Stanley Fields

Actor: Stanley Fields

Born: May 20, 1883 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania
Died: Apr 23, 1941 in Los Angeles, California
Occupation: Actor
Active: '30s
Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
Career Highlights: Way Out West, Viva Cisco Kid, King of the Lumberjacks
First Major Screen Credit: The Border Legion (1930)

Biography

Bulky, foghorn-voiced Stanley Fields was a professional prizefighter before becoming a vaudeville comedian. He came to Hollywood when the movies began to talk, establishing himself as a scowling villain. One of his biggest early film roles was the gang boss who gives torpedo Edward G. Robinson his first big break in Little Caesar (1931). Thereafter, Fields frequently popped up unbilled but never unnoticeable, as witness his spirited performance as a hillbilly theatre patron in Show Boat (1936). Fields' foreboding brutishness made him an excellent foil for such comedians as Wheeler and Woolsey (Cracked Nuts [1931] and Girl Crazy [1932]) Eddie Cantor (The Kid From Spain [1932]) and Laurel and Hardy (Way Out West [1937]). Evidently changing agents in the late 1930s, Stanley Fields enjoyed some of his most sizeable screen assignments in the years just prior to his death in 1941, notably the practical joke-playing crime czar in the 1939 John Garfield vehicle Blackwell's Island. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide