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W. C. Fields

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W. C. Fields
File:W C Fields06.jpg
Born
William Claude Dukenfield
Other namesCharles Bogle
Otis Criblecoblis
Mahatma Kane Jeeves
Height5 ft 8 in (1.73 m)
SpouseHarriet Hughes

W. C. Fields (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946) was an American comedian and actor. Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century—a misanthrope who teetered on the edge of buffoonery but never quite fell in, an egotist blind to his own failings, a charming drunk; and a man who hated children, dogs, and women, unless they were the wrong sort of women.

This characterization was so strong that it was generally identified with Fields himself as well as the characters he portrayed in films and radio. It was maintained by the then-typical movie-studio publicity departments at Fields' 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' letters, photos, and personal notes in grandson Ronald Fields' book W.C. Fields By Himself, it has been shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged from his wife), financially supported their son, and loved his grandchildren.

Biography

Birth and early career

Born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania. His father, Jim Dukenfield, came from an English-Irish family of noble origins (being descendants of Lord Dukenfield of Cheshire), and his mother, Kate Spangler Felton, was also of British descent. However, Jim Dukenfield was of the working class in England, and in the United States sold vegetables from a cart, an enterprise in which the young William assisted.

Fields left home at age 18 and entered vaudeville. By age 21 he was traveling as a comedy juggling act, becoming a headliner in both North America and Europe. In 1906 he made his Broadway debut in the musical comedy The Ham Tree, signing with impresario Florenz Ziegfeld.

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 in England while Fields was enjoying success in the Music Halls there.

He married a fellow Vaudevillian, chorus girl Harriet "Hattie" Hughes, on April 8, 1900. Their son, Claude, was born on July 28, 1904, while Fields was away from Hattie on tour in England. By 1907, however, W. C. and Hattie were separated, and until his death Fields would keep up both correspondence and the sending of voluntary child-support payments to Hattie.

File:Fields-WC-LOC.jpg
W.C. Fields in a scene from The Bank Dick

Though known for his comic acting, Fields started as an "eccentric juggler," (and was later inducted into the juggling hall of fame) appearing in the make-up of a genteel "tramp" -- scruffy beard and shabby tuxedo, for instance. He juggled cigar boxes, hats, and a variety of other objects in what seems to have been a unique and fresh act, parts of which are reproduced in some of his films. His trademark mumbling patter was developed during this time, and he toured with Irwin's Burlesquers and other vaudeville troupes in the United States, Europe and Australia before making it to Ziegfeld's show. 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 stunts. His pool game is also reproduced, at least in part, in some of his films.

Hollywood

Like many vaudevillians, Fields worked in silent films and one-reelers, but he first hit big theatrical fame in 1923 in the Broadway musical Poppy, where he perfected his persona as an oily, failed confidence man. Fields later appeared in talking feature films and short subjects, including the 1934 classic It's a Gift, which included a version of his stage sketch of trying to sleep on the back porch as a result of nagging family and being bedeviled by noisy neighbors and traveling salesmen. 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).

As he was often also a writer on his films, the writing credits often include quite unusual names substituting for his own, such as "Otis Criblecoblis", which contains an embedded homophone for "scribble". Another, "Mahatma Kane Jeeves", is a pun on mahatma and a phrase of an aristocrat walking out: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves". He also used the ordinary-sounding "Charles Bogle" several times.

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).

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 Mississippi: "Whilst traveling through the Andes Mountains, we lost our corkscrew. Had to live on food and water for several days!" Another notable quotation regarding his love of alcohol is this: "I can't stand water because of the things fish do in it."

Although lacking formal education, he was well-read, and was a lifelong fan of author Charles Dickens. He achieved one of his career ambitions by playing the character Mr. Micawber, in MGM's David Copperfield in 1935. In 1936, Fields recreated his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures. ("If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice." "Yes, Pop?" "Never give a sucker an even break!") He had previously transferred his famous role onto the silent screen in Sally of the Sawdust (1925) directed by the legendary D.W. Griffith. That effort was not a success.

Fields's ego sometimes got in the way of important roles. He turned down the role of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz fearing the role would be "too small".

Radio

Illness, worsened by his heavy drinking, stopped Fields' film work for a time, but he made a comeback trading insults with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on radio in 1938. Fields would twit Charlie about his being made of wood, while Charlie would fire back at Fields about his drinking (Fields: "Is it true your father was a gate-leg table?" McCarthy: "If it is, your father was under it!"). This 'rivalry' between the two carried onto film in Fields' first feature for Universal, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939). In 1940 he made My Little Chickadee with Mae West, as well as The Bank Dick, which perhaps might be his most well-known film, speaking to bartender Shemp Howard, ("Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?" "Yeah!" "Boy, is that a load off my mind... I thought I'd lost it!").

He was known to his friends as "Bill", a fact evidenced in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, in which he played himself. Edgar Bergen also called him "Bill" in the radio shows. (Charlie McCarthy, of course, called him by other names.) In films in which he was portrayed as having a son, he sometimes named the character "Claude", after his own son. In England he was sometimes billed as "Wm. C. Fields", presumably to avoid controversy due to "W.C." being the British abbreviation/euphemism for "Water Closet", although it might be safely assumed that the earthy Fields was amused by the coincidence.

Death

Fields spent his final weeks in a hospital, where a friend stopped by for a visit and caught Fields reading the Bible. He inquired as to why, to which Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes." In a final irony, W. C. Fields died in 1946 (due to a stomach hemorrhage) on the holiday he claimed to despise: Christmas Day. As documented in "W. C. Fields and Me" (published 1971), he died in a bungalow-type sanitarium where, as he lay in bed dying, his long-time 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, his death occurred in this way: he winked and smiled at a nurse, put a finger to his lips, and died. Fields was 66.

He was 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, similar to a line he used in My Little Chickadee, "I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia would do!" (In one of his film bits, 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 internment marker merely has his name, and birth and death years.

Carlotta Monti is one of several people who have chronicled Fields's life. She wrote a book about their life together, W.C. Fields and Me published in 1971. The book was made into a film of the same name in 1976.

Caricatures

Fields, with his bulbous nose, rotund body and blustery, nasal voice, has often been caricatured . A few examples:

  • Several contemporary cartoons contained Fields characterizations. [1]
  • 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 a a Fields lookalike called "W.C. Fritos".
  • 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.
  • Les Dawson's character Zebediah Twain was obviously an affectionate tribute.

Trivia

  • When casting the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz, Fields was the original choice for the title role. However, he couldn't make it. One rumor of why he couldn't because he believed the role was too small. Another alleged reason was 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.
  • After losing money on Citizen Kane, RKO executives urged Orson 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.

Filmography

Silent Films

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Sound Films

Source

  • Man On The Flying Trapeze: The Life And Times Of W. C. Fields, Simon Louvish (W. W. Norton & Company, 1977; ISBN 0-393-04127-1).
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