W. C. Fields

Fields continued personally and with legal counsel to protect his comedy material during the final decades of his career, especially with regard to that material's reuse in his films. For example, he copyrighted his original stage sketch "An Episode at the Dentist's" three times: in January 1919 and twice again in 1928, in July and August.^[36] Later, 13 years after its first copyright registration, that same sketch continued to serve Fields as a framework for developing his already noted short The Dentist.^[36] He 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 use of his copyrighted material is the previously discussed 1918 Follies sketch "An Episode on the Links" and its recycling in both his 1930 short The Golf Specialist and in his feature You're Telling Me! in 1934. "The Sleeping Porch" sketch that reappears as an extended segment in It's a Gift was copyrighted as well by Fields in 1928.^[36] A few more of his copyrighted creations include "An Episode of Lawn 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 the years, both copyrighted and uncopyrighted, remains undetermined, but may exceed 100.^[38] Between 1918 and 1930, he applied for and received 20 copyrights covering 16 of his most important sketches, which Fields biographer Simon Louvish has described as the "bedrock" upon which he built his stage career and then prolonged that success through his films.^[37]

Personal life

Fields married a fellow vaudevillian, chorus girl Harriet "Hattie" Hughes (1879–1963), on April 8, 1900.

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

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

While performing in New York City at the

Fields met Carlotta Monti (1907–1993) in 1933, and the two began a sporadic relationship that 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 into a motion picture at Universal Studios in 1976. Fields was listed in the 1940 census as single and living at 2015 DeMille Drive. (Cecil B. DeMille lived at 2000, the only other address on the street.)

Persona

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

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

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

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

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

Films

Silent era and first talkies

In 1915, Fields starred in two short comedies,

Beginning in 1935, the strain of his busy film schedule and a succession of personal tragedies took a toll on Fields's health. He fell ill with influenza and back trouble 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 Hardy on October 16. The combination of these events provoked a complete breakdown for Fields that laid him up for nine months.^[79] He was gingerly approached the next year to recreate his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures; he 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 and screen partner, Tammany Young, had died in his sleep on April 26 at age 49. Losing three friends in less than a year sent Fields into a deep depression. He stopped eating, his back pain flared up, and his chronic lung congestion trouble returned with a vengeance, eventually turning into pneumonia. He would be in hospitals and sanitariums for various treatments until the summer of 1937.

In September 1937 Fields returned to Hollywood to appear in Paramount's variety show

Now physically unable to work in films, Fields was off the screen for more than a year. 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.[86] 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 mock Charlie about his being made of wood:

Fields: Tell me, Charles, is it true your father was a gate-leg table?

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

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

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

Another exchange:

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

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

McCarthy: When was that, last night?

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.^[87]

Return to films

Fields's renewed popularity 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 Cheat 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 dominated the action and stole the film, winning star billing in the process.

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

Fields: Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?

Shemp: Yeah.

Fields: Oh boy, what a load 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 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 an absurd satire of Hollywood moviemaking. Fields appeared as himself, characterized as "The Great Man." Advance publicity named the film The Great Man before Universal adopted the 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 script as Fields conceived it, culminating in an incoherent string of blackout sketches. In an attempt to add structure to the film, Universal recut and reshot parts of the feature without Fields's participation. Both the film and Fields were released quietly 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 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's property. Grief-stricken over the tragedy, he had the pond filled in.^[90]

Fields had a substantial library in his home. Although a staunch atheist—or perhaps because 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 Bible. Mitchell asked what he was doing, and Fields replied, "Looking for loopholes."

In a 1994 episode of the

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

During the

Dodd, Mead and Company published it in 1940, with illustrations by Otto Soglow.^[93]

In 1971, when Fields was seen as an anti-establishment figure, Dodd, Mead issued a reprint, illustrated with photographs of the author.

Fields's film career slowed considerably in the 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 and later reinstated for some home video releases.^[94] The scene featured a temperance meeting with society people at the home of 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, an all-star entertainment revue for the Armed Forces. (Despite the charitable nature of the movie, Fields was paid $15,000 for this appearance; he was never able to perform in person for 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 musical revue Sensations of 1945, was released in late 1944. By then his vision and memory had deteriorated so much that 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 Sinatra on Sinatra's CBS radio program on February 9, 1944.

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

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

Death

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

His cremation, as directed in his will, was delayed pending resolution of an objection filed by Hattie and Claude Fields on religious grounds.^[101] They also contested a clause leaving a portion of his estate to establish a "W. C. Fields College for Orphan White Boys and Girls, where no religion of any sort is to be preached".^[103][104] After a lengthy period of litigation, his remains were cremated on June 2, 1949,^[105] and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale.

Gravestone

It has been claimed that Fields's grave marker is inscribed, "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".^[106] In reality, his interment marker bears only his stage name and the years of his birth and death.^[10]

Comic persona and style

Fields often played a "bumbling hero".

Motion Picture

You've heard the old legend that it's the little put-upon guy who gets the laughs, but I'm the most belligerent guy on the screen. I'm going to kill everybody. But, at the same time, I'm afraid of everybody—just a great big frightened bully . ... I was the first comic in world history, so 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. People didn't know what the unmanageable baby might do to get even, and they thought the dog might bite me.^[108]

In features such as It's a Gift and Man on the Flying Trapeze, he is reported to have written or improvised more or less all of his own dialogue and material, leaving story structure to other writers.^[109] He frequently incorporated his stage sketches into his films—e.g., the "Back Porch" scene he wrote for the Follies of 1925 was filmed in It's the Old Army Game (1926) and It's a Gift (1934);^[110] 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).^[111]

Fields's most familiar characteristics included a distinctive drawl, which was not his normal speaking voice.^[112] His manner of muttering deprecatory asides was copied from his mother, who in Fields's childhood often mumbled sly comments about neighbors who passed by.^[113] He delighted in provoking the censors with double entendres and the near-profanities "Godfrey Daniels" and "mother of pearl". A favorite bit of "business", repeated in many of his films, involved his hat going astray—either caught on the end of his cane, or simply facing the wrong way—as he attempts to put it onto his head.^[114]

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 not appreciate him.^[115]

Fields often reproduced elements of his own family life in his films. By the time he entered motion pictures, his relationship with his estranged wife had become acrimonious, and he believed she had turned their son Claude—whom he seldom saw—against him.^[116] James Curtis says of Man on the Flying Trapeze that the "disapproving mother-in-law, Mrs. Neselrode, was clearly patterned after his wife, Hattie, and the unemployable mama's boy played by [Grady] Sutton was deliberately named Claude. Fields hadn't laid eyes on his family in nearly twenty years, and yet the painful memories lingered."^[117]

Unusual names

Although lacking formal education, Fields was well read and a lifelong admirer of author Charles Dickens, whose characters' unusual names inspired Fields to collect odd names he encountered in his travels, to be used for his characters.^[118] Some examples are:

• "The Great McGonigle" (The Old-Fashioned Way);
• "Ambrose Wolfinger" [pointing toward "Wolf-whistling"] (Man on the Flying Trapeze);
• "Larson E. [read "Larceny"] Whipsnade", the surname taken from a dog track Fields had seen outside London^[119] (You Can't Cheat an Honest Man),
• "Egbert Sousé" [pronounced 'soo-ZAY', but pointing toward "souse", a synonym for a drunk] (The Bank Dick, 1940).

Fields often contributed to the scripts of his films under unusual pseudonyms. They include 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 on Mahatma and a phrase an aristocrat might use when about to leave the house: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves".^[120]

Supporting players

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

• Elise Cavanna, whose onscreen interplay with Fields was compared (by William K. Everson) to that between Groucho Marx and his friend Margaret Dumont^[121]
• Jan Duggan, an old-maid character (actually only a year younger than Fields).^[122] It was of her character that Fields said in The Old Fashioned Way, "She's all dressed up like a well-kept grave."
• Kathleen Howard, as a nagging wife or antagonist
• Baby LeRoy, as a preschool child fond of playing pranks on Fields's characters
• Franklin Pangborn, a fussy, ubiquitous character comedian who played in several Fields films, most memorably as J. Pinkerton Snoopington in The Bank Dick
• Alison Skipworth, as his wife (although 16 years his senior), usually in a supportive role rather than the stereotypical nag
• Grady Sutton, typically a country bumpkin type, as a foil or an antagonist 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 from heart failure in 1936

Unrealized film projects

W. C. Fields was (with