W. C. Fields

William Claude Dukenfield (January 29, 1880^[1] – December 25, 1946), known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer. Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century: a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children, and women.

The characterization he portrayed in films and on radio was so strong it became generally identified with Fields himself. It was maintained by the movie-studio publicity departments at Fields's studios (Paramount and Universal) and further established by Robert Lewis Taylor's 1949 biography W.C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, with the publication of Fields's letters, photos, and personal notes in grandson Ronald Fields's book W.C. Fields by Himself, it has been shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged from his wife), and he financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren.

There was some truth to the misanthropic persona, however. Madge Evans, a friend and actress, told a visitor in 1972 that Fields so deeply resented intrusions on his privacy by curious tourists walking up the driveway to his Los Angeles home that he would hide in the shrubs by his house and fire BB pellets at the trespassers' legs. Groucho Marx told a similar story, in his live album An Evening with Groucho.

Biography

Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania. His father, James Dukenfield, came from an English-Irish Catholic family that came to America from Sheffield, England in 1854, when James was 13^[2]. James fought for the Union during the American Civil War and lost a finger or two at the Battle of Lookout Mountain in 1863^[3]. Fields's mother, Kate Spangler Felton, was an old-stock Philadelphian, a Methodist of German extraction. The 1876 Philadelphia City Directory lists James as a "clerk." After marrying Kate about 1879, he worked mostly as an independent produce merchant, and part-time tavern-keeper.^[4]

Young Claude Dukenfield (as he was called) worked briefly at the Strawbridge and Clothier department store and in an oyster house, before leaving home at age 18 (not 11, as many biographies have suggested). At age 15 or 16 he began performing a juggling act at local church and theater shows, and then entered vaudeville as a "tramp juggler" under the name of W. C. Fields.^[5] By age 21, he was traveling as a juggling act ('The Eccentric Juggler'), and eventually introduced amusing asides and added increasing amounts of comedy into his act, becoming a headliner in both North America and Europe. In 1906 he made his Broadway debut in the musical comedy The Ham Tree.

Fields was well known for embellishing stories of his youth, but despite the legends he encouraged, the truth is that his home seems to have been a relatively happy one and his family supported his ambitions for the stage: his parents saw him off on the train for his first real stage tour as a teenager, and his father visited him for two months in England while Fields was enjoying success in the music halls there.^[6]

Fields was known to his friends as "Bill". Edgar Bergen also called him "Bill" in the radio shows (Charlie McCarthy, of course, called him by other names). In Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, in which Fields played himself, his 'niece' called him "Uncle Bill", and in one scene introduced himself, "I'm W.C., uh, Bill Fields." In films in which he was portrayed as having a son, he sometimes named the character "Claude", after his own son. (Fields himself was also called "Claude" by friends sometimes.) In England he was sometimes billed as "Wm. C. Fields", presumably to avoid controversy due to "W.C." being the British initialism for 'Water Closet', although it might be safely assumed that the earthy Fields was amused by the coincidence. His public use of initials instead of a first name was a commonplace formality of the era in which Fields grew up. That "W.C. Fields" more easily fit onto a marquee than "W. Dukenfield" undoubtedly was a factor in his choice of a stage name.

Personal life

Fields married a fellow vaudevillian, chorus girl Harriet 'Hattie' Hughes, on April 8, 1900.^[7] Their son, William Claude Fields Jr., was born on July 28, 1904.^[8] Although Fields was "an avowed atheist [who] regarded all religions with the suspicion of a seasoned con man", he yielded to Hattie's wish to have their son baptized.^[9]

At the time Fields was away from Hattie on tour in England. By 1907, however, W. C. and Hattie had separated; she had been pressing him to stop touring and settle down to a respectable trade, while he was unwilling to give up his own livelihood.^[10] Until his death, Fields continued to correspond with Hattie and voluntarily sent child-support payments.

He had another son, born on August 15, 1917, with girlfriend Bessie Poole, named William Rexford Fields Morris.^[11] Bessie was an established Zeigfield Follies performer and met W.C. while performing in New York City at the famous Amsterdam Theater. Her beauty and quick wit attracted W.C. who was the featured act from 1916 until 1922. She was killed in a bar fight several years later, leaving young Bill to be raised in foster-care where he acquired the surname Morris by his foster-mother. W.C. sent voluntary support to young Bill in care of his foster-mother until high school graduation when he sent $300 as a graduation gift.

Fields lived with Carlotta Monti (1907-1993) after they met in 1932 and they began a relationship which lasted until his death in 1946. Monti had small roles in a couple of Fields' films and also wrote a biography of Fields, W.C. Fields and Me.

Fields on stage

Fields started as a juggler in vaudeville, appearing in the makeup of a genteel 'tramp' with a scruffy beard and shabby tuxedo. He juggled cigar boxes, hats, and a variety of other objects in what appears to have been a unique and fresh act, parts of which are reproduced in some of his films. Fields confined his act to pantomime so that he could play international theaters. Fields toured several continents and became a world-class juggler and an international star. He worked bits of juggling into many of his films. A good portion of his act is contained in The Old Fashioned Way.

Back in America, Fields found that he could get more laughs by adding dialogue to his routines. His trademark mumbling patter and sarcastic asides were developed during this time. (According to the A&E Biography program about Fields (1994), when he was young his mother would sit with him on the front steps and mumble comments about the passersby.) He soon starred on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies revues. There he delighted audiences with a wild pool skit, complete with bizarrely shaped cues and a custom-built table used for a number of hilarious gags and surprising trick shots. His pool game is also reproduced, at least in part, in some of his films (Six of a Kind, 1933).

He starred in multiple editions of the Follies and in the Broadway musical comedy Poppy, where he perfected his persona as an oily, small-time confidence man.

Movies

Fields starred in a couple of short comedies, filmed in New York in 1915. His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924. He reprised his Poppy role in a silent-film adaptation, retitled Sally of the Sawdust (1925) and directed by D.W. Griffith. Fields wore a scruffy-looking, clip-on mustache in virtually all of his silent films, discarding it only after his first sound feature film, Her Majesty Love.

Screen stardom

Fields made four short subjects for comedy pioneer Mack Sennett in 1932 and 1933. During this period, Paramount Pictures began featuring Fields in full-length comedies, and by 1934 he was a major movie star. It was for one of the films of this period (International House) that out takes of one scene (Fields, and two other actors) allegedly recorded the only moving image record of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. This footage was later revealed to have been faked as a publicity stunt for the movie.

He often contributed to the scripts of his films, under unusual pseudonyms such as the seemingly prosaic "Charles Bogle", which appeared on most of his films in the 1930s; "Otis Criblecoblis", which contains an embedded homophone for "scribble"; and "Mahatma Kane Jeeves", a play on mahatma and on a phrase an aristocrat might use when about to leave the house: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves". 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.

In his films, he often played hustlers such as carnival barkers and card sharps, spinning yarns and distracting his marks, as with this gem from My Little Chickadee (1940): "Whilst traveling through the Andes Mountains, we lost our corkscrew. Had to live on food and water for several days!" Fields had an affection for unlikely names and many of his characters bore them. Among the prime examples are:

• "Larson E. [read "Larceny"] Whipsnade" (You Can't Cheat an Honest Man);
• "Egbert Sousé" [pronounced 'soo-ZAY', but pointing toward a synonym for a 'drunk'] (The Bank Dick);
• "Ambrose Wolfinger" (Man on the Flying Trapeze); and,
• "The Great McGonigle" (The Old-Fashioned Way).

The carnival fraud was not the only character Fields played. He was also fond of casting himself as the victim: a hapless householder constantly under the thumb of his shrewish wife and/or mother-in-law. His 1934 classic It's a Gift included his stage sketch of trying to escape his nagging family by sleeping on the back porch, and being bedeviled by noisy neighbors and traveling salesmen. That film, along with films such as You're Telling Me! and Man on the Flying Trapeze, ended happily with a windfall profit that restored his standing in his screen families.

Although lacking formal education, he was well read and a lifelong admirer of author Charles Dickens, whose characters' unusual names inspired Fields to do likewise for his various characters. He achieved one of his career ambitions by playing the character Mr. Micawber, in MGM's David Copperfield in 1935. In 1936, Fields re-created his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures.

Supporting players

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

• Kathleen Howard, as a nagging wife or antagonist.
• Alison Skipworth, as his wife (although 16 years his senior), usually in a supportive role rather than the stereotypical nag.
• Grady Sutton, typically as a country bumpkin type, as either a foil or an antagonist to Field's character.
• Baby LeRoy, a pre-school child fond of playing pranks on Fields' characters.
• Tammany Young, as a dim-witted, not intentionally harmful assistant; appeared in seven Fields films until his sudden death from heart failure in 1936.
• Bill Wolfe, a gaunt looking character, usually a Fields foil.
• Jan Duggan, an oldish woman (actually about Fields' age) who played small roles as a widow type. It was about her character that Fields said in The Old Fashioned Way, "She's all dressed up like a well-kept grave."
• Franklin Pangborn, a ubiquitous character actor of the period, also played in several of Fields' films.
• Elise Cavanna, whose on-screen interplay with Fields was compared (The Art of W.C. Fields 1967 by William K. Everson) to that between Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont

Fields and alcohol

Fields’s screen character was often fond of alcohol and this trait has become part of the Fields legend. In his younger days as a juggler, Fields himself never drank, because he didn’t want to impair his functions while performing. The loneliness of his constant touring and traveling, however, compelled Fields to keep liquor on hand for fellow performers, so he could invite them to his dressing room for companionship and cocktails. Only then did Fields cultivate a fondness for alcohol.

A notable quote regarding alcohol is attributed to Fields: "I can't stand water because of the things fish do in it." Fields expressed his feelings to Gloria Jean (playing his niece) in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: "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."

On movie sets, Fields kept a vacuum flask of martinis handy; he referred to it as his "lemonade". One day a prankster switched the contents of the flask, filling it with actual lemonade. Upon discovering the prank, Fields was heard to yell, "Who put lemonade in my lemonade?" (A variation on the story is "pineapple juice".)

In 1936 Fields became gravely ill, his health worsened by his heavy drinking. Fields’s film series came to a halt while he recovered; he made one last film for Paramount, The Big Broadcast of 1938. The comedian's all-around cussedness kept other producers away, and Fields was professionally idle until he made his debut on radio. By then Fields was very sick and suffering from delirium tremens.

Radio

While Fields was inactive, he recorded a short 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.^[12] One of his funniest routines had him trading insults with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour. Fields would twit 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!

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?

Via radio Fields reached an even wider audience than before, and he was soon in demand for films again.

Movie comeback

Fields's new popularity 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 Fields made My Little Chickadee, with Mae West, and The Bank Dick, perhaps his best-known film (in which he asks bartender Shemp Howard, "Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?" "Yeah!" "Oh, is that a load off my mind... I thought I'd lost it!").

Fields often 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 own choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and the resulting film, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, (1941) is a masterpiece of absurd humor in which Fields appeared as himself, "The Great Man". Universal's singing star Gloria Jean played opposite Fields, and his old cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn served as his comic foils. But the film Fields delivered was so surreal Universal recut and reshot parts of it and then quietly released both the film and Fields.

Sucker turned out to be his last starring film. By then he was much heavier and less mobile than he had been at the peak of his film career during 1934-1935, when he was reasonably fit and trim.

Unrealized movie projects

W. C. Fields was the original choice for the title role in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz. One rumor was that he believed the role was too small. Another alleged that he was asking too much money: his asking price was $100,000, while MGM offered $75,000. However, his agent asserted that Fields rejected the role because he wanted to devote his time to writing You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.

Fields also figured in an Orson Welles project. Welles's bosses at RKO Radio Pictures, after losing money on Citizen Kane, urged Welles to choose as his next film a subject with more commercial appeal. Welles considered an adaptation of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers starring Fields and John Barrymore, but Fields's schedule would not permit it. The project was permanently shelved, and Welles went on to adapt The Magnificent Ambersons.

During the early planning for It's a Wonderful Life, director Frank Capra considered Fields for the role of Uncle Billy, which eventually went to Thomas Mitchell.

Final years

Fields occasionally entertained guests at his home. Anthony Quinn and his wife Katherine DeMille (daughter of prominent Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille) called on Fields one afternoon, which became a nightmare when the Quinns' two-year-old son, Christopher, drowned in Fields’s lily pond. Fields was hit hard by this incident, and brooded about it for months.^[13]

Generally, Fields fraternized with other actors, directors, and writers who shared his fondness for good company and good liquor. John Barrymore, Gregory La Cava, and Gene Fowler were a few of his intimates.

In the 1994 Biography TV show, his 1941 co-star Gloria Jean described how she would visit his house from time to time, and they would talk. Gloria Jean found Fields to be kind and gentle in real life, and believed that Fields yearned for the kind of family he lacked when he was a child. The show also reported that Fields eventually reconciled with his long estranged wife and son, and enjoyed playing with his grandchildren.

With a presidential election looming in 1940, Fields toyed with the idea of lampooning political campaign speeches. He wrote to vice-presidential candidate Henry Wallace, intending to glean comedy material from Wallace’s speeches, but when Wallace responded with a warm, personal fan letter to Fields, the comedian decided against skewering Wallace. Instead, Fields wrote a book entitled Fields for President, humorous essays in the form of a campaign speech. Dodd, Mead and Company published it in 1940 but declined to reprint it at the time. It did not sell well, mostly because people were confused as to whether it was meant to be taken seriously. Dodd, Mead and Company reprinted it in 1971 when Fields was seen as an anti-establishment figure. The 1940 edition includes illustrations by Otto Soglow; the 1971 reprint is illustrated with photographs of Fields.

Fields's film career slowed down considerably in the 1940s. His illnesses confined him to brief guest-star appearances in other people's films. An extended sequence in 20th Century Fox's Tales of Manhattan (1942) was cut from the original release of the film; it was later reinstated for some home video releases. He performed his famous billiard-table routine one more time on camera, 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 his appearance, and he never was able to perform in person for the armed services.) In Song Of The Open Road (1944) Fields actually juggled for a few moments, remarking "this used to be my racket". His last film, the musical revue Sensations of 1945, was released in late 1944.

He also guested occasionally on radio as late as 1946, often with Edgar Bergen, and just before his death that same year he recorded a spoken-word album, delivering his comic "Temperance Lecture" and "The Day I Drank A Glass Of Water" at Les Paul's studio, in which Paul had just installed his new multi-track recorder. The session was arranged by Paul's old Army pal Bill Morrow, a friend he had in common with Fields. Fields's vision had deteriorated so much that he read his lines from large-print cue cards. It was W. C. Fields's last performance and, despite his frail health, one of his most charming.

Fields spent his last weeks in a hospital, where a friend stopped by for a visit and caught Fields reading the Bible. When asked why, Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes". In a final irony, W. C. Fields died in 1946 (from a stomach hemorrhage) on the holiday he claimed to despise: Christmas Day.^[14] As documented in W.C. Fields and Me (published in 1971, the book was made into a 1976 film of the same name starring Rod Steiger), he died at Las Encinas Sanatorium, Pasadena, California, a bungalow-type sanitarium where, as he lay in bed dying, his longtime and final love, Carlotta Monti, went outside and turned the hose onto the roof, so as to allow Fields to hear for one last time his favorite sound of falling rain. According to the documentary W.C. Fields Straight Up,^[15] his death occurred in this way: he winked and smiled at a nurse, put a finger to his lips, and died. Fields was 66, and had been a patient for 22 months. His funeral took place on January 2, 1947, in Glendale, CA.

Fields was cremated and his ashes interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. There have been stories that he wanted his grave marker to read "On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia", his home town, which is similar to a line he used in My Little Chickadee: "I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia would do!" (In the same film, he made a point of referencing "Philadelphia cream cheese". Given his fondness for words, maybe he just liked the sound of his home town's name.) This rumor has also morphed into "I would rather be here than in Philadelphia". The anecdote that Fields often remarked, "Philadelphia, wonderful town, spent a week there one night" is unsubstantiated. It is also said that Fields wanted "I'd rather be in Philadelphia" on his gravestone because of the old vaudeville joke among comedians that "I would rather be dead than play Philadelphia". Whatever his wishes might have been, his interment marker merely has his name and birth and death years.

Caricatures

Fields, with his bulbous nose (partly as a result of rosacea, although his parents also had bulbous noses), rotund body, and blustery, nasal voice, has often been caricatured. A few examples:

• Several contemporary cartoons contained Fields characterizations.^[16]
• The comic strip The Wizard of Id features an attorney called "Larsen E. Pettifogger", an obvious parody of Fields that borrows from the character "Larsen E. Whipsnade" that Fields created in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.
• Frito-Lay's controversial "Frito Bandito" in the late 1960s was retired in favor of an animated Fields lookalike called "W.C. Fritos".
• In addition to the above "W. C. Fritos" ads, Fields was mimicked and caricatured in a great many animated cartoons and commercials, ranging from classic Looney Tunes shorts to an ad for Cocoa Puffs (in which Sonny disguised himself as W. C.). In the late '60s Warner Brothers spoofed Fields' persona in their character Merlin the Magic Mouse, voiced by Larry Storch.
• The Firesign Theater's How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All (Columbia CS-9884 — July 1969) includes a character "Bill" who speaks in fluent W.C. Fieldese.
• On the TV show Gigglesnort Hotel, there was a puppet character named W. C. Cornfield which was an obvious caricature of Fields.
• Fields was an easy target for impressionists and mimics. For example, Ed McMahon aped Fields on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Family Feud host and Match Game panelist Richard Dawson frequently did imitations of Fields. Master impressionist Rich Little used a Fields characterization for the "Scrooge" character in his one-man presentation of A Christmas Carol.
• British comic Les Dawson's character Zebediah Twain was obviously an affectionate tribute.
• Benny Hill mimicked Fields in sketches and musical numbers on The Benny Hill Show.
• In the finale of 1970's TV series Gangsters, writer Philip Martin appeared as "W.D. (White Devil) Fields", a ninja assassin who adopted the appearance and mannerisms of Fields in order to lull his opponents into a false sense of security. His first line in the series was "Birmingham, eh? On the whole I'd sooner be in Philadelphia". Martin was credited as "Larsen E. Whipsnade", Fields' character in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.
• He was also caricatured in the Belgian comic strip Lucky Luke in the album Western Circus and the animated film La Ballade des Dalton.
• The character of Horatio K. Boomer on radio's Fibber McGee & Molly, voiced by Bill Thompson was a vocal parody of Fields.
• In the comic strip Hi and Lois there was a constantly-drinking neighbor named Mr. Thurston, a.k.a. "Mr. Thirsty," who bore a strong resemblance to Fields. This character and his drinking have been greatly downplayed in recent years.

Fields in popular culture

• Singer Jimmy Buffett has made much of the fact that he was born on the very day that Fields died, even mentioning it in the cover booklet of his CD "Christmas Island."
• In the film Die Hard, while trapped in Nakatomi Plaza, John McClane (played by Bruce Willis) says he'd "rather be in Philadelphia."
• He's featured on the cover of the 1967 Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• In the 1991 movie The Rocketeer, which was set in 1938, Bob Leeman^[17] played the part of W. C. Fields.
• On August 18, 2007, Nick Miles and Adele Silva were asked the nationality of Fields for their £10,000 question on the British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. They answered the question correctly.
• MGM's 1944 cartoon Batty Baseball takes place at "W. C. Field" in what the cartoon describes as a "corny gag", then assures the audience that the guy who thought up the gag "isn't with us any more".[1]
• In the film Ghost World, Seymour, played by Steve Buscemi, is a member of the W.C. Fields fan club.

Filmography

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: W. C. Fields

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

References

Further reading

• Fields for President by W. C. Fields. Dood, Mead, 1940 and 1971. ISBN 0396064191. (Humorous essays about Fields's stance on marriage, politics, finance, etc.)
• W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes by Robert Lewis Taylor. Doubleday, 1949; reprint edition: New American Library, 1967. ISBN 0451506537. (First book biography, with many firsthand quotes from Fields and friends)
• The Art of W. C. Fields by William K. Everson. Random House, 1967. ISBN 0517012324. (First book-length examination of the Fields films)
• W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography, edited by Ronald J. Fields. Prentice-Hall, 1973. ISBN 0139444629. (Collection of Fields's letters and scripts, with commentary)
• Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W. C. Fields by Simon Louvish. Faber & Faber, 1999. ISBN 0393041271. (New biography, with new research)
• W. C. Fields: A Biography by James Curtis. Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. ISBN 0375402179. (Comprehensive biography, with many firsthand quotes)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: W. C. Fields

• W. C. Fields at the Internet Movie Database
• W. C. Fields at the Internet Broadway Database
• "W.C. Fields: The Radio Years"
• W. C. Fields at Find a Grave
• Criterion Collection essay by Dennis Perrin on W.C. Fields: Six Short Films
• The Fatal Glass of Beer (iPod format) at the Internet Archive
• Bibliography

• W.C. Fields' first show for the Chase And Sanborn Hour 1937-05-09 (01) Guest - Ann Harding Fields' "bit" focuses on his illness that kept him out of performing for a year - with a new introduction