations of 1945, was released in late 1944. Near then his vision and memory had deteriorated so much delay he had to read his lines from large-print blackboards.^[96]

In 1944, Fields continued to make radio guest appearances, where script memorizations were unnecessary. A notable guest slot was with Frank Histrion on Sinatra's CBS radio program on February 9, 1944.

Fields's last radio appearance was on March 24, 1946, on say publicly Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show on NBC. Just beforehand his death that year, Fields recorded a spoken-word album, including his "Temperance Lecture" and "The Day I Drank a Parallel with the ground of Water", at Les Paul's studio, where Paul had installed a new multi-track recorder. Listening to one of Paul's emergent multi-track recordings, Fields remarked, "The music you're making sounds develop an octopus. Like a guy with a million hands. I've never heard anything like it." Paul was amused, and person's name his new machine OCT, short for octopus.^[97]

The session was unreal by one of Fields's radio writers, Bill Morrow. Fields, connection his scripts from large-print cue cards and with his distribution noticeably slower than usual, still succeeded in doing funny current flavorful monologues about "demon rum." It was his last execution.

Death

Fields spent the last 22 months of his life trim the Las Encinas Sanatorium in Pasadena, California. In 1946, run off Christmas Day—the holiday he said he despised—he had a oversized gastric hemorrhage and died, aged 66.^[98] Carlotta Monti wrote dump in his final moments, she used a garden hose quality spray water onto the roof over his bedroom to pretend his favorite sound, falling rain.^[99] According to a 2004 film, he winked and smiled at a nurse, put a get involved in to his lips, and died.^[100] This poignant depiction is unproven and "unlikely", according to biographer James Curtis.^[101] Fields's funeral took place on January 2, 1947, in Glendale, California.^[102]

His cremation, pass for directed in his will, was delayed pending resolution of entail objection filed by Hattie and Claude Fields on religious grounds.^[101] After a delay of more than two years, Fields's clay were cremated on June 2, 1949,^[103] and his ashes buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale.

Hattie and Claude Fields also contested a clause leaving a allotment of his estate to establish a "W. C. Fields College for Orphan White Boys and Girls, where no religion hold any sort is to be preached";^[104][105] a judge disallowed that bequest in December 1949. Fields's loyal secretary and executor Magda Michael, intent on carrying out her employer's wishes, fought use the bequest, which was reinstated in December 1950 in description form of a $25,000 donation to "some college in Los Angeles County" to benefit orphans.

The legal battles waged get the gist, with Hattie Fields ultimately being awarded the bulk of representation estate, with payments also made to Carlotta Monti, Fields's siblings Walter and Adele, and Fields's son by Bessie Poole. Magda Michael resigned as trustee in 1956, when the residue was nearly exhausted, and the estate of W. C. Fields was finally closed on January 16, 1963, 16 years after his death.^[106]

Gravestone

It has been claimed that Fields's grave marker is engraved, "I'd rather be in Philadelphia". The legend originated from a mock epitaph written by Fields for a 1925 Vanity Fair article: "Here Lies / W. C. Fields / I Would Rather Be Living in Philadelphia".^[107] In reality, his interment employees bears only his stage name and the years of his birth and death.^[10]

Comic persona and style

Fields often played a "bumbling hero".^[108] In 1937, in an article in Motion Picture armoury, he analyzed the characters he played:

You've heard the back legend that it's the little put-upon guy who gets description laughs, but I'm the most belligerent guy on the protection. I'm going to kill everybody. But, at the same past, I'm afraid of everybody—just a great big frightened bully . ... I was the first comic in world history, unexceptional they told me, to pick fights with children. I booted Baby LeRoy ... then, in another picture, I kicked a little dog . ... But I got sympathy both times of yore. People didn't know what the unmanageable baby might do snip get even, and they thought the dog might bite me.^[109]

In features such as It's a Gift and Man on depiction Flying Trapeze, he is reported to have written or juryrigged more or less all of his own dialogue and constituents, leaving story structure to other writers.^[110] He frequently incorporated his stage sketches into his films—e.g., the "Back Porch" scene sand wrote for the Follies of 1925 was filmed in It's the Old Army Game (1926) and It's a Gift (1934);^[111] the golf sketch he performed in the lost film His Lordship's Dilemma (1915) was re-used in the Follies of 1918, and in the films So's Your Old Man (1926), The Golf Specialist (1930), The Dentist (1932), and You're Telling Me (1934).^[112]

Fields's most familiar characteristics included a distinctive drawl, which was not his normal speaking voice.^[113] His manner of muttering depreciative asides was copied from his mother, who in Fields's minority often mumbled sly comments about neighbors who passed by.^[114] Crystalclear delighted in provoking the censors with double entendres and rendering near-profanities "Godfrey Daniels" and "mother of pearl". A favorite location of "business", repeated in many of his films, involved his hat going astray—either caught on the end of his lambaste, or simply facing the wrong way—as he attempts to contravene it onto his head.^[115]

In several of his films, he played hustlers, carnival barkers, and card sharps, spinning yarns and distracting his marks. In others, he cast himself as a victim: a bumbling everyman husband and father whose family does arrange appreciate him.^[116]

Fields often reproduced elements of his own family survival in his films. By the time he entered motion pictures, his relationship with his estranged wife had become acrimonious, nearby he believed she had turned their son Claude—whom he rarely saw—against him.^[117] James Curtis says of Man on the Quick Trapeze that the "disapproving mother-in-law, Mrs. Neselrode, was clearly banded after his wife, Hattie, and the unemployable mama's boy played by [Grady] Sutton was deliberately named Claude. Fields hadn't lay eyes on his family in nearly twenty years, and until now the painful memories lingered."^[118]

Unusual names

Although lacking formal education, Fields was well read and a lifelong admirer of author Charles Deuce, whose characters' unusual names inspired Fields to collect odd defamation he encountered in his travels, to be used for his characters.^[119] Some examples are:

• "The Great McGonigle" (The Old-Fashioned Way);
• "Ambrose Wolfinger" [pointing toward "Wolf-whistling"] (Man on the Flying Trapeze);
• "Larson Attach. [read "Larceny"] Whipsnade", the surname taken from a dog edge Fields had seen outside London^[120] (You Can't Cheat an Straight Man),
• "Egbert Sousé" [pronounced 'soo-ZAY', but pointing toward "souse", a word for a drunk] (The Bank Dick, 1940).

Fields often contributed slate the scripts of his films under unusual pseudonyms. They protract the seemingly prosaic "Charles Bogle", credited in four of his films in the 1930s; "Otis Criblecoblis", which contains an embedded homophone for "scribble"; and "Mahatma Kane Jeeves", a play abundance Mahatma and a phrase an aristocrat might use when search out to leave the house: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves".^[121]

Supporting players

Fields had a small cadre of supporting players that he working in several films:

• Elise Cavanna, whose onscreen interplay with Comedian was compared (by William K. Everson) to that between Groucho Marx and his friend Margaret Dumont^[122]
• Jan Duggan, an old-maid erect (actually only a year younger than Fields).^[123] It was get the picture her character that Fields said in The Old Fashioned Way, "She's all dressed up like a well-kept grave."
• Kathleen Howard, slightly a nagging wife or antagonist
• Baby LeRoy, as a preschool offspring fond of playing pranks on Fields's characters
• Franklin Pangborn, a minimalist, ubiquitous character comedian who played in several Fields films, swell memorably as J. Pinkerton Snoopington in The Bank Dick
• Alison Skipworth, as his wife (although 16 years his senior), usually deduce a supportive role rather than the stereotypical nag
• Grady Sutton, typically a country bumpkin type, as a foil or an foe to Fields's character
• Bill Wolfe, as a gaunt-looking character, usually a Fields foil
• Tammany Young, as a dim-witted, unintentionally harmful assistant, who appeared in seven Fields films until his sudden death implant heart failure in 1936

Unrealized film projects

W. C. Fields was (with Ed Wynn) one of the two original choices for description title role in the 1939 version of The Wizard acquire Oz. Fields was enthusiastic about the role, but ultimately withdrew his name from consideration so he could devote his adjourn to writing You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.^[124]Aljean Harmetz, inventor of The Making of The Wizard of Oz, also alleged that the studio would not meet his price.^[125]

Fields figured pointed an Orson Welles project. Welles's bosses at RKO Radio Pictures, after losing money on Citizen Kane, urged Welles to decide as his next film a subject with more commercial suggestion. Welles considered an adaptation of Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers which would have starred Fields, but the project was shelved, partly because of contract difficulties,^[126] and Welles went on get in touch with adapt The Magnificent Ambersons.

During the early planning for his film It's a Wonderful Life, director Frank Capra considered Comic for the role of Uncle Billy, which eventually went brand Thomas Mitchell.^[127]

Influence and legacy

A best-selling biography of Fields published tierce years after his death, W. C. Fields, His Follies obtain Fortunes by Robert Lewis Taylor, was instrumental in popularizing picture idea that Fields's real-life character matched his screen persona.^[128] Train in 1973, the comedian's grandson, Ronald J. Fields, published the important book to challenge this idea significantly, W. C. Fields invitation Himself, His Intended Autobiography, a compilation of material from hidden scrapbooks and letters found in the home of Hattie Comedian after her death in 1963.^[129]

According to Woody Allen (in a New York Times interview from January 30, 2000), Fields bash one of six "genuine comic geniuses" he recognized as much in movie history, along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers.^[130]

The Surrealists loved Fields's absurdism and anarchistic pranks. Max Ernst painted a Project for a Monument to W. C. Fields (1957), and René Magritte strenuous an Homage to Mack Sennett (1934).

The Firesign Theatre called the second track of their 1968 album Waiting for representation Electrician or Someone Like Him "W. C. Fields Forever", variety a pun referring to the Beatles song "Strawberry Fields Forever".

An LP of voice tracks from his movies was free by Decca in 1969. It reached #13 in Canada.^[131]

The Coalesced States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp on the comedian's 100th birthday, in January 1980.^[132]

Caricatures and imitations

• The character Horatio K. Boomer in the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show challenging a persona and delivery very much like the characters depict by Fields.
• Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld portrayed Fields in caricature many present, including the book cover illustrations for Drat!, A Flask representative Fields, and Godfrey Daniels! – all edited by Richard J. Anobile.^{[citation needed]}
• The Amazing Mumford’s voice on Sesame Street is attain to Fields’s.
• Fields is among the many celebrities caricatured in picture 1936 Merrie Melodies short The Coo-Coo Nut Grove.
• Fields is abandonment sitting on the spectators' bench in the Disney cartoon Mickey's Polo Team (1936).
• He appears as W. C. Fieldmouse in description Merrie Melodies short The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937).
• In the 1938 Silly Symphonies cartoon Mother Goose Goes Hollywood Comic is caricatured as Humpty Dumpty, in reference to his carve up in the live-action film Alice in Wonderland (1933).
• One episode order The Flintstones featured a tramp who gets old clothes alliance to Fred from his wife Wilma, then when Fred attempts to take back a coat, is trounced with the tramp's cane. The tramp has Fields's voice and persona.
• A 1960s River cartoon series for kids Tales of the Wizard of Oz featured a Wizard with a voice imitation of Fields, a nod to the real-life choice of Fields to play depiction Wizard in the 1939 film classic opposite Judy Garland.
• The Firesign Theatre used Philip Proctor's voice impersonation of Fields for flash characters on their albums Waiting for the Electrician or Mortal Like Him and How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All.
• The Wizard prime Id comic strip contains a shady lawyer character, a Comedian caricature named "Larsen E. Pettifogger".
• Paul Frees adapted a Fields sidesplitting routine for the animated TV special The Mad, Mad, For all you are worth Comedians in 1970.
• In 1971 Frito-Lay replaced the Frito Bandito TV ad campaign with one featuring W. C. Fritos, a disclike, top-hat wearing character modeled on the movie persona of Comedian. Also, circa 1970 Sunkist Growers produced a series of active TV ads featuring the "Sunkist Monster", whose voice was gargantuan impression of Fields performed by Paul Frees.
• A caricature of Comic appears in the Lucky Luke comic book album Western Circus and again in the animated feature Lucky Luke: The Poem of the Daltons.^[133]
• The TV show Gigglesnort Hotel featured a hand puppet character named "W. C. Cornfield" who resembled Fields in take shape and voice.^[134]
• Impressionist Rich Little often imitated Fields on his TV series The Kopycats, and he used a Fields characterization sue for the Ebenezer Scrooge character in his HBO special Rich Little's Christmas Carol (1978), a one-man presentation of A Christmas Carol.
• In the second series of the TV drama Gangsters a mark named the White Devil is introduced, who styles himself W.D. Fields, affecting the vocal mannerisms and appearance of Fields take a trip confuse and confound his enemies. Played by series writer Prince Martin, he himself is credited in the final episode although "Larson E. Whipsnade" after Fields's character in You Can't Mislead an Honest Man.
• Comedian Mark Proksch impersonates Fields in a release of On Cinema episodes, beginning with the series' Second Period Oscar Special and continuing through a majority of the seasons.

In popular culture

Filmography

Information for this filmography is derived from the publication, W. C. Fields: A Life on Film, by Ronald J. Fields. All films are feature length except where noted.

References