W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom: Becoming a Cultural Icon (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History) 1137473290, 9781137473295

Citation preview

PA L G R AV E S T U D I E S I N T H E AT R E A N D P E R F O R M A N C E H I S T O RY

W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom Becoming a Cultural Icon

Arthur Frank Wertheim

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History Series Editor Don B. Wilmeth Emeritus Professor Brown University Providence, RI, USA

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History is a series devoted to the best of theatre/performance scholarship currently available, accessible and free of jargon. It strives to include a wide range of topics, from the more traditional to those performance forms that in recent years have helped broaden the understanding of what theatre as a category might include (from variety forms as diverse as the circus and burlesque to street buskers, stage magic, and musical theatre, among many others). Although historical, critical, or analytical studies are of special interest, more theoretical projects, if not the dominant thrust of a study but utilized as important underpinning or as an historiographical or analytical method of exploration, are also of interest. Textual studies of drama or other types of less traditional performance texts are also germane to the series if placed in their cultural, historical, social, or political and economic context. There is no geographical focus for this series and works of excellence of a diverse and international nature, including comparative studies, are sought. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14575

Arthur Frank Wertheim

W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom Becoming a Cultural Icon

Arthur Frank Wertheim Independent Scholar Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, USA

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History ISBN 978-1-137-47065-2  (eBook) ISBN 978-1-137-47329-5 https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949621 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: W. C. Fields in Typical Poker Face Pose © Bettmann/CORBIS This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

Fields’s famous iconic photograph. Cheating at poker in My Little Chickadee (1940). © Bettman/Corbis

For the grandchildren of W. C. Fields: Allen Fields Everett F. Fields Harriet A. Fields, Dr. Ronald J. Fields William C. Fields III Who made my writing about this legendary comic icon possible by donating the prodigious Papers of W. C. Fields to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences so that the laughter their grandfather generated will electrify generations to come.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to the grandchildren of W. C. Fields: Dr. Harriet A. Fields; Ronald J. Fields; William C. Fields, III; and Allen Fields. All graciously granted me full support and cooperation to write about their grandfather. They consented to interviews, which yielded significant information and insights. During a visit to the Library of Congress to research Fields’s copyrighted stage sketches, I learned that Harriet Fields lived in Washington, D.C. Over lunch we had an informative conversation about her grandfather during which she encouraged my project and offered to assist me. From that time to the present, her help has proved to be invaluable. I would also like to acknowledge grandson Everett Fields for his insights pertaining to the story of his grandfather. The family’s goal is to ensure that current generations and generations to come know the joy of their grandfather’s art through humor, and most important, to make his work accessible to the world community. Many thanks are extended to the diligent archivists in the Department of Special Collections at the Margaret Herrick Library for their aid in helping me research the Fields Papers: Barbara Hall, Research Archivist, and Howard Prouty, Acquisitions Archivist. Faye Thompson, Photograph Department Coordinator, helped me select the many photographs in the Fields collection and order digital copies. The staff behind the desk was extremely efficient in paging the material, making items available every day, and photocopying what I needed. Together they ix

x   

Acknowledgements

made my innumerable visits to the library a very pleasant experience. The Fields family chose a superb place to work and a wonderful home for their grandfather’s valuable collection. I might still be wading through the Fields Papers if it was not for my research assistant, Dr. Emily Carmen. I cannot thank her enough for her diligent work. She shared in the research at the library, typed documents unavailable for photocopying, and did numerous transcriptions. A film scholar, her knowledge of cinema history aided me in understanding Fields’s movie career. Individuals at libraries also deserve my gratitude for their help. Uppermost is the help of Dr. Barbara Bair, Historian, Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. She helped guide me through the collections that deal with W. C. Fields, especially the large number of typed stage sketches, film press books, radio scripts, and photographs deposited at the library. My thanks are also extended to the staff of numerous other libraries who were very helpful: Ned Comstock, Cinematic Art Library, University of Southern California, who helped guide me through their various collections and oversaw the photocopying of important material; Geraldine Duclow, archivist, Free Library of Philadelphia; staff, Harvard Theatre Collection; Margaret Stevens-Garmon, Theatre Collections Archivist, Museum of the City of New York; Rick Watson, Research Associate, Performing Arts Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; and K. Kevyne Baar, Project Archivist, Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University for providing me with Fields’s involvement with Actors’ Equity strikes. I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge the authors of several books on Fields. Their findings and writings were extremely helpful to me as guideposts to Fields’s story. Uppermost are the two books by his grandson, Ronald J. Fields, W. C. Fields by Himself (1973) and W. C. Fields: A Life on Film (1984). The former is an excellent groundbreaking book comprising considerable letters and documents about his grandfather, which proved indispensable for my study. The latter book on his grandfather’s films contains a gold mine of information about Fields’s movie career. I very much appreciate his kindness in granting me permission to quote from the two books. Five other books were valuable to my research. W. C. Fields A BioBibliography and Groucho and W. C. Fields: Huckster Comedians by Wes

Acknowledgements   

xi

D. Gehring provide gems of information and insights into his subject’s life and comedy. Gehring has also written about Fields’s valuable Follies scripts, which the comedian deposited at the Library of Congress. They proved crucial to understanding the evolution of Fields’s comedy in the Follies. David T. Rock’s W. C. Fields—An Annotated Guide is also valuable for its list of chronology; bibliography; filmography; cartoons; recordings; and miscellaneous subjects. Two other books, W. C. Fields: A Biography by James Curtis and Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W. C. Fields by Simon Louvish, have uncovered a wealth of new information about their subject. They especially deserve credit for disproving many legends about Fields. Both books were helpful to my study, especially for cutting through the fog of fabrications about the comedian. The preparation and production of this book included several individuals, who I especially wish to thank. First, I very much appreciate the strong support of Don B. Wilmeth, editor, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, who granted me the opportunity again to contribute to his outstanding series. Named as a Messer Emeritus Professor of Theatre and English, Brown University, Don has contributed more than sixty works in theater and performance history, including recently co-editing The Group Theatre (2013). He was awarded the 2012 Theatre History Preservation Award from the Theatre Museum for his remarkable achievements. I wish very much to thank him for recognizing the important need for a study about the life and career of W. C. Fields. Crucial to the publication of volume three were the diligent editors at Palgrave Mcmillan in charge of Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Tomas René, Commissioning Editor, Literature and Theatre, has been helpful to work with and finding solutions to the many problems I encountered. Vicky Bates, assistant editor, answered my questions promptly and assisted me in completing the numerous documents necessary for the book’s publication. I wish to extend my thanks to both for their conscientious support. Also invaluable was Rachel Nishan of Twin Oaks Indexing who deserves my thanks for creating a first-rate index for all three volumes.

Contents

Part I  The Comeback 1

Welcome Back to Hollywood 3

2

The Sennett Quartet 19

Part II  The Bountiful Years: 1933–1934 3

“The World’s Biggest Entertainment Joy Ride” 45

4

Three of a Kind 51

5

From Silent to Sound 69

6

Return to the Sawdust Trail 75

7

The Mail-Order Groom 85

8

Magnum Opus.1 91

xiii

xiv   

Contents

Part III  1935: A Remarkable Year! 9

A Perfect Mixture of the Part and the Actor 113

10 Mississippi River Card Shark 123 11 All in the Family 135 12 A Vocal McGargle Emerges 149 Part IV  Off-Screen 13 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 163 14 Battling Sickness 171 Part V  From Radio to the Screen 15 Radio Saved My Life! 185 16 The Big Broadcast of 1938 199 17 The Paramount Purge 209 Part VI  The Universal Years, 1939–1941 18 Battling Universal 221 19 Combustible Co-stars 237 20 Magnum Opus.2 257 21 The Great Man 275

Contents   

xv

Part VII  Last Hurrahs 22 Swan Songs 289 23 Doomsday at Bundy Drive 301 24 Scenes Before the Final Exit 313 25 The Man in the Bright Nightgown Cometh 325 Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon 343 Notes 363 Index 393

Symbols and Abbreviations

Frequently Cited Names and Sources WCF William Claude Fields WCFALOF Ronald J. Fields, W. C. Fields: A Life on Film (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984) WCFBH  W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography, commentary by Ronald J. Fields (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) WCFP W. C. Fields Papers, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Department of Special Collections, Beverly Hills, CA

Manuscript Collections and Archive Symbols AEFTL Actors’ Equity Files, Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, New York, NY AMPAS Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Department of Special Collections, Beverly Hills, CA CFOHCU Center for Oral History, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY EBC-USC Edgar Bergen Collection, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA HTC Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA MCNY Museum of the City of New York, New York City MMIOHP Museum of the Moving Image Oral History Program, Astoria, Queens, New York, NY xvii

xviii   

Symbols and Abbreviations

MOMAFSC Museum of Modern Art, Film Study Center, New York, NY MPD-LOC Motion Picture Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C MRR-LOC Main Reading Room, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C MSD-LOC Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C NYPAL New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Collection & Robinson-Locke Collection, Lincoln Center, New York, NY PFL-TC Philadelphia Free Library Theater Collection, Philadelphia, PA USC University of Southern California, Cinema and Television Library, Los Angeles, CA

Newspapers and Magazines BE Brooklyn Eagle CDT Chicago Daily Tribune CEP Chicago Evening Post CEE Chicago Evening Examiner CHE Chicago Herald Examiner HR Hollywood Reporter LADM Los Angeles Daily Mirror LADN Los Angeles Daily News LAE Los Angeles Examiner LAEHE Los Angeles Evening Herald Express LAHE Los Angeles Herald Examiner LAT Los Angeles Times LST London Sunday Times MPC Motion Picture Classic MPD Motion Picture Daily MPH Motion Picture Herald MPM Motion Picture Magazine MPN Motion Picture News MPW Motion Picture World NYA New York American NYDM New York Dramatic Mirror NYDN New York Daily News NYEJ New York Evening Journal NYEP New York Evening Post NYG New York Graphic NYH New York Herald NYHT New York Herald Tribune NYMT New York Morning Telegraph NYSN New York Sunday News

Symbols and Abbreviations   

NYST New York Sunday Telegraph NYT New York Times NYTEL New York Telegram NYW New York World NYWT New York World Telegram PPB Paramount Press Book SEP Saturday Evening Post SLGD St. Louis Globe Democrat SLPD St. Louis Post Dispatch SLT St. Louis Times ZTN Zit’s Theatrical Newspaper

xix

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 5.1

Fields juggling plates as Bela Toerrek in Her Majesty Love (1931). Author’s collection 8 Fields as Rollo La Rue, retired juggler, and Alison Skipworth as Emily La Rue driving one of their cars in If I Had a Million (1932). Bison archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 15 Fields pulling Elise Cavanna’s bad tooth with a forceps in Mack Sennett’s two-reel short, The Dentist (1932) (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 24 “It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast,” says Snavely (Fields) to the Officer of the Mounties (Richard Cramer) (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 29 Snavely and his wife (Rosemary Theby) whack Chester (George Chandler) on his head (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 32 Fields and Frank Capra presenting an honorary Oscar to Mack Sennett on March 10, 1938 (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 40 Fields as Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland (1933). Author’s collection 60 Sheriff “Honest John” Hokley (Fields) playing pool as he tells Dr. Busby (Tammany Young) a tall tale in Six of a Kind (1934). Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 66 William LeBaron, Fields’s Guardian Angel, at age 37, then scenario editor at Cosmopolitan Productions. Motion Picture News, April 17, 1920, p. 3486 70

xxi

xxii   

List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2

Fig. 8.3

Fig. 9.1 Fig. 12.1 Fig. 15.1 Fig. 19.1

Fig. 19.2

McGonigle (Fields) leading his troupe in The Old Fashioned Way (1934). Bison archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 78 McGonigle is pierced by a large needle while sitting in Cleopatra Pepperday’s (Jan Duggan) living room. The Old Fashioned Way. Bison archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos. com 82 Newly married Ellsworth Stubbins (Fields) and Tabitha Hazy (Zasu Pitts) ready, if needed, to whack her husband with a clothing pin in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934). Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 89 The sleeping porch sequence (It’s a Gift, 1934). Confronting the life insurance salesman. Left to Right: Kathleen Howard (Amelia Bissonette), Fields (Harold Bissonette), and T. Roy Barnes (insurance salesman) (Courtesy, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) 98 The picnic scene (It’s a Gift). Left to Right: Jean Rouverol (Mildred), Buster the dog, Tommy Bupp (Norman), Fields (Harold) trying to open a can, Kathleen Howard (Amelia) (Courtesy, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) 103 Fields sits with his cinema companion, the dog Buster, studying the film’s script. It’s a Gift. A photograph that contradicts Fields’s hatred of dogs. Bison Archives/ HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 105 Fields as Micawber with Freddie Bartholomew as David in David Copperfield (1935). Bison Archives/ HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 119 McGargle (Fields) and Poppy (Rochelle Hudson) eating hot dogs at the carnival. Poppy. Bison Archives/ HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 156 Radio’s vocal warfare: Fields, Charlie McCarthy, and Edgar Bergen (Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS) 196 Fields (Tillie) and West (Flower Belle) meet one another on the train. Opposite is Donald Meek (cardsharp, Amos Budget) who performs their fake marriage. My Little Chickadee (1940). Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoric Photos.com 247 Twillie playing poker with five card-shark gamblers in the saloon at Greasewood City. My Little Chickadee. Author’s Collection 250

List of Figures   

Fig. 19.3 Fig. 20.1

Fig. 21.1 Fig. 23.1 Fig. 23.2 Fig. 25.1

Fig. 25.2

xxiii

“Philadelphia will do!” Twillie about to be hanged near the conclusion of My Little Chickadee. Author’s Collection 252 Egbert Sousé (Fields) at the Black Pussy Café ordering a drink from bartender (Shemp Howard). In the background is Mackey Q. Greene (Richard Purcell), the manager of Tel-Avis films, who offers Egbert a job to direct his movie. Author’s Collection 265 The Great Man (Fields) talking to Tiny, the waitress, in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Author’s Collection 280 The Bundy Drive Boys (1942). Left to right: Fields, Gene Fowler, John Barrymore, John Carradine, Jack La Rue, and John Decker. Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com 306 Portrait photograph of Fields and John Barrymore for Carlotta Monti. Author’s Collection 309 The icebreaker, ca. September 1943. Fields kissing his new grandson named after him. To the right is the mother, Bill’s daughter-in-law, Ruthie (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 332 The gold-plated plaque on Field’s crypt. Columbarium of Nativity, The Great Mausoleum, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Glendale, CA (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 340

Introduction

My life with W. C. Fields started on a spring day in May 2007. An article in The Los Angeles Times announced that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was staging an exhibition on its fourth floor gallery titled: “The Amazing Peregrinations and Pettifoggery of One William Claude Dukenfield, late of Philadelphia, Pa., familiarly known to Crowned Heads and Hoi Polloi alike as W. C. Fields.” Entering the door to the show, I was bowled over by the sight. The walls were covered with colorful posters; original playbills; handwritten and typed personal letters; contracts; cartoons; photographs; stage scripts; movie scenarios; souvenirs from his performances abroad; and much more material. At one end of the room, gales of laughter stemmed from visitors watching his films. The show embodied a treasure trove of memorabilia donated by Fields’s grandchildren so that the public might encounter the astonishing career of an eminent comedian. His complete papers remained unavailable for researchers until the family gifted them to the Academy. After perusing the multi-page inventory and the material for a few months, I became convinced that the seventy-one boxes in the Fields Papers are possibly the most voluminous and valuable collection of an American performer’s career. The collection is a gold mine. It begins with his date book listing his first stage appearances in 1898 and ends with papers about his lengthy confrontational probate trial lasting until the mid-1950s. A journey through Fields’s career from 1898 to 1946 is an incredible ride that yields significant information about his appearances in xxv

xxvi   

Introduction

practically every performance art during the first half of the twentieth century: club shows; burlesque; medicine, museum, and minstrel shows; American vaudeville; British music halls; leading European variety theaters; three Broadway revues, including performances in six annual Ziegfeld Follies; a star in the long-running Broadway show Poppy; twelve silent movies; thirty-two sound shorts and features; guest spots on radio comedy programs; and as a recording artist six months before his death. While in Ziegfeld’s spectacular revue, he created two comic characterizations—the good-natured charlatan and besieged husband— two impersonations which reappear in his films. When he went to Hollywood permanently in 1931 to make films, he took with him not only his stage scenarios but also the techniques he used in the theater— pantomime and masterful timing as a jokester. He repeats his vaudeville acts, juggling balls, manipulating cigar boxes, and pool tricks for the screen. His 1918 Follies sketch as a frustrated bungling golfer is reused in The Golf Specialist (1930). Three of his four shorts for Mack Sennett stem from his stage scenes in the Vanities. Fields’s hilarious “Sleeping Porch” scene from the 1925 Ziegfeld Follies is repeated in the silent picture It’s the Old Army Game (1926) and sound film It’s a Gift (1934). Three of his last movies can even be traced back to his stage career. The Fields Papers unleashed the need for a three-part sequential series that reevaluates the evolution of his comedic art and its relationship to his personal life. The first book, W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian, discusses his early life and stage career until 1915. This second volume, W. C. Fields at the Ziegfeld Follies: Becoming a Character Comedian, dramatizes a momentous turning point in Fields’s career. During his appearances in six Follies between 1915 and 1925, he moves from being typecast as a vaudeville comic juggler to a character comedian performing a variety of roles, which are repeated in silent and sound films. By the end of his Broadway performances, Fields has created his two most durable characters—an endearing con artist and harassed husband—an achievement that will bring him fame as a top film comedian. Volume three highlights his astonishing career in sound films and radio that led to his Phoenix-like rise to an American cultural icon during the 1960s and 1970s. His work and life in Hollywood resembles a roller coast ride of failures and successes. He nonetheless creates a remarkable cinematic oeuvre that includes two masterpieces, It’s a Gift and The Bank Dick. Alcoholic addiction, accidents, and other afflictions undermine his

Introduction   

xxvii

health and cause studios to eventually fire him. His last films are mainly cameo roles causing his fame to plummet. During the 1960s, his biting iconoclasm is rediscovered by devotees of the counterculture as well as respected film critics who hail his sound films, thereby creating a Fields resurgence. Volume three enlivens the saga of a virtuoso comedian, often called a comic genius, legendary iconoclast, and “Great Man,” who brought so much laughter to millions while enduring so much anguish.

Prologue

After thirty-five years on the stage, the curtain descended on Fields’s final night before the Broadway footlights. His appearance on February 21, 1933, in Ballyhoo, a musical comedy, became the last performance of his prolific theatrical career, which extended back to burlesque, minstrelsy, vaudeville, English music halls, the Ziegfeld Follies, and the Broadway stage. His experience in Ballyhoo, which ran only sixty-eight performances, convinced him that pursuing a career on the Broadway stage was no longer feasible. During the hard times of the Great Depression, theater business continued to nosedive. There were more movie venues than legitimate theaters in the Times Square area. Vacant Broadway venues, fewer productions, and plummeting attendance added up to a bleak picture. Challenged by the growing popularity of sound films and radio programs, vaudeville also had become a dying performance art. Fields was caught in a quandary between a film industry undergoing a transition from silent to sound and a busted American theater on Broadway. These revolutionary changes in show business caused Fields to question his next move. Should he return to Hollywood again and embark on a sound movie career? His first trip to filmdom’s capital during 1927–1928 turned out to be a disaster. Fields arrived just when studios were going through a major transition from producing silent pictures to Talkies. Due to its revolutionary implications, the introduction of sound systems sent earthquake-like reverberations across the film industry. The transformation to sound propelled changes in every area of filmmaking. xxix

xxx   

Prologue

The sound revolution occurred while Fields was in Hollywood making three silent features for Paramount shot at the studio’s new 1926 facility in West Hollywood. Production at Paramount was divided between the old soundless formula and the new Talkie format. Fields’s chief competitor in comedy on the Hollywood lot was Harold Lloyd, who made two excellent silent films for Paramount, The Kid Brother (1927) and Speedy (1928). Anxious to present new comedic performers, the studio signed the Marx Brothers. Once the Paramount brass focused on younger comics, the studio lost interest in Fields, who turned fifty in 1930. With mixed reviews on his last two movies shot at Astoria, Paramount’s Long Island facility, and a reputation as a difficult performer on the set, Fields arrived in Hollywood when Paramount executives were unwilling to take a chance on another Fields flop. Studio executives were uncertain of his popularity at the box office as a stand-alone comedian. Although Fields worked best as a sole star, the studio announced that “W. C. Fields and Chester Conklin will form a Paramount comedy team.” Films starring two-man teams were suddenly in vogue, an established genre from nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century burlesque and vaudeville. “There will certainly be no dearth of comedy teams this season,” wrote a reporter in 1927. “It seems that all the studios have at least one fun-making duo, while others are going in for it as a wholesale business.”1 By the time Fields finished shooting three silent pictures with Conklin, he had developed a negative opinion of Hollywood. He was shocked to experience Paramount’s factory system. He became irked about how stories were developed by hordes of studio screenwriters, continuity writers, and gag men and manufactured on the set by studio hacks. Paramount ran a highly efficient studio system, churning out the mass production of multitude films featuring their roster of stars. The film industry followed the practices of big business by vertically integrating its three branches: production, distribution, and exhibition. Distribution of its output resembled a well-oiled structured process guaranteeing theater chains first-run films. In Hollywood, Fields felt like a cog in a bureaucratic mass production factory. Busy developing film sound equipment and wiring their theaters, Paramount sunk Fields’s pictures with poor scripts, stilted plots, and mediocre direction. The fault stemmed from the shoddy material the studio gave Fields. On April 18, 1928, he wrote his estranged wife Hattie that he needed to reduce her allowance. “I am at a stage where I cannot

Prologue   

xxxi

get an offer at all. I have been badly handled and am now out of the movies. I have worked sixteen weeks in the last thirteen months. Have had two big law suits, lost both, and am entering upon a third. After income tax, lawyer’s fees, agent’s comm[i]s[ion] and damages have been deducted from my income there is little if anything left.”2 Three mediocre silent pictures with co-star Chester Conklin failed at the box office and received mixed reviews, causing Paramount not to renew his contract. Lost among studio luminaries, Bill became a sacrificial lamb thrust aside by a system that worshipped screen idols who assured box-office profits. Not one studio executive recognized that Fields might be a sensation in a Talkie with his resonant voice, exceptional timing, and comedic skills. Six of Fields’s twelve silent pictures, which represent one half of his oeuvre in the medium, have perished. Fields’s last three movies, which are lost, could have yielded significant knowledge about his evolution as a screen comedian. Lost are priceless scenes—Fields’s pool playing, juggling, his role as a circus operator, and his many con man impersonations. Some pictures such as The Potters (henpecked husband becomes rich and gains family respect) were precursors to his sound comedies, It’s a Gift and The Bank Dick. Unaware of their importance to posterity and value to cinema history, studios found that storing silent pictures cost considerable money due to their bulkiness and inflammable material, which required fire insurance. (The Library of Congress estimates that only 14% of American silent feature films—1575 of 10,919 titles—have survived.) Because of its silver content, the negatives were worth more as scrap. Opting to make money rather than paying high storage bills, studios consequently sold many silent pictures for scrap. With only one half of his canon available for viewing, judgment of Fields’s work as a silent comedian is challenging. Bill had a late start as a silent screen comedian. After completing two shorts in 1915 (Pool Sharks and His Lordship’s Dilemma), he faced a dilemma—whether to embark on a screen career or continue as a Follies star. Unimpressed by his experience before the camera, he returned to the Follies. Fields consequently stayed away from the silent screen for ten years. He completed the majority of his soundless pictures between 1925 and 1928—the tail end of the silent era and the advent of the sound revolution. These factors prevented Fields from ever joining the top pantheon of preeminent silent screen comedians—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Although a few silent pictures, such as So’s

xxxii   

Prologue

Your Old Man (1926), were first-rate, Fields still ended up in the second tier of silent comedians. Digital technology, however, has given viewers a second chance to evaluate his pre-sound movies and to observe a great pantomime at work. With his existing silent films now available for easy viewing on DVD, a new generation of Fields aficionados can now see signs of the great sound comedian to come. Without a renewed Paramount contract and no offers from other studios, Fields had no idea what to do next. Returning to the Broadway stage was an option, but after dedicating himself to a film career, it seemed a backward step. New York had its excitements, but half the year the weather was cold compared to California. Bill had fallen in love with the Sunshine State, the warmth, its slow lifestyle, its pristine beauty from the low desert and the Sierras to the blue Pacific Ocean. “If the West didn’t want me, I wanted it. I wanted sunshine and warm weather. I wanted a house and a bed to sleep in and a closet to hang my clothes in… I wanted to be out in the open and play golf and tennis… But for that I had to have work.”3 Facing an uncertain future was not new to him. He lost count about how many times he reached the summit and from there hit rock-bottom again. His ambition for a film career lay buried in Hollywood’s quicksand. “Hollywood,” he once remarked, “is the gold cap on a tooth that should have been pulled out years ago.”4 A fortunate opportunity awaited him when he returned to New York—an offer from Earl Carroll to star in his 1928 Vanities revue. Carroll gave Bill free reign to write his own scenes. Among them were three sketches that he later revived for the sound screen: “Stolen Bonds” (The Fatal Glass of Beer); “An Episode at the Dentist’s” (The Dentist); and “The Caledonia Express” (Sensations of 1945). Favorable reviews in the revue lifted Fields’s spirit after his debacle in Hollywood. In Ballyhoo, which opened on December 22, 1930, Fields played a promotor of a cross-country foot race in which he revived his stage routines: juggling, balancing cigar boxes, and playing a card shark. Bad reviews caused the financially strapped producer, Arthur Hammerstein, to close the production. Fields took the lead reviving the show by cost cutting and shortening the script. Fields knew that reopening Ballyhoo was a risky gamble, but he wanted to help the show’s cast. From earlier experiences, Bill knew what it was like being an unpaid performer. During his life, he aided numerous down-and-out troupers and helped his group of supporting actors to find work. His attempt to revitalize Ballyhoo showed Fields’s magnanimous spirit, an aspect of his personality

Prologue   

xxxiii

Fig. 1  Illustration by Al Hirschfeld depicting the cast in Ballyhoo headed by Fields. NYT, November 9, 1930. Left to Right: Janet Reade, Chaz Chase, Fields, Grace Hayes, Jeanie Lang, and Don Tomkinson. © The Al Hirschfeld Foundation. www.AlHirschfeldFoundation.org. Al Hirschfeld is represented by the Margo Feiden Galleries Ltd., New York

often overshadowed by his surly curmudgeon persona depicted on the stage and screen. Fields’s attempt to renew the show failed when Hammerstein declared bankruptcy (Fig. 1). Fields turned fifty-one when Ballyhoo closed, an age when numerous thespians had either retired or been casted aside as too old, some spending their final years in actors’ homes for the elderly and indigent. At age fifty-one, the big three silent clowns—Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd— were faltering in the era of sound. In 1931, the year Fields made his second trip to Hollywood, Chaplin released City Lights, a silent picture except for a few sound sequences. In 1931, knockabout and slapstick artist Buster Keaton was thirty-six with arguably his best work behind him once he signed with MGM. Harold Lloyd put away his iconic rim glasses and turned producer at the age of forty-five. Fields would need incredible stamina to stay afloat during his second attempt in merciless Hollywood. Bill hoped that his first sound short that he completed in New York before leaving might open doors in Hollywood. His appearance was due to Fields’s “guardian angel” William LeBaron, who had aided Bill during his silent film career at Paramount’s Astoria Studio. The producer stood out among the few film executives who recognized the brilliance

xxxiv   

Prologue

of Fields’s matchless voice for the evolving era of sound cinema. As vice president of production at RKO, LeBaron was instrumental in recommending Fields to perform in his first Talkie. Across the Hudson River at the Ideal Sound Studios in Hudson Heights, New Jersey, Louis Brock was producing RKO’s Broadway Headliners, a series of two-reel sound shorts. LeBaron convinced Brock that Fields would be an ideal headliner to perform his comic golf sketch, a surefire hit in the 1918 Follies. Bill had also revived the popular routine in the 1928 Vanities and at the Palace Theatre where he had received thunderous ovations and curtain calls. Except for the beginning sequence in a hotel lobby and a tacked-on ending, the original golf sketch takes up most of the twenty-one minute short. Filmed on a soundstage rather than a golf course, the action occurs on a carpeted platform where a painted backdrop depicting several palm trees and a lake in the distance suggests that Fields is playing outdoors. The stationary camera, placed inside a sound-proof box to prevent noise being picked up, creates the impression of a photographed stage act. Although the immobile camera impedes close-ups, The Golf Specialist is a rare opportunity to see how the sketch appeared on the Follies stage with the dialogue and comic antics intact plus some new laugh-producing sequences. The short subject film was also an ideal vehicle for Fields. A twenty-minute two-reel short perfectly fit the length of his vaudeville sketches. Without a subplot, the short concentrated exclusively on his comic actions, giving him the time and pauses he needed to execute surefire lines. Fields plays Effingham Bellweather, a slick small-time con man, who enters a Florida resort hotel lobby singing “Happy Days Are Here [Again],” a 1929 song later adapted by FDR to promote his 1932 presidential campaign. Addressing the hotel clerk, Bellweather inquires “Any telegrams? Cablegrams? Radio? Television?” This line and his singing represents the first time Fields’s peerless voice is heard on sound film. Posing as a well-healed sportsman, Bellweather appears smartly dressed in a dapper dark double-breasted jacket, contrasting slacks, white shirt, and striped tie. On his head is a straw hat and in his left hand he clutches his customary walking stick—two props from his vaudeville years that he reuses in his films. Pasted just below his nose is his proverbial black mustache, an accoutrement that he continually fiddles with during the film. Unable to smoke the cigarette that hangs from his mouth because his

Prologue   

xxxv

lighter does not work, Bellweather puts it into his side pocket, which immediately catches fire—a venerable vaudeville laugh-getter.5 Bellweather’s clothes disguise his livelihood as a petty swindler. In the hotel lobby, he tries to steal a little girl’s piggybank containing $50. The girl takes revenge by soaking his pants with water from a pitcher. Thinking a stuffed dog near his pants is the culprit, Bellweather gives it a swift kick out the door. (One of many actions that contributes to the public’s belief that Fields hates dogs.) Soon Bellweather is off to the links with the flirtatious blond wife of the hotel detective. Joining them is the caddy played by Allan Wood, a twenty-three-year-old ex-hoofer. Wood later recalled that he won the role because he was small in height and that Fields gave him a second chance after he botched the rehearsal. “He was a very generous guy, willing to believe the best about people until they proved otherwise,” he observed. Wood recalled Fields handing out crumpled ten-dollar bills to down-and-out troupers. “He respected them as fellow professionals who were weathering a bad season, something he’d gone through many times himself.” Before the camera, Fields was a “pretty tough egg” who “worked to get everything he could out of every line, every move, and he expected anyone working with him to do the same. He was an artist.”6 Wood gives an excellent performance as the stooge for Bellweather’s failed attempts to hit a tee shot. The caddy enters the scene stooped over by lugging a huge bag full of clubs. He is dressed in crumbled baggy pants, an oversize well-worn jacket, and a gigantic hat that Bellweather calls an “overcoat.” The caddy keeps a tight-lipped dumfounded facial expression during the entire shenanigans. As in the Follies, the caddy hands him the identical ludicrous clubs from a bent iron to a driver that resembles a mallet. The same disturbances from the Follies sketch distract Bellweather— the caddy’s rattling of paper, squeaky shoes, the gooey pie that sticks to his hand and club; and paper that blows across the tee. Sound enhances the production because viewers can hear the papers rattling and the shoes squeaking. Exasperated by the noise, Bellweather curses “Godfrey Daniel!” one of Bill’s favorite catch phrases, a substitute for “God Damn” to avoid the censors. As in the Follies, the lady in riding attire without her horse appears and breaks a club by stepping on it. Next comes the fashionable snobbish beautiful woman who walks across the set with an afghan. “That’s a beautiful camel you have there,” Bellweather exclaims, a surefire laugh-getter.

xxxvi   

Prologue

The director Monte Brice, a comedy short specialist, gave Fields carte blanche to do whatever he thought would amuse moviegoers. The Golf Specialist therefore gave Bill opportunities to improvise and add new lines. Take for example, Bellweather’s reaction to the pie: “Fancy bringing a pie to a golf course. A pint, yes, but a pie never…never! Why it’s like carrying something or other, somewhere or other, as the case maybe.” Bellweather’s first reaction to the caddy’s noisy shoes is to look up at the sky. “Sounds like one of those birds that fly backward.” Although the caddy did not purposely create the disturbances, an enraged Bellweather starts to choke him: “I’d like to ring your neck. I’d like to wash it first and give it a good ring—a ring you hear for miles.” Although Bellweather treats the caddy with contempt, he is cordial to the detective’s wife. When the ground resembles a garbage dump he apologizes to her: “I’m sorry you had to see this. I have never struck a woman in my life,” he tells the attractive blond, “not even my own mother. I’m very kind but of course I can be cruel if need be…a veritable tiger.” Near the end there is a cut away back to the hotel desk, a scene not in the Follies. The house detective encounters a sheriff who hands him a wanted poster that lists nine preposterous crimes Bellweather has committed. Among them “eating spaghetti in public;” “possessing a skunk;” “spitting in the Gulf Stream;” and “failing to pay installments on a strait jacket.” Intending to arrest him, the lawmen go to the golf course where they sneak behind Bellweather. The sheriff’s gun goes off, causing a huge bird to strike Bellweather’s head, knocking him to the turf. Still unaware of the lawmen’s presence, he shows the detective’s wife how to hold a club. “Keep the wrists together… never let the wrist’s separate.” With his wrists together, the sheriff easily handcuffs him. As the sheriff leaves with Bellweather in tow, the prisoner mumbles repeatedly “keep the wrists together… keep the wrists together,” as the screen goes black ending Fields’s initial Talkie. Bellweather is a pitiable rogue, a typical Fieldsian character frustrated by objects and events he can’t control—blowing papers, a sticky pie, annoying people, bent clubs, etc. Accosted by these many disturbances, he never does hit a ball. In The Golf Specialist, moviegoers can hear Fields’s voice his frustrations. A verbal humorist from his years on stage, Fields instinctively meshed his distinctive voice with the character he played. “Fields is the most loveable liar ever to come to the screen,” wrote the journalist and TV star Ed Sullivan. “In him we see ourselves and the sight is funny.”7

Prologue   

xxxvii

The Golf Specialist stands out as a landmark because for the first time moviegoers can hear his remarkable viva voce. “His voice is one of Bill Fields’ greatest assets,” said William Beaudine, who directed Fields in The Old Fashioned Way. Beaudine felt that his power of speech especially fit his role as the loveable raconteur and braggart. “He was, one of the few silent actors, I think, who did not give audiences a shock when they began to talk. The gusty pomposity was just what one had expected.”8 Although advertised as a silent juggler or humorist in vaudeville, Fields had earlier spoken on stage. “He always talked to his properties,” wrote W. (Bucky) Buchanan-Taylor, Fields’s English friend and agent, who saw him perform in British music halls. “He would reprimand a particular ball which had not come to his hand regularly, whip his battered silk hat for not staying on his head when it ought, mutter weird and unintelligible expletives to his cigar when it missed his mouth.” His way of speaking became noticeable once Bill had more roles in his Follies sketches. Fields “says words right out loud,” observed a critic about the 1915 Follies. “When you can hear him, you hear a lovely voice which reminds you of stripping gears on a flivver.” As a performer in the same show, Ed Wynn recalled that he liked “to get into a falsetto voice, unintentionally, unconsciously, and once in a while, he would have a rasping voice.”9 The importance of Fields’s voice became much more notable when he played the captivating carnival charlatan McGargle on the stage in Poppy. The perceptive critic Gilbert Seldes noticed it as he watched Fields’s antics. “In Poppy, he found voice; it had been piped up once or twice before. The voice issues from him and he seems as much surprised as anyone to realize that he has one that is really coming out of his mouth…and that they are a useful addition to hands and feet and eyebrows and elbows as a means of self-expression.” Fields’s physical humor, wrote Seldes, illustrates “the nightmare of a man attacked by fly paper; the comic tragedy of a man against whom all inanimate nature is in league.” Combined with his newly discovered speaking skills, Fields generates a “perfectly finished, proportioned, balanced creation.”10 Whether emanating from a movie sound system or a radio speaker, Fields’s voice became the most notable feature associated with the comedian after 1930. His everyday discourse at times resembled that of a sophisticated Victorian gentleman, an affectation picked up during his many sojourns to England or reading the prose in Dickens’s novels. “Fields could shout at the top of his lungs, speak out of the sides of his voice, or insult you

xxxviii   

Prologue

under his breath, but he always brought a melody to his speech, such that one often thinks of Fields as much as a vocalist as a humorist.”11 The critic Kenneth Tynan described his voice when he wrote: “He both looked and sounded like a cement mixer. He would screw up his lips to one side and purse his eyes before committing himself to speech; and then he would roll vowels around his palate as if it were a sieve with which he was prospecting for nuggets. The noise that finally emerged was something quietly raucous, like the crowing of a very lazy cock.”12 As a master of wordplay, Fields had other ways to use language for comic effect. He mangled foreign expressions as in It’s a Gift: “C’est finie— meaning you can’t fool me.” He often embroidered his dialogue, choosing to embellish his language rather than uttering the obvious. Instead of stating simply I stubbed my toe in You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man, Fields said “broke my metatarsal bone.” Another example stems from The Bank Dick: “The jockey was a very insulting fellow. He referred to my proboscis as an adscititious excrescence.” Malapropisms become another comic device in his films. In Poppy, he pronounces Madame DePuizzi’s name as Countess DePussy, a sexual innuendo that bypassed the censors. Occasionally he spoke Philadelphia lingo, speech patterns he heard as a youth on the streets of William Penn’s “City of Brotherly Love.” Recognized by local linguists, Philly dialect includes countless different pronunciations such as the “backing of a before r to au to create caur” (car).13 Fields’s voice enabled him to amplify unusual words for comic effect. He would jot down some of these unique words on pieces of paper when he saw them during his travels. At times an expression suddenly appeared out of nowhere during his ad-libs leaving the audience wondering what he meant. Bill would also make up funny-sounding terms not found in the dictionary. Largely self-educated but an avid reader of literary masterpieces, Fields ranks among the great wordsmiths on stage, screen, and radio. Some of his favorite buzz words included: • beezer (nose) • Beelzebub (devil) • diaphanous (transparent) • drat! (damn) • effulgence/effulgent (radiant) • euphonious (pleasing to the ear) • Godfrey Daniel! (“God Damn”) • Jabbernowl (nincompoop)

Prologue   

xxxix

• Mogo on-the-go-go-go (a made-up illness) • moon calf (idiot) • mother-of-pearl (frustrated expression) • nose paint (liquor that reddens the proboscis) • Passamaquoddy (place name) • peccadillo (petty sins) • peregrinations (travels) • perspicacity (insight) • pulchritude (physical comeliness) • Rocky ford cantaloupe (bald head) • saturnalia (partying) • skullduggery (trickery) • spondulicks (money) • squidgilum (kissing game) • taradiddle (to trifle, waste time)11 Some stories suggest that Fields’s boyhood adventures caused his raspy voice, especially from sleeping outdoors as a youth during frigid winter nights. More than likely this is a dubious Huckleberry Finn tale concocted to embellish the story of his rugged childhood. A more valid reason was his propensity to catch numerous severe colds with sore throats and clogged sinuses. As an itinerant vaudevillian, he often caught the flu, especially in England’s raw climate. According to Fields’s sister Adele, this was an affliction that their mother Kate also had and that her voice resembled her oldest son. A physician in Berlin in 1900 told Bill that he had a lung problem. In 1915, another doctor in New York “said I had one lung completely gone and the other was full of scars.”14 Most moviegoers felt that the sounds he uttered on the screen were his natural voice. Several friends who knew Fields well have indicated that his voice at home was less shrill. Carlotta Monti, his off and on “significant other” for about a dozen years, felt there were two voices. One was for the public “that was abrasive enough to scratch the purest of mountain air,” she claimed. “But at home it sounded like the blending of tuneful sounds.” His voice, which fluctuated from raucous to melodious, reflected Fields’s multi-personality, a conflicted human being who Monti called “a very mix bag of a man.”15 The person who heard Fields the most was his son, Claude. “To me the voice is part of what you would expect from his actions,” he said in an interview. “It fitted admiringly and convincingly as the voice he

xl   

Prologue

affected primarily for the screen. Of course, his speaking voice was very plain, but when he got into the comedy aspects it was timed differently.”16 Once Fields realized how vital his voice was to his fame during the sound era, his speaking on camera became much more affected. Fields’s voice enabled him to alter the way he delivered his lines. To sound more strident, he spoke out of the side of his mouth. To make furtive comments, Fields made barely audible mumbling asides. The sotto tone derived from his mother who sat on her porch steps when she greeted a neighbor in a friendly voice. Once the person left, she made a sly aside about the neighbor. Playing in his films as a medicine-show hustler or sideshow barker preaching to a crowd of potential suckers, a rhapsodic flow of words rolled off his tongue like a flamboyant oration delivered by a long-winded preacher. Fields often timed his voice to produce a joke. He would make a comment, pause for a few seconds, and then deliver the punch line. Take for example the scene with Peggy Joyce in International House when he bragged about his sexual prowess: “I shall dally in the valley… (pause)…and believe me, I can dally.”17 Fields rarely used one-line gags. Bill’s trademark was uttering several lines until the proper time came to unleash a surefire quip that ignited laughter. Mack Sennett recognized this trait in Fields’s comedy. “It’s all very well and good to try for gag lines. But you have to know when not to talk. Now Bill Fields, when he worked for me, he knew about that. Our writers would work out a situation. Bill would do the lines, and then, when it came to the topper, he would go into pantomime and hit them right in the belly. Bill was a man who knew that chuckles have to build up to a belly laugh.”18 His power of speech became his greatest asset that added to his stupendous success in sound cinema. Since The Golf Specialist displayed his talent for the sound era, Fields had hoped that it might generate offers from Hollywood. But the RKO short was shown only as an add-on with a feature film and thus had a limited run. It therefore failed to get Fields the publicity he needed to make a comeback in Hollywood. As he drove out of town in his new Lincoln on a sunny day in 1931 headed for Hollywood, Bill was leaving behind a lengthy stage career that had started in 1898. His long perilous journey with its ups and downs from one-night Philadelphia club stands to Broadway revues had propelled him from a novice tramp juggler to a top-rated character comedian. Outside of a pestering wife and estranged son in New

Prologue   

xli

York, he had no strong family ties to chain him down. Driven by his never-ending wanderlust, he had the lifelong ability to take off at a moment’s notice. By living in rental furnished housing, he had less material possessions to haul except his theater paraphernalia. Although Fields was bidding good-bye to New York and its theater culture, he took with him items ranging from stage props to scripts, material that would prove critical to advancing his movie career. His training before the footlights—the pantomimic facial expressions and bodily movements; the timing necessary to reach the exact laugh-producing second; and his talent to connect with his audience stayed with him. Remembrances of his vaudeville and revue sketches were embedded in his mind, ready to resurface when needed. His stage experience enabled him to revive numerous scenes: roles, stunts, gags, and sayings during his sound film career. Consider some of the following transitions from the boards to celluloid during the era of Talkies. Fields performed his vaudeville juggling act in The Old Fashioned Way and his pool table routine in Six of a Kind and The Big Broadcast of 1938. His croquet sketch from the 1917 Follies is revived in the film Poppy. Versions of his Follies golf routine reemerge countless times. In his sound movies, Fields continues to play characters who first arose in his stage routines: beleaguered husband, congenial con man, bankrupt trouper, bungling dentist, henpecked pharmacist, Yukon prospector, huckster, and raconteur, among others. The old army shell game, first discovered by Fields as a teenager, recurs in the sound version of Poppy. The card shark poker player returns in Mississippi and reaches its apex in My Little Chickadee. The naughty brat character, which begins with Baby Rose in the “Family Ford” sketch in the 1920 Follies, morphs into numerous little terrors. The most infamous, Baby LeRoy, drives McGonigle berserk in The Old Fashioned Way and other films. The importance of Fields’s stage work to his film career is evident in other areas. Many of his bête noirs from his revue sketches are reborn in his Talkies—bossy wives, pompous snobs, obnoxious salesmen, crooked show biz mangers, among others. Fields continues to use his habitual stage gestures on the screen, for example, the Fieldsian flinch, his customary recoil when threatened by objects and people. His topless straw hat is one of the numerous props he continues to use in his sound films. His flowery rhapsodic oratory first vocalized in his Broadway shows becomes a more pungent artifice in his sound films. Bill’s pet sayings such as “never give a sucker an even break” are reiterated in his screen

xlii   

Prologue

roles. Fields’s habit of giving his characters inventive names, such as Larson E. Whipsnade in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, continues unabated. He takes characterizations from the theater and replicates them in his motion pictures. McGargle from the Broadway show Poppy becomes McGonigle in The Old Fashioned Way. The dysfunctional families initially seen as the Flivertons in the Follies return as the Bissonettes in It’s a Gift. These copious stage influences are what Louise Brooks had in mind when she wrote that “Fields never really left the theatre.”22 As Bill’s car crossed into New Jersey on its way to Hollywood, a feeling of nostalgia swept over him. “I twisted around for a last look at the skyline. I had an idea somehow that I wouldn’t see it again.” His premonition was right—Fields never returned to Broadway. “But I felt young, and I knew I was good, and it was a wonderfully sunny day. So I drove on toward a very uncertain future, about the same as I had in the past.”23

PART I

The Comeback

CHAPTER 1

Welcome Back to Hollywood

According to a wildly held story about his arrival from New York, Fields drove up to the popular Hollywood Plaza Hotel (1925), located on Vine Street south of Hollywood Boulevard, intending to make a grand entrance and an extended stay. Built to model East Coast hotels, the imposing ten-story 108-room Hollywood Plaza was one of several firstclass hotels that had sprung up during the 1920s. Arriving by train from New York, numerous actors, directors, songwriters, and other moviemakers checked into the Hollywood Plaza. With the air of a crown prince, Fields entered its large lobby bedecked with potted palms and fresh flower arrangements. From the carved beamed ceiling, several wrought iron chandeliers hung. Intending to get noticed by the film colony, he was dressed in a cutaway, morning trousers, and silk top hat. Behind him came an entourage of several bellhops carrying numerous pieces of luggage, including a trunk labeled “W. C. Fields, Greatest Juggler on Earth.” Crossing the marble floor covered with extra thick hand-woven carpets to the reception desk, Fields knocked on the counter with his gold-headed cane and demanded the bridal suite. “It’s usually reserved for a bride and groom,” the manger declared. “Fine, I’ll pick up one in town,” Fields retorted.1 The busy crossroads of Hollywood Blvd. and Vine had become synonymous with the film capital due to its nearby movie palaces, offices of booking agents, Variety’s headquarters, fancy restaurants, and scandalous nightclubs. Around 1929, 121,200 cars were counted passing the corner © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_1

3

4 

A. F. WERTHEIM

of Hollywood and Vine in sixteen hours. As a district of Los Angeles, Hollywood had grown during the three years Bill was treading the Broadway stage and had now reached a population of 184,531. Compared to congested New York, Los Angeles’ enormous expanse, which spread its wings like a giant albatross from the Hollywood Hills to the Pacific Ocean, masked the impact of the Great Depression. Looking closely, however, it was clearly evident on Hollywood Boulevard, where shops were boarded up and desperate unemployed people on street corners holding signs that read, “I Want and Need Work.” The Bank of Hollywood at Hollywood and Vine crashed as well as several others in the area, which caused the downtrodden to rename it the “Hollywood Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” An awesome sight in 1932 was the march of the local Bonus Army veterans down Hollywood Boulevard heading to Washington, DC, demanding payment of their service certificates for fighting in World War I.2 Countless number of filmmakers, theater owners, and performers went broke due to the stock market crash. Bill knew some of them. Charlie Christie, who with his brother Al produced Tillie’s Punctured Romance, lost his mansion in Beverly Hills, Rolls Royce, and other possessions and had to borrow money for food. After losing six million dollars in the crash, Sid Grauman was forced to sell his prized Chinese Theater to the Fox chain. During 1930, only 30 of Central Casting’s 17,000 extras were employed for more than three days. Fields arrived at an ominous time to return to the screen. He lived in the hotel for several months while he went from studio to studio seeking a job. With a reputation for hijinks on the set and a record of box-office failures with his last three silent pictures, Fields fought a losing battle with the moguls, who were facing their own financial problems after the stock market crash. Paramount, Bill’s studio during the silent era, reported a deficit of $21 million in 1932 and declared bankruptcy the following year. As they transitioned to sound, the Big Five major studios faced large box-office debt until the mid-1930s. Cost cutting involved firing employees, reducing salaries, and slashing filmmaking expenses. The massive deficits caused studios to be financially linked to Wall Street banks. Studios created a star system that “caused contemporary audiences to seek out each new film they appeared in” and to placate fans thirsting for the latest glamor queen or handsome Romeo with large box-office potential.3 Links to Wall Street caused the studios to make box-office

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

5

winners featuring performers from its star roster and to produce sure-fire genre formula pictures. Talented but often cutthroat production chiefs (i.e. MGM’s Irving Thalberg) were hired to oversee filmmaking. Actors were chained to a standard five- or seven-year contract that bound them exclusively to a studio. The agreement contained an option clause that gave studios the power to fire an actor after six months and, if dissatisfied, the right not to exercise the option. Performers were viewed as studio property obligated to act in films chosen by production chiefs. These developments created more hurdles for Fields to break into a giant industrial machine run by an oligopoly of Big Five companies (Paramount, Loews [MGM], Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO). Each was built on a tri-part vertical integration structure (production, distribution, and exhibition), a system that allowed studios to disseminate films to their own theater chains. Bill tried every trick in the book to get hired. In desperation, he contacted RKO’s Louis Brock, who had produced his first talkie, The Golf Specialist. Fields offered Brock “to write, direct, and act in a film for nothing. And I would not ask a single nickel. Being one of those men who knew what the public wanted, he refused my offer.” On top of his difficulties, he got news of another blow. “After being idle for eighteen months and dancing on the edge of fifty years, I received word that the Harriman Bank had failed in New York. A quarter of a million dollars, my life’s savings, went with it.”4 Left with considerable leisure time, Fields played golf regularly with his pals William LeBaron and Gregory La Cava. He made himself notable at Hollywood restaurants and late-night swank parties where he juggled silverware and spun hilarious tall tales, which sent the socializers laughing all the way home. Fields was putting up a façade as a party-time jokester. What he frantically needed was not to be the star of a party but a star of a movie. Bill had reached the point that he would take any role just to keep his name before the public. To uplift his spirits when distraught and to escape from Hollywood’s maddening crowd, he usually sought refuge in the countryside by driving along the Pacific coast. Bill felt much more comfortable outside the city surrounded by pristine nature and preferred renting an abode in the countryside. By July 1931, he was living with friend Charley Mack at his house on a twenty-two-acre estate, dubbed “Crowland,” in bucolic Newhall, near cowboy star William S. Hart’s mansion.

6 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Suddenly out of nowhere he experienced one of those memorable moments that can change life’s course in a split second. One Sunday night while dining in a Santa Barbara hotel and “feeling much lower than the stars,” he encountered Marilyn Miller, who he knew from the 1918 Ziegfeld Follies.5 She had enraptured theater audiences with her blond curls, toe dancing, and effervescent charm during a spectacular career in Broadway musicals. Fame on stage led to a film contract with Warner Bros.-First National where she earned as much as $8000 to $11,000 a week. After disappointing appearances in two sound films based on her Broadway successes, Miller was scheduled to star in Her Majesty Love, an American remake of the German film Ihe Majestät die Liebe (1931) based on a Berlin stage hit and directed by the talented German expatriate William Dieterle. “Bill!” squealed Miller. “You’re just the man I’ve been looking for. I’m doing a picture for Warner Bros. Will you play my father?” Fields rose from the table and bowed. “Madam, though you may not be aware of it, you happen at the moment to be playing my fairy godmother.”6 A fan of Fields’s comedy, she believed that he was perfect for the role of Bela Toerrek, an ex-vaudeville juggler who works as a barber. But Jack Warner balked when he heard that Miller wanted Fields, telling her that the comedian had only made one Talkie short and had a reputation for disregarding scripts. Since Warner was one of Miller’s beaus, she changed his mind by continually cajoling him. Needing an opportunity for a comeback, Fields grabbed the offer with a four-week guarantee of $5000 per week. Her Majesty Love’s plot focuses on Lia (Miller), a Berlin cabaret barmaid, who is ecstatic about her pending marriage to affluent Fred Von Wellington (Ben Lyon) until he decides to call off the wedding in exchange for a promotion and larger salary at his family’s ball bearing factory. In spite, Lia marries an elderly rich man, the six-times divorced Baron Von Schwarzdorf (Leon Errol, another Follies veteran). Despite playing a supporting character in a musical comedy with three other comedians in the cast (Errol, Chester Conklin, and Ford Sterling), Fields took center stage as Bela in several humorous sequences. He portrays Bela as a McGargle-type rogue who sees his daughter’s marriage to the Baron as an opportunity to live happily ever after with plenty of money. He tells Lia, “After your married and I come to visit you, I can hear you say, ‘Dad, how much do you need?’” When Lia hesitates to marry the Baron, Bela advises her: “He’s a great catch. He’s rich.

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

7

He’s old. What more do you want? A rich old man is worth two rich young men and they’re less bother. And you can always look forward to a happy widowhood.”7 After marrying the Baron, she sees Fred, her ex-beau, in a cabaret and while dancing the tango with him he proposes again since she is now acceptable as a Baroness. They embrace on the dance floor as the Baron sits dejected realizing that his marriage is finished and he will be divorced for the seventh time. Lia phones her father in the middle of the night to tell him about her engagement to Fred. In bed dressed in pajamas, Bela is too sleepy to understand who his daughter is marrying: “With whom? Oh, to him. Who’s him? He? And who’s he? I see. Him and he are the same. I think you’re a little tipsy. Never mind. It’s a very good omen for marriage. I was half stewed when I proposed to your mother.” After saying good night, he calls her back. “Oh, one question, does he really love you?”8 Lia and Bela attend a party hosted by Fred’s upper-class parents in honor of their son’s engagement. They dine with a group of wealthy stuffy social snobs, who wonder why Fred has invited these two outsiders to dinner. A tipsy Bela proceeds to embarrass his daughter. He inadvertently blurts out that Lia is a cabaret barmaid and that he is a former vaudeville juggler and a barber who “doesn’t bring in much these days—everyone’s got a safety razor.” His table manners shock the family, especially eating with his gloves. At the table’s end sits Emil (Chester Conklin) who asks Bela to pass the éclairs. With a big utensil, he flips two éclairs onto Emil’s plate. “I use to do a trick with plates in the circus that would make women scream,” he tells the guests. He proceeds to juggle three plates until an embarrassed Lia tries to stop him, grabs his arm, and the plates crash to the floor. He juggles three ball-shaped pieces of food until one hits a female guest. Lia angrily escorts her father out of the house. Filmed in 1931, the dinner sequence illuminates the wide gulf between the snobbish socialites and the common folk during the nation’s worst financial crisis (Fig. 1.1). During a conversation with Fred, Bela brags about his fame in vaudeville. “Once in vaudeville my assistant handed me a porcupine instead of a rabbit.” When Fred asks him if he needs help getting into a rumble seat, he refuses the aid. “No, I used to be in vaudeville.” The camera shows him flying into the seat. When the Baron brings flowers for Lia, Bela tells him. “I haven’t seen such lovely roses since I was in vaudeville. My public used to send them to me. I shall put them in water. Not my

8 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 1.1  Fields juggling plates as Bela Toerrek in Her Majesty Love (1931). Author’s collection

public, the roses.” Although Bela is a ne’er-do-well, he is a warmhearted father whose genuine feelings for Lia are expressed with considerable pathos. The loving relationship between Lia and her father illustrates Fields’s affection for his daughters in his films compared to his loathing toward his sons.9 Rumors circulated that Fields ignored the script and ad-libbed while on camera. One story reported that Bill “kept goosing her [Marilyn]off camera just before she had to go on. She would jump and spew obscenities at him…. He smashed dishes against the wall and spilled the contents of salt and pepper shakers into Marilyn’s hair.” His behavior caused the temperamental blond star to once leave the set.10 Her Majesty Love was among the first films that the German expatriate William Dieterle directed. He was responsible for making the movie interesting from a technical standpoint. “Dieterle’s handling of Her Majesty’s, Love was lively and visual; the camera fluid and mobile at a time when many directors were still shooting static stage setups; the pacing fast, and the cutting decidedly inventive,” wrote William Everson. Due to his direction, the film “holds up as a sporadically, charming and amusing film, very typical of the Continental-flavored musical comedy of its period and rather above average for its genre.” The Hollywood Reporter critic felt it was a “bright and amusing film.” The movie

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

9

became an important “stepping-stone” in Dieterle’s career, who excelled in directing lavish romantic films.11 Fields garnered good reviews for Her Majesty Love. He was singled out as giving the best performance “among the five comics.” The New York Times reviewer believed “Fields aroused a good deal of laughter.” “Altogether the whole affair had the air of a revival of an outmoded farce,” wrote the Variety critic. But he felt Fields did as much as he could with his role. “They couldn’t quite submerge the natural comedy knack of W. C. Fields in a futile old man character.…Fields does something with the role of the girls’ father, a Micawber-like character which would have counted in better surroundings.” Her Majesty Love, nonetheless, lost money at the box office, causing Warner Bros.-First National to lose $12 million during 1932.12 Marilyn Miller failed to convince Warner Bros. executives that she had a future in Hollywood. During the filming, the studio’s publicity department tried to make Miller into a sex goddess—Hollywood’s new “it girl,” an expert on love who had run through numerous marriages and affairs. But Miller’s angelic countenance failed to fit the prototype and the campaign failed. Two months after the film was released, the studio cancelled her three-year million-dollar contract, giving her a $75,000 settlement, which caused Miller to return to the New York stage. “The magic she had onstage, that indefinable charm that made up for her tiny voice and moderate acting talent, utterly vanished on camera,” said Hal Wallis, then a Warner executive.13 Although Miller was a stunning success in her last stage show, Irving Berlin’s topical musical revue, As Thousands Cheer (1933), she never recaptured her radiant presence on the Broadway boards. Plagued by chronic sinusitis during her life, Miller died unexpectedly in 1936 at age 37 from complications from nasal surgery by an incompetent doctor, a procedure that later triggered an untreatable infection in her sinus cavities that inflamed her brain. At Miller’s funeral in New York more than 2500 attendees and thousands of fans outside the church mourned the loss of the premier luminary of Broadway musicals during the 1920s. Despite Fields’s positive reviews, his hope for a career in the movies remained in limbo. “It was my bad luck to reverse many film precedents,” Fields recalled. “I made good in the picture.” But “after Her Majesty Love I couldn’t get a job for months.” He blamed it on the film’s mixed reviews. “The reviewers all raved about me, but what everyone remembers was my last film got terrible notices.” Instead of sending

10 

A. F. WERTHEIM

his estranged wife Hattie a “long sob sister” about his poor health and finances he wrote a “brief summary.” “Last year I worked nine days in a picture called ‘Her Majesty Love’ … The little nest egg I had cached for inclement weather almost entirely disappeared with the Bond crash.” He concluded the letter with a question: “Could you manage with Fifty dollars per week until things look up?”14 “Months passed before I got another offer for less money,” recalled Fields.15 The transaction came from Herman J. Mankiewicz, a Paramount producer, who had met Fields when he performed on the Broadway stage. A Fields fan, he had co-written the titles for Bill’s silent picture Two Flaming Youths. Herman convinced the Paramount brass to give Fields a part in Million Dollar Legs. Recalling his three flops with Conklin, they agreed to give him a sizeable role with a salary cut provided he was not the star. Desperate to continue his film career and still a free agent without a studio contract, Bill gladly agreed to the terms. Fields was about to jump into the zaniest and most surreal film he would ever make—a hilarious ride through a maze of verbal and physical comedy: non-sequiturs, parodies, puns, double entendres, and riotous slapstick. Joseph Mankiewicz, Herman’s talented older brother, was on the Paramount writing staff and wrote the story for Million Dollar Legs. At age fourteen Mank, as he was called, had interviewed Fields for his high school newspaper, The Caliper, at the time Bill was starring on the Broadway stage in Poppy. Mankiewicz recalled that the comedian “was extremely cordial,” and he told me “to drop by any time.” Pleased with Mank’s interview, Bill sent him a handwritten letter complementing him on his style. “I adored Fields as a performer,” said Mankiewicz, and he was a “hell of a comic.”16 Mankiewicz remembered that B.P. Schulberg, Paramount’s production chief, had asked the staff to write a story about the 1932 Olympic Games scheduled for Los Angeles. He talked Schulberg into making a comedy that parodied the whole conception of the Games. Fields attained second-billing behind the wisecracker Jack Oakie, playing the inept tyrannical leader of Klopstokia, a bankrupt mythical and madcap country, led by wacky politicians and inhabitants called “goats and nuts.” (Because Oakie was under a Paramount contract, he received $3200 for four weeks work, while Fields was paid $12,000.) The president rules the country due to his proficiency in arm wrestling by constantly beating his nearest rival, the Secretary of the Treasury, who plots to overthrow the ruthless dictator along with the entire cabinet. The president orders the

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

11

secretary to find the money to get the country solvent. “What the country needs is money,” he tells him. “It’s up to you to get it to me, and if you don’t … I’m going to take it out of your hides!”17 Among the country’s spies paid to report the president’s every move is the mysterious cross-eyed comic Ben Turpin, who wears a large black hat and cloak. A well-known graduate of Sennett’s Keystone school, Turpin’s comedy was built around his unique physical presence: “his deformed pear-shaped body, his turkey neck and pale weak-jawed face dotted with wayward eyes.”18 The film’s director, Eddie Cline, was another Mack Sennett disciple. Starting as a Keystone Kop in 1913, Cline turned to screenwriting and directing for the King of Comedy by 1916. His flair for Sennett-type slapstick undoubtedly influenced the frenetic action in Million Dollar Legs. After the film, Fields wrote Cline “It was a great pleasure to work with you…. ‘You’re just an old peach.’”19 Cline later became Fields’s friend and ally and directed his Universal films. The witty Jack Oakie plays the brush salesman, Migg Tweeney, who falls in love with Angela, the president’s daughter. Hearing the news, the jealous president orders Migg shot but Angela saves her “Sweetheart” by convincing her father that he can get Klopstokia out of debt. Noticing the prowess of the citizens, Migg recommends entering the country in the upcoming 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games (an actual event to commence in the summer). If the team wins, Klopstokia would reap enough money from royalties and advertising contracts to solve its debt crisis. To prevent the president from succeeding, the cabinet hires the sexy dancer Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti) to seduce every male on the Klopstokia team while on the boat to the USA. Her bewitching spell weakens the competitors who fight among themselves, which severely damages their athletic skills. The only strong person left on the team is the president who captures the weightlifting contest by lifting 1000 pounds and the shot put. Klopstokia wins the games and money from the publicity gets the country out of debt. Herman Mankiewicz, the film’s supervisor, instructed the director Edward “Eddie” Cline to follow his brother’s story verbatim. Cline consequently criticized Fields for his perpetual ad-libbing, accusing Bill of “basic incompetence.” “I ad-lib most of my dialogue and have for years,” Fields retorted. “If I did remember my lines, it would be too bad for me.”20 Cline decided it was useless to cajole Fields and he eventually believed that Bill’s improvisation worked.

12 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Million Dollars Legs belonged to the 1930s genre of outrageous satirical and surreal cinematic farces. The film’s absurdist tone paralleled the Marx Brothers’ movies, who a year later did Duck Soup, a film very much in the same vein. The farcical anti-government movie matched American’s nihilistic mood when it was released during July 1932. The film hit a raw nerve—masses of unemployed Americans had lost their faith in government. Herbert Hoover’s lame policies were not working, banks were failing, and unemployment was rising. Klopstokia was broke and so too was the country. The only means for Klopstokia to get out of debt was winning the Olympic Games. The satire on government and the Olympic Games did well at the box office in large cities, but in the hinterland, the far-out satire failed to excite audiences. Fields, however, garnered favorable reviews. He “romps away with the picture” wrote the New York American critic. The Herald Tribune reviewer Richard Watts labeled the film “an accidental masterpiece” and Fields “one of the greatest of modern comedians.” The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael later called it “one of the silliest and funniest pictures ever made.” As Gilbert Seldes watched the film, he noticed that Fields possessed a unique gift that enriched his comedy: “For about twenty years Fields has been one of the most amusing human beings in the world—when he found his voice, he was even funnier. Almost unique among funny men he is also an actor.”21 Million Dollar Legs “has a preeminent place in [my] affections,” said Joseph Mankiewicz. In Paris where the picture was a big hit and had a long run at a Left Bank venue, the artist Man Ray “called it the first surrealist film comedy.” Mankiewicz’s favorite lines of dialogue that the Hays Office tried unsuccessfully to censor was when Fields, the president, says to Andy Clyde “Fetch me my privy counselor.” Clyde says, “Where would I find him?” And Fields says, “Where would a privy counselor be.” Mank recalled: “It was that sort of joke all the way through.”22 Fields’s acting ability, especially his expert pantomime talent, had been apparent early on as a tramp juggler and his stage role as Sherlock Baffles in The Ham Tree (1905). His portrayal forte became more evident in the Ziegfeld Follies as a character comedian in his Fliverton family sketches as a frustrated bungling husband and as an endearing con man McGargle in Poppy. These two contrasting personas—the berated husband and the captivating charlatan—were repeated often on stage and in his films. By contrast, his roles as the president of Klopstokia in Million Dollar Legs and as Bela Toerrek in Her Majesty Love were break-out performances,

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

13

which required Fields’s acting talent to make both characters unique comedic figures. Since some critics wrote that he stole Million Dollar Legs, Bill expected offers to arrive immediately. “No doubt wishing to punish me for such a theft, I was not given another part for some time,” he joked.23 His next film for Paramount was a role in If I Had a Million, a bizarre parody, released five months after Million Dollar Legs. The movie comprises eight different episodes built around a multi-millionaire oddball who decides to give a million dollars to strangers he selects from a phone book. If I Had a Million was a Paramount showcase featuring the studio’s acting and directing talents, considered the most outstanding in Hollywood after MGM. Stars such as Gary Cooper, George Raft, and Charles Laughton were among the large cast and directors James Cruze, and Norman McLeod, a talented comedy specialist who oversaw Fields’s segment. The entire production was supervised by Ernest Lubitsch, one of Hollywood finest filmmakers. Bill was paid $5000 for one week of work and an additional $1666 for extra shooting time. Fields appears in the fourth episode playing Rollo La Rue, a former vaudeville juggler and the husband of Emily La Rue, his show biz partner, who has received the million dollars. While Fields was dining at the Brown Derby—a favorite haunt for the Hollywood set with drawings of celebrities lining the wall—Paramount’s Al Kaufman informed him that he wanted Alison Skipworth to play Emily. If I Had a Million was Kaufman’s pet project. He was Zukor’s son-in-law, who had become production head in a Paramount in-fighting coup d’état, which led to the ouster not only of B.P. Schulberg but also Jesse Lasky, long-time co-founder of the studio. Skipworth, a veteran legitimate theater star, had started as a light opera singer. Her versatility earned her numerous Broadway stage parts until 1930 when she went to Hollywood appearing in more than one hundred pictures during the next eight years. With her matronly yet feisty looks resembling Marie Dressler and her natural flair for comedy, she became a perfect screen cohort opposite Fields, playing his ex-wife in Tillie and Gus (1933), the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland (1933), and as a sassy innkeeper in Six of a Kind (1934). Joseph Mankiewicz, who wrote the screenplay for “Rollo and the Road Hogs,” crafted a bizarre take-off on automobile driving on the country’s clogged roads. Emily and Rollo, owners of a tea shop, leave

14 

A. F. WERTHEIM

their place, and see “drawn up in front of the door … a new Ford sedan, all nickel and shiny.” A salesman stands beside it brightening up some dull spots with a cloth. He smiles at Emily and Rollo as they come out of the shop. Emily is too overcome to speak for a minute. Rollo, too, is overcome, but hides it manfully by juggling a couple of oranges he has brought with him from the shop. “Rollo, it’s ours! An automobile— our own automobile—what we dreamed of during thirty years of split weeks,” exclaims Emily. Rollo, equally ecstatic, utters, “To be worthy of you, my dear, it should be of solid gold with diamonds for wheels and a pearl for a radiator cap.”24 The two seek revenge when their new car is wrecked by a road hog who crashes into their vehicle as it leaves the lot. They decide to take the million dollars to buy eight cars and pay several helpers with the intention of damaging every road hog they see. Before long the two are chasing a road hog until they crash into the car and completely damage it and their own vehicle. “You should have let me kill him, Emily. The man is worse than a murderer—he’s a road hog!” says Rollo. Emily is equally downtrodden: “All our lives we’ve worked hard and saved for one thing—and now this has to happen.” Rollo agrees: “Road hogs—a constant menace to society. They should be wiped out. Emily do you hear? Wiped out. They have powder for cockroaches— why not for road hogs?” Impressed by Rollo’s fortitude, Emily states: “How manly you are, Rollo. But perhaps it just had to be. We must not think of only revenge.” Growling, Rollo retorts: “Revenge. I’d love it. A fender for a fender and a wheel for a wheel.” The two get into their next auto and proceed to destroy the car of another road hog. Two down and six more crashes to go until their mission is complete (Fig. 1.2).25 The search for a road hog, the chase, and the crash make for a hilarious romp on the screen. The episode reflected not only Fields’s passion for cars but a continuation of a subject he was drawn to starting with “The Family Ford” in the 1920 Follies. After that routine came a long list of car stage sketches: “Terrific Traffic,” “The Baby Austin,” “The Joy Ride,” “The Sport Model,” “Off to the Country,” and “City Streets.” “I’m wild about motoring,” he once remarked. “I’ve motored back and forth across the continent so many times that my arithmetic has gone bad on me.”26 In addition, Fields had experienced car accidents, the worst being when he was angrily chasing after a car that had overtaken him. His

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

15

Fig. 1.2  Fields as Rollo La Rue, retired juggler, and Alison Skipworth as Emily La Rue driving one of their cars in If I Had a Million (1932). Bison archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

new Cadillac landed in a ditch, wrecking his auto and badly injuring his passenger Will Rogers. He owned a litter of sports cars, one called a Le Baron Custom Convertible Roadster from the Maddux Company. As for sedans, he favored high-end Lincolns, purchasing at least seven of them. While in Hollywood he owned a large custom-made bungalow trailer equipped with an electric stove, shower, downy couch, shortwave radio, and refrigerator stocked with alcoholic beverages. The trailer, hauled by one of his luxury cars, was taken to the studio, location shots, and on trips. While filming it served as a dressing room and hideaway to take a drink of liquor. His three-car garages in rented houses were always packed with the latest models. As a recreation, Bill loved driving his cars as fast as he could on the open road, especially with the top down, and with no destination in mind. It gave him a sense of freedom, reduced stress, and placated is wanderlust.

16 

A. F. WERTHEIM

“Oh, Rollo, Rollo, let’s go look at it,” says Emily who wants to see the new car Rollo has bought. “Coming, my little chickadee,” responds Rollo—one of the many bird monikers he uses to address Emily. “Bill seemed to like this ornithological touch,” said Joseph Mankiewicz. Fields asked the screenwriter if he could buy the epithet. “I don’t have to buy it from you but I’d feel better if I did, because then I’d know it was mine.” Mankiewicz told him that “he didn’t need to buy it, because it was already paid for by Paramount. But he insisted that I was the writer and he was making a purchase from me, and he put a fifty dollar bill in my hand. So later on, these bird terms kept coming back in W. C. Fields’s movies—My Little Chickadee and so forth.” Mankiewicz praised the comedian’s “incredible punctiliousness about material that is one of the great attributes of the old-time vaudevillian.”27 The movie was released on December 2, 1932, at the height of the Great Depression and only weeks after Roosevelt was elected to help “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” Despair was the mood throughout the country as the people awaited FDR’s answers to their poverty. Instead of spreading their unexpected wealth among the unemployed hungry, the revengeful La Rues use their million to destroy cars driven by road hogs. “If I Had a Million is a surprisingly bitter film,” wrote the film historian Louis Brock. “The film’s metaphorical solutions to economic woe (including its fairy tale premise) at times borders on the anarchistic and the absurd, suggesting destruction and irony-laced viable alternatives to established job and family structure.” Andrew Bergman, another film historian, agreed: “The zaniness of this and other ‘anarcho-nihilist laff riots’ at this bleak time was really the dark side of American irreverence, a wild response to an unprecedented shattering of confidence.” Pauline Kael believed that the movie was “perhaps the best of the American all-star episode films of its era.” Movie critic Lou Jacobs felt that “it shows what the combination of a multi-star cast, multi-star directional staff, and the brains of about a score of ace writers can do when properly blended…. If I had a Million is a history-making talkie.”28 While appearing in If I Had a Million Fields was living in a rented sprawling 3700 sq. ft. wooden frame house bordering bucolic Toluca Lake in North Hollywood on the southeastern edge of the San Fernando Valley. Located near Universal and Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, the fashionable community was home to numerous celebrities in the film industry. Fields practiced golf by hitting golf balls into the six-acre

1  WELCOME BACK TO HOLLYWOOD 

17

man-made lake where numerous elegant feathery white swans paraded on the water. A ball occasionally struck a swan causing the angry bird to charge out of the lake and pursue Fields up his lawn. Bill was perturbed about the excrement the swans left on the grass. He tried to befriend the rubber-neck waterfowl by standing by the shore and giving them food from his hand. The gesture failed to pacify his uninvited guests. Stories about Fields’s war against the swans spread like brush fire among his Toluca Lake neighbors. A gigantic swan with a humongous wingspan became Fields’s main nemesis. Bill was rowing on the lake when he spotted the swan, tried to beam the bird with his paddle, and fell into the water. “We all knew about it,” recalled the pixie-face comic Bert Wheeler, a vaudeville and Follies veteran, who called Fields “the greatest comedian who ever lived.” He recalled that “any time this swan came near his property, Fields would chase him off.” The producer Milton Breen told Wheeler that he once visited Fields’s home and saw him club a swan on the head with a baseball bat. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he told Fields. “Well, I told that so-and-so to keep off my property.”29 The best swan story comes from neighbor Joseph Mankiewicz, who awoke late one night hearing a thunderous clamor coming from the lake. He looked out the window and saw two huge swans wildly thrashing their immense wings as Fields threatened them with a golf club. Bing Crosby, who lived nearby, suddenly telephoned Mankiewicz eager to know who was causing the racket. He informed the popular crooner that Fields was beating the swan with a four or five iron. Tell him that he is “using too heavy a club,” suggested Crosby jokingly.30 Fields was frustrated that Paramount refused to let him be a lead in a film. He had not been the sole star of a feature film since the silent picture Running Wild in 1927. Fields worked best when he had top billing. Being billed below Jack Oakie in Million Dollar Legs failed to enhance his reputation and he joined other featured performers in If I Had a Million. The latter’s pre-Christmas release failed to attract the large audience it deserved both in Los Angeles, New York, and other cities; consequently, the film only made a modest profit. His earnings per picture had dropped precipitously from a high of $45,000 for the silents, Two Flaming Youths and Fools for Luck, to $6666 ($5000 a week plus $1666 for extra days of shooting) for If I Had a Million. Bill yearned for a studio contract but Paramount was about to declare bankruptcy and other studios were in the same position.

18 

A. F. WERTHEIM

He passed the time playing golf at the Lakeside Country Club across from his house bordering bucolic Toluca Lake. To avoid fees, he rowed across the lake and parked his boat on the shore near the middle of the course. The Lakeside links attracted many filmmakers. It was here that Bill was about to have a fortuitous encounter with one of the most wellknown names in Hollywood.

CHAPTER 2

The Sennett Quartet

“At last the sky cleared,” recalled Fields. “I fell in with one of the shrewdest man in films … Mack Sennett … a master of comedy. I still consider him one of the most gifted men in the field of comedy. In fact, Sennett’s gift ranges beyond comedy. He is a great satirist.” According to Sennett, Fields told him: “Mack, I’m having difficulty out here getting into the movies, and I’d like to get into your studio. I don’t care what you pay me. I just want to be busy.” “There’s only [one] thing I naturally want you to do and that’s get on the screen,” Sennett replied. “You’re a great artist, perform.” The self-anointed King of Comedy recalled seeing Fields initially on the Broadway stage. “Like everyone else, I thought all his routines were uproariously funny.”1 Sennett signed an agreement with Paramount-Publix on February 26, 1932, to produce and distribute thirty-six two-reel comedies. At the time, the King of Comedy’s new facility was in Studio City, located in the San Fernando Valley, where he produced Mack Sennett Star Comedies. His production company was financially in debt due to the stock market crash. Needing to placate the Paramount brass by producing sure-fire laugh-getters, Sennett was thrilled to work with Fields. Mack thought Bill’s salary demands were outrageous. “Now you know I get $5,000 [per week] when I perform,” Fields told him. “What’s the matter,” asked a stunned Sennett, “are you afraid of being fired?” “I’m not taking any chances,” stated Fields, “that’s the deal.” “Bill bullied me, cajoled me and charmed me, and walked out of the office with a © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_2

19

20 

A. F. WERTHEIM

$5000-a-week contract—$2500 payable at the beginning of each week, and $2500 payable in the middle of each week.” Mack wondered about Bill’s demand to be paid twice a week. “Just in case of fire,” the comedian told him. More realistically, Fields knew about Sennett’s shoddy financial condition and felt he might declare bankruptcy, leaving him marooned.2 Sennett’s early life reads like a Horatio Alger poor-boy-makes-good tale. The son of Irish immigrant parents, Mack Sennett (br. Mikall (Michael) Sinnott) was born on January 17, 1890, in Danville, Quebec, Canada. His family moved to New England where the seventeen-year-old lad toiled as a laborer at the American Iron Works and later in a pulp factory. Sennett called the jobs hard sweltering work for “a big, black-haired boy standing six foot one and weighing 210 pounds.”3 He spent his earnings going to the theater where the performers inspired him to become an actor. For five years starting around 1902, he joined burlesque companies, traveling shows, and Broadway musicals as a chorus singer. The experiences roused Sennett’s interest in slapstick and knockabout hysterics, which were then in vogue. Watching flashing pictures on a primitive screen for a nickel in storefronts also fascinated him. He became convinced that the popular stage was destined to be replaced by motion pictures. In 1908, he decided to pursue a film career working for D.W. Griffith at Biograph where for three years he acted, directed, and supervised Griffith’s comedy unit. His valuable apprentice years with the filmmaker gave him the foundation for his own success. With the financial backing of two venture capitalists in the movie business, Sennett formed the Keystone Pictures Studio in 1912, located in Edendale, a small rustic town near downtown Los Angeles. At Keystone, Sennett gained fame for his numerous pioneer slapstick-knockabout shorts, considered high points in early silent screen comedy. The future stars he helped nurture read like a who’s who of early screen comedy—Charlie Chaplin, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, Ben Turpin, and Marie Dressler, among others. As a writer, cameraman, director, and producer, Sennett churned out hundreds of zany one- and two-reel shorts that featured frenzied physical comedy—fights, pursuits, rescues, and madcap chases by the Keystone Kops. Characters from bungling fools to bearded villains performed pratfalls, pie-throwing, cliff-hanging, and other slapstick antics. His hilarious frantic shorts accented comedic violence, vulgarity, anarchy, and zaniness. Sennett’s modus operandi undermined the social order, lampooned respectability, and debunked acceptable behavior.

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

21

Because he failed to meet the salary demands of his Keystone stars, many departed to other studios, including Chaplin. In 1915, Sennett established the Triangle Film Corporation, a short-lived partnership with Griffith and Thomas Ince and two years later formed his own company. During the 1920s, he moved his comedy company from one studio and distribution company to another. By clinging to his outmoded Keystone model, he achieved a mixed bag of slapstick successes and failures. The advent of sound motion pictures sounded the death-knell of Mack’s roughhouse physical comedy style and made the Keystone genre outmoded. Sennett agreed to create cinematic versions of Fields’s hilarious stage sketches. The Dentist, a twenty-two minute two-reeler deriving from his routine in the 1928 Vanities, was the first of four shorts produced by Sennett. The victimizing dentist vs. the victimized patient was a readymade subject for tempestuous humor on the stage. Numerous comedies about tooth extraction were made during the early silent pictures era, including many depicting the dentist as a fiendish figure. In his Keystone comedy Laughing Gas (1914), Chaplin plays a dental assistant who pretends to be the dentist when his employer leaves the office. In this early short, Chaplin is not a tender tramp but a sadistic character. He does some violent physical comedy with patients, including clobbering a person on his mouth with a brick that causes his teeth to fall out. He flirts with an attractive woman patient but she resists his advances. In an act of sexual exploitation, he leaps on her, grabs the lady’s nose with a pair of forceps, and kisses her repeatedly as he spins the chair around. Five years later Sennett produced a twenty-minute two-reel short, The Dentist, featuring the cross-eyed Ben Turpin and the effervescent Marie Prévost. In this short, the dentist searches for the mouth of a heavily bearded patient, a scene which Fields borrowed for his short. The Dentist (1932) repeats numerous scenes from his Vanities stage routine but it also contains original sequences and characters. Among them is a new domestic situation that focuses on the dentist’s teenage spoiled daughter’s (Babe Kane) romance with Arthur, the iceman. The daughter belongs to the longline of misbehaved brats in Bill’s films. Although a demanding wife is missing, the household is another frenzied abode where a father is unable to control his daughter. The opening scene occurs one morning in the kitchen where the dentist and daughter are quarreling. The repartee between the two reveals the dentist’s crotchety absent-mindedness. “Where’s my glasses?”

22 

A. F. WERTHEIM

he asks. “They’re on your head.” “Where’s my newspaper?” “Your sitting on it.” “Where’s my gold bag?” “You just fell over it.” The iceman arrives with a fifty pound block of ice, which he places on the floor. The ice is too heavy to lift so the dentist places it on the stove where it melts until he can install it in his icebox. His daughter announces her plans to marry the iceman. Opposing the marriage, the dentist plans to prevent the iceman from coming to the house by threatening to buy a Frigidaire.4 In the kitchen, the dentist receives a phone call from Charley Frobisher (named after a childhood friend), who tells him that he is late for their golf game. Moviegoers next see him on the links searching for a ball. An elderly lady who is sitting on a nearby bench tells him it is under a leaf. Embarrassed that an old woman found his ball, he exclaims in a brusque tone “thank you!” Dressed in slacks, shirt and tie, and a sweater, he tees off and his ball lands on the green where it knocks a golfer unconscious. Anxious to complete the hole, the dentist never apologizes as the injured player is carried off the course. Discovering his ball inside a sprinkler connection, he reads from the rule book that he can drop the ball without penalty on the green. With the finesse of a Kareem AbdulJabbar basketball skyhook, he throws the ball over his head and it rolls into the hole. “Down in two.” he insists. “You can’t do that!” complains his opponent. “Read the card” and “don’t quibble,” the dentist retorts. At the next hole, the green lies in the middle of a pond where numerous ducks are wading. The dentist’s shot goes into the water. “Those ducks are throwing me off.” When his second shot lands in the pond he blames his caddy who, as in previous golf sketches, acts as the fall guy. “Don’t stand behind me when I’m shooting,” he yells at the caddy. “You told me to stand over their, sir.” “Never mind where I told you to stand. You stand where I tell you. That’s kid’s so dumb he don’t know what time it is.” The dentist’s next two shots also land in the water. Frustrated, he throws his clubs, bag, and the caddy into the water. “You can’t do that,” his opponent complains. “What do you mean, I can’t do that!” replies the irate dentist. “I can do anything I want to!”5 In the waiting room, Miss Peppitone (Dorothy Granger) sits with a painful toothache. She is ignored by the dentist until the nurse reminds him he has a client. The dialogue between the dentist and the patient is nearly the same as in the stage version. She raises her skirt to show the dentist where a dachshund bit her, revealing her long alluring legs, which arouses the dentist. “You’re rather fortunate it wasn’t a Newfoundland

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

23

dog that bit you.” Her shrieks before the dentist drills cause the patient in the waiting room to flee. Unable to endure more pain, Miss Peppitone runs out the door. Next comes the stately Miss Mason a role played to perfection by Elise Cavanna, a standout among Fields’s regular character performers. Tall and lanky, she wears an elegant full-length dress, exudes a snobbish air, and radiates considerable sex appeal. Many lines and action remain from the Vanities version but Cavanna adds her exceptional talent to the part. The dentist asks Miss Mason to open her mouth. “Come on now, you have a bigger mouth than that. Open it! Mm! Beautiful! Hand me that 4040 circular buzz saw, will you. (hums) Grubbing!…Grubbing!… Grubbing! … (a favorite Fields’s ditty) Is that a 400 circular you’ve given me?” His daughter suddenly storms into the dental office intent to visit the iceman. Her father forcibly takes his daughter to her bedroom above the dental office and locks her inside. While the dentist continues his procedure with Miss Mason, his daughter stomps on the floor causing the plaster to break and the chandelier to rip from the ceiling. When a big piece of plaster falls on the dentist’s head, he runs upstairs, grips her arm forcibly, and tells her to “shut up.” Returning to Miss Mason, the dentist grabs a pair of pliers. “Have you ever had this tooth pulled before?” the dentist asks. “This won’t hurt you—much.” Miss Mason grunts and squirms as he begins to tackle her tooth with the pliers. The dentist pulls so hard she rises with her long legs strapped around his waist in a seductive pose. The scene becomes more erotic when she pulls her dress high enough to reveal her garters. With her legs draped around him, she falls to the floor. The dentist is exhausted. The nurse gives him a palm leaf to fan himself. With the pliers still gripping her tooth, the dentist yanks her back to the chair with her legs clinging around his genital area again. “Whew! I’m going to give her gas,” he says, “she’s not going to pull me around the floor.” When another piece of plaster hits him on his head, he rushes upstairs to reprimand his daughter. He returns but finds Miss Mason is no longer sitting in the chair. “That female wrestler gone?” he asks the nurse. “Yes, she’s gone” (Fig. 2.1). The sexual innuendos in the sequence between Fields and Cavanna are among the most licentious episodes filmed in 1932 during the PreCode Era (1930–1934). The self-policing production code that let the studios censor themselves spawned a lenient enforcement policy. More than any other studio Paramount flouted the production code

24 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 2.1  Fields pulling Elise Cavanna’s bad tooth with a forceps in Mack Sennett’s two-reel short, The Dentist (1932) (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com)

by churning out the most daring films with risqué scenes featuring seduction, infidelity, milk baths, nude swimming, double entendres, and dirty jokes, etc. An individualist, non-conformist and free speech advocate, Fields fought censorship, especially after the Pre-Code Era ended. The disregard of public morality precipitated a much stricter set of regulations starting in 1934 enforced by the newly established Production Code Administration, run by Joseph Breen, a resolute IrishAmerican Catholic intent on a strong campaign of censorship. A script needed to be scrutinized before production by the Breen office, which issued a list of problems, eliminations, and deletions that the studio needed to fix before being shot. The final release was also reviewed and any violations had to be corrected before the film could receive its official seal of approval. The Production Code office ordered the Fields-Cavanna

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

25

erotic scene cut, and it was also removed from television replays during the 1950s. When scruples became less restrictive during the 1960s, the scene was restored to the film. Entering the dental office next is a small Russian man (Billy Bletcher) with a length bushy beard. The dentist needs a stethoscope to find his mouth hidden in his stubble, and his drilling causes the patient to spit out numerous teeth. When small birds suddenly fly out from under his beard, the dentist grabs his rifle and pokes under the patient’s beard to see if more birds are hibernating. This sketch in the Vanities caused Fields to be arrested by two Humane Society officers for torturing a canary. He was arraigned the next day at a court hearing. After pleading not guilty, Fields’s lawyer called him to the stand to give his account. “No, your honor, I wasn’t cruel to the canary. I took good care of him—or her—and what the Humane Society says isn’t true. No sir, I wouldn’t be mean to any bird, not even a chicken.” Fields’s lawyer argued that the bird might have died from smoke inhalation caused by the photographers’ flash bulbs outside the station. Siding with Fields’s lawyer, the judge accused the police of making “an unjustifiable arrest of a reputable citizen.” As for the canary, “there is not a scintilla of proof that the bird was tortured. … The bird suffered from the effect of the smoke from the flash-light … and died in the cage.”6 Meanwhile, the dentist’s daughter has escaped from a window in her room via a ladder to see Arthur, the iceman has brought. The dentist finds them outside with the golfer he beamed on the head and his son. A confrontation occurs, the golfer’s son slugs the dentist, and in retribution, Arthur knocks the son out. The dentist is impressed that Arthur has come to his defense. “Father, you’re not really going to buy a Frigidaire, are you?” asks his daughter. “Fifty pounds and make it snappy,” he tells the iceman. Realizing the iceman can still come to their house, the happy daughter kisses both her father and Arthur as the short concludes. The dentist is perhaps the cruelest character Fields plays, a sadistic tooth puller who dislikes his job and botches his procedures. Like many of Fields’s protagonists, he is a blunderer. Except for the ending in which he decides to keep his antiquated ice box for his daughter’s sake, the dentist never shows an ounce of kindness. Although Fields is credited as the screenplay’s writer, Sennett’s influence seems evident, given the dentist’s maliciousness and the faced-paced action. Fields, however, offers comic relief by creating some laughable moments. Fields’s voluptuous wrestling match with Elise Cavanna, a classic skit, steals the film.

26 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Because the short was often shown as part of a double feature, there were few reviews. Those published in city newspapers were favorable. By contrast, small-town movie theater managers reported that the short was not liked by their audiences, who were offended by its risqué scenes and malevolence. A venue owner in Plainview, Nebraska, called it “rotten.”7 The American Dental Association protested the negative depiction of its profession. Sennett’s comedic formula accenting speed, frenzy, and violence conflicted with Fields’s style, which depended on character development within a slower-paced narrative. “Neither of us could agree on the nature of comedy,” Fields declared. Sennett wanted to change a scene in their next short, The Fatal Glass of Beer, a spin-off from the Vanities “Stolen Bonds.” Sennett felt Bill’s sequence singing a ballad on the dulcimer about his wayward son was overly long and boring. To add zeal, Mack insisted flashbacks depicting the lyrics be included. Fields exploded in a letter: “You told me I would get screen credit for stories I wrote and that I could do as I wished until I went wrong. If the pictures I have made are not what you want tear up the contract. You have been a tremendous success with your formula, but it is new to me and I can’t change my way of working at this late stage of the game. When I have the stage all set for a Fields picture and you come in and have everything changed to a Sennett picture, you can see how you have rendered me helpless.” Although flashbacks were added, Sennett eventually capitulated in other areas and gave Fields freedom from interference.8 The Fatal Glass of Beer traced its roots back to dramatic film accounts about gold-seeking adventures in the frigid upper northwest. The Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) lists thirteen silent films about the Yukon. Set in the Canadian northwest, Fields’s tale parodies the melodramatic gold rush genre within the framework of a frontiersman’s family feuding over greed. The Fatal Glass of Beer repeats many lines, sight gags, and scenes from “Stolen Bonds” but Fields also wrote significant new material. The opening two sequences are entirely original. The short begins with a blizzard and a view of a mining cabin in a valley covered with snow. Snavely (Fields) is packing provisions for his trek “over the rim.” A Canadian Mounted Officer, Posthlewhistle (name of an English town Fields knew), knocks at the door and enters covered with snow. “Still Snowing?” Snavely asks. “I don’t know. To tell ya the truth. I never looked.” After conversing for a time, the officer asks if has heard from

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

27

his son Chester. Snavely tells him that he has not heard from Chester for nearly a year. Posthlewhistle asks Snavely to sing a song about the evils of drinking since he has a son “whose gotta hankerin’ to go to the city.” Snavely fetches his dulcimer. “You won’t consider me rude if I play with my mittens on, will ya?” “Not at all Mr. Snavely, not at all.” Accompanied by music from a recorded sound track, Fields uses heavy mittens to play the string instrument! Snavely begins to sing in a somber tone: There was once a poor boy, and he left his country home, and came to the city to look for work. He promised his ma and pa he would lead a civ’lized life, and always shun the fatal curse of drink.…

The lyrics continues to describe the boy obtaining a job in a quarry where he meets some college students. In a flashback (added by Sennett), the audience sees Chester dressed in white with a bow tie and straw hat in a saloon where patrons encourage him to join them. The song continues: They tempted him to drink, and they said he was a coward; at last he took the fatal glass of beer.

Another flashback shows Chester initially refusing but then deciding to drink his beer. He’s found what he’d done He dashed the glass down on the floor, And he staggered through the door With delirium tree-mens. Once upon the sidewalk He met a Salvation Army girl,

28 

A. F. WERTHEIM

And wickedly he broke her tambourine. Oh she said, ‘Heaven bless you’ and placed a mark upon his brow with a kick she’d learned before she had been saved.

Moviegoers see a Salvation Army woman kicking Chester’s head causing him to be knocked to the pavement. The constable continues to sob as Snavely sings the last stanza. Now, as a moral to young men who come down to the city, don’t go ‘round breaking people’s tambourines.

“That certainly is a sad song,” says the constable as he hides his tears with a handkerchief. Snavely pats him on his back. “Don’t cry constable. It is a sad song.” The song lampoons popular temperance tunes that supported Prohibition. Critic Harold Bloom, an avid fan of the short, wrote: “Fields-Snavely, croaking his ghastly dirge to the uncertain sound of the dulcimer, is a parodic version of the Bard of Sensibility, a figure out of the primitivism of Thomas Gray or William Blake.”9 The tune adds a new dimension to the story by satirizing the evils of drinking promoted by temperance advocates. When the film was released, March 3, 1933, Prohibition was still in effect and was not repealed until about nine months later on December 6. “Well, I think I’ll be a high-tailin’ it over the rim,” says Snavely. To check the climate, he opens the door and a clump of snow hits his face. For the first time, he utters a line that will become one of Fields’s signature sayings: “It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast.” A howling wind from a blizzard is heard as the trip begins with canned footage of a dogsled team led by Snavely. As he runs behind the sled, he commands his lead dog, “Mush, Balto, mush.” (Balto was a heroic Siberian Husky, who in 1925 led a dog sled team in whiteout conditions while transporting antitoxin serum to Nome, Alaska, where a widespread diphtheria outbreak had occurred.) An amateurish back-projection shot shows

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

29

Snavely urging his dog team onward through the snow by striking his load of supplies. Snavely spits snow from his mouth. “Tastes more like cornflakes.” (Cereal flakes painted white were often used for snow.) The sequence ends with a lone wolf howling using a studio soundtrack of an injured dog. Snavely’s farcical trip was purposely done to create what is considered the worst footage ever made. The outdoor sequence intentionally lampoons the technical aspects of moviemaking, especially rear projection shots and stock footage (Fig. 2.2). Returning to his cabin, Snavely opens the door causing a blast of snow to strike his face. Flinching, he exclaims: “It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast.” While eating Snavely and his wife talk about a creditor

Fig. 2.2  “It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast,” says Snavely (Fields) to the Officer of the Mounties (Richard Cramer) (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com)

30 

A. F. WERTHEIM

who threatens to take his dog team for unpaid debts. “He won’t take my lead dog, cause I ate him. He was mighty good with mustard.” The conversation turns to Chester (George Chandler), their prodigal son, who has been in jail for three years “for stealing them there bonds.” Suddenly, there is a knock at the door. “Who’s thar?” asks Snavely. While walking to the door, Snavely sticks his foot in a bucket, drags it across the floor, and kicks it off causing a noisy thud (a Sennett-type slapstick gag). As he opens the door, the snow-in-the-face running gag is repeated. “Welcome home, Chester .… But I don’t suppose we’ll have him with us long.” Facing the camera, Snavely philosophies: “Once the city gets into a bo-hoy’s sy-system, he a-loses his a-hankarin’ for the country.” The three sit at the kitchen table where Ma (Rosemary Thebe) and Chester sob while Pa stuffs crackers into his mouth. He laughs so hard that he spits out the crackers and snow from the top of his hat falls into his soup. “I ain’t ever going to leave again,” a remorseful Chester tells them. He goes to his bedroom where he can “lay on the bed, and cry like I was a baby again.” Ma, Pa, and Chester go through a comic ritual of saying goodnight. “Fields loved to mock the time and energy wasted on meaningless socialization and everyday small talk,” wrote the film critic William Everson, “and this little vignette was one of the simplest and funniest episodes he ever devised along these lines.”10 Carrying a lantern, bucket, and moose horn, Snavely leaves the cabin to milk his elk. This new sequence is another spoof on Hollywood adventure film moviemaking. Through the use of amateur background screens, it depicts Snavely walking among a stampede of elk. He calls for his favorite elk, Lena, but is unable to find her. To attract Lena, he blows his moose horn but instead all the elk retreat. Standing in front of a background screen picturing a huge elk, Snavely asks Elmer “have you seen Lena? Tell her Mr. Snavely wants to see [her].” He finally spots Lena. “Hey Lena, it’s me, come here. Dontcha know me? Mr. Snavely!” But the elk runs away. “Drat her old hide!” Giving up, Snavely walks to a frozen water pump, which emits only ice cubes to put in his bucket. The outdoor scene depicts Snavely as a failed frontiersman who botches all his duties. He is the antithesis of the mythic heroic pioneers, backwoodsman, explorers, and scouts celebrated in tall tales of fortitude, bravery, and decency. Snavely is another one of Fields’s incompetent bunglers, a long list that includes golfers, pharmacists, dentists, motorists, husbands, and fathers.

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

31

Arriving home, Snavely sneaks around the room looking to see if anyone is watching him. Peeking through a broken window he gets snow in his face. “It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast,” he utters. Melodramatic music suggests something ominous is about to happen. “Can I speak to you a minute, son?” he asks. “Yes, Pa.” Seated at the table, where Ma has placed a large pitcher and bowl, Chester tells his father that he had stolen the bonds but has not brought any money home. “And you came back to me and mother …. to sponge on us the rest of your life!” Accompanied by music from the ballad Snavely had sung earlier, Pa clobbers Chester on his head with a pitcher. Ma rushes into the room and strikes Chester with another bowl. Finally, Pa whacks Chester on his head with the bowl on the table, causing him to collapse on the floor. “You lug!” shouts Pa. “Get out! Get out! Get out of here!” Together they toss him out the door as if he was large piece of garbage. Without regretting what they have done, Ma and Pa stand outside arm in arm. “It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast,” says Snavely again. Expecting to get hit with a pile of snow, Pa flinches but, surprisingly, no snow comes! The film then fades to black concluding one of Fields’s darkest and poignant comedies that parodies the sacrosanct institutions of home and family and debunks the glorification of the heroic frontiersman (Fig. 2.3).11 A satire showing the parents hurling their son out into the frigid cold shocked most Americans. Theater owners in the heartland reacted with horror. A proprietor in Oxford, North Carolina, called the short “the worst comedy we have played from any company this season. No story, no acting, and on the whole nothing.” Another in Chelsea, Michigan: “Two reels of film and 20 minutes wasted.” The Motion Picture Herald called the short “silly….On the whole the comedy is hardly more than moderately enjoyable.”12 During the Great Depression, the family was viewed as a refuge from the unemployment, and poverty overwhelming Americans. The Fatal Glass of Beer rebukes that notion since Ma and Pa Snavely throw Chester out of the house and into the cold. The film turns the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son on its head by refusing to forgive Chester for throwing his bonds away. Harold Bloom, called it “a grotesque version of the biblical parable of Prodigal Son” as well as a paean to the outrageousness of life in all its aspects.13 In 1933, moviegoers were not prepared to see a film that lampooned the American frontier, an escape valve that promised a new beginning

32 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 2.3  Snavely and his wife (Rosemary Theby) whack Chester (George Chandler) on his head (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com)

out West. Popular culture enshrined the frontier as a treasured place producing numerous heroes ranging from courageous explorers to beloved cowboys. Fields makes a mockery of the last frontier with its nonstop blizzards not fit “for man or beast.” All that remains for the Snavelys is their solitary life in a mortgaged frigid cabin. The Fatal Glass of Beer, wrote William Everson, “was another case of a brilliant little film being offered at the wrong time, before the public was attuned to such bizarre and even black comedy.”14 Recognition of the film as a satirical masterpiece would have to wait until the rebellious 1960s when a new generation of critics interpreted the movie as a poignant parody that undermined the sacrosanct mores of conventional society, a film that perfectly matched an era of disillusionment and dissent. For his third Sennett film, Fields dipped into his bag of stage sketches to do a new version of “The Drug Store,” a scene in The Comic Supplement and a central sequence in the silent picture It’s the Old Army

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

33

Game. Fields believed that the drug store owner was perfect for a stand-alone short. In the eighteen-minute two-reel short called The Pharmacist, the action is centered on the druggist Mr. Dilweg (Fields) and his defiant family: his constantly complaining wife Grace (Elise Cavanna), his naughty child Priscilla (Babe Kane), and his older daughter Ooleota (Lorena Carr). The daughter is in love with her boyfriend Cuthbert played by Grady Sutton, a new member of Fields’s Comedy Company. Beginning as a performer in Hal Roach two-reel comedies, Grady became known for his “blank-faced, empty-headed hayseed” look, pained expression, and rolling his eyes as he spoke his lines with a slow Southern drawl. Impressed by the way he stood out in a scene, Bill insisted that producers hire Grady. “He would cover for me when I missed my cue,” Sutton recalled. “Bill Fields was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” Fields hired Sutton to play four supporting character parts in his films. After he finished The Bank Dick (1940), his last film with Fields, Bill told him that he did a “fine job.” Closing the letter, Bill wrote: “With appreciation of your friendship and splendid talent. I am proud to be your friend.”15 Fields created a short that ranks among his most amusing works. The opening sequence is mostly silent. After shooing kids away from his front door, Dilweg enters the store and finds two old-timers playing checkers. He silently watches them play and acts as a kibitzer. “They haven’t made a move in three and one-half hours,” informs his wife. “Never buy anything. Get them out!” Overlooking the table, he helps one player by signaling what he thinks is the correct move. For the wrong move, he takes off his straw hat, rubs his scalp, turns his head side to side, and grimaces. For the correct move, he keeps his hat on and smiles. Taking his advice, the player advances a checker piece one square, which allows his opponent to hop over all his pieces. The mostly silent episode gives Fields an opportunity to exhibit his pantomime skill. Without uttering a word, Dilweg is depicted as a docile helpful druggist but upstairs where his dysfunctional family lives he becomes a strict father. The next sequence occurs over lunch in the family dining room where moviegoers meet Dilweg’s naughty daughter Priscilla. She mixes her father’s martini by jumping up and down on a pogo stick attached to a cocktail shaker, which stems from an earlier stage sketch, “10,000 People Killed” (1922). Dismissed from the table for her ill manners, Priscilla is so hungry she reaches into the pet canary’s cage to devour its crackers and starts eating the bird. When she sits down at the table, she

34 

A. F. WERTHEIM

coughs up the feathers. This bit derives from “What a Night” (1921), a wacky unproduced stage spoof on a murder mystery story with surreal incidents. Dilweg reprimands his mischievous daughter: “Won’t Papa’s little doll baby sit down or will Papa bust you over the head with this stick.” Sitting down, she starts popping her chewing gum. “Now I have a chewing gum olive there in my martini! Get out of here!” His bossy wife intervenes: “Why don’t you learn that kid some manners? … And it might be a good idea if you’d take your hat off.” “I have had the hat forever,” declares Dilweg, “and another thing, it has no top in it and so it doesn’t’ matter.” The dining room sequence concludes with Dilweg’s confrontation with his other daughter Ooleota. He is angry because she has been talking on the telephone nonstop with Cuthbert, who Dilweg thinks is a “sissy.” “Why you’ve never even seen him,” says Ooleota. “I don’t need to see him. I never knew a Cuthbert in my life that wasn’t a sissy. When I was a kid I licked every kid in school named Cuthbert.” She continues to woo Cuthbert with romantic gibberish. “Aw, this is getting too much. … She’s been talking to him an hour. … That’s done it! She’s making me sick.” Dilweg flees the dining room when he hears the telephone ring downstairs. As on the stage, Fields portrays the pharmacist as a pathetic figure, a poor businessman who has worked fifteen years in his store with little profit. He receives a telephone call from a person who orders cough drops “with the gentlemen with the whiskers on each side of the box.” “I’m very sorry we can’t split a box,” says Dilweg. He agrees to send the box to her house twenty-two miles away. Compared to his brusque behavior as a father, the pharmacist is polite and kind to his customers. Dilweg is especially proud of his stamp business. “Say, do you know, since I‘ve had that big electric sign painted, our stamp business has picked up one hundred percent,” he proudly tells his wife. “Could I interest you in a stamp?” he asks a potential customer. “Give me a purple one!” “I’m sorry we haven’t got a purple one. I could paint one for you.” Dilweg picks one out. “Don’t give me that dirty one! Give me a clean one. Give me that one out of the middle. … Got change for a hundred dollars?” When Dilweg admits he has no change the customer tells him “I’ll pay you next time I come in.” “We’re giving these little souvenirs away today with every purchase,” declares Dilweg. He reaches under the counter and pulls out a huge Chinese vase. Carrying the vase under his arm, the customer leaves.

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

35

Two elderly women enter the store and ask for “a lady in attendance.” They are too old-fashioned and embarrassed to ask Dilweg if his drug store has a ladies room. He solicits his wife to wait on them. Unhappy about going downstairs, his complaining wife declares, “I ought to have some decent clothes if I’m going to clerk in the drug store.” Later he goes upstairs to see why she has not come down. He opens the bathroom door and sees her getting dressed. “Close the door and get out of here! I’m putting on my gown.” As he shuts the door, he exclaims “hurry up down dear. We’re going to lose their trade.” He rushes down the stairs humming his favorite buzzwords—“drubbing, drubbing, drubbing.” After keeping the ladies waiting, his wife finally arrives dressed in her Sunday best. She condescendingly asks: “What can I do for you?” “Is there a ladies’ rest room here?” “Yes! Right over there. The first door on your left.” Turning to her husband: “You fool! Why didn’t you tell them?” “They didn’t ask me anything about it.” Although they have not bought anything, Dilweg gives the ladies two Chinese vases. “Whenever you want any stamps don’t forget us,” he tells them as they begin to leave. “Been in the same place for fifteen years now. Control all the stamp business in this neighborhood.” A plainclothes Prohibition agent arrives and whispers in Dilweg’s ear that he wishes to buy liquor. Dilweg takes a fan that blows open his jacket revealing the agent’s badge. “You think I’d break the laws of this great and glorious United States of ours just to satisfy your depraved tastes. A thousand no’s! I’ve never had or sold a bottle of liquor since I’ve opened this place.” “Well you’re not fooling me,” says the agent. “I’ll get you yet!” “Well, maybe, and maybe not,” Dilweg replies. Suddenly, a woman who has fainted is carried into his store. Applying smelling salts, she awakens and sees Dilweg. “Heavens! That horrible man again!” “Never saw her in all my life,” says Dilweg. A crook enters the store seeking refuge from numerous policemen across the street. A gun battle ensues causing a cascade of bullets to destroy many items in the store. The criminal is about to shoot Dilweg when a man in the telephone booth opens the door and knocks the crook out with the phone receiver. Dilweg wants to introduce the man who saved his life to his oldest daughter. “I want you to meet a very wonderful and brave young man … he’s just saved my life … This is my daughter.” Ooleota yells “Cuthbert”! He is no longer a sissy to Dilweg but a hero and is now a suitable husband for Ooleota. Reviews were scarce since the twenty-minute short was mostly shown as part of a double bill with the feature receiving the publicity. The

36 

A. F. WERTHEIM

development of the double feature annoyed Sennett. “When this double dosage became a national fact, the two-reel comedy ailed and pined away. This removed the greatest training ground ever provided for screen actors, mostly especially for screen comedians.”16 Fields’s last short for Sennett was The Barber Shop, another sketch from the Vanities. The barber is a time-honored comic figure in popular culture. In cinema, the character emerged as early as 1894 in The Barbershop, a twenty-second Edison kinetoscope depicting a customer getting a shave. That same year the film, What Demoralized the Barbershop (1894), appeared about two prostitutes who entice clientele inside the shop. In 1929, Sennett joined the crowded field with The Barber’s Daughter, a two-reeler directed and produced by the King. Chaplin’s role as a Jewish barber and Hitler clone in The Great Dictator (1940) is a memorable example of the genre. The figure has never gone out of style. Three contemporary films are the Barbershop (2002), its sequel Barbershop 2 (2004), and the thriller The Barber (2014). Suffering from insomnia and backaches, Fields slept on a barber’s chair during his later years. He once said that one of his greatest pleasures was getting a haircut in a comfortable barber’s chair. The barbershop, like the dentist’s office, is a locale where comedy mutates into malevolence. Vulnerable customers who sit helplessly in the barber chair can be subject to the worst kind of abuse. Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), for instance, is based on a Victorian horror story about a barber who kills his customers and bakes them into pies. Pain is inflicted by a dentist who extracts teeth with forceps and by a barber who cuts a customer getting a shave with a sharp razor. Fields’s barber, the inept Cornelius O’Hare, is not as brutal as the dentist and has a compassionate side. The short opens with a scene showing O’Hare sitting on a chair outside his barbershop sharpening his razor. The film is set in Felton City titled after his mother’s maiden name. Fields draws on childhood memories for the initial sequence, which mocks small-town two-faced gossipers. Neighbors from the small town walk by O’Hare. After they leave, O’Hare makes several behind-the-back remarks about them, which resemble his mother’s sly comments about her neighbors while sitting on the family’s porch. Mrs. Scroggin tells O’Hare that her husband is not well. “Oh, that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear that,” says O’Hare. “I’m worried about him.” “Well, I am to.” After the woman walks past O’Hare, he says the opposite: “He was out on one of his benders last

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

37

night again. How one can drink all that raw alcohol I’ll never know. Fine man he is!” The influence of his mother, Kate, is undoubtedly evident here and in the many comic mumbling asides he makes in other films.17 Moviegoers next see O’Hare, his wife, and son Ronald (Harry Watson) eating a vegetarian meal at the dining room table. Unlike the other Sennett shorts, Fields is a benevolent father and gets along with his son Ronald. One of the few times Fields creates an on-screen affable young son instead of a brat. At the table, the two engage in a game of telling riddles. On the set Watson recalled having trouble remembering his cues because Fields improvised so much. So that Watson would know when to say his lines, Fields kicked him under the table. The riddles annoy O’Hare’s badgering wife, played by Elise Cavanna, her third role in the Sennett shorts. She tells them to stop and eat their spinach. O’Hare retorts: “He‘s very smart, dear, to know all those fine riddles. Mr. Lincoln used to tell riddles, and that, as much as anything else made him the wonderful president that he was.” Exasperated, she leaves the table. Inside the barbershop O’Hare is talking to an Italian salesman who wants to sell him a bass fiddle. The barber already has a similar instrument, named Lena, but agrees to keep it until the man returns from work. O’Hare employs an attractive blond manicurist, who he likes to impress. “I was practicing last night on Lena out in the garage and I think I got that down fine now. Would you mind listening to it?” He uses the bow to bang the wood so hard it sounds like the beating of a drum. “I think it’s sweet,” she says. “Isn’t it funny my wife doesn’t think its music. Guess she has no ear for it.” A customer (Johnny Sinclair) arrives who had visited O’Hare’s barber­ shop earlier. Fields employed Sinclair, a stuntman, because he saved him from being run over by a truck on the set of Two Flaming Youths. “I beg your pardon, isn’t your name Flood?” asks O’Hare. “I thought so … I didn’t recognize your face when you first came in.” “No, it’s all healed up since I was in last.” After sharpening his razor and licking it with his tongue, O’Hare begins shaving him as he hums, “drubbing … drubbing …drubbing.” He pauses to deposit excess soap from his razor on the man’s tie. While looking at a pretty girl rolling up her stocking through a window, he gets distracted and slashes the man’s cheek. Loud scraping sounds are heard as O’Hare quickly moves his razor around his face. His customer is highly annoyed. “Easy now. My error, my error … it wasn’t your fault. . . That a mole?” asks O’Hare. “Yes, I’ve had it all my life.” “You won’t have it anymore.”

38 

A. F. WERTHEIM

A fat man appears who wants to loose weight in O’Hare’s steam room. The barber goes outside to a contraption he calls Ethyl to turn on the steam. He instructs the fat man: “Now don’t stay there over a minute. If it gets too hot just press the button and the light will go on. If it gets too hot just pull the rope and I’ll get you out.” O’Hare tells his angry customer who is getting a shave that he needs to put numerous boiling towels on his face. “Just one little hot towel and we will be through with you.” They are so hot they scorch his skin. The man is in agony. “Would you like a little powder?” O’Hare asks. “Have you had enough?” The customer suddenly gets up, threatens to hit him, and storms out of the shop without paying. The fat man, who has been abandoned in the steam room, is equally livid. Opening the door, O’Hare sees that the man is skin and bones. “If I had my former weight I would choke you to death … I’ll sue you and take your barber shop away from you … You deliberately locked me in that room.” “Why this is a colossal fib,” replies the barber pretending to be insulted … “I am a very kind hearted man. I’ve never hurt man, beast, or child … except when I’ve had to.” A bank robber suddenly appears in his shop and threatens O’Hare with a gun. He wants the barber to change his appearance by shaving his mustache, trim his eyebrows, and cut his hair. “Have you tried that good barber in the hotel?” says the cowardly O’Hare. “He is wonderful … I’m the worse barber in town … my wife will tell you that, won’t she?” O’Hare runs out of the store and rides a bicycle down the street. “Get out of the way … want to get killed?” He screams at some chickens. “Drat this bicycle.” Circling the town, he returns to his store where he crashes into the robber and both fall to the floor. The criminal lies on top of him unconscious. “Let me up … let me up. I didn’t try to get you. My wife and I like bandits … some of my best friends are bandits … the president of the bank comes to our house.” A policeman arrives and tells O’Hare that he has won an award for capturing the robber. “I told you I’d get him,” O’Hare says. His wife can’t believe her husband caught the robber. “I had to chase him around the block three times before I got the revolver away from him.” Another policeman appears with the real winner, a young boy who batted a baseball across the street that hit the robber on his head. The boy is his son Ronald! “Never mind Mr. O’ Hare, I know you caught the bandit,” states the manicurist. “I know I caught him too but what’s the use arguing with those people.”

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

39

O’Hare looks at his bass fiddle leaning on the salesman’s instrument. As he begins to play, he suddenly see that Lena has given birth to tiny bass fiddles that lie on the floor. “The dirty devils … are just as lively as can be.” He grabs the salesman’s fiddle, “the seducer,” smashes it with a hard kick and throws it out the door. A surreal and absurd ending about the birth of baby bass fiddles concludes the short. The Barber Shop is a realistic portrayal of a boastful, incompetent, but also a kindhearted barber. As in his other stage and screen works, O’Hare is a figure disrespected by a callous wife. Only his son and the manicurist admire him. A critic from the Motion Picture Herald reported that the spectators watching The Barber Shop at a Broadway movie theater were “in a state of almost continuous laughter.” Fields’s “comic mannerisms,” the reviewer wrote, “are still highly effective. … He is wholly enjoyable, and this yarn gives him ample opportunity to display his wares.” Fields has taken his sketches from his Broadway appearance in Earl Carroll’s 1928 Vanities to make original screenplays, which become unique cinematic works of art in Fields’s cinematic canon. In three of the shorts, Fields becomes a victimizer rather than a victim. Except for the pharmacist, the inept dentist, prospector, and barber engage in exaggerated violent actions. Snavely throws his son out into the cold; a dentist engages in a “wresting match tooth-extraction gag” with his patient; and a sadistic barber defaces his customer and turns an obese man into a scarecrow. A nihilistic and surreal tone runs through the shorts reflecting the dark days of the Great Depression. They suggest Fields’s pessimistic weltanschauung in 1932–1933, a time of gloom when “it ain’t a fit night out for man or beast.”18 Sennett’s career plunged downhill after The Barber Shop. Owing one million dollars, he declared bankruptcy in mid-December 1933, almost four months after The Barber Shop premiered. Except for a few releases his plans for a comeback never materialized. A prolific filmmaker, Sennett made more than one thousand silent pictures and several dozen sound films. Most of his productions never matched the brilliance of his Keystone era—an epoch that forged a milestone in early silent screen comedy. As the years progressed, his attachment to chaos, chases, and collisions as laugh-getters became passé. He was stuck in a time warp defending the slapstick formula. “People love slapstick,” he said as late as 1948. “The lowering of dignity is always funny. There is a great deal of humor in the combination of surprise and violence.”19 Louise Brooks recalled spotting Mack Sennett in 1936 sitting forlornly by himself in the lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel,

40 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 2.4  Fields and Frank Capra presenting an honorary Oscar to Mack Sennett on March 10, 1938 (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www. wcfields.com)

smoking cigars and watching people. He was then living in modest rented rooms in the Garden Court Apartments across the street. “How could he have allowed himself to be discarded on the Hollywood rubbish heap,” Brooks wondered. The author Will Fowler had a similar impression while eating lunch with Sennett. “He was a melancholy man. I remember he took his cigar, clipped off the end, dunked it in his coffee and sucked it.” Sennett outlived most of his colleagues, spending his last year at the Motion Picture Country Home and dying at the age of eighty from a coronary thrombosis on November 5, 1960 (Fig. 2.4).20 During Sennett’s long career of triumph and tribulations, one extraordinary moment arrived when Hollywood remembered the filmmaker. On March 10, 1938, Sennett was given an honorary Oscar by two presenters at the Tenth Annual Academy Awards held at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. The inscription read: “For his lasting contribution

2  THE SENNETT QUARTET 

41

to the comedy technique of the screen, the basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a special award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius, Mack Sennett.”21 One presenter was Academy President and director Frank Capra. The other was W. C. Fields—a comedian whose film career Sennett rejuvenated with a quartet of humorous and evocative shorts.

PART II

The Bountiful Years: 1933–1934

CHAPTER 3

“The World’s Biggest Entertainment Joy Ride”

Fields’s career suddenly skyrocketed during the time he filmed the Sennett quartet. “The Fields’s two-reelers were immensely successful,” wrote the King of Comedy. “Indeed they were so good that Fields was soon under contract to Paramount.”1 The support of the producer, William LeBaron, back at Paramount in 1932 after a stint at RKO, was again influential in securing Fields’s contract. In both silent and sound films, LeBaron played a major role in advancing Bill’s career. His influence was so substantial that without him Fields might have been buried in the quicksand of Hollywood. Bill’s initial studio contract was signed on September 8, 1932, three months before The Dentist was released. The document was the standard seven-year option contract adopted by the major studios in 1931. At first glance, the contract might seem lucrative. It awarded Fields $15,000 for his next feature film, which was International House. The six options gave Fields annual salary increases, which zoomed from $20,000 to $160,000 over a seven-year period. But the wording granted Paramount control over Fields by giving the studio the right to either reject or agree to the option every six months. Cancellation of the option would leave Fields jobless, while acceptance would enable him to continue working at Paramount with an increased salary. Restrictive clauses, moreover, accorded the studio the right to regulate an actor’s service, image, picture assignments, and to comply with studio rules, among others. “What emerged during this time was a © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_3

45

46 

A. F. WERTHEIM

paradox between the stars’ ‘glamorous images’ and their material labor as contractually obligated workers,” wrote Emily Carmen. “Although they were well compensated, stars still had to conform to the decrees of studio bosses and their assembly line production practices.”2 In time, Fields’s individual libertarianism would clash with studio servitude. At the time International House was released on June 2, 1933, Paramount was in financial turmoil. The studio went into receivership in early 1933 after announcing a record loss of $21 million in 1932. Paramount, however, was saved by several factors: the creation of a new board of directors from Wall Street firms, bankers, lawyers, and realtors; an unmatched lineup of producers and directors; and a strong star system of contract players. All types of genres were churned out. Among them were ensemble films that showcased Paramount’s large cast of studio celebs doing their specialties. International House (1933), a 70-minute film, followed that formula. Fields joined a star-studded cast, which included a large number of cinema, vaudeville, and radio personalities. Paramount hyped the picture as a “The World’s Biggest Entertainment Joy Ride.”3 The riotous plot of International House focused on events in a hotel in Wuhu, China, where big-business representatives are competing for the rights to a radioscope, an early television invention. Playing opposite Fields was the stunning silky blond blue-eyed showgirl, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, who he knew from the 1917 Follies.4 With little singing and dancing talent, her main job in the 1917 Follies was to wear beautiful gowns and parade up and down on the stage or sit like a seductive goddess ogled by male patrons. Desiring to include beautiful women in Fields’s routines, Ziegfeld told her to appear briefly as a distraction in Bill’s tennis game sketch. Described as a notorious “Gold Digger,” Joyce became more noted for her well-publicized six marriages and affairs with affluent spouses and beaus in sensational tabloid stories graced with photographs that touted her million-dollar jewelry gifts. Her conquests included Chaplin, whose eyes stared lustily at her figure when she visited his studio. Chaplin called their affair in the summer of 1922 a “bizarre, though brief, relationship.”5 Her sex-craved life was continually celebrated in popular songs by the likes of Cole Porter. Nearing forty years of age, Joyce was given star billing over Fields due to her publicized notoriety, even though her acting ability was sub-par. In the film, she portrays herself, a sensuous blonde seeking to ensnare

3  “THE WORLD’S BIGGEST ENTERTAINMENT JOY RIDE” 

47

another millionaire husband. As the plot enfolds, she believes Professor Quail (Fields) is rich, which allows the flirting between the two to evolve into ribald and risqué interaction. Joyce “gives ‘em a one-gal fashion show with panties up,” wrote the Variety critic.6 Hoping to go to Kansas City, Professor Quail flies his autogiro (part helicopter and minicar) by mistake to the hotel in Wuhu, China. He tells the hotel manager that he landed because “he ran out of the last bottle of beer just a minute ago.” Quail also indulges in hard liquor once on land. International House is therefore among Fields’s first sound films that connects his persona to the consumption of liquor, a linkage that ballooned over time. Although not credited as the screenwriter, there is considerable Fieldsian humor in the film. He composed his own dialogue and at other times ad-libbed on camera. The film is directed by Eddie Sutherland, who had now become Fields’s friend and drinking buddy in Hollywood. Unlike their hostile relationship on the set of It’s the Old Army Game (1926), Sutherland gave Bill free reign to do whatever he wanted. Quail uses quaint words of endearment to romance Joyce, a habit he derived from his role in If I Had a Million. He calls her “my little cupcake,” “my little fussy fuchsia,” and “my little pineapple.” Sutherland later said that “W. C. Fields was just wonderful in International House. Fields returned the compliment: “He’s not only Hollywood’s grandest guy, but one of the best comedy directors.”7 Quail lands on the roof of the International Hotel and is greeted by Joyce and the hotel manager (Franklin Pangborn). He tells the hotel guests that “my presence here is due to a slight error in navigation. Took the needle of my compass to darn a pair of socks. Since that time I’ve been flying completely by ear.”8 The film’s setting in China allows for a Busby Berkeley-type Chinese dance, the appearance of Fields dressed in a kimono, and off-color jokes, which would now be considered politically incorrect. Ensnared in the wires of a switchboard, Fields blurts: “It’s a Chinese noodle swamp!” Released during the Pre-Code era (1930–1934) on June 2, 1933, International House reflects a time when censorship oversight allowed studios to voluntarily self-regulate. The Motion Picture Production Code had been established in 1930, under ex-Postmaster General Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA). Without strong legal enforcement and knowing titillating subject matter reaped box-office profits, studios evaded

48 

A. F. WERTHEIM

requirements, resulting in a wave of liberalization in screen content, especially violence and sex. In his ribald and risqué sequences, Fields uses numerous suggestive gags, bawdy lines, and double entendres. On May 8, James Wingate, head of the Studio Relations Committee in the Hays Office, wrote Paramount’s A.M. Botsford about his concern about the film. “Today we had the pleasure of reviewing the Paramount picture International House. As you are doubtless aware, this is a type of picture with which censor boards recently have been dealing severely, with particular reference to double-meaning lines and gags. We therefore feel that you would be well advised to give careful consideration to any items which may seem questionable.”9 Fields’s rebellion against convention and censorship is revealed in a scene in which Quail tells Joyce: “Well, sweet buttercup, now that I’m here and see what’s to be had, I shall dally in the valley, and believe me, I can dally.” At night, he searches for a room in the sold-out hotel and while looking through a keyhole he sees a couple and says, “What won’t they think of next.” The MPPDA recommended that the keyhole line and several others by Fields be cut. Paramount’s A.M. Botsford’s replied that the line “is smutty only in the minds of persons who want to construct smut out of it.” His reaction was strong enough to keep the line in the film.10 Another sequence the Hays Office wanted eliminated was Fields’s scene in which Quail finds himself in Joyce’s bedroom. Nothing in way of intimacy occurs because Joyce’s ex-husband spotted Quail in the room and wants to shoot him, causing him to flee. His parting words: “When the excitement dies down, I’ll be right back, my little Calliope.” Although the scene showed the two in twin beds, it drove the censors crazy. “This sequence of Quail and Peggy getting into the same bedroom by mistake, and the long subsequent action of their undressing and getting into bed without being aware of each other’s presence, will need great care and discretion in handling, otherwise it may be questioned and cut.”11 The censors were also bothered by shots of Joyce’s legs while undressing and Quail exposing his bare legs when he removed his shorts. The scene, however, remained intact. The sequence showing Quail and Joyce fleeing Wuhu in his minicar caused the most fury among censors. Joyce suddenly thinks she is sitting on something. “Something’s under me. What is it?” Quail decides to investigate. “Ah! It’s a pussy!” “Oh, the poor thing.” “Worry not, my little titmouse, he still has eight more lives to go. There you are, pussy.

3  “THE WORLD’S BIGGEST ENTERTAINMENT JOY RIDE” 

49

Run away now.” A litter of cats suddenly appear. “I wonder what their parents were?” asks Joyce. “Careless, my little cupcake, careless.” When the Code administrators reviewed the scene, they accused Paramount of pulling “a fast one.” The print they viewed had the word “cat” in it, not “pussy.” Wingate sent a memorandum on June 23, 1933, to Paramount: “From several people who have spoken to me about this scene, it is my understanding that it is has been changed radically and in such a way as to make it offensively vulgar. In the first place, there is not a shot which establishes the cat lying on the seat of the car; secondly, Fields speaks the line, ‘It’s a pussy’ before producing the cat. Incidentally, the cat is never produced as it was when we saw it, but apparently just scampers off so that the meaning of the line spoken by Fields is made unmistakably vulgar. … It is my opinion that Paramount should certainly be called into account. From various comments, it appears we are taking a terrific beating in allowing something to pass which is unmistakably vulgar.”11 Fields’s fiery battle with censorship and the Production Code was just beginning and would continue unabated during the remainder of his film career. The hard line adopted by the movie censors struck Fields as intolerable. He felt restrictions on his screen performances violated artistic freedom. Censorship represented the moralistic conventions of society that inhibited independence and nonconformity. “Who gave them the right to censor things?” wondered Fields. “You can’t say this thing because of one group of people; you can’t say that thing because of another group. It’s a wonder you can talk at all!”12 Once the Code became more stringent under Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration (PCA), every film needed a seal of approval before distribution. According to the new rules, Paramount needed to obtain a reissue certificate of approval from the PCA. The president of the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America wrote Breen that the film “borders constantly on the salacious according to the comments of the public groups.” In October 1935, Breen wrote Paramount suggesting that the studio withdraw its application for International House. The film “is filled with gross vulgarities in both action and dialogue.” Breen warned that “if the studio refused to withdraw its application, the decision is likely to be a decision of rejection.”13 The Roman Catholic Church created the Legion of Decency, which required parishioners to avoid films which lacked the Legion’s seal of approval. In Fields’s home town of Philadelphia, Cardinal Dougherty

50 

A. F. WERTHEIM

ordered his parishioners to avoid all films screened in the city. The action confirmed Fields’s cynical view of his home town: “Last week, I went to Philadelphia but it was closed.”14 The notoriety about International House actually helped boost box-office profits in major cities. Its run at Time Square’s showcase Paramount Theatre was extended. By contrast, International House flopped in the hinterland where theater owners and patrons complained about its vulgarity, especially the “pussy” line. Although Fields’s commanding presence is not felt until the final third of the picture, several reviewers believed he was “the star of the show.” As Quail, Fields has a “line of maniacal gags that turns the film into a riot of ribald, farcical mirth.” “Fields’s inimitable clowning … furnishes most of the merriment” and the film “is a starring vehicle for Fields,” wrote the Hollywood Reporter reviewer. Andre Sennwald, the New York Times critic, lauded Bill’s performance. “With his, regal and somewhat beery manner, his precious silk hat, his frozen face, and his unlit cigar, he keeps his audience in perpetual roars.” Given his favorable reviews, Fields’s role in International House boosted his cinema career.15

CHAPTER 4

Three of a Kind

Fields felt he had learned a lesson regarding his experience in International House. “I wouldn’t sign a contract until I was allowed to help with my own stories and dialogue as I had always done on the stage. My comedy is my own and evidently it can’t be sifted through the medium of another one’s thought.”1 Paramount renewed Fields’s option in a new contract on May 25, 1933. The first provision guaranteed his employment for another eleven months during which time he was to complete four films, an ambitious task making Fields a workhorse for the studio. Another provision provided him with weekly salary increases, starting with $4375 for his first picture up to $5635 for his third and fourth film. Fields was overjoyed to learn that he was guaranteed eleven months of work but it did not give him the independence he wanted. He celebrated by placing a tongue-in-cheek halfpage ad in the Hollywood Reporter:          W. C. Fields        The New Deal     Giving the Suckers a Break2

Bill’s fate after eleven months was subject to Paramount’s determination. “If Fields completes his four pictures within the contractual period, and if Paramount elects to, he will appear in a fifth picture, with all the same conditions and provisions, except a salary increase of $6250.00.” © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_4

51

52 

A. F. WERTHEIM

The words “if Paramount elects to” gave the studio basic control over his future employment. Paramount also had two options on his exclusive services for the next two years. In both options Fields needed to complete four films within a year. Under the first option, he would receive a salary of $6250 per week for the first two pictures and $6875 per week for the next two films from approximately July 1, 1933, to June 30, 1934. The second option extended Fields’s contract for another year (approximately July 1, 1934, to June 30, 1935) at a salary of $7500 per week for each film.3 Because Paramount was undergoing bankruptcy proceedings at the time and needing to cut performers’ salaries, Fields’s paycheck for $7500 per week was less than the $45,000 he made per picture during 1927. All told the options in the contract covered Fields’s screen appearances from 1933 to 1935. (Fields did not sign another contract with Paramount until October 4, 1935.) The contract, however, had one significant downside for Bill, who desperately wanted to star in a film rather than join performers in another ensemble picture. Paramount had determined his fate ever since his first trip to Hollywood when starting in 1927 the studio presented him in three mediocre pictures with his co-star Chester Conklin. Fields was well aware that to shine in Hollywood he needed to be the sole lead. His experience on the stage and silent pictures proved that he excelled best as a comedian when he performed in the limelight as the “top banana.” That Paramount was still uncertain of Bill’s star billing was a provision in the 1933 contract that guaranteed his appearance as a “star, co-star, or featured player” and his name shall appear in “size of type no smaller than the size of type used to announce the name of any featured player appearing in said motion picture.”4 Bill was consequently a feature player or co-star in his next three films before he finally became the solo lead in You’re Telling Me (released April 6, 1934). A comparison with the Marx Brothers reveals the capricious nature of the studio contract system. While under contract to Paramount the brothers made a series of comic hits, beginning with movie adaptations of their Broadway stage successes, The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930), shot at Long Island’s Astoria Studio. The extremely popular team landed in Hollywood in 1931 with great fanfare as Paramount’s comic favorites. By contrast, Fields arrived the same year without a contract. While Bill was searching for film roles, the brothers continued their successes with Monkey Business (1931) followed by Horse Feathers (1932). On August 15, 1932, they appeared on the cover of

4  THREE OF A KIND 

53

Time magazine, which celebrated their comic hits. Their next picture, Duck Soup (1933), a riotous mockery of statehood that later became a classic, received mixed reviews by critics and a mediocre reception by the public. Paramount was concurrently undergoing a reorganization due to bankruptcy proceedings and now viewed the salaries of the four Marx Brothers as too exorbitant. There had been considerable acrimony between the brothers and the studio heads before and during the shooting. All these factors contributed to Paramount’s decision not to renew their contract in 1933. A shift in comedic taste occurred during the last half of 1933 away from anarchic mayhem to social order. Popular good-natured “screwball” comedies stressing social unity, harmony, and reconciliation met the public’s palate. Released in July 1932, Fields’s Million Dollar Legs, a surreal and ludicrous depiction of government and a precursor to Duck Soup, reflected the despair and nihilism that pervaded the nation during the Hoover years. By contrast, Roosevelt’s New Deal programs had ushered in an optimistic climate, which gave people a renewed faith in government. The public was no longer receptive to the nihilistic portrait of the American frontier and the dysfunctional family depicted in The Fatal Glass of Beer, released in 1933, the same year as Duck Soup. The short therefore suffered the same fate as Duck Soup, both brilliant and poignant pictures that failed to click with American audiences but later achieved their place in the limelight. Not until 1935 did Groucho, Chico, and Harpo resume their screen careers as MGM contract players with A Night at the Opera, a comedy with much less anarchy. A flood of new films Fields made from the years 1933–1935 produced one of his richest periods on screen, a total of ten movies. During 1933 two movies were released, Tillie and Gus and Alice in Wonderland. The next year Six of a Kind, You’re Telling Me, The Old Fashioned Way, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, and It’s a Gift premiered. During 1935 David Copperfield, Mississippi and Man on the Flying Trapeze opened. In these films Fields lights up the screen with bravura performances as he impersonates memorable characters: Augustus Q. Winterbottom (Tillie and Gus); Humpty Dumpty (Alice in Wonderland); Sheriff John Huxley (Six of a Kind); Sam Bisbee (You’re Telling Me); The Great McGonigle (The Old Fashioned Way); Ellsworth Stubbins (Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch); Harold Bissonette (It’s a Gift); Wilkins Micawber (David Copperfield), Commodore Jackson (Mississippi); and Ambrose Wolfinger (Man on the Flying Trapeze).

54 

A. F. WERTHEIM

As Augustus Q. Winterbottom in Tillie and Gus, Fields returns to portray a roguish character during the film’s first part. He is a slick card shark who is on trial for shooting an opponent in a poker game in Nome, Alaska. “You are hereby charged with pumping a load of lead into the anatomy of one High-Card Harrigan,” the Judge tells Winterbottom. “Have you anything to say before I find you guilty.” Augustus, who has been drinking liquor on the stand, replies indignantly: “So you’re going to deal with a cold deck, eh?” Pleading with the jury, he claims that High-Card put down five aces against his four. “I don’t object to nine aces in one deck, but when a man lays down five aces in one hand. And, besides, I know what I dealt him.” The judge orders the citizens not to shoot Winterbottom for an hour and a half, which gives him enough time to flee the town with some parting words to an old prospector: “There comes a time in the affairs of men, my dear Blubber, when we must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”5 Doubtful about Fields’s ability to carry a picture alone, Paramount teamed him again with Alison Skipworth, his cohort in If I Had a Million. She plays Tillie Winterbottom, his divorced wife and a mischief-maker, who has just lost her saloon, the Soo Chow Club, in a rigged dice game against a Swede in Shanghai, China. “Who made the dice, for you?” Tillie asks the Swede. “A fellow in Alaska, called Gus Winterbottom.” An indignant Tillie replies: “At the first opportunity, I must shoot that ex-husband of mine.” Although Skipworth, age 70, is 17 years older than Fields, the chemistry between them sparkles while feeding lines to one another. Each receive letters from the larcenous lawyer Phineas Pratt, stating that Tillie’s brother has died. Both decide to travel to Danville, a river town, in order to secure their share of the inheritance. They accidently converge at the railroad station in Seattle where Gus stops Tillie from reaching in her bag for a gun to shoot him. “The passing years have slowed you on the draw, my little chickadee,” comments Gus. Tillie is another one of those hardened women found in Fields’s stage sketches and films. Gus thinks Tillie is “as solid as a brick telephone booth.”6 Pretending to be missionaries, they take a train to seek their inheritance. On their way, Gus is invited by a gambler to join a draw poker game. Feigning to be a novice card player, he asks: “Is that the game where one receives five cards? And if there’s two alike that’s pretty good, but if there’s three alike, that’s much better?” “Oh, you’ll learn the game in no time,” states the gambler. Standing behind the four players,

4  THREE OF A KIND 

55

Tillie provides tips to Gus about how many cards his opponents carry by ­telling him that she saw two sailors today (two of a kind). After Gus deals new cards to his adversaries Tillie says she also saw two other sailors (four of a kind). “It’ll take four aces to beat me,” says one player. Slyly palming the cards, Gus deals himself four aces. “What a coincidence,” he says. After winning the pot Gus and Tillie return to their seats, Gus sings his favorite tune “Bringing in the Sheaves,” an old missionary song. “You’re entitled to fifty per cent, my dear Annie Oakley,” he tells Tillie, who replies “I shall credit your share to the alimony account.” The sequence showing Gus playing poker on the train is among the film’s highlights. As a scallywag, Fields is in top form.7 Once in Danville, Gus becomes a benevolent trickster by helping Tillie’s niece and nephew, Mary and Tom Sheridan, win their rightful inheritance from infamous Phineas Pratt, the estate’s executor, who has cheated them by stealing the estate’s funds. The Sheridans are left with only a dilapidated ferry boat, which Gus helps rebuild. Fields’s attempt to paint the boat becomes a funny slapstick scene as he follows the instructions from a radio program. Unable to mix the paint successfully, he throws all his cans and bottles into a paint bucket. Frustrated, he gives up the task. But he and Tillie convince Pratt, who owns a new ship, to race the Sheridans’ boat with the winner receiving the river’s government franchise. (Location sequences were shot at Malibu Lake in the Santa Monica Mountains.) Wearing a diving suit, Gus descends into the water in order to bore holes in the hull of Pratt’s boat and tie it to the wharf. Although Gus’s shenanigans cause Pratt’s boat to get a late start, it nonetheless catches up to the Sheridans’ ferry, which has lost fuel. Gus helps win the race by putting fireworks and Roman candles in the boilers to propel the boat and the explosion engulfs Pratt’s vessel. After Pratt falls in the river, Gus hooks the lawyer around the neck with his cane and dunks him until he confesses his duplicity and agrees to return the inheritance to the Sheridans. The latter are so thankful to Tillie and Gus that they decide to give them a share of their money. Moviegoers last see the couple about to have dinner at the Sheridans’ house singing, “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Another important character in the film is Baby LeRoy, the first of his four appearances in a Fields film. The child movie star was born Ronald LeRoy Overacker in 1932 in Los Angeles. Hoping that the infant might enliven the picture with his antics, Paramount gave him featured billing along with Bill and Skipworth. According to Paramount’s publicity

56 

A. F. WERTHEIM

writers, Leroy had earlier stolen two films, A Bedtime Story (1933) with Maurice Chevalier, who supposedly discovered him, and the Torch Singer (1933) with Claudette Colbert. Nicknamed “The King” in Tillie and Gus, Leroy plays the spoiled mischief-making fourteen-month son of the Sheridans. In order not to be a nuisance during the boat race “The King” is placed in a bathtub tied to logs on the wharf. Suddenly the logs roll off the wharf throwing Leroy into the lake. The baby seems fine until he unplugs the bathtub causing water to flow into it. Noticing that the baby might drown, Gus leaps into a lifeboat and saves the infant. “This little fellow helps greatly by his happy demeanor in decidedly exciting scenes in this hectic tale,” wrote Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times.8 Fields’s fierce battles with Baby LeRoy do not erupt in Tillie and Gus. (A still shows Bill having fun lifting the baby on his shoulders.) At one point, however, Tillie asks Gus if he likes children. “I do,” he declares, “if they’re properly cooked.” Bill’s retort became one of his noted zingers. Their separate roles in Alice in Wonderland (1933), in which Fields plays Humpty Dumpty and LeRoy the Joker, also prevented any altercation. The clash between the two exploded a year later in The Old Fashioned Way and It’s a Gift, causing considerable publicity that boosted Fields’s persona as a faux child hater and created a bogus feud guaranteed to draw audiences. Tillie and Gus generated mixed reviews but Fields received kudos. Time magazine’s critic called the fifty-eight-minute movie “one of the pleasanter chapters in the long and happy career of W. C. Fields’s famed unlighted cigar.” The New York Times reviewer considered the film a “cheery absurdity…. Insane as are the doings in this concoction, they succeed in being really funny. It is the sort of thing admirably suited to Mr. Fields’s peculiar genius.” He also noted that Skipworth “rivals Mr. Fields in arousing laughter, but she, as Tillie, is more rational than is Gus.”9 The Fields-Skipworth pairing illustrates the concurrent vogue by studios to team male and female co-stars. Wallace Berry and Marie Dressler in MGM’s Tugboat Annie, premiering also in 1933, exemplifies the trend. Some film historians have even viewed Tillie and Gus as a parody of MGM’s film. Others have compared Fields’s film to Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) since Buster encounters similar incidents on the water and Will Rogers’s Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) with its classic winner-take-all steamboat race.

4  THREE OF A KIND 

57

Fields attended the premier of Tillie and Gus with Will Rogers at the Criterion Theatre in Santa Monica. “The audience screamed all through the picture, much to my surprise and amazement,” Fields wrote to Bob Burkhalter, his attorney. “Bill [Will Rogers] told me that his [Steamboat Round the Bend.] was stinko, but the critics claimed his was good. I hope we are both wrong.” Fields told his lawyer that Tillie and Gus was “very bad and about which I had many arguments over direction, supervision, writing and everything else.”10 Paramount assigned the film to Francis Martin, primarily a screenwriter, who had never directed a fulllength comedy. Tillie and Gus consequently lacked pizzazz and at times the movie lagged. Martin, who also co-wrote the screenplay, often made Fields stick to the script and resented his ad-libbing. Since it included a boat race on a lake, there were several disruptions due to the vessels’ mechanical failures and leaks, which inhibited Fields’s comic timing. Martin returned to screenwriting while Bill immediately began another feature on the Paramount lot. One morning Fields ran out of his Toluca Lake house in a panic. “Help! help!” yelled Bill. “There’s a crazy man in there!” he told his neighbors. “He’s trying to measure me for an egg” roared Fields. He suddenly remembered that the “crazy man” was from Paramount’s wardrobe department and had come to measure him for his role in Alice in Wonderland (1933) as Humpty Dumpty. Thus began the bizarre saga of Fields as one of the most famous characters in Lewis Carroll’s classic tale Alice Through the Looking Glass (1871). While a lecturer in mathematics at Oxford University, Carroll (Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was supposedly inspired by his friendship with the youngster Alice Liddell, daughter of a former Dean of Oxford, to write his Alice tales. Carroll enjoyed spending time with children. Legend has it that he was motivated to write his famous stories one tranquil summer day as he watched ten-year-old Alice and her sisters row a boat down a river outside Oxford. Alice begged him to write a story he told them on the boat, which became the genesis for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Later, Carroll described Alice Liddell as one “without whose infant patronage I might possibly never have written at all.” After seeing the Paramount movie and impressed by its faithfulness to Carroll’s book, she remarked, “I am delighted with the film and am now convinced that only through the medium of the talking picture art could this delicious fantasy be faithfully interpreted. ‘Alice’ is a picture which represents a revolution in cinema history.”11

58 

A. F. WERTHEIM

After a wide search to find the best person to play Alice, Paramount chose nineteen-year-old Charlotte Henry, already a Broadway and film performer. “Her charm, her youthful beauty conspire to make her more than any of the other candidates a personification of Lewis Carroll’s own description of Alice—‘child of the pure, unclouded brow and dreaming eyes of wonder.’”12 Fields initially refused to take the cameo role but realized that he needed to keep his name before the public. He would gain exposure as a member of a large all-star cast with actors such as Cary Grant (Mock Turtle) and Gary Cooper (White Knight) as well as his co-players Alison Skipworth (Duchess) and Baby LeRoy (Joker). Another reason for his reluctance was that he hated the idea of so much makeup and plaster being applied to his entire body and being confined inside a suffocating outfit during the shooting. His fears were not groundless given that he was possibly claustrophobic if a story about sleeping in a dugout as a youth is true and being holed up in tiny rooms as an itinerant thespian. He once admitted that he feared getting into an elevator. In charge of Fields’s maquillage was Wally Westmore, head of Paramount’s makeup department since 1926, He was one of six sons sired by the family patriarch George Westmore, who founded the first makeup speciality at the Selig Studio in 1917. Three of Wally’s brothers also became top makeup artists at three other studios. All became groundbreakers in novel beauty and horror illusions. Wally gained fame in 1931 for converting Frederick March’s appearance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They established the famous House of Westmore beauty salon, which catered to the Hollywood community. Ern Westmore, who worked at RKO and 20th Century-Fox, often visited Bill’s house to join him in liquor binges. He liked to tell the story of the time in 1932 when he and John Barrymore received a distress phone call from Fields that his nose had exploded. They rushed to Bill’s house each carrying a glass of Scotch, where they discovered that the comedian’s blood vessels had burst from blowing his nose. “There they found the comedian clutching his huge veined probiscus with one hand, blood trickling through the fingers, while delicately balancing a martini with the other.”13 Ern threw his glass of Scotch onto Bill’s face, causing the blood to cauterize. Molding the Humpty Dumpty plaster cast on Fields’s body, head, and hands became one of the worst ordeals the comedian faced in his screen career. Frank Westmore, Wally’s young son, witnessed the torment Bill

4  THREE OF A KIND 

59

endured. “He greased Fields’s face so the plaster wouldn’t stick to his eyebrows; then he applied the plaster itself, leaving the nose area until last.” To allow Fields to breathe through his nose, Westmore planned to insert soda straws into each nostril. When he started to “pour plaster around the soda straws…. Fields went berserk. He began clawing at the still-damp plaster on the rest of his face, pulling it away from his mouth and emitting unearthly howls.” Bill hands, which he cherished since his juggling years, were another problem. Once the plaster covered his hands, Fields leaped from his chair and smacked them on the walls, attempting to remove the plaster from his fingers. “The face mold was a crumbling mess around his still-shouting mouth, and his hands began to bleed.” A doctor was called to calm Fields, who now had become completely daffy. The physician grabbed a syringe with a needle and injected the comedian with a sedative. “Wally eventually molded Fields’s face into two vertical halves, alternately leaving one eye and one nostril uncovered by the plaster.”14 Fortunately, the shoot took only a few hours (Fig. 4.1). Paramount’s 1933 film was unique in several ways. The movie was a difficult undertaking to produce due to finding the best actors to play the many roles and the challenges of costume and scenic designs. Before 1933 there had been numerous short silent pictures featuring Alice in different situations. The first 55-minute Talkie was produced in 1931 by Metropolitan Studios but received mediocre reviews. Except for the animated Walrus and The Carpenter sequences, the ninety-minute film was live action. To direct, Paramount assigned Norman McLeod, a talented comedy specialist, a former animator who had recently directed the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. Although they drew characters from both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Alice Through the Looking Glass, screenwriters Joseph Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, aimed to be faithful to the writings of Carroll. Menzies, an extremely talented production designer, was also responsible for scenic designs, set decorations, and the film’s overall appearance. Costumes followed the original illustrations by John Tenniel. “W.C. Fields as the hapless Humpty Dumpty gets everything out of the part,” wrote the critic Mordaunt Hall. Unlike most of the other characters, Bill’s voice was easily discernible. “Fields was the only player in the entire cast of stars that was able to create a vivid characterization by his voice alone,” stated a reviewer. Following the script, he turned Humpty Dumpty into a cranky, gruff, and sarcastic oddity, pronouncing each Lewis Carroll line as if it had been written for himself. “Fields,

60 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 4.1  Fields as Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland (1933). Author’s collection

as Humpty Dumpty, seems to fit physically and mentally into Lewis Carroll’s world as logically as he would later fit into Dickens’ world in David Copperfield,” wrote the perceptive critic William Everson. “His Humpty façade seems like a logical extension of his true self, and the absurd yet somehow logical lines of Lewis Carroll, could almost have been written for Fields’ delivery.” Generating considerable glee and guffaws from the audience was the interchange regarding semantics and pragmatics between Alice and the voluminous egg-shape figure with scrawny legs and arms sitting precariously on a wall.15

4  THREE OF A KIND 

Alice: Why it’s, it’s Humpty Dumpty! Ohhh! Humpty Dumpty: Don’t stand there staring at me as if I were an egg. Tell me your name and your business. Alice: My name is Alice. Humpty Dumpty: It’s a stupid enough name. What does it mean? Alice: Must a name mean something? Humpty Dumpty: Of course it must. My name means the shape I am, and a right handsome shape it is. With your name, you might be any shape…. Alice: Don’t you think you’d be safer on the ground? That wall is so very narrow. Humpty Dumpty: Of course I don’t think so! Why, if I ever did fall off— which there’s no chance of—but if I did—if I did fall, the king has promised me— Alice: To send all his horses and all his men! Humpty Dumpty: Ah, so you know. All his horses and all his men. They’d pick me up again in a minute, they would. However, this conversation is going on a little too fast…. When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean, neither more or less. Alice: The question is whether you can make words mean different things. Humpty Dumpty: The question is which is to be the master, you or the word, that’s all. However, I can manage the whole lot. Humpty Dumpty: Impenetrability, that’s what I say. Alice: Would you tell me please, what that means? Humpty Dumpty: I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of the subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life. Alice: Fancy it meaning all that. You seem very clever at explaining words, sir. Would you kindly tell me the meaning of a poem called ‘Jabberwocky’? I read it a long time ago. Humpty Dumpty: I can, but I won’t. That’s all. Goodbye. Alice: Goodbye, till we meet again. Humpty Dumpty: I shouldn’t know you if we did meet, you’re so exactly like other people. Alice: The faces are generally what one goes by. Humpty Dumpty: That’s just it. Your face is the same as everybody’s. The two eyes, so; nose in the middle; mouth under. Now if your two eyes were on the same side of your nose, or your mouth on top, that would be some help. Alice: It wouldn’t look nice. Humpty Dumpty: Wait till you’ve tried. (laughs)

61

62 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Alice: Watch out! Ohh! Humpty Dumpty: Help! Help! I’m falling. Tell the King. Tell him to bring his horses and his men! Alice: Oh! Humpty Dumpty: Help!16

Opening three days before Christmas as a holiday attraction for children and their parents, the film made money at the box office. The reviews, however, were mixed. Some critics felt the movie lacked the original story’s whimsical nature and ended up as a dreary drawn-out tale. The New York Times reviewer felt that “the scenes seldom give the pleasant mind’s-eye picture inspired by reading Alice’s adventures.” Variety’s review was the most damaging, calling the picture too disjointed and an “overpowering sedative.” “A series of scattered unrelated incidents definitely won’t do to hold the interest for an hour and a quarter.” Others praised the costumes, makeup, and the actors’ characterizations. “It’s for all the world like turning the pages of the book and seeing Sir John’s Tenniel’s drawings in action,” wrote the Chicago Daily Tribune critic. “A marvelous achievement of makeup and settings! You couldn’t be fooled on Cary Grant as he sings the Mock Turtle song and who else but Gary Cooper could be the White Knight, who has such difficulty staying astride his noble steed.”17 Although Bill felt that his appearance in a confining costume was a painful ordeal, he was glad that he participated in the all-star picture. Fields’s cameo role as Humpty Dumpty got mostly good reviews, pleasing the Paramount brass. But one distressing question kept gnawing at him: When would the studio finally cast him as the sole star in a feature picture? He was not pleased that his next film, Six of a Kind, also failed to give him top billing. The comedy featured three stellar pairs of comedians who together comprise six of a kind—Fields and Alison Skipworth; the radio stars, George Burns and Gracie Allen; and the stage celebrities, Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland. Adding to Bill’s displeasure was that the draft script he read the night before the shooting had him enter late in the film, thus allowing Burns and Allen to steal the picture. Bill also felt that his character was poorly conceived, the dialogue failed to reflect his speech patterns, and his pool playing routine had little relation to the sketch he had made famous in vaudeville. Assigned to the film was the famous director Leo McCarey, an alumnus from the Hal Roach studio and a celebrated comedy specialist.

4  THREE OF A KIND 

63

His credits included the films of Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, Eddie Cantor, Harold Lloyd, and the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup. On the Paramount lot Fields told McCarey that he had drunk a “quart of whiskey before he finally got to his part! I came to the conclusion that you were trying to kill me in pictures. I thought we were good friends but Cesar thought Brutus was too.”18 Bill felt he could avoid doing the film because MGM was concurrently interested in casting him in a film as a loan out from Paramount but Emmanuel Cohen, the studio’s head of production, squashed the deal. Cohen’s action infuriated Fields and he did not show up on the first day of shooting. Equally annoyed, Cohen told Bill either to honor his contract or face repercussions. Fields finally appeared on the set with a plan to ad-lib his lines and write his own scenes. His free-wheeling attitude infuriated McCarey and they constantly argued during the shoot. He was difficult because of “his drinking,” said the director. McCarey believed that the best way to direct Fields was “by getting into [comic] fights with him.” One time Fields ad-libbed a scene that he believed would irritate McCarey. “What have you got to say to that?” he asked. While staring at Bill, the director retorted “Lunch!” Looking back, McCarey recalled that he got along with Fields “after a fashion.” I directed him “by getting into fights with him.” Bill’s difficulty “was all based on his drinking.” Describing their relationship further, McCarey added: “The hell of it was he was basically so funny that I’d start to wail to the Front Office about how difficult he was and I got no sympathy.” During the shoot, a truce was finally orchestrated that mostly permitted Bill to freely ad-lib within reason.19 Fields cleverly turned his role as “Honest” John Hoxley, the sheriff of Nuggetville, Nevada, into one of his most familiar personas—a mendacious liquor-loving rogue, who even steals coins from the a pay phone. He plays opposite the gruff Alison Skipworth, called Duchess, who operates a shabby inn in Nuggetville. Like many other reprimanding women in Fields’s stage skits and film scenarios, she berates the sheriff for his unconventional behavior. “Now listen to me, honest John. Why do you drink so much?” she asks. “Because I like it.” “Everything you like to do his wrong,” the Duchess complains. Defending his honor, the sheriff delivers a cutting rejoinder: “According to you, everything I like to do is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.”20 Believing it was a funny ad-lib, McCarey asked Fields if he could use his retort for Irene Dunne’s angry response to Charles Boyer in Love

64 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Affair (1939). In a legal agreement, Bill conveyed to McCarey the right and title to the line in return for a case of branded whiskey. When a critic pointed out that the line originated with Alexander Woollcott, McCarey was furious and phoned Fields. Why did you lie to me that the sentence was yours? Fields replied: “All I assigned to you was any right, title, and interest I had in the joke. As it turned out, my rights were nil you bought nothing.” Later the director stated that he liked Six of a Kind because it enabled him “to meet the great William Fields.”21 Despite his complaints to McCarey Bill still appears during the film’s second half after the four other co-stars drive up to the inn in Nuggetville. They have been on a long amusing car ride to Hollywood. “Pinky” Winney (Ruggles), a bank teller, and his wife Flora (Boland) are on their second honeymoon accompanied by George Edwards (Burns) and Gracie De Vore (Allen) and their large Great Dane. Unbeknown to Pinky is that his briefcase contains $50,000 placed there by Ferguson, a co-worker who stole the money and intends to regain it at the inn. Honest John unintentionally locks Ferguson in a storage room. The sheriff thinks Pinky is the culprit until investigators arrive with information that Ferguson is the robber. Pretending that he knew all along that Ferguson was the criminal, Honest John receives a reward. Although Fields’s antics as a sheriff are amusing, the highlight is his pool playing scene, which partly resembles his vaudeville sketch. To do the routine, the comedian sent for his table, which was in storage in New York. Appearing with him in the sequence was Tammany Young, a new member of Fields’s stock company of character actors. A bit part performer in numerous Broadway shows and movies, Young gained repute as a champion gate crasher at sports events and Hollywood parties. Bill hired him to replace loyal William “Shorty” Blanche, who was hired by Fields around 1915 to be his stage foil, private valet, prop man, and all-around assistant while he performed in the Follies. “I used to stand in the wings and laugh my head off,” Shorty said. “I guess he appreciated my appreciation ‘cause he took me with him after that.”22 He performed in several of Fields’s Follies sketches, including his golf routine. Ziegfeld, who hated “dwarfs,” wanted Shorty sacked because of his diminutive size but Fields stood by him. Bill also got him bit parts in three silent films and several Broadway productions. When Shorty failed to live up to his employer’s expectations such as stealing the comedian’s booze to sell to Follies chorus girls, Bill fired him only to hire him back a short time later. Bill enjoyed tricking Shorty,

4  THREE OF A KIND 

65

especially sending him on wild goose chases. Once he hid Shorty’s false teeth, a gift from Fields, and told him to search for them all over New York. Needing to eat his favorite snack, Bill sent Shorty on an errand to get a cold turkey leg and potato salad from a nearby deli. Returning empty handed after several hours, he told Fields that he “went to eight places, and everywhere… people laughed at me.” “What did I send you for?” Bill asked. “You sent me for turkey eggs and potato salad.”23 Unaware of his future in filmdom, Bill left Shorty behind in New York when he made his second trip to Hollywood. Needing work, he briefly became a stagehand again before he died in 1931 from tubular meningitis. Bill was so downcast when his friend died that it took him a long time to recover. In his private life Fields was not a cold-hearted misanthrope but often displayed kindness and generosity toward friends he trusted. But people who deceived him became easy targets for his vindictiveness and volatile outbursts. Young had pestered Fields for ten years to become his stooge but out of loyalty to Shorty the comedian always turned him down. Bill told him that “I certainly would like to have you working with me but I am tied up with Shorty and I gotta keep him on.” But one day he ran into Fields and asked him for the job. Bill surprised him by saying: “If you work with me, you gotta keep your mouth shut because you don’t have a word to say. Can you do that?” After Young happily agreed Fields told him to go to Paramount where he was filming Six of a Kind and aid him in his “old pool table act.” With his expressionless face and reserved demeanor, Young was perfect for the role of Doctor Busby, the sheriff’s sidekick. After the pool sequence was shot, Bill told him “you’re good and you’re hired.”24 The pool table segment starts when Sheriff Hoxley and Doctor Busby enter the inn’s pool room. Honest John talks about his bender the night before. “I feel as if the Russian army been walking over my tongue in their stocking feet.” After tossing a glass of water into a bucket, he drinks all the alcohol in his flask. Here the association of Fields with liquor is starting to become an indelible part of his on-screen persona mirroring Bill’s publicized imbibing in his private life. After his refreshment, the sheriff picks out a crooked cue and examines it. “It’s crooked isn’t it?” Young asks. “I’d like to see something in this joint that isn’t crooked,” the sheriff replies, and proceeds to select a cue with no tip on it. Fields believed that he got more laughs by bending objects rather than breaking them. “It is never funny,” he said, “to break anything. It is only funny to bend things”25 (Fig. 4.2).

66 

A. F. WERTHEIM

While standing next to the table, Young asks the sheriff how he got “the name of Honest John.” The question gives Fields the opportunity to relate a tall tale. During his career in film and radio, he became well known for spinning far-fetched humorous stories that followed the nineteenth-century literary tradition of picturesque comic exaggeration found in the tall-talk of boastful backwoodsmen and the adventurous yarns of frontiersmen. The exploits of frontier heroes such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Johnny Appleseed became spellbinding legends. The tall tale reached its zenith in the stories of Mark Twain, one of Fields’s favorite writers. He called “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg” a “brilliant and bitter tale” and “the greatest short story ever written.”26

Fig. 4.2  Sheriff “Honest John” Hokley (Fields) playing pool as he tells Dr. Busby (Tammany Young) a tall tale in Six of a Kind (1934). Bison Archives/ HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

4  THREE OF A KIND 

67

As a vaudevillian in Melbourne in 1914, he told an interviewer that “we must have exaggeration, I always maintain either in fiction or on the stage, if we are to enjoy it. It is the fact of the types being overdrawn which makes their funny side appeal to our sense of humor…. What’s the good of telling a story if you don’t embroider it a bit, and win a laugh?”27 As a raconteur, the far-fetched yarn was a perfect vehicle for Fields’s fondness for hyperbole and his portrayals of boastful windbags and pompous liars. During his vaudeville years, he was already known as a reputed storyteller who weaved stories backstage in his dressing room to entertain fellow performers. One story he told in 1903 concerned Jinks McCaffrey who caught two ocean fish, managed to make them live in fresh water at home, and then without any water. Jinks soon taught them tricks including making the fish follow him wherever he went. One day he was walking by a river and suddenly they disappeared. He looked in the river and found them dead in the water. “How did they die,” asked the audience? “They had fallen in and were drowned,” Fields replied.28 Using his instinctive talent for timing and delivery, Fields intersperses pieces of his yarn throughout his entire pool routine. “At the time of which I speak, I’m tendin’ bar up at Medicine Hat. Well, a guy used to come in there with a glass eye. I used to wait on him. Wasn’t a bad guy. He used to take this glass eye out and put it in a tumbler of water. Wait I’ll break these balls. [billiard routine] He comes in one day and he forgets the glass eye. [Ball hits table and bounces back. Ball hits him] I found it. The next morning when he comes in, I said ‘Young man, here’s your glass eye,’ and I gave it back to him. Ever since that time —ever since that day, I’ve been known as Honest John.”29 The sheriff, of course, is not really “honest” but a petty crook who steals a sweater and coins from a hotel pay phone. Fields’s appearance on radio later in his career provided an opportunity to flaunt his talent as a raconteur. On the airwaves he delivered two masterpieces in 1945, “The Temperance Lecture” and “The Day I Drank a Glass of Water.” The pool scene also displays Fields’s wonderful pantomime skills as he pursues his fruitless and frustrating fight against the objects he handles during s pool games. Everything he touches goes haywire; every object rebuffs his efforts. He is unable to grip his pool cue because the end keeps bouncing up and down. He is therefore unable to put chalk on its tip. Fields lines up his shot by gripping the stick’s end with his left hand and placing the top part between the index fingers of his right hand.

68 

A. F. WERTHEIM

He starts to shoot but extends his left hand too far causing the cue to leave his right hand and whack the table. While attempting to put his cigar in his mouth, he discovers that the stogie is stuck to some chalk. The sheriff mistakenly eats the chalk and spits its remnants out in disgust. When he tries again to break the balls at the table’s end, he hits the cue ball but misses the target causing it to rebound off the cushion, and bang him in the head. Recovering from the blow, the sheriff places his stick above the cue ball and tries a massé shot. When he misses the ball, his cue pierces the table, a sight gag he performed in vaudeville. He yanks the cue out of the table, places a ball basket over the hole, and with the doctor exits the room. To escape the charge that he is repeating himself, Fields takes the best parts of his pool stage sketch, uses his pantomime skills to great effect, and adds humorous dialogue. The end result is that the sequence blossoms on the screen. Fields’s performance was hailed by the critics. “It is he [Fields] who, alone and unaided, performs, the almost legendary feat of ‘bringing down the house,’ in his now-famous billiards match by himself,” wrote the reviewer in the British journal, Film Weekly. Richard Watts in the New York Herald Tribune felt Fields was “at the top of his form” and “walks off with the photoplay.” “W. C. Fields is one of the rarest and most original of American comedians,” raved The Literary Digest writer. “There is gusto and richness to everything he does, and a certain outrageous air of frayed and battered dignity that is utterly and completely distinctive.”30 As a co-star in his last four features, Bill had managed to steal the pictures and to garner top-notch reviews. But he knew that he needed to get sole star billing in order to really reach the zenith of his calling as the “king of comedians,” which Cy Coleman in the New Outlook called Fields after he saw him in Six of a Kind.31 After his successes in his last three films, he was still haunted by that perennial question: When would the Paramount brass recognize his talent to be the star of a film?

CHAPTER 5

From Silent to Sound

Hoping to find Fields a starring role, William LeBaron once again rescued the comedian. Fields had a “sort of elfin charm,” said LeBaron, “along with a tremendous mastery of pantomime and an air of timing.” “LeBaron took me in hand,” Bill admitted. “I took the liberty of bawling on his shoulder and telling him what I thought was wrong with my movie career, to date and inclusive … I begged him to let me have my head and, Lord bless him, he did.” Deciding to produce a sound version of So’s Your Old Man, entitled You’re Telling Me, LeBaron hired ­writers to work on the screenplay, including J. P. McEvoy, who co-authored with Fields the stage musical comedy, The Comic Supplement (1925). The remake illustrates the first time Fields made a sound version of one of his silent pictures. Converting his silent movies to Talkies became a perennial habit during his post-1933 film career (Fig. 5.1).1 Fields’s appearance in the two cinematic mediums, silent vs. sound, illuminates substantial insights about his performances on screen. “Silent-film acting drew on the heroic and melodramatic traditions of nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century theatre, it drew as well on mime, magic shows, and vaudeville,” wrote David Denby. Fields’s humor derived from the latter tradition, the variety stage, where he discovered that he had an innate talent for pantomime—a skill vital to his success in silent pictures. According to Denby, silent film is a “language of gestures, stares, flapping mouths, halting or skirting walks, and sometimes movements and expressions of infinite intricacy and beauty.” The genre gave © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_5

69

70 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 5.1  William LeBaron, Fields’s Guardian Angel, at age 37, then scenario editor at Cosmopolitan Productions. Motion Picture News, April 17, 1920, p. 3486

a performer like Fields “super-expressive power. It could turn him into a larger-than-life metaphor, a quintessence of a mental or spiritual state that … lies beyond words.”2 Silent pictures allowed Bill to cultivate one of his most significant screen characterizations—an Everyman besieged by threatening objects. “The principal relationship they [silent films] dramatize is not between man and woman, or between man and man,” wrote Denby, “but between man and a universe of objects; emotion is less important than survival in an absurd and hostile world.” Whether besieged by golf clubs, tennis balls, hats, or bottles, etc., Bill is constantly ducking a barrage of props on screen. Fields is assaulted by an additional menace—malicious individuals from naughty child brats to dictatorial spouses. Although battered and abused, Fields’s screen characters persevere to fight another day.3 Sound film—heavily dependent on aural transmission—gave Fields another poignant weapon to battle hostile forces—a one-of-a-kind

5  FROM SILENT TO SOUND 

71

voice—an affectation he developed by accentuating his own way of speaking—what Walter Kerr called his “oracular nasalities.” His power of speech in his sound films became so pronounced that it tended to outshine his other talents, including his remarkable pantomime skills, causing his silent pictures to be mostly forgotten. “Today it is virtually unthinkable that Fields should ever have been a silent comedian: we remember him first as something heard, then something seen,” remarked Kerr.4 A comparison of So’s Your Old Man with You’re Telling Me demonstrates why the development of sound was so critical to Fields’s later success. Although the comedian’s pantomime skills are still evident in his Talkies, his acting ability melds with his inimitable intonations to create hilarious sequences in You’re Telling Me, a 67-minute feature. Compared to his fast-moving silent pictures, Fields’s sound films move at a slower pace more in tune with his comedic style. It gives Fields the time he needs to reach the best moment to unleash his gags and antics. Dialogue allows him to portray a more sympathetic character who empathizes with the suffering of others. Sound enhances Fields’s ability to show pathos, feelings impeded in his silent pictures. In the scene where he convinces the princess not to commit suicide, moviegoers can hear Fields soften the tone of his voice, which gives him the ability to perform the scene with much more flair. “Don’t do it, little lady, it don’t pay. When you wake up in the morning and find yourself dead it’s too late to regret it…. Don’t commit suicide. You’re too young. You’re too beautiful.”5 The plot of So’s Your Old Man is mostly repeated in the sound film, but there are also several significant additions. Bisbee’s prize invention is a puncture-proof tire instead of a shatterproof windshield. Another creation is a burglar-catcher chair that knocks him out which, as mentioned earlier, derives from his “Patent Office” Follies sketch. Fields once explained the comic method he used in the chair gag. Instead of letting the audience be surprised, he conveys beforehand “exactly what is going to happen…. The laughter begins when I start toward the chair. It reaches its peak before the ball whams me on the bean.” If he would have to explain the incident after the gag, “the scene would fall flat…. The success of the scene depends on the absence of surprise.”6 The supporting cast impersonate the same characters seen in So’s Your Old Man. Bisbee’s nagging pretentious wife, played by Louise Carter, berates her husband as a failure. Their daughter, Joan Marsh, typifies the many young girls in Fields’s cinematic canon who respect their father.

72 

A. F. WERTHEIM

His coarse habits initially prevent her from marrying the son (played by Buster Crabbe, the Olympic champion swimmer) of the wealthiest family in Crystal Springs. His snobbish mother is enacted by Kathleen Howard, the former opera contralto star turned character performer. Another member of Bill’s stock character team, Howard later played memorable roles as the berating wife in It’s a Gift and The Man on the Flying Trapeze. “I always have to be a shrew in pictures with Bill,” she remarked. “Bill likes to likes to play with me because I don’t get upset.”7 Bisbee is portrayed as an avid inventor of gadgets. He stumbles home tipsy late at night unable to open the front door until he uses his new device, a keyhole funnel for dipsomaniacs. Bisbee demonstrates his nose-lifter-upper to prevent snoring—“the only one in existence”— another laugh-getter. Determined to exhibit his puncture-proof tire, he shoots mistakenly at a parked car that resembles his automobile. The tires go flat causing him to run to the train station with the police in pursuit. Another sequence displays Fields’s ability to turn a potential dark episode into a humorous event when he attempts unsuccessfully to commit suicide by drinking iodine from his collapsible spoon because it constantly shakes due to the train’s movement. “Probably only Mr. Fields, of all the comedians, including Chaplin, could make that scene of attempted suicide hilarious, but in some magic way, he does perform the miracle,” wrote a reviewer.8 On the train, he encounters the stunning Princess Lescaboura (Adrienne Ames), who he thinks is about to commit suicide when he sees iodine in her compartment. He proceeds to talk her out of it. Impressed by Bisbee’s compassion, she decides to help him by visiting his hometown. The princess, who is fond of Bisbee, convinces the Murchisons to approve the marriage between her son and Bisbee’s daughter. Impressed by the visit of the princess, the townspeople now laud Bisbee. Arriving home, Bisbee wants to pacify his wife by giving her a gift of a huge ostrich named Myrtle. With its long neck, huge physique, round belly, and comic shape, the highly temperamental ostrich became a proverbial bird in slapstick comedies. Tied with a rope around its neck, the ostrich Myrtle leads Bisbee hopelessly around town in one of the funniest sequences in the film. “The comedian and the bird, with their similarly rotund forms, were an ideally suited pair,” writes Anthony Balducci.9

5  FROM SILENT TO SOUND 

73

Unlike the silent version, moviegoers can hear the annoying noises that distract Bisbee’s golf game, and hear Fields’s inimitable voice reacting to the disturbances. As the princess watches, Bisbee goes through a series of clubs, one that whips around his body and another which is warped. When Bisbee asks for a Canadian club, the caddy, performed by stone-faced Tammy Young, hands him a bottle of whiskey. “I told you to hide that and not to let anybody see it,” Bisbee angrily tells him. As in the silent picture, the caddy gets blamed for every disturbance that flusters Bisbee, including his squeaky shoes. “Stand still will you,” Bisbee orders. “Maybe this’ll help a bit,” he says as he squirts oil on the bottom of the caddy’s shoes. “I never should have had a caddy in the first place…. Stand still, if I have to choke you to death.” A chocolate custard pie sticks to Bisbee’s shoe, golf club, and hat. When it lands on the caddy’s shoe, Bisbee takes his club and smacks his foot. “Take that! I hope you lose your nail.” Bisbee searches in vain to find his golf ball until the princess points out that it is stuck to his club. “So it is, so it is! What a dunce I feel like.” Suddenly, a tire manufacturer appears who wants to offer him a contract for his invention. Realizing that Bisbee is being taken, the princess also bids and forces the manufacturer to give the golfer a $1 million contract with royalties. Bisbee never realizes that the woman he calls Marie is a real princess. “We certainly put that princess stuff over, didn’t we?” he says to her as she departs. “You’re telling me!” she says laughingly. Compared to the silent picture, You’re Telling Me gives moviegoers the opportunity to hear Bisbee’s frustrated reactions to the commotions that upset his golf game. The aggravated, piercing tone of Fields’s voice and the earsplitting noises emanating from the objects that accost him greatly enhance the film. John Scott, writing in the Los Angeles Times, hailed the golf sequence: “It has been many months since I have heard such laughter in the movie theater … deserves a place in the comedy highlights of the screen.”10 Despite its virtues, the 67-minute sound film You’re Telling Me does not undercut the high caliber of the silent picture So’s Your Old Man, which stands out as one of Fields’s best silent pictures. Fields’s superb pantomime ability shines in So’s Your Old Man. Pantomime remained a universal language, ready to be used at the proper occasion. “It has the advantage of never interrupting the audience. You can’t talk through a laugh. If you do, you kill it. But a pantomime comedian can continue to build up one laugh on another until the audience is hysterical.”11

74 

A. F. WERTHEIM

In You’re Telling Me, Sam Brisbee is described as an “amiable henpecked dipsomaniac” by Time magazine.12 His characterization as a dipsomaniac fit Fields to a T. The role was new, resulting from his well-published association with drinking—a linkage between his private life and screen persona that magnified over time. During the plot, Bisbee morphs from an inebriated bungling dabbler in gadgets and social outcast who lives on the wrong side of the tracks to a successful inventor lauded by the town citizenry. Many of Fields’s films culminate in this manner—a ne’er do well underdog who triumphs in the end. As in So’s Your Old Man, Bisbee refuses to succumb to the superficial values of the snobs in small-town America. Left alone at his mansion, he is reunited with his two drinking buddies. “Now, if anybody wants me for the next two weeks, I’ll be in conference,” he informs his three butlers, who have the name “Bisbee” embroidered on their jackets. “We’re off to the races,” he tells his pals. “What a relief. They’re gone. Charlie, open that bag. This will be the first real drink I’ve had in months.” The three happy pals walk away as the screen fades to black, concluding one of Fields’s finest performances. The film’s opening on April 6 at the Times Square Paramount drew unanimous kudos from the New York press. “The appreciative fans of W. C. Fields’ happy nonsense guffawed and howled in delight yesterday throughout the unfolding of the film.” Reviewers noted that the movie was Fields’s first starring role in a Talkie. “The new picture offers a fulllength portrait of his talents” and “he is the creator of a real character,” wrote The Literary Digest critic. “The fumbling, but robust; shrewd, but blundering, fellow has a rich, hearty, racy quality of Dickensian magnitude.” “W. C. Fields’ first picture as a star is one long, lusty, laugh,” declared the New York Mirror reviewer. The perceptive New York Post critic noted that “being a star in his own right, he is permitted to take hold of the picture from the beginning.”13 By successfully transposing a silent picture to sound, Fields created a tour de force and opened the door to more remakes to come.

CHAPTER 6

Return to the Sawdust Trail

Fields’s laudatory reviews in You’re Telling Me, read by the Paramount brass, helped secure Bill’s position as the sole star in his next film—The Old Fashioned Way. The screenplay was a partial rewrite of Fields’s lost silent picture Two Flaming Youths (1927) and derived from a draft called “Playing the Sticks,” credited to Fields as “an epitome of a motion picture story” set in 1898.1 The protagonist is The Great Mark Anthony McGonigle, his surname possibly pilfered from Will Roger’s cowpuncher pal during his rodeo days or from Scotland’s popular nineteenth-century poet, William Topaz McGonagall. Using the pseudonym Charles Bogle, the name of a bootlegger in upstate New York, Bill received credit for writing the original story for The Old Fashioned Way. The title refers to the “old-fashioned” entertainment at the end of the nineteenth century, which Fields knew from first-hand experience. He drew on his grueling occurrence as a burlesque performer during 1898– 1899, a time when many itinerant shoe-string troupes trod from one small town to another staging plays, variety routines, sideshow attractions, and other amusements in opera houses, town halls, and tents. On the side pitchmen sold quack medicine and enticed suckers to play fraudulent gambling competitions, especially the shell game, poker, and three-card monte. Familiar with the sawdust trail as a nomadic trouper, Fields brings to life on the screen outdoor amusements that entertained masses of Americans in the hinterland. The film is therefore a throwback to his earlier involvement as a carnival mountebank in the Broadway play Poppy (1923–1924) © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_6

75

76 

A. F. WERTHEIM

and Sally of the Sawdust (1925), its remake as a silent picture, and the aforementioned Two Flaming Youths. It was a theme Fields would return to in the circus film, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939). The director, William Beaudine, and Fields were surprisingly compatible, a rapport Bill rarely achieved with other filmmakers. One of Paramount’s most talented versatile directors, he oversaw nearly 350 films in various genres. As a devotee of “editing in the camera,” Beaudine shot only necessary scenes, avoiding full coverage shots and alternate takes. He tolerated Fields’s adlibs and constant changes, discussed with the comedian the progression of gags, the necessary balance between laughs and tears, and his preference for no breaks in the action. He recalled that Fields had one major rule: “If you suggest a comedy scene which he doesn’t quite like, he will think it over and then say: ‘It’s a swell gag—but I just can’t do it.’”2 Fields called McGonigle “a loveable old so-and-so,” and a “raucous voiced trickster.” He is a character whose antecedents are found in McGargle from the play Poppy, its film versions as well as from Gabby Gilfoil in Two Flaming Youths. “What he has got,” wrote Beaudine, “is the ‘common touch’ that inspires warm affection rather than the colder admiration.”3 Beaudine remembered Bill arriving “on the set in the morning, his hair perfectly brushed, his cheeks shaved and powdered, a glass in one hand and stick in the other. You’d take him for a prima donna.” Around this time, Bill started drinking more on the set. He would devour martinis during the morning causing him to nap by afternoon. Beaudine’s son recalled that Bill delayed his father’s schedule by his absences and prevented his work getting done.4 The opening sequences reveal McGonigle as a shifty bankrupt operator of a traveling troupe who is continually one step ahead of the sheriff. Moviegoers first see him hastily walking down a station platform to catch a train already occupied by his thespians. Behind him is Marmaduke Gump, (Tammany Young), the company’s manager, who is carrying his suitcases. Helped by his charming daughter Betty (Judith Allen), who points to the sheriff from the train’s open window, McGonigle sneaks behind the officer waiting on the platform to arrest him. Taking a lighted match, McGonigle sets fire to the writ for his arrest sticking out of his back pocket. “I have something to give you,” says the sheriff. “Just what I have been waiting for! I thank you,” declares McGonigle while lighting his cigar from the fire. “Thanks for the light” he exclaims as he boards the train, leaving the bewildered sheriff in a stupor.

6  RETURN TO THE SAWDUST TRAIL 

77

Once on the train bedlam occurs. The troupe’s financial status is immediately apparent when a performer quits because he has not been paid. Using a sleeping berth ticket he has found on the floor, McGonigle kicks the occupant out of his accommodation. While descending from his stolen upper berth in the morning he steps on the stomach of a huge foreigner sleeping on the lower birth, causing uproar between the two. McGonigle hits him on the head with a croquet mallet taken from a child and then flees to the washroom where he proceeds to use up all the towels. For this sequence, Fields drew on a sketch he copyrighted in 1921, entitled “The Pullman Sleeper,” in which the main character engages in amusing incidents with passengers in a sleeping berth compartment. As the train nears Bellefontaine, McGonigle reads a fictitious telegram to his troupe sent by Sheed Hern, his manager. To shore up the company’s morale, he changes the word “worst” to ­“best”—“advance sale indicates the worst—the best business this theatre has ever known.” Staring out the window, he sees a large crowd has gathered to greet his repertory company. “They’ve not only brought out a brass band, but they’ve also called out the militia.” But the reception is for a dignitary of a brotherhood lodge, the individual who lost his berth to McGonigle. Looking like a flamboyant successful promoter rather than a penniless boss of ragtag entertainers, he descends from the train bedecked in a bulky outfit with an oversized sunflower in a buttonhole, checkered trousers, spats, and a huge top hat encircled with a large ­ribbon. The iconic apparel adds to McGonigle’s pretension as the hoodwinking kingpin of his troupe. McGonigle’s florid highfalutin address to the assembled greeters is laced with Fieldsian florid oratory. “My friends of the beautiful city of Bellefontaine, words fail me in expressing our gratitude. Few of you realize the penalty of greatness in which myself … and my company are martyrs. During our peregrinations … of the Seven Seas … we have always had a fond spot in our heart for dear old Bellefontaine.” Fields’s remarks reflect the hard grind he faced in vaudeville entertaining as a juggler for fifteen years in venues from the Northern to the Southern Hemispheres. “Peregrinations” is surely one of those unique words that Fields must have seen and written down in his pocket dictionary to use one day. When the fraternal dignitary appears, the militia raise their swords in tribute and one of them pierces McGonigle’s hat. The troupe fails to realize that they have been part of a sham celebration (Fig. 6.1).

78 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 6.1  McGonigle (Fields) leading his troupe in The Old Fashioned Way (1934). Bison archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

McGonigle leads his company down Main Street “drum-majoring with his silk hat and cane, and sidestepping horse droppings with the greatest of ease and no conscious attention whatsoever.”5 The players arrive at a boardinghouse operated by Mrs. Wendelschaffer, who knows McGonigle often leaves town without paying his bill and warns him not to repeat the offense. The next sequence depicts the troupers eating lunch at the dining table. Sitting next to McGonigle is the insufferable widow Cleopatra (Cleo) Pepperday (Jan Duggan), described by Betty (Judith Allen), McGonigle’s beautiful daughter, as “the richest woman in Bellefontaine.” Cleo is anxious to sing in the troupe’s show. “Don’t you remember how she pestered you last year?” asks Betty. “No, I don’t recall. She’s all dressed up like a well-kept grave” (one of Fields’s famous lines). Aware of Cleo’s money, McGonigle flatters her: “It is a pleasure and an honor to have you sit at my right … to break bread with you on such a delightful afternoon.”

6  RETURN TO THE SAWDUST TRAIL 

79

The highlight of the luncheon sequence is the row between The Great McGonigle and Albert Pepperday (Baby LeRoy), Cleo’s little terror. Their spat begins when McGonigle tries to put Albert in his high chair but the child falls to the ground causing him to burst out crying. “I’m just trying to help you in, that’s all. There you are…. Can you see his other foot? Oh here it is.” Albert next tosses utensils in McGonigle’s soup causing the liquid to splatter all over his coat. “I don’t know whether to eat from my coat or from my plate!” Unable to obey his mother’s reprimands, Albert continues to misbehave and dips McGonigle’s watch in molasses. Although bristling, he tries patronizing the little monster. “How could you hurt a watch by dipping it in molasses?” McGonigle tells Cleo. “It just makes me love the nipper all the more.” Albert’s taunts continue until he tweaks McGonigle’s proboscis causing him to explode. “He’s a brat! A brat! A b-r-a-t—brat!” The name calling infuriates Albert, who throws a piece of meringue pie that hits McGonigle’s face. “Naughty! Naughty!” berates Cleo. “Oh, it’s all right,” retorts McGonigle. “D-Don’t apologize. Yes. I’m used to that sort of thing. Yeah. We stage folks get that all the time.” The mischievous brats played by Baby LeRoy in Bill’s films are descended from a long line of little monsters in popular culture. As early as the 1890s “Kid Strips” had appeared in newspapers typified by The Katzenjammer Kids (1897), two destructive rascals, Hans and Fritz, who defied parental authority. Richard Outcault’s The Yellow Kid (1895) concerned a rebellious ragamuffin in a city slum, and his Buster Brown (1902) is a strip about a boy and his bulldog. Hank Ketchum’s popular Dennis the Menace is a later example of a mischief maker in the funnies. The antics of rowdy children also appeared in the early silent film, Peck’s Bad Boy (1921), and movies featuring the Little Rascals. “Kid Strips” and films parodied parental permissiveness and the consequences of lenient child raising in the USA, a movement that gained steam as the twentieth century progressed. “I don’t know why he is behaving like this,” Cleo says, “You should see him when he is alone” causing Fields to retort, “Yes, I’d like to catch him when he’s alone.” McGonigle is left with Albert when Cleo and the guests dart from the table anxious to see a “new-fangled horseless carriage” outside the house. McGonigle seizes the opportunity to seek revenge. Reaching for Albert in the high chair with his hands ready to choke him, McGonigle discovers he has disappeared. He rises from the table and sees Albert squatting on the floor in an adjacent room perfectly

80 

A. F. WERTHEIM

positioned for a quick kick on the seat of his pants. With no one around McGonigle boots LeRoy’s behind so hard that the little monster sails through the air and lands on the floor. Feeling that moviegoers would be shocked, Paramount executives wanted the scene cut. “You can’t do that. People won’t stand for it. You can’t kick a kid.” Fields agreed to make the kick gentler in a retake. In the redo, McGonigle nonchalantly boots the boy’s behind causing Albert to land on the floor. The toddler looks to see who kicked him and smiles! The way McGonigle kicks Albert with his fanny sticking out and his smile suggests that the sequence is a retake “What the hell!” Fields exclaims. “It’s what any ordinary human being would do. Look what he’s done to me.” It “gets the biggest laugh in the picture,” said Beaudine. “People like it—because it’s just what you’d expect that loveable old so-and-so would do.”6 The clash in The Old Fashioned Way between Baby LeRoy and Fields generated a faux feud in future films and boosted the comedian’s reputation as a child hater. The year The Old Fashioned Way (1934) was released marked the end of the pre-code era in Hollywood when censorship was weakly enforced. While The Old Fashioned Way was being filmed, considerable pressure by forces, including the Catholic Legion of Decency (1934), were placed on the film industry to sanitize indecent sex, immoral eroticism, and glorified violence. Behind the development of more stringent rules that year was the founding of the Production Code Administration (PCA) under the supervision of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America (MPPDA). Joseph Breen, head of the PCA, sent Paramount letters concerning two scenes that should be cut. A former journalist and a staunch Catholic, Breen adopted an extremely strong enforcement of the code outlawing prohibitions from nudity to seduction, among many others. Breen complained about “a great deal of drinking done by the leading character [McGonigle] throughout this picture. While we realize that this action is part of the characterization involved, we should like to remind you that excessive evidence of indulgence of liquor is still generally objectionable. It would, therefore, be well to tone down the scenes containing these actions as much as possible.”7 The warning was possibly the reason for the elimination of a scene in the dining room between Fields and Baby LeRoy, in which “He [McGonigle] takes a flask from his hip-pocket, pours a generous dose in Albert’s mush [porridge].” Another letter sent by Breen insisted cutting

6  RETURN TO THE SAWDUST TRAIL 

81

“the business of McGonigle trying to determine whether he could be Albert’s father.”8 Two days after The Old Fashioned Way opened in New York on July 13, 1934, a new more rigorous production code was adopted by the (MPPDA). Film outlines, scripts, scenarios needed to be sent to the PCA for approval before shooting. To get the MPPDA’s Seal of Approval, a finished film needed to be previewed before release. Whether in script form or final product, any suggestions by the PCA should be followed by the studios. The new censorship rules led to different reactions by the studios ranging from complete compliance to negotiations based on compromise. During the pre-code era, Paramount was considered the producer of the most licentious films. The studio therefore was carefully watched by the PCA, especially its leading light Mae West, considered the sexiest star at the time. W. C. Fields, known for his double entendres and racy sequences, also became a PCA target after 1934. Suppression of free speech thus developed into a bête noir for Fields who fought irate battles with censors overseeing film and radio. The next laugh-getting sequence in The Old Fashioned Way occurs in the parlor where McGonigle listens to Cleo’s atrocious singing. “You make Jenny Lind sound like a mangy alley cat with asthma…. Why, those last high notes are still ringing in my ear…. Ah, how could you fail with those silvery tones! And those golden locks.” Overcome by emotion, Cleo asks him to call her your Rocky Mountain Canary. “Oh, Marky, I feel like I’m sitting on top of the world!” A venerable slapstick act occurs when he sits on a couch with her and a large needle pierces his rear end (Fig. 6.2). At the town’s opera house, McGonigle’s troupe lampoons The Drunkard, or The Fallen Saved, a popular temperance melodrama written by William H. Smith, the stage manager at Moses Kimball’s Boston Museum where it premiered in 1844. The play’s overwhelming popularity spawned numerous productions, particularly at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum’s Lecture Room in New York where it ran for more than one hundred consecutive performances during the height of the temperance movement. After the second wave of temperance during the 1920s ended with the repeal of prohibition in 1933, The Drunkard became a target for parody. In Los Angeles, a production opened at the Theatre Mart in 1933 and ran continuously for 36 years. Actors from the Theatre Mart joined McGonigle’s repertory company to present The Drunkard in the film. In reply to a 1943 invitation to write a publicity slogan for the Theatre Mart, Fields wrote the following:

82 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 6.2  McGonigle is pierced by a large needle while sitting in Cleopatra Pepperday’s (Jan Duggan) living room. The Old Fashioned Way. Bison archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com Men may come and men may go But “The Drunkard” will go on FOREVER. By W. C. (Tennyson) Fields

McGonigle’s company presents a highly amusing takeoff on an abbreviated version of the temperance play. Entering with his famous line from The Fatal Glass of Beer (“It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast!”), Fields hams it up as the villainous lawyer Squire Cribbs. He cheats Edward Middleton out of his rightful inheritance, encourages Edward to become a despicable drunkard, and an embarrassment to his family as he descends into drunken orgies, befriends vile associates, and threatens

6  RETURN TO THE SAWDUST TRAIL 

83

suicide. Wearing a long black coat and trousers, black top hat, black faux walrus mustache, black curly hair wig, and black spats, Cribbs suffers several deserved indignities for his crookedness. He falls into the orchestra pit, the curtain descends on his foot, and as it rises it snatches his wig. During the burlesque, Cleo is rehearsing her one line “Here Comes the Prince” behind the curtain but she never gets to perform. At the end, Edward is saved by a temperance philanthropist and is reunited with his family and pledges sobriety. After the play, McGonigle stages an afterpiece in which he does some vaudeville stunts. Moviegoers are treated to the finest exhibition of juggling Fields performs on the screen. Twenty years had passed since being billed as a vaudeville comic juggler, but now at the age of 54, he still presents a virtuoso exhibition. He juggles balls, hats, and as a highlight does his famous cigar box tricks. “As the Great McGonigle, Fields is quite priceless, and is given an opportunity to go through his old juggling act, just as good as new,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter movie critic.9 After performing The Drunkard, McGonigle receives the bad news that his troupe’s itinerary has been cancelled. He overhears conversations that his presence in town is preventing his daughter’s marriage to Wally Livingstone, son of a wealthy citizen in Bellefontaine. McGonigle wants to see his daughter happily married and tells her that he has received a telegram offering him a stage role in New York. “Isn’t it wonderful how everything rounds out eventually? My little daughter happily married and I on my way to greater triumphs…. If you need me at any time, financially or otherwise, I am at your beck and call…. Goodbye, dear.” His daughter is shocked: “That’s funny. He never acted like that before.” The review in England’s Manchester Evening News called his farewell to his daughter “a big-hearted pathetic gesture of generosity. The qualities are always behind the humor of Fields.” Beaudine called the parting scene “a great bit of acting” by Fields. “He acted with the pathos of the true clown. He held his audience and conveyed to them the sadness of the old man’s parting from the only person who meant anything in his life.”10 With no money to pay for his stay at the boardinghouse, McGonigle and his assistant Marmaduke Gump sneak out of their abode in the middle of the night. The rattling of their trunk on the stairs wakes up the landlady Mrs. Wendelschaffer. McGonigle cleverly tells her that the trunk belongs to a friend who plans to spend a few days with him. The landlady insists that she does not permit any more performers staying at her boardinghouse and orders them to take the trunk out. McGonigle and

84 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Gump quickly leave with their trunk and flee without paying their bill. “You’ll regret this in the morning,” McGonigle tells the landlady. The sequence recreates an actual event in Kent, Ohio, where Fields was with the burlesque show, the Monte Carlo Girls, during Christmas 1898. One night the manager and his wife absconded with the troupe’s funds, leaving the thespians stranded and Fields without money to pay for his lodging. On a cold December night with snow one foot deep outside his boardinghouse, he placed his trunk on a sled and ran downhill toward the train station. “I think I hold the record of being the only man ever chased out of Kent by his own trunk,” he remembered. “Do you recall the Monte Carlo Girls disintegrating in Kent, Ohio … salaries unpaid, no money for hotel bills or eats not to mention railroad fares?” he asked a cast member years later. “Although I have been in the business for forty some odd years, I’ve never felt it was a stable business. My first time of being stranded was Xmas … in Kent, Ohio. It didn’t seem then as though I was ever going to get back in the theatrical business.”11 Instead of assuming a lead role in a New York show, McGonigle ends up as a medicine man barker pitching Yach’Wee Indian Medical Discovery: “I have been here tonight for a few bottles which I am selling for one dollar. It cures hoarseness. It’ll cure the most stubborn cases of hoarseness for many years. This malignant disease, whenever speaking in public as I do, and I—(coughs)…. One little sip of the bottle—(croaks). (then roars) IT WILL CURE HOARSENESS!! Who’ll be the first to buy a bottle?” Leaving McGargle as a pathetic pitchman, the film fades out and ends.12 The film’s opening on July 13 at the Paramount Theatre in Times Square yielded kudos for Fields’s performance. “Mr. Fields’s talents are continually being rediscovered … so droll and resourceful a comic never faced an audience before,” wrote the New York Times reviewer. The Los Angeles Times critic agreed: “W. C. Fields has been nominated and has taken office as the funniest man on the screen today.” The best review came from The New Republic’s Otis Ferguson who wrote that Fields has recreated through his own experience the “stock companies trouping the whistle-stops of the country…. He is not only a funny man, he is a familiar and endearing figure, to be seen with mirth and remembered with special affection, a minor Jack Falstaff on the sawdust of the twentieth century.”13

CHAPTER 7

The Mail-Order Groom

A major miscalculation next placed Fields again in a secondary role in a second-rate film, a remake of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934). It was an administrative blunder and a setback to his career, especially given Bill’s recent success in The Old Fashioned Way. After emerging from bankruptcy and forced reorganization, Paramount was now overseen by financiers and manufacturers. They were inexperienced filmmakers prone to making mistakes in production and casting. Fields felt joining the cast was a demotion from solo star to a featured performer. Although Bill did not appear until the last third of the picture, he took the part feeling that he needed to keep his name before the public. In Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch Fields plays C. Ellsworth Stubbins, a retired trouper and the mail-order groom for Tabitha Hazy, performed by the multitalented comedienne and character actress Zasu Pitts, known for her large piercing eyes, angular figure, curly locks, and handwringing mannerism. She possessed an extraordinary flair for both dramatic and comedy films in which she could draw tears as well as laughs. A veteran of over 120 films, she became celebrated for her comic stock persona as a flustered spinster, exemplified by her role in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. Fields found the outdoors shooting location during July stifling. Performers recall him drinking from morning to night. One child in the cast reported that Bill gave her something to drink as a protection against rattlesnakes in the area. Her mouth burned so bad she told her school teacher on the set, who promptly went to Bill’s tent. Learning it © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_7

85

86 

A. F. WERTHEIM

was gin, she ordered Fields not to socialize with the children. “He was a very strange man,” recalled Edith Fellows, who played Australia Wiggs. “The kids on the film were a little afraid of him. His nose alone was frightening.” By contrast, the child Ada (Carmencita Johnson) recalled being given a cantaloupe by Fields. “That was a really sweet thing for him to do.”1 Fields was hired to inject comedy in a film which effused tragedy, best illustrated by the inhabitant’s abject poverty and the death of one of Mrs. Wiggs’s five children. Tabitha, a shy prudish spinster seeking a mate, finds one in Cupid’s Matrimonial Guide after her good friend Mrs. Wiggs writes a letter for her to the marriage bureau. Stubbins, the mail order bride, enters Tabitha’s property in a scene accenting pure Fieldsian horseplay. He gets entangled in the ropes of a three-strand wire fence, ending up with a noose around his neck, his hat in the dirt, and his cane caught in the webbing. After escaping from the fence, a boy runs by and Stubbins gets entrapped in the youngster’s kite. The sequence is entirely extemporized since Fields ordered the fence and kite from the set’s prop man. The director, Norman Taurog, fortunately gave Bill the freedom to improvise. William Beaudine recalls that the audience was howling during Bill’s opening scene. “His voice is one of Bill Fields’ greatest assets. … When he first comes into the picture, all that you see of him is his feet—and at the same time you hear him speaking. That is enough. The audience is roaring its head off long before his face has appeared on the screen.”2 Tabitha is surprised by Stubbin’s appearance since she only knows him by a photograph she received showing a young handsome man. Compared to the snazzy outfit Bill wore in The Old Fashioned Way, he is plainly dressed. Fields and Zasu Pitts radiate a comic chemistry, which lightens the movie’s dreary mood. According to Pitt’s biographer, “Zasu gained his respect, and they worked well together.”3 Fields spews out his lines using a florid rhythmic tone, which Bill often utilized whenever he played a boisterous braggart. His pseudo-Victorian speech matches the time of the story, which occurs in a small town in the 1890s when there were severe financial problems and massive unemployment across the nation. The poverty of people in Cabbage Patch also reminds moviegoers of the deprivation occurring in 1934 during the Great Depression—a time when people were living in rickety shacks in shanty towns. The sequence depicting the initial awkward encounter between Stubbins and Tabitha reflects the humorous interaction between the two:

7  THE MAIL-ORDER GROOM 

87

Stubbins: Whom do I have the honor of addressing? Tabitha: I’m Miss Hazy. Stubbins: I feared as much! Have you perchance a daughter? Tabitha: I am a maiden lady! Stubbins: Tell, me Madam, did you at one time cherish in your heart a fond dream of connubial bliss? And in pursuit of this mental mirage of matrimonial harmony, trust and invite to the United States mail a letter or missive as the case may be intended for the eyes of one unknown to you bearing the name of Stubbins—C. Ellsworth Stubbins Tabitha: Well, I—yes I did. Stubbins: Behold Stubbins of today, C. Ellsworth Stubbins…in the flesh! (Fields falls head first on her bed.)

Tabitha runs to Elvira Wiggs’s house in a panic to tell her that Stubbins is sleeping on her bed. “Don’t look at me so. He fell there… I noticed when he come into the house he was kind a rickety on his legs and pretty soon he fell over on my bed and laid there.” “An’ we paid a dollar for him,” says Elvira. “If he’s gone an’ died on you, we’ll get that dollar back.” Returning to her abode, Tabitha sees Stubbins awake and groaning. “Ellsworth Stubbins dead. A Stubbins may sleep much, Madame, but he seldom dies.” Soon the subject of marriage is discussed: Stubbins: And now, my little carrier pigeon of the postal service, we must discuss our wedding. Tabitha: Oh! Oh, there’s a funny kind of something goes through me when you speak of it. Hmm! Stubbins: I too, experience a kindred feeling at the mention of the event. However, Madame, there’s one thing I must know before our marriage bells clang out the joyous news. Madame, can you cook?

Knowing Hazy can’t cook, Mrs. Wiggs comes to her rescue. “Can she cook! Why Mister if you ain’t et Miss Hazy’s cookin’ why, you ain’t never et victuals. If you never put your teeth into one of her mince pies, mince pies is something you still got to learn of.” Stubbins craves mince pies. “Enough! Tonight you shall cook me a dinner and bake me a mince pie, and if it’s half as good … as she says the sun shall shine tomorrow morn upon the dawn of our wedding day. …Bring on the victuals.” Unbeknown to Stubbins, Mrs. Wiggs prepares the meal. While waiting for the feast, Tabitha wants to know if Stubbins was a play actor. “My dear, the last night I appeared in Punka City, the house was so crowded

88 

A. F. WERTHEIM

they couldn’t applaud that way. They had to applaud this way (vertical clapping).” Hazy is impressed—“Oh, how wonderful!” “Nothing really,” says Stubbins. “In Keokuk one night they were so jammed in they couldn’t laugh, ha-ha-ha. They had to laugh, ho-ho-ho.” As Stubbins’ eats his meal, he utters a series of compliments. Sniffing, he says: “Madam, if my palate verifies the promise that my nose offers, your remaining hours of maiden meditation are numbered. Far be it from me to bedazzle a lady with flattery but if your mince pie approaches excellence of that which has gone before … a happy event impends.” By meal’s end, they both agree to marriage. After the wedding ceremony, they return to Tabitha’s house where Stubbins is eating another meal but this time cooked by his wife. Feeling dishonest, she confesses to Stubbins that she cooked the food. “I can’t cook!” Stubbins: “Mother of Pearl! What about the first meal?” “Oh, Mrs. Wiggs cooked that.”4 The final sequence shows Stubbins trying to prepare an egg dish by using a cookbook. He has morphed from a cocky bombastic boaster into a henpecked husband responsible for the cooking. Inferred is that Tabitha does not want a selfish husband, a glutton who only thinks of feeding his stomach. A still photograph shows Tabitha threatening Stubbins with a large wooden cylindrical rolling pin—a weapon used at the time by angry housewives in comedy scenes. By movie’s end, she has domesticated her husband (Fig. 7.1). Critics liked Fields’s humorous sequences but they felt that he appeared too late in the film to make his appearance memorable. “He was given a walk-on in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch and his name was dishonestly starred on the marquee to float that whole lighter of garbage,” wrote Otis Ferguson. As for the film, Ferguson hoped it was the last of the “smile-with-a-tear tradition, so beastly clean and wholesome. … A nasty all’s-right-with-the-world burlesque of poverty, with emotions to tug at such heartstrings.” When the film ends “without his playing pool, juggled or had his watch dipped in molasses, there is inevitably a sigh of audience disappointment,” wrote William Everson.5 Fields too was disappointed. “I saw it for the first time a few nights ago in North Hollywood but when I came on the screen, I stunk so badly the police came in with the impression that someone had been throwing stink bombs around. Fortunately, I had my fake moustache with me. I turned up the collar of my great coat and did a ‘vanishing lady’ before I was discovered.”6

7  THE MAIL-ORDER GROOM 

89

Fig. 7.1  Newly married Ellsworth Stubbins (Fields) and Tabitha Hazy (Zasu Pitts) ready, if needed, to whack her husband with a clothing pin in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934). Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

Fields’s self-deprecating comments suggest that he was still furious that the Paramount bosses had pressured him to take the role. Bill was a perfectionist, an artist who took pride in his work and was extremely bothered anytime his performance did not meet the high standards he set for himself. Many moviegoers felt his appearance enhanced the film through his comic scenes and believed he stole the picture. But Fields remained bitter. He had been promoted to star in two excellent films: You’re Telling Me and The Old Fashioned Way. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch demoted him to a secondary role in which he shared the spotlight with Zasu Pitts and other cast members. The experience confirmed his dislike of the studio system and the way he was treated by Paramount’s bosses. The clash between his strong belief in individuality versus conformity in the film industry escalated

90 

A. F. WERTHEIM

over time. In 1934, Fields bitterly recalled his debacle in Hollywood during his first trip during 1927–1928. Fields was shocked when he initially discovered the bureaucratic system Paramount had created to produce their pictures. “The first time I came to Hollywood I was taken gently but firmly to one side, and spoken to in a fatherly tone,” he said. “I was told that my days of worry and toil were over. Hollywood, it seemed, was a community of specialists working in a mass-produced film factory. There were specialists who did nothing but sit down and think of plots for stories, others who embellished these into screenplays, still others to write dialogue, and more to think of up funny situations. All I had to do I was told, was to go out and play golf. When they were ready for me, they would let me know. I would come to the studio, make a few faces and a few previously written remarks, and I would be paid regularly. I tried it and in six months I was out of a job. Not only was my option not renewed, but nobody else would hire me.”7 Not one filmmaker at the start of the sound film era recognized that his distinctive voice was perfect for the Talkies. Having witnessed the fickleness of Hollywood, he worried that he might again be out of a job. Overwhelmed by his insecurities that constantly plagued him, Bill sunk into a depressed stupor. He had no idea that he was about to skyrocket to the apex of his screen career with a “magnum opus.”8

CHAPTER 8

Magnum Opus.1

Fields again dipped into his bag of past performances to create his next film, It’s a Gift, which evolved from his stage and silent picture oeuvre. The movie comprised Fieldsian gems from The Comic Supplement play, four of which Ziegfeld had interwoven into the 1925 Follies and a year later were morphed into the silent, It’s the Old Army Game. If The Old Fashioned Way revived Fields’s rogue showman persona, It’s a Gift resurrected Bill’s beleaguered milquetoast husband character. It’s a Gift therefore illustrates the impact of Fields’s stage and silent picture career on his sound films. Being a perfectionist, Fields feared that a carbon-copy remake could be critiqued as nothing more than It’s the Old Army Game with sound. As a contributor to the screenplay, Bill therefore added numerous new sequences that transformed the Talkie into a novel conception. Using his frequent nom de plume, Charles Bogle, Fields penned the story, enriched the plot, and enhanced the characterizations. According to one story, he discovered the name Charles Bogle during a vaudeville engagement in upstate New York. Checking into a hotel during Prohibition, he asked a clerk where he could buy some liquor. The clerk helped me obtain some “mountain dew—late Prohibition vintage” from Charles Bogle, “who knew the guy who knew the guy who made it. Ah, acquaintance is a marvelous thing.”1 Fields liked the moniker so much he used it several times. Bogle is credited for writing the story “Playing © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_8

91

92 

A. F. WERTHEIM

the Sticks,” the basis for The Old Fashioned Way, and is the name of a character in You’re Telling Me. Gone is the lead character in It’s the Old Army Game—the apothecary Elmer Prettywillie—who is replaced by the store proprietor, Harold Bissonette. He is the fourth and last frustrated drug store owner in Fields’s oeuvre. The four characters—Pa Jones (The Comic Supplement); Elmer Prettywillie (It’s the Old Army Game); Mr. Dilweg (The Pharmacist); and Harold Bissonette (It’s a Gift)—illustrate Fields’s unique gift to recreate his protagonists in a new format. All are henpecked creatures and aggravated bunglers at their jobs but each has different burdens to overcome. Rather than being criticized for overusing stale characters, Fields makes each individual distinctive. During the film, Harold corrects people who pronounce his last name as Bis-on-ette rather than Bis-o-nay—a running gag that illustrates the store owner’s attempt to give his surname more flair. Ronald Fields, the comedian’s grandson, discovered that the real Harold Bissonette was a member of North Hollywood’s Lakeside Country Club where Fields played golf while living in Toluca Lake. Fields actually called Bissonette to ask him if he could use his moniker. Bill pilfered the names of his other characters from numerous sources: friends, acquaintances, signs, phone books, etc. He habitually kept his eyes wide open everywhere he went, writing the best ones on slips of paper and storing them in folders and notebooks. As a henpecked husband and weak father figure, Harold is ruled over by his crabby wife Amelia (Kathleen Howard). He is harassed by his two children, Mildred (Jean Rouverol), his lovesick teenage daughter, and his young smart aleck son, Norman (Tommy Bupp), who parades around the house on roller skates. As the owner of a small-town general store, Harold personifies the neighborhood merchant willing to help people but his customers take advantage of his kindness. Despite being assaulted by life’s perils, Harold is an honest man who seeks the American dream of prosperity for his family. He is “the most long suffering, gentle, turnthe-other cheek soul that ever endured the results of marriage,” wrote a London critic.2 It’s a Gift opens to the tune “California Here I Come,” as the Bissonette family drives down a main street in Wappinger Falls, New Jersey. As in Fields’s other works, the provincial small town is portrayed as a locale inhabited by stuffy snobs, narrow-minded bourgeoisie, and numerous cheapskates who rarely buy an item at his store. Above his

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

93

store is the family’s abode where Harold is shaving in the shared bathroom using the mirror attached to the medicine cabinet. (This sequence reprises the shaving routine in the lost 1927 film, The Potters.) Mildred, his self-absorbed teenage daughter, ignoring her father, applies lipstick before the mirror, blocking her father’s view. As she combs her hair, Harold stands behind her trying to shave until Mildred’s locks sweep across his face causing him to cut himself. “If you want me to cut my throat, keep that up,” her father reprimands. She continues gargling. “You evidently do!” Frustrated, Harold tries to shave using the back of a can for a mirror. When that fails he takes a hand mirror, attachés it to a light string, and precariously squats on the back of a chair to shave as the mirror swings back and forth. His shrewish wife, Amelia, arrives and demands to know why he is foolishly shaving in that position. “What kind of tomfoolery are you up to now?” Stop “all the dribbling, idiot.” What makes the sequence so amusing is Fields’s astounding body language and facial gestures, especially the way he ducks to avoid being hit by the mirror. This brilliant sequence immediately casts Harold as a harassed husband lacking respect, berated by his wife, and his needs ignored by his daughter. Katherine Howard, a former opera singer with the Metropolitan Opera, strikes all the right notes as Amelia when she scolds her husband. Howard’s performance is “so authentic as to make Mr. Fields’s suffering seem cosmic and a little sad despite their basic humor,” wrote Andre Sennwald.3 Howard also plays the snotty Mrs. Murchison in You’re Telling Me and the badgering wife, Leona, in The Man on the Flying Trapeze. A standout character performer, Howard excelled in her roles as the reprimanding wife who continually nags and reprimands her spineless husbands impersonated by Fields. Bill knew intimately the perfect archetype for his portrayal of shrewish spouses—his own wife Hattie. In his mind, she was a caustic complainer, called him names behind his back, and deliberately controlled their offspring Claude. Hattie’s harsh behavior created a long-standing painful estrangement between Fields and his son. When the film shifts to the family’s breakfast table, more discord occurs. On his way, Harold trips on his son’s roller skates causing him to fall into the dining room on his back. “Suffering Sciatica,” Harold mumbles. Amelia shows no sympathy for her husband, “Don’t leave Norman’s skates around the house. I just had them fixed. Get up off the floor.” “Coming, coming, coming,” Harold retorts. Trying to light a cigar, he takes a flower from his lapel. “Why are you trying to light a flower?” asks

94 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Amelia. “Don’t smoke at the table. Don’t throw matches on the floor.” Finding the sugar bowl empty, Harold blames his son. Nathan: What’s the matter, Pop? Don’t you love me anymore? Harold: (ready to hit the brat) Certainly, I love yah. Amelia: Don’t you touch that child! Harold: He’s not goin’ to tell me I don’t love him. Over breakfast, the family learns about their father’s plan to buy an orange grove in California with money he might inherit. The news causes havoc. His wife, who opposes the idea, commences to scold her good-for-nothing husband for always upsetting the family. Amelia reminds him that she has kept the family together. Amelia: Harold I want one thing settled. If you get any money from your Uncle Bean, you are not going to buy an orange ranch with it. Harold: Oh, no, no, no, no Amelia: Oh, don’t try that innocent look with me. We need things in the house. I haven’t a stitch on my back, the children need clothes, and we should have a car. Harold: Oh, yes. A car, by all means. Yes. Amelia: I don’t know where you get the idea that you could make money raising oranges, when you can’t even run a corner grocery store. Harold: I know a lot about raising oranges.

Hearing enough, he begins to retreat to the safe haven of his store located downstairs. As he leaves, Amelia barks out another sarcastic remark. “You run away as if I have the small pox or something every time I open my mouth.” Harold’s first customer is the grouchy Jasper Fitchmueller, who orders ten pounds of cumquats (a small orange fruit Fields’s father peddled). He keeps Fitchmueller waiting while his lackadaisical clerk Everett (Tammany Hall) helps him put on his white coat and topless straw hat. Hall fulfilled a lifelong goal when he became Fields’s new stooge after Shorty died.4 Mr. Muckle (named after a neighbor near his parent’s home in Philadelphia) is a blind and half-deaf hotel detective, played by the veteran character actor Charles Sellon, who suddenly tries to enter the store through a closed door. “Open the door for Mr. Muckle!” Bissonette orders Everett. Swinging his cane wildly, Muckle shatters the door’s

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

95

glass. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” says Harold trying to calm Muckle. “You got that door closed again,” complains the irritable Mr. Muckle. “I’m awfully sorry. I’m awfully sorry.” Once inside, the blind man breaks more glassware, including a stack of glass bulbs. “Please sit down, Mr. Muckle! Please, honey!” pleads Harold, who wraps a stick of chewing gum for him. “I’m not going to lug that with me,” says Muckle. “Send it.” Escorting him outside, Harold walks to the curb and seeing no traffic encourages him to cross the street. “You’re all right. Nothing coming at all. Street’s as clear as a whistle.” A siren is heard as Muckle starts to cross the street alone. Suddenly, a horde of fire engines and other vehicles speed down the street. Several cars almost hit Muckle causing Harold to flinch and cover his eyes at the close calls. When Muckle safely reaches the other side, Harold is exhausted by the ordeal and falls into a garbage can. Fields tackled a sensitive subject trying to make a scene with a blind man humorous. The critic Andrew Sennwald believed he succeeded. “With the one exception of Chaplin, there is nobody but Mr. Fields who could manage the episode with the blind and deaf man in the store so as to make it funny instead of just a trifle revolting.”5 Amelia tells her husband that his Uncle Bean has died from a heart attack from choking on an orange at a picnic. His $5000 (“It’s a Gift”) inheritance will be enough to fulfill Harold’s dream of buying a California orange ranch. “Very regretful,” says Harold. “Regrettable,” states his wife. “Oh yes, regrettable. Regrettable.” “How about my ten pounds of cumquats?” Fitchmueller yells. Finally, the customer gives up and leaves the store. The kindhearted but incompetent store operator has still not made a sale. Accompanied by her little son, Baby Ellwood (Baby LeRoy), the impetuous Mrs. Dunk arrives. She orders two pounds of round steak. While Harold is busy getting his mother’s steak, Elwood has opened the spigot on a barrel of molasses, which causes the store to be inundated with the gooey liquid. Mrs. Dunk is furious. “What do you mean by running molasses all over the floor and ruining his shoes? Give me my baby! You’ll never see me in this store again!” Harold locks the store and places a notice on the outside door: Closed On Account Of Molase

That night Harold hears a tirade of criticism from his wife “Are you listening to me? Wake up! Wake Up! Go to Sleep! I’ve given you the best

96 

A. F. WERTHEIM

years of my life and now I have to spend it… on that grocery store.” “I’ve sold the grocery store.” “What!” The scolding continues in bed far into the night until the telephone rings. Once Harold answers the phone his wife thinks it might be a lady calling her husband and she becomes suspicious of his infidelity. Amelia: Who was it? Harold: Uh—somebody called up. Wanted to know if this was the maternity hospital. Amelia: What did you tell them? Harold: Uh-I-told `em no, it wasn’t the maternity hospital. Amelia: Funny thing they should call you up here at this hour of the night from the maternity hospital. Harold: They didn’t call me up, dear from the maternity hospital. They wanted to know if this was the maternity…hospital. Amelia: Oh, now you change it! Harold: No, I didn’t change it dear. I told—I told you they—uh—they asked me if this was the maternity hospital. Amelia: Don’t! Oh don’t make it any worse. Harold: They asked me— Amelia: I don’t know how you expect anybody to get any sleep, hopping in and out of bed all night, tinkering around the house, waiting up for telephone calls. You have absolutely no consideration for anybody but yourself. I have—to get up in the morning, get breakfast for you and the children. I have no maid, you know—probably never shall have one.

This sequence as well as others in It’s a Gift (released on November 30, 1934) reflect profound social changes occurring between the sexes at a time when many unemployed male breadwinners lost their prominence in the family. A jobless husband suddenly saw his family descending into poverty. Not only did he blame himself for his failure but the family often blamed him for their difficulties. “Male unemployment led to fundamental shifts of authority within the family and often a rapid deterioration of the father’s status,” believed cultural historian Henry Jenkins. Mirra Komarovsky, who studied unemployed New York families in 1935–1936, wrote: “In addition to sheer economic anxiety, the man suffers from deep humiliation…. He fails to fulfill what is the central duty of his life, the very touchstone of his manhood—the role of family provider.”6 Amelia’s stinging criticism of her husband and Howard’s timidity mirrors changes in the American family during the height of the Great Depression.

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

97

The Amelia-Harold confrontation over the telephone call segues to the famous “Sleeping Porch” sequence. Hoping to get some sleep, Harold takes his bedding to the second story’s back porch and lies down on a swing connected by chains to an upper beam. The back porch scene, stemming from The Comic Supplement play, includes considerable new material, including Harold being toppled by the swing. Suddenly, the beam breaks apart and the swing crashes to the floor at the head’s end, leaving Harold lying at an angle with his body sloping downward. “Harold!” Amelia shouts: “Will you please keep quiet and let me get some sleep!” He takes a chair to prop up the swing and lies down again to snooze. As the milkman climbs three floors to make a delivery, his milk bottles rattle loudly in his wire carrier. Awakened by the racket, Harold shouts, “Uh—make a little less noise down there, will you?” A coconut, which the milkman has left on a window still, falls to the ground, starts rolling down three flights of stairs, and slams into garbage cans. Each noise causes Harold to do the Fieldsian flinch. Exasperated, he mumbles, “What a night! It was not a night for love!” Next a shrewd insurance agent appears. (Fields recalled the time when he kicked an insurance salesman out of his house for suggesting he stop drinking.) Agent: Do you know a man by the name of LaFon—Carl LaFong? Capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g. LaFong. Carl LaFong. Harold: No, I don’t know Carl Lafong—capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g! And if I did know Carl LaFong, I wouldn’t admit it. Agent: Well, he’s a railroad man and he leaves home very early in the morning. Harold: Well, he’s a chump. Agent: I hear he’s interested in an annuity policy. Harold: Oh. Isn’t that wonderful! Agent: Yes, yes it is! (He runs up the stairs sensing Harold might be suckered into buying a policy.) The public are buying them like hotcakes. All companies are going to discontinue this form of policy after the twenty-third of this month (Fig. 8.1). Harold: That’s rather unfortunate. (Harold hides under his blanket.) Agent: Yes, it will be. Maybe you would be interested in such a policy. Harold: I would not! Agent: Say what’s your age? Harold: None of your business. Agent: I would say you were a man about fifty.

98 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 8.1  The sleeping porch sequence (It’s a Gift, 1934). Confronting the life insurance salesman. Left to Right: Kathleen Howard (Amelia Bissonette), Fields (Harold Bissonette), and T. Roy Barnes (insurance salesman) (Courtesy, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) Harold: Yeah you would say that. Agent: Let me see. (thumbing through his manual) Fifty-fifty-fifty. Ah here we are. Here we have it. Now you can, by paying only five dollars a week, retire when you are ninety, on a comfortable income. Harold: I can retire when I’m ninety…? Amelia: Harold! If you and your friend wish to exchange ribald stories, please take him downstairs! Harold: My friend! (rushes into his house) Agent: And should you live out to be one hundred, WO-oh! (Harold returns clutching a meat cleaver causing the agent to start running down the stairs.) Harold: (yelling at him) I suppose if I live to be two hundred, I get a velocipede! (Harold drops the cleaver on his foot.)

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

99

Trying to sleep again, Harold awakens when Baby Elwood (Baby LeRoy) drops some grapes through a hole in the floor above, which hits his nose. “Oh! Right on the proboscis,” he mumbles. A second grape falls into his mouth (gags). Next, the baby drops an ice pick through the hole which nearly lands near his head. A big bunch of grapes thrown by Baby Ellwood splatters all over his face. “Shades of Bacchus!” Harold utters. Furious, he runs upstairs with the ice pick and dangles it over the baby’s head with the threat—“even a worm will turn!” Seeing Harold, Mrs. Dunk, the baby’s mother yells “stop!” She seizes the ice pick from Harold. “Look what you’ve done to my floor. It wasn’t enough for you to pour molasses all over him! Now you have to stuff him with grapes and give him the colic! Come on, darling, I’ll give your some ipocac.” Baby LeRoy was crying continually during the shoot, and his nurse had to give him his bottle. Fields asked if he could feed the baby while she went across the street to get him a racing form. While she was away, he spiked the infant’s milk bottle with gin. According to legend, LeRoy passed out and the filming had to be suspended. “I told you the kid was no trouper,” Fields told the director.7 Fields’s attitude toward Baby Leroy was hyped by the comedian because it made good publicity. Studio publicists and movie magazine writers were anxious to promote his rivalry with LeRoy. “He thought it was terrific that everyone thought he hated kids,” said Carlotta Monti. “He thought it was good publicity.”8 Off screen, however, Fields was much kinder to the infant. When Paramount felt LeRoy was too old for a part in It’s a Gift Bill helped the child obtain his role as Baby Elwood. Between takes at the studio, Fields interacted with LeRoy. Stock photographs show Fields riding a velocipede with Leroy on his shoulders and another with the infant sitting in front of him on a bicycle. It’s a Gift became LeRoy’s last film with Fields. After appearing later in a feature film and a small part in a comedy short at age six, his parents decided to end his career as a child actor. “They can’t last,” Fields declared. “They never do. A dozen pictures, and a kid is washed up, while us regular actors go on forever. Why sixty years from now old W. C. Fields still will be making comedies. And I suppose I’ll be working with Baby LeRoy’s grandchildren.”9 “When I was a child I heard many stories about Fields,” said Ronald LeRoy Overacker (aka Baby LeRoy) in a 1956 radio interview. “Some stories I heard were mostly publicity stories. There were a lot of stories about me stealing his gin, me stealing his milk. Another old gag was that

100 

A. F. WERTHEIM

he would spike my orange juice. That would generate a lot of publicity. My mother has pictures involving me. The expression on the man’s face didn’t look like a man who didn’t like children.” In a 1965 newspaper interview, he told a reporter: “Fields really loved children and always sent my mother and me a telegram at Christmas.”10 Lastly, a noisy vegetable and fruit peddler appears, a huckster like his father. Harold races into his house and grabs a rifle. As he cocks the weapon, he stands over the railing ready to obliterate the peddler. “Oh, vegetable man,” he calls out. “Vegetable gentleman.” But the peddler has disappeared into the apartment below. Exhausted, Harold lies down on the swing and falls asleep. The rifle slips from his hand and explodes, causing the entire apparatus and its supporting beam to crash down, and Harold to fall to the floor. He picks himself up, sees a fly, and whacks the pest with a swatter—a tiny victory climaxing a nightmarish night. The sun rises, signaling another day for Howard and his eternal battles against the furies. Fields felt the porch sequence in It’s a Gift was much better than the one in the silent picture It’s the Old Army Game (1926), which he called “awful.” I “had nothing to do with the way it being photographed.” Fields was then a novice learning how to perform before a camera and had little independence. Eight years later, he had become a skillful screen actor and had much more control over his scenes. “Norman McLeod [the director] was kind enough to let me do my own version of the scene up at the Lasky Ranch for Paramount and that was a very fine scene,” Fields believed.11 A specialist in comedy, McLeod granted his actors considerable artistic freedom and consequently gave Fields extensive independence on the set. Sound also added a new dimension to the sleeping porch sequence. Fields’s distinctive voice reacts to provocations with modulations ranging from barely heard mumbles to earsplitting grating sounds. Pantomimic facial gestures and body movements, techniques he honed on the stage, add to the frustrations he feels. The porch scene can rightly be called Fields’s penultimate portrayal of the exasperated Everyman facing menacing objects and threats from fellow beings. All the elements of Fields’s unique artistry are brought together to create a comic tour de force. The next sequence, “The Joy Ride,” sees the Bissonette family— Harold, Amelia, Mildred, Norman, and its newest member, Buster the dog—ready to leave for California in a convertible four-door Model T Ford loaded with their entire possessions strapped to the vehicle sides.

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

101

As usual, Harold has a difficult time starting the car. (The scene evokes Fliverton’s troubles in the “Family Ford” 1920 Follies sketch. The Bissonettes are an updated version of the Fliverton family with bungling husband, berating wife, and a brat.) Watching Howard’s ineptitude Mrs. Dunk delivers a parting shot: “I wouldn’t ride across the country with that man for a million dollars.” After the car finally starts the Bissonettes depart for their cross-country venture to the tune of “California Here We Come.” The trip to California is a new segment that Fields wrote. Harold’s pursuit of the American dream—the opportunity to have a more prosperous life in a new place—lies at heart of his mission. His goal is no different than the multitude of migrants on the road to California during the Great Depression. Having left his produce store where he failed due to his mismanagement and munificence, Harold yearns to strike it rich with an orange grove estate. “I’ve got my heart set on a thing, I’m goin’ through with it,” declares Harold after reading a brochure on a typical California orange ranch. In his store were orange crates decorated with colorful graphic art images of a paradise with perennial warm sunshine, blue skies, verdant foliage, orange fields, and other motifs promoting the “California Dream” of a blissful life. Faster railroad shipping, packaging, and promotional campaigns had increased the consumption of oranges. Advertising companies hired by fruit monopolies such as Sunkist pitched the “health, domestic happiness, prosperity, respectability” of oranges. Their “Drink an Orange” campaign was targeted “at middle class hopes for the good life, and by so doing further linked these aspirations by subliminal association to Orangeland California.”12 During the 1930s, orange crate art also depicted the dreamland of Hollywood, its film stars, and upcoming movies. In 1934, a picture of Fields’s face appeared on a crate advertising “It’s a Gift” brand of oranges. The Bissonettes spend the night at a trailer camp. Amelia tells her husband, who has been drinking, that there is no room in their tent. She orders her husband to sleep on a deck chair. “Don’t forget to put some wood on the fire. And no more drinking.” He finds the chair folded and tries in vain to open it. Thwarted, he hurls the chair into the campsite fire. Harold spots travelers singing around the campfire. They are among the masses of unemployed poverty-stricken wayfarers on the road to California. The lower-middle-class Bissonettes with their inherited money, however, do not resemble the displaced farmers ravished by the

102 

A. F. WERTHEIM

horrific dust storms. What they have in common is the search for a better life in California. The Bissonettes are another displaced family driving to an unknown future hoping to find a new life. Feeling a bond with the singers, Harold joins the songsters. He tells them that as a young man he was a member of a glee club in Philadelphia. Do you know the “Two Sweethearts” song? He begins singing the tune until he hears a nearby “Moo” from a cow who puts him “off key.” Annoyed by his singing, Amelia yells “Harold!” He starts singing again until Amelia flings a boot at his head which knocks his straw hat off. “Coming dear!” he retorts. The trailer camp scene and footage of dilapidated vehicles heading West link the film to the tragedy of poverty and unemployment during the Great Depression. Moviegoers next see the Bissonette family looking for a picnic spot. Once found, Harold drives into the grounds of a large estate. “Look out where you’re going!” states Amelia as a loud crash is heard. “Oh, look what you’ve done!” Years later, Jean Rouverol, who played Mildred, Howard’s daughter, recalled that the scene was to end with Amelia’s complaint. Fields, however, loved language and agonized over every line in his script. “He was not only book oriented in terms of getting the best language but he was heck of an ad-libber too.”13 As the camera rolled, Fields improvised Harold’s response to Amelia—“she ran right out in front of the car.” “Why it’s a statue, you idiot,” retorted his wife. “It’s the Venus de Milo. Look what you have done.” At the picnic site, Harold starts eating a mouthful of crackers. “These are the best crackers we had in the store. We sure picked out a delectable spot.” Amelia orders him to give his son half of his sandwich. He puts all the meat in his portion and selfishly gives his son two pieces of rolled-up bread. “Sit down and eat like a gentleman,” demands Amelia. Harold takes a pillow but their dog Buster starts to tear it apart, causing feathers to fly all over the place. “Never knew your mother had any feathers. Whew!” He starts eating a sandwich full of feathers. Harold removes his straw hat and feathers fall over his face (Fig. 8.2). By now, the lawn is littered with cans, papers, and garbage. Norman, who has been busy throwing cans at a broken statue, turns on the sprinkling system, causing the grounds to become a soggy mess. The owner and an employee suddenly arrive and order them to leave before they are arrested. Amelia quarrels with them and wants her husband to join the argument. “Don’t argue with ‘em dear,” he retorts. “They’re beneath our dignity!” Once in the car, Amelia scolds her husband for his

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

103

Fig. 8.2  The picnic scene (It’s a Gift). Left to Right: Jean Rouverol (Mildred), Buster the dog, Tommy Bupp (Norman), Fields (Harold) trying to open a can, Kathleen Howard (Amelia) (Courtesy, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

cowardly silence. “Why were you sitting there like a stone image when those men were insulting me?” “I was just waiting for one of ‘em to say something to me.” After their long coast-to-coast trip the Bissonettes arrive in California, passing miles and miles of beautiful orange groves. The family is excited, including Amelia, who suddenly sees their cross-county trip as an opportunity to begin a new prosperous life. “Oh, look at these lovely trees,” says Amelia as they pass a luscious orange grove. As they near their property, they stop to ask a neighbor, for directions. His abode excites Amelia, “I hope our ranch is half as nice as this.” “Wait till you see it.” “Maybe I’ve been wrong about this whole thing.” “I knew you were, dear (puts his arm around her) but I never said anything. We’re all liable to make mistakes.”

104 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Arriving at their property, they find the opposite: dusty soil, dried out vegetation, and a dilapidated shack. Amelia is furious: “Well here we are. Here’s your orange grove. You knew it all as usual…. You dragged us out here. Spent every nickel on this and now what.” As a sign of hope, Fields holds what he thinks is a “young orange tree.” “It’s a weed, you idiot! Look at this house. A ranch house… It’s a shack!” Optimistically, Harold retorts: “I can spend a lot of my spare time fixing it up.” Harold walks to the porch and finds a horseshoe nailed to a beam. “They say it’s lucky to walk under a horseshoe,” he states as he steps on a loose floorboard that whacks his leg. He enters the house where every item he touches breaks apart. “May have to rebuild after all.” “What with?” asks Amelia who is now furious. “Well, you can stay here and wallow in this misery. I’m not. We’re going.” She takes the children and drives “away from this filthy dump.” Left alone, he sits dejectedly on the porch’s steps with his dog Buster. Between his lips is his perpetual cigar that has been there since he departed. His car is in shambles; his property worthless; and his family has deserted him. Only his pet dog remains. “Everything goes at once. We’ll have to take back the old choo-choo,” he mumbles to Buster, who licks his face. Harold then wraps his arm around the dog. It is Bill’s most tender scene with “man’s best friend.” The affectionate scene contrasts sharply with Fields’s mistreatment of dogs in earlier films when it became a running gag hyped by studio publicists and movie magazine writers. Like his severely blemished proboscis and drinking exploits, Fields capitalized on playing characters who abhorred canines. But he actually owned several dogs during his life (Fig. 8.3). His neighbor suddenly appears with the news that a racetrack is going to be built near Harold’s property and that the proprietors need his land. He urges Harold to “hold out for any price.” To gain courage for the negotiations, he drinks liquor from a flask. The fast-talking racetrack owner arrives with his partners and tells Harold that he wants to build a gas station on his land. While continuing to imbibe, Harold refuses his latest offer of $25,000. Amelia, who has returned, urges him to accept. “Are you drunk or crazy?” “Neither one.” “Harold, listen to me!” she pleads. In an action that contradicts his character as a weakling, he removes her from the negotiations. “You keep out of it. This is a private argument.” Noticing Harold’s drinking, the enraged promoter exclaims “You’re drunk.” The accusation causes Harold to utter one of Fields’s legendary expressions:

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

105

Fig. 8.3  Fields sits with his cinema companion, the dog Buster, studying the film’s script. It’s a Gift. A photograph that contradicts Fields’s hatred of dogs. Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

106 

A. F. WERTHEIM

“Yeah, and your crazy. I’ll be sober tomorrow, and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.” “All right. What’s your price?” asks the racetrack tycoon. Harold opens the brochure that lured him to California, which shows a large picture of a “typical California orange grove” with acres of trees as far as the eye can see. “See that orange ranch,” declares Harold. “That orange ranch and $44,000.” “That’s a holdup,” replies the owner. After conversing with his partners, the owner agrees to the deal. Amelia faints from the news. Harold hands his flask to Mildred. “Here, give her some of this reviver.” Recovered, she looks up at Harold, her face radiant with amazement. “You’re an idiot, but I can’t help but loving you.” “Give her another drink,” says Harold after hearing the first words of endearment from his wife. The next sequence shows the newly wealthy Bissonettes in their luxurious orange grove estate. It begins with a close-up of a sign reading “Bissonette’s (pronounced Bis-o-nay) Blue Bird Oranges” and then the camera pans to a stack of orange crates labeled with the same trademark. Harold stays home in his sweet abode while the others, including Mildred’s fiancé, leave in a luxurious limousine. Harold sits at a table with bottles of liquor and behind him is a large orange grove. He plucks an orange from a nearby tree, slices it in half, and pours the juice into a glass. While looking around to make certain his family has left, he fills his glass with liquor. Harold gives the other half of the orange to Buster the dog, who is seated next to him. He leans back in his chair, his face beaming with a smile of contentment. Harold has finally found his California dream. The movie was released on November 30, 1934, during the economic crisis when male breadwinners found themselves unemployed and helpless. The portrayal of Howard achieving his American dream sent a hopeful message to fearful moviegoers—that at the end of the dark tunnel lay a ray of hope. The happy-ever-after ending in It’s a Gift typifies numerous films that depicts Fields as the browbeaten Everyman gaining his reward through luck or self-reliance. The bungling inventor Sam Brisbee in So’s Your Old Man and You’re Telling Me strikes it rich with his unbreakable windshield and puncture-proof tire. In the The Bank Dick (1940), the ne’er-do-well Egbert Sousè hits the jackpot with his beefsteak mine, reward for capturing a criminal, and a film contract. Bisbee and Sousè are uncomfortable in their elegant surroundings and would rather carouse with their drinking buddies. Harold prefers to relax in the

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

107

sunshine rather than go with his family in a limousine. Refusing to be corrupted by their new affluence, Fields’s strike-it-rich characters keep their integrity by remaining loyal to their values. These endings suggest that there is more to life than wealth. The last scene was filmed at Fields’s spacious and picturesque neo-Spanish ranch house in Encino, then a relatively undeveloped community in the San Fernando Valley. Three days before It’s a Gift was released, Fields wrote his lawyer Bob Burkhalter: “Just finished a picture called “It’s a Gift”…. I have rented a 14 [71/2]-acre ranch, just outside of Van Nuys on which I grow everything from apples to bananas…. As I write this, I am looking out from a window over my orange [italics mine] and lemon groves to the mountains twenty-five miles away…. The sun is warm and effulgent.” “Now I’m a Gentleman Farmer,” he said: “I am watering my orange trees with gin instead of water. Then all I have to do is squeeze the juice in a glass.” “All real actors,” explained Fields, “live their roles. If I am to portray an orange grower, I must grow oranges.”14 Located three miles from the nearest abode, Fields enjoyed his hacienda’s isolation, its spaciousness (a cure for his dislike of cramped quarters), and the feeling of being close to nature. As a trouper for seventeen years he had lived in hundreds of boarding houses and hotels in noisy towns but as a Broadway and screen performer he rented houses outside the city, some with pastoral views of the seaside. In an article entitled “Now I’m a Gentleman Farmer” in The Hollywood Reporter, published soon after he finished It’s a Gift, Fields described his abode where he “communes with nature.” “I enjoy my trees and my vegetables and my flowers. I love nature. Beauteous, bounteous, beneficent nature. I love the sun and the moon (particularly the moon) and the stars. I love the soft winds, and the gentle dripping rain.”15 The bountiful grounds were covered with orange, cherry, and lemon trees, which emitted intoxicating aromas. In the vegetable and flower gardens, Bill planted various seeds in the spring, consciously watered them, and watched them grow. Across the way was a goldfish pond, a swimming pool, and a tennis court where Fields competed against friends for money. In a corner stood a portable homemade bar stashed with liquor, ice bucket, and glasses. Fields was known to play tennis holding a highball in one hand. His buddies marveled at his “vicious chop shot that landed just over the net, with reverse English, and bounced back on his side, much [like] he made tennis balls behave when he was juggling.”16

108 

A. F. WERTHEIM

His abode gave Fields a rare sense of belonging. “There, in my little home, I am way from the hustle and bustle of this work-a-day world,” he said. Fields despised the drudgery of working nine to five; one reason he chose showbiz as a career. To his chagrin, he found that a screen actor had to be on the set early in the morning and work until the late afternoon. In the evening there was homework, reviewing or rewriting the script. “There is peace, and quiet, and solitude in the country,” he said. He enjoyed his country home because he was far from Hollywood’s maddening crowd and their rounds of endless parties. Bill was not a party animal although he did have a coterie of drinking buddies he often invited to his house, especially to play poker. When the owner wanted to move back after a year, Fields was willing to pay double the rent but his offer was rejected.17 Fields’s love of nature probably stemmed from his life as a youth. There was abundant open land near his parents’ dwellings located in Philadelphian neighborhoods where there was a community feeling. Here, he played with his friends on land near where horses and cattle grazed. Although he went downtown to Philly’s center, Bill was never a “city kid.” His first job was helping his father collect and sell fruits and he never forgot the produce and its pungent aromas. The film’s conclusion mirrors Fields’s life at this time. Bill’s contentment in his pastoral abode certainly echoes Harold’s bliss at the end. Like the film’s protagonist, Fields had driven to California in 1931 in search of a new beginning. Fields drew on his own experiences between 1931 and 1934, years that reflected his own pursuit of fame in Hollywood’s celluloid dream factory. Having completed eight features during 1933–1934, he was now a top-rated screen comedian with a substitute income. By the end of 1934, Fields was rated “the second most important male star on the Paramount lot.”18 Although the film was considered unexceptional, Fields was given excellent reviews for his performance. Leading the naysayers was Otis Ferguson’s lethal critique in The New Republic “In It’s a Gift, his presence dignified a magic-lantern show that as it stood could not, without the grace of block booking have ever made the grade of being doubled billed into the neighborhood houses of Canarsie.” The Literary Digest found the production “crude, clumsy, and quite amateurish in appearance.” Nonetheless “a great comedian appears in it and has a free hand in his brilliant clowning.” Richard Watts likewise thought an amateur production was saved by Fields’s “hearty and magnificent… work.”

8  MAGNUM OPUS.1 

109

Variety felt the story was “of the thinnest thread” and “just a series of gags.” Fields, however, “does one of his best jobs in this picture, one that should stamp him among the screen’s leading comedians.”19 One perceptive critic, however, recognized the film as a prized gift of a great comedian to the public. Andre Sennwald wrote in The New York Times: “It’s a Gift immerses the beery, adenoidal, and bulbous-nosed star in a variety of situations which he promptly embroiders into priceless and classic comic episodes…. Mr. Fields had come back to us again and It’s a Gift automatically becomes the best screen comedy on Broadway.”20 The following week Sennwald published an insightful analysis of Bill’s comedy entitled “W. C. Fields, Buffoon.” “Mr. Fields is a great comedian because he traffics in high and cosmic matters relating to man’s eternal helplessness, frustrations, and defeats. Not to be aware of the tragic overtones in the work of this middle-aged, whisky nose, fumbling and wistfully incompetent gentleman is to be ignorant of the same tragic overtones in the comedy of Don Quixote de la Mancha.” It’s a Gift, wrote Sennwald, “presents for our amusement that part of the human composition which is plagued by persistent frustrations, bullied by an inescapable sense of inadequacy, and tormented by the problems involved in complex associations with other human beings.” In so doing, “Fields is the great healer, taking unto himself grievous human burdens and in the same breath teaching his disciples to crucify him with laughter as his reward for purging them of the futilities.” Fields speaks “for all of us who are condemned to be the shamefaced victims of our fellows and the mockery of our friends as a result of persistent lapses from what the world esteems to be sanity and correctness.” Sennwald believed that Fields’s humor sprung from the comedian’s own tribulations. “Several of the sober items in the master’s [Fields’s] career bear a gratifying resemblance to the lunacies in which he deals professionally.” The long list of Fields’s “complex associations with other human beings includes his wife, estranged son, another son out of wedlock, and one calamity after another in the perils of show business.”21 It’s a Gift illustrates Fields’s ability to take a character he performed on the Broadway stage and to reinvent that role in a silent picture and sound film. Rather than being criticized for overusing similar stale characters, the comedian makes each individual distinctive. Fields’s flair to convert the druggist Pa Jones from the play The Comic Supplement into three diverse figures—Elmer Prettywillie (It’s the Old Army Game); Mr. Dilweg (The Pharmacist); and Harold Bissonette (It’s a Gift)—stands

110 

A. F. WERTHEIM

out as a remarkable feat in the comedian’s career. The metamorphose from stage to screen illustrates how critically significant Fields’s theater career was to the evolution of his comedic art. The evaluation of It’s a Gift to its rightful place in the pantheon of great screen comedy came later when a new generation during the last decades of the twentieth century pronounced the film a comic masterpiece. It’s a Gift was named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2010. Today, the film stands out as Fields’s first magnum opus.

PART III

1935: A Remarkable Year!

CHAPTER 9

A Perfect Mixture of the Part and the Actor

“Once in a lifetime a player gets a part he can settle into with a sigh of relief,” stated Fields. “From the very first minute he feels at home. And for one of the very few times in my life that’s what has happened to me.” Bill was talking about playing Wilkens Micawber in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, which had opened a month earlier. “What Dickens had was imagination,” said Bill. “It was unsurpassed. And his character delineations were superb. They simply walked off the pages into your life, to live on with you until the end of your days.” A friend asked Bill: “Do you think you can get away with this part of Micawber in David Copperfield?” “I ought to be able to,” retorted Fields, “I’ve been rehearsing this fellow for forty years.”1 His admiration for the English novelist blossomed into using the flowery, rhapsodic language spoken by Dickens’s characters. He could never say “hit him on the head,” remembered his secretary Magda Michael. It had to be “conk him on the noggin.” In the play and film versions of Poppy, the showbiz huckster Eustace McGargle is dressed in the garb of a showman during the late Victorian period and pontificates in rich hyperbolic patois. The mountebank McGonigle in The Old Fashioned Way (1934) is a clone of McGargle. Both McGargle and McGonigle are in debt and like Micawber are several steps away from being arrested by the sheriff. “I’ve been playing Micawber all my life, under a lot of different names and never knew it,” said Fields. “He’s the kind of guy who is always expecting something to turn up to help him out of his present difficulties.”2 © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_9

113

114 

A. F. WERTHEIM

“Reading Dickens was my start in collecting names,” he declared. The following are among Fields’s favorites: from Oliver Twist: Sowerberry and Bumble; from the Pickwick Papers: Augustus Snodgrass and Sergeant Buzfuz; and from Bleak House: Volumnia Dedlock and Harold Skimpole. When Carlotta Monti lived with Fields during the 1930s, she counted nine of Dickens’s novels by his bedside. “He devoured the Victorian stilted phrases, and would mark passages from various books that appealed to him.” Fields especially liked Macawber’s remarks when he first meets Copperfield. “My dear Copperfield, this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense of the instability of all humans—in short, it is a most extraordinary meeting.” Walking along the street together, Copperfield immediately feels Macawber could be a “valued friend.”3 Another reason for Fields’s worship of Dickens was Bill’s English ancestry on his father’s side. In 1935, Bill wrote a revealing letter to his cousin George Stevenson: “Strange, as it may seem, I have become quite important as an entertainer in England and I am anxious to have as much data as possible on my English ancestry to use in the publicity work.”4 Bill’s grandfather, John Duckenfield, hailed from Sheffield, Yorkshire, one of the country’s most polluted industrial cities, where he and his brothers worked as skilled comb makers and made other products. John’s family was relatively poor, and their cottage industry was impacted by the Industrial Revolution. The economic upheaval caused the products made by the Duckenfields to be mass produced by mechanization in factories, forcing master craftsman like John out of work. By 1857, the large Duckenfield family, including Fields’s father James or Jim, born in 1841, had immigrated to the USA, initially living in the Kensington area in northeastern Philadelphia, known as Little England, where many migrants from Great Britain worked as weavers in the textile industry. During his vaudeville years as a juggler, Fields made six regular trips during the summer entertaining in London’s venues and in the larger English cities. “I’m quite as much home here as in America,” Fields told a British reporter. “I have a great regard for the English music halls. The best audience I ever played to have been in the west-end halls of London.”5 Although the damp weather often irritated his lungs and caused chronic colds, Bill’s tours included numerous highlights. Among them was performing in the traditional Cinderella pantomime at Manchester’s Palace Theatre during the extended Xmas holiday season in 1904. That same year he did his juggling stunts before

9  A PERFECT MIXTURE OF THE PART AND THE ACTOR 

115

King Edward VII and his entourage at the majestic London Coliseum where he supposedly was greeted afterward by the King. His pièce de résistance was appearing in a special benefit performance on October 11, 1913, before King George V, Queen Mary, and their family at the London Coliseum. During his vaudeville tours in the USA and abroad, he always carried a trunk full of books, including many by Dickens. On the same playbill with Bransby Williams, “The Hamlet of the Halls,” Fields intently watched from the wings his clever impersonations of Dickens’s characters. When he left Southampton for South Africa in January 1914, seven months before the start of World War I, he had no idea that he would never again see the home of his paternal ancestors. Considering the wanderlust experiences of his youth, Bill undoubtedly identified with the waifs inhabiting Dickens’s novels. Fields ran away from home when he got into a vicious fight with his father at age twelve or in his early teens. Although the amount of time he spent as a homeless youngster in Philadelphia has never exactly been determined, he did sleep a few nights outside in the cold, in numerous basement shelters, and he roomed mostly at a boys’ club with his friends. Bill and his buddies participated in all types of pranks, especially stealing food. When his tyrannical father was not at home, he visited his caring mother, who gave him food. For a time he stayed at the home of his mother’s sister, respectable Aunt Annie, who tried to stop his misbehaving and encouraged him to get a job. During his nomadic youth, Bill began practicing juggling pilfering fruit and tennis balls. Bill called his time away from home “a glorious adventure and every boy in the neighborhood would have been glad to change places with me…. I was a regular king among them because I was my own boss and could sleep away from home— which is what an adventurous boy longs to do.”6 In Hollywood, Fields embellished his youthful adventures for studio publicists and screen magazine writers, spinning a hyperbolic tale of a poor, homeless, and hungry urchin who rode freight trains as a hobo and landed in jail for stealing. Bill’s mythmaking as a Huckleberry Finn runaway or Dickensian urchin made good copy for the Hollywood press. Although Bill’s low-income working-class family faced hard times, especially during the 1890s Depression, they were never as poverty stricken as Charlie Chaplin’s parents residing in the slums of London. They were forced to send Chaplin to a workhouse at age seven and then to a school for orphans and destitute children. Bill’s experiences as a runaway youth

116 

A. F. WERTHEIM

nonetheless provided him with enough tribulations to identify with the orphans, urchins, and waifs that inhabit Dickens’s novels. How David Copperfield became a film and how Fields won the role of Micawber is an intriguing tale in Hollywood lore. The film was the brainchild of prominent producer, David O. Selznick, known for transferring literary classics into motion pictures, a rare aspiration in the dream factory. As studio boss at RKO, for instance, he made Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women in 1933. That year he returned for his second tour of duty at MGM where he was awarded his own production unit. In 1930, he married Irene Mayer, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer, Metro’s omnipotent West Coast studio head, known for his complex personality ranging from charming and sentimental to calculating and vindictive. At MGM, Selznick produced Night Flight (1933) from a novel by the French author and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry and in 1935 Tolstoy’s Anne Karenina and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. At RKO and MGM, Selznick befriended George Cukor, an outstanding director who shared his vision. Cukor first gained experience in the theater directing a stock company in Rochester, New York, from 1920 to 1927, followed by managing Manhattan’s Empire Theatre for two years Starting in 1930, he began directing feature films for Paramount before moving to RKO and MGM, where he became Selznick’s favorite director. At Metro, Selznick produced and Cukor directed Dinner at Eight (1933) based on the Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. The success of Dinner at Eight prompted Selznick and Cukor to propose David Copperfield as their next production. Dickens’s autobiographical novel was one of Selznick’s favorite books. As a Russian immigrant boy living in England, he remembered his father often reading the novel in order to learn English, which also aroused his son’s interest in the book. The Metro brass were lukewarm about filming literary classics that would require expensive sets and costumes and a costly large ensemble cast to play numerous characters. Fearing a financial loss for David Copperfield due to a limited audience, MGM’s executives felt the film would only do well at the box offices in England and in American urban areas populated with educated inhabitants who enjoyed reading literary classics. Mayer favored wholesome entertaining movies for the masses (musicals, comedies, adventure films, and series pictures, etc.) starring the large list of talented performers in Hollywood. Mayer was lukewarm about David Copperfield but gave his blessing to the project in order to avoid battling with his son-in-law.

9  A PERFECT MIXTURE OF THE PART AND THE ACTOR 

117

Selznick and Cukor started casting for the film. For the role of David Copperfield, they discovered an angelic ten-year-old English boy, curlyhaired Freddie Bartholomew, who had theatrical experience on the British stage. The renowned English actor Charles Laughton known for his flamboyant characterizations and pompous oratorical skills was selected after much persuasion to play Micawber. He told a Birmingham newspaper that he was “the perfect incarnation of Dickens’ character.” Known for his insecurity, the capricious Laughton lost interest after several days of shooting, which convinced him that he was not right for the role. He felt his last Dickens’s characterization, playing Pickwick at London’s Haymarket Theatre was a failure. “I felt sure that that my Micawber would be worse than my Pickwick.” Freddie Bartholomew supposedly cried when he saw Laughton’s grotesque makeup and shaved head. “It’s no good,” he told L.B. Mayer. “I’m sorry but with my head shaved like this I look horrible. I’m a monster…. You’ll have to let me go.” Although Cukor considered Laughton the biggest star in the ensemble, he had decided after a few days of shooting that he lacked “the geniality or the innocence for the part.” (Laughton’s wife, the splendid character actor Elsa Lanchester played Clickett, a servant in the Micawber household.)7 Cukor and Selznick already had Fields in mind in case Laughton walked out. “He was really born to play it,” Cukor recalled, “that rare combination of personality and the part…. Physically he wasn’t quite right, wasn’t bald as Dickens describes Micawber—but his spirit was perfect…. He was charming to work with, his suggestions and ad libs were always in character.” Unlike most of the cast, Fields did not speak with an English accent. “He always spoke with a slightly bogus accent…. It wasn’t American, it wasn’t anything. That’s an interesting picture because there’s a picture that was very, very British.” Laughton even supported Fields taking the role of Micawber. After he saw the picture, he wrote in a Birmingham newspaper in England that Fields “is the perfect incarnation of Dickens’ famous character.”8 An agreement needed to be worked out between MGM and Paramount for the loan-out. Paramount was hesitant initially because they wanted Fields to immediately begin filming his role in Mississippi. The studio granted Fields permission to act in David Copperfield as long as he returned to Paramount no later than November 11, 1934. Should he be delayed beyond that date the studio asked MGM for financial compensation $18,251.31, for the expenses incurred from Mississippi. For his twoweek shoot, Fields was paid $50,000. Worried about Bill’s appearance

118 

A. F. WERTHEIM

in Mississippi if MGM wanted Fields to replicate Dickens’s d ­ escription of Micawber as bald, Paramount inserted the following provision in the agreement: “That you shall not shave your head or remove your hair there from the purpose of rendering your services in the said David Copperfield.”9 As a substitute, Fields wore a large top hat that disguised his locks and resembled the type he wore playing small-time showmen. During the shooting, Fields mostly honored the words from the screenplay written by the English novelist and poet Hugh Walpole, president of the Dickens Society. “He would suggest things—in his own way—but he spoke the lines absolutely the way they were written,” declared Cukor. “Then, occasionally, he would say things in rehearsal that I thought were funny, and he would do it in the scene…. He just happened to fit that role perfectly—he was born for it—and there were little comic bits of business which he uniquely could get away with. He was a law unto himself. With a regular legitimate actor playing Micawber, those misadventures that Fields did for himself would be absolutely fraudulent. But with Fields, he was so much a personality that it all became part of his character.”10 But at times he did improvise to the delight of Cukor. “George would let the camera roll whenever he [Fields] started saying something that wasn’t in the script,” remembered Michael Pearman, the director’s assistant. “Fields was such a character—he would start to juggle fruit on the table. George thought it was terribly funny.” “Some of my happiest memories are those of W. C. Fields entertaining with his juggling [when] we made David Copperfield,” Cukor recalled. The scene that depicts Micawber, a bookkeeper, at a tall desk dipping his pen in a teacup instead of his inkwell was Fields’s idea. He also asked for a wastepaper basket when he was sitting on a high stool so that he could get his feet stuck in the receptacle, a routine from the The Fatal Glass of Beer. “He brought in any number of old gags, but the spirit was somehow Micawber’s,” said Cukor. “He was a charming and inventive man, not too honest, not too easy to know, and the character of Fields and the character of Micawber was so close that it made for rather an interesting reading of the part.”11 The chemistry between Micawber and Copperfield was harmonious with each displaying empathy toward one another. When Micawber sees David in the blacking factory, he shows a genuine concern for the boy. The departure of Micawber causes David to express his sincere compassion for his new friend. During the shooting Freddie Bartholomew developed a favorable opinion of Fields. Bill got along very well with

9  A PERFECT MIXTURE OF THE PART AND THE ACTOR 

119

Freddie since he did not play a brat but a charming “curly-haired ten year-old British schoolboy with perfect English diction,” said Cukor, the film’s director. “He had a noblesse oblige and it was terribly difficult to make him cry (Fig. 9.1).”12

Fig. 9.1  Fields as Micawber with Freddie Bartholomew as David in David Copperfield (1935). Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

120 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Cukor was dedicated to making the film as authentic as possible. “The difficulty when you do a Dickens thing is not to make them caricatures. Retain the exaggerations, but make them as human as well.” He strove to stress the novel’s strength. “You’ve got to find out when you do these classics, what is the strength, what has made them so, what is the vitality, and capture that as best you can.”13 A box-office bonanza, the film cost a little more than one million dollars but grossed nearly three million dollars in its eight-six-week run, a quarter of the profits derived from the British Commonwealth countries. The movie was nominated for Best Picture in 1934 but the Oscar went to Mutiny on the Bounty starring Charles Laughton. Rave reviews permeated the press both for the film and Fields’s performance as Micawber. Emblematic was the appraisal written by the well-respected Andre Sennwald, the New York Times movie critic. “It is my belief that this cinema edition of David Copperfield is the most profoundly satisfying screen manipulation of a great novel that the camera has ever given us.” Three thousand miles away the Los Angeles Times reviewer called the picture a “real screen accomplishment… faithful to its subject in the largest respects, the film transcription evidences the power and resources of the studios.”14 Some critics felt the 132-minute film was too long by the standards of the time. They believed that the first half was much better than the second half, which covers David as an adult played by Frank Lawton. Freddie Bartholomew was so terrific that when he disappeared from the picture the audience was despondent. Cukor knew that the first part of Dickens’s novel depicting David as an ill-fated boy was more powerful and heart wrenching than the second part. Some MGM executives wanted it cut or divided into two movies but Cukor and Selznick rejected their suggestions, believing that the picture should reflect Dickens’s complete narrative. “To get the strength of a novel, you’ve got to do the weaknesses,” said Cukor.15 A Fields aficionado, Sennwald gave Bill one of the most laudatory reviews he received during his entire screen career. The critic “noticed that Fields had achieved what Cukor had described as a “perfect mixture of the part and the actor.” “Being himself pretty generally a spiritual descendant of Mr. Micawber, W. C. Fields manages with the greatest ease to become one with his illustrious predecessor according to the directions laid down in the text of Dickens and the drawings of Phiz.” (Phiz, the pseudonym for Hablot Knight Browne, was the famed illustrator for David Copperfield and other Dickens’s works.) The critic felt

9  A PERFECT MIXTURE OF THE PART AND THE ACTOR 

121

Fields was the predominant performer in the picture. “When you have heard him in his lofty rhetorical flights, heard him in the speech that begins: ‘You perceive before you the shattered fragments of a temple that was once called man’; heard him say: ‘With renewed courage I again throw down the gauntlet to society,’ you will perhaps understand that Fields can do no wrong.”16 Fields felt doing David Copperfield was a high point in his career. He said: “All my life David Copperfield has been a favorite book and I’ve laughed my head off over Micawber many times, never dreaming I’d bring him to life. It is such coincidences that make acting a thrilling game.”17

CHAPTER 10

Mississippi River Card Shark

After David Copperfield, the challenge to play Orlando Jackson, a Mississippi river showboat operator in the Antebellum South, was a huge leap for Fields. Why Paramount cast him in a film that had already been done as two silents, The Fighting Coward (1924) and River of Romance (1929) is puzzling? Both pictures were based on Booth Tarkington’s 1924 short-lived Broadway play The Magnolia. As mentioned earlier, Fields faced considerable pressure from Paramount to finish David Copperfield as soon as possible so that he could begin filming his role in Mississippi, a musical comedy/drama already in production. In addition, he was under contractual obligations to do the movie. (Fields was paid $6875 weekly for six and one-half weeks of work, earning a total of $44, 687.) The film exemplifies Paramount’s bent on churning out movies as fast as possible often without regard for advancing their stars’ careers. The constant executive changes at Paramount created a chaotic environment. Production heads came and went from Manny Cohen to Ernst Lubitsch, who was in charge during the filming of Mississippi, “Lubitsch didn’t like the picture particularly during the days it was being made,” said producer Arthur Hornblow.1 The studio chaos caused Fields to believe that he was constantly skating on thin ice. As his drinking increased exponentially, the ice got thinner and his reputation became more precarious. Hornblow remembered that Fields arrived at the studio in a trailer so that he could get more sleep on an installed bed. The producer felt © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_10

123

124 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Bill “was difficult to work with…. He was ill-tempered, drank… much too much. But one’s respect for his talent was so enormous that it all didn’t seem to matter very much. I personally loved him, despite his bad temper, his grouchiness, and in time, perhaps because of my incorrigible affection for him, he came to like me a little, although generally I thought he felt that all producers were a lot to be despised.”2 The production of Mississippi was marred from start to finish by cast changes, arguments over the screenplay, clashes over songs, performers’ absences, and onset rivalries. The tenor and radio star Lanny Ross was selected to play the singer Tom Grayson. But a rough cut revealed that Ross, a bland vocalist, was unfit for the role. Ross was replaced by the popular crooner Bing Crosby, a radio celebrity, recording artist, and a Paramount up-and-coming movie star with four films under his belt, starting with The Big Broadcast of 1932. The Paramount brass believed Crosby was much better for the box office. Joan Bennett assumed the role of Lucy Rumford, originally intended for Elizabeth Young. Already a star in numerous films, Bennett’s career blossomed when she signed a contract with Walter Wanger in 1934. Fields consequently found himself back in a co-starring role with Crosby and Bennett with the crooner regularly listed first in the movie’s publicity. Having just received exceptional reviews in David Copperfield, Fields felt aggrieved. Crosby’s role as Tom Grayson, a Philadelphia pacifist who later becomes known as the “killer singer,” formed the love story’s nucleus. Engaged to a daughter from an Old South wealthy plantation family, Grayson is spurned because he refuses to fight a duel with his rival. Converted to fierceness, he returns to the plantation where as a new man he gains the hand of the Rumford’s younger daughter Lucy (Joan Bennet). Crosby, who weighed 190 pounds, had to wear tight pants in the costume picture so he needed to diet. “I had to be strapped up, and I soon found out why women are so anxious to get out of their girdles.”3 Crosby’s role was enhanced by singing five songs by the famed Broadway team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (lyrics). Fields and Crosby had been friendly neighbors when both lived at Toluca Lake, where the crooner witnessed Bill’s war with the swans, played golf with him at Lakeside, and together frequented the club’s bar. Bill “couldn’t hit a long ball but… was a terrific putter” due to “his superb co-ordination from having been a juggler…. And he was a master at manipulating the betting arrangements on the first tee.” Crosby called him “one of my idols…. He knew what he was doing every moment and

10  MISSISSIPPI RIVER CARD SHARK 

125

what each prop was supposed to do.” According to Robert Lewis Taylor, the comedian’s first biographer, “Crosby had an idolatrous, filial attitude toward Fields, whom he always called ‘Uncle Bill’.”4 The idolatry apparently vanished once they became rivals on the set. Fields feared Crosby might steal the picture so Bill took every chance he got to filch the limelight. Bill believed that Bing’s decorous façade made him a pushover. Crosby had “a terrific sense of humor” recalled the film’s director Eddie Sutherland. “Fields was so funny for Crosby that Crosby couldn’t play scenes with him—it kept breaking him up.”5 Mississippi was Sutherland’s fourth film directing Fields. By now, the director had become a personal friend, mentor, and drinking buddy. During the filming, he noticed that Bill’s passion for liquor had become a serious problem that impacted his health and altered his time on the set. “Fields was all right from about 9 in the morning till 2—he’d just go out, and I’d stall around and shoot other stuff…. That’s one of the things you had to understand about Fields. By this time in his life, he could work in the morning, juggle a bit, work some of the afternoon, then he was tired out. He didn’t have stamina enough.”6 Bill was tired because his insomnia had gotten worse. He slept on a barber chair hoping it would relieve the constant pain in his back. Unable to sleep, he took extensive walks around his property. On the set, the makeup man needed to hide the large circles under his eyes. Sutherland let the comedian freely ad lib knowing that, if needed, his sequences could be left on the cutting room floor. But the director felt a responsibility to warn Crosby. “I got kind of worried,” Sutherland recalled. “We were changing the story.” Bing wondered why the director was agitated. “Well, you know, as this thing develops, we’re building the comedy for Fields, but I’m worried now that he’s going to be so funny he’s going to steal the picture from you. I feel it is my duty to tell you, you being my friend and the star above Fields.” “Well, tell me, is it good for the picture,” replied Crosby. “I think it’s great for the picture,” stated Sutherland, causing Bing to retort: “Forget it, it’s got my name in it, what do I care what Fields steals. I’m not a fundamentalist. This is business. If it’s funny, OK. I think he’s great.”7 Bill hated the script but had no choice but to do the picture under his contract. He wrote Eddie Sutherland, “I was hippodrome into playing this part and, as you know, it was nothing to write home about when they put it on paper.” The trouper, however, rose to the occasion knowing that as a Commodore on a Mississippi showboat he could

126 

A. F. WERTHEIM

revert to playing a mountebank. Fields’s skill at improvisation did not bother Hornblow. “I have very little respect, as a rule, for changing lines on the set, and had very little respect generally for actors attempting to improvise lines, Fields is the one exception. Fields really could improvise lines and make them much better than anything anyone wrote for him. He was a real original.”8 Drawing on his well-honed skills as a con man, card shark, braggart, debtor, and orator of tall tales, the plot presents Bill with a chance to lampoon his favorite targets. Fields was returning to familiar territory—a story about the popularity of outdoor entertainment in the late nineteenth century. If Poppy and The Old-Fashioned Way illuminate alfresco carnivals and medicine shows, Mississippi trumpets the vogue for showboats, which provided well-liked entertainment to folks living along or near America’s largest river. Playing Commodore Jackson gave Fields an opportunity to redress his inability to play Cap’n Andy in the Broadway production of Show Boat. The setting evokes one of Fields’s favorite writers, Mark Twain, who piloted a steamboat on the river and wrote about his exploits in Life on the Mississippi (1883). Bill’s hyperbolic stories on his showboat follow in the footsteps of Mark Twain, the nation’s most famous teller of tall tales. To impress a woman and a planter on board, the raconteur relates his feats fighting Native Americans. Woman: What a treat this is to ride up here in the pilot house with you… Commodore! Commodore: Not at all, not at all. The pleasure is all mine…. Planter: Why I didn’t know you were an old Indian fighter. Commodore: In the olden days— Woman: Oh, you don’t know how thrilling, all this is to me, Commodore! Commodore: Oh, thank you. My last encounter with the Redskins was over thirty-five years ago. I was a mere stripling. Planter: Is that so? Commodore: Yeah, I whipped out my revolver… Planter: Revolvers weren’t invented thirty-five years ago. Commodore: Uh-uh—I know that, but the Indians didn’t know it. It doesn’t bother me. I threw it away. Woman: Oh, how exciting! Please don’t interrupt. Commodore: I’d just swum the rapids. Had my canoe under one arm and a Rocky Mountain goat under the other. Planter: How could you swim without the use of your arms?

10  MISSISSIPPI RIVER CARD SHARK 

127

Commodore: Uh-uh—in those days, I had-uh-I had very strong legs-uh-uh excuse me—very strong limbs. Woman: You must have been full of fire in your… youth! Commodore: I had to carry fire insurance until I was over forty. As I arrived on the river bank, I was encountered by the entire tribe of the Shug Indians, the most ferocious… Commodore: (to planter): Have you ever been in Shug territory? Planter: No, I haven’t. Commodore: Ah, that’s fine. I unheated my bowie knife and cut a path through this wall of human flesh, dragging my canoe behind me. Woman: (gasps) Commodore: Oh, I’m very sorry. Perhaps I’ve gone too far.9

The exchange between the Commodore, the woman, and the planter stands out for several reasons. The sequence exemplifies Fields’s reputation as a teller of hyperbolic tall tales. With its emphasis on fighting Native Americans and heroic feats, the tale resembles stories about heroic nineteenth-century frontiersmen (i.e., Davy Crockett) told by several writers from the southwest—a literary genre that later flowered in the writings of Mark Twain. Fields portrays the Commodore as a braggadocio but like typical tall tales his boastfulness is punctured by the planter, who questions his use of a revolver and swimming the rapids without use of his arms. The Commodore continues telling the tale until looking at a porthole he mistakes some wooden cigar store Indians as real Native Americans, which causes him to change his story from a violent encounter to one of brotherhood. “Since that time, of course, the noble red man and his pale faced friends have smoked the pipe of peace. Why I wouldn’t… think now of harming a hair on a red man’s head than I would sticking a fork in my mother’s back. Heh… why, some of my best friends are Indians… Shug Indians.” “What happened to the goat” asks the planter? “He was very good with mustard,” replies the Commodore. As discussed in The Fatal Glass of Beer, Snavely (Fields) tells his wife that he ate his lead dog, Balto, who “was mighty good with mustard.” Repeating one-liners with slight variations appear consistently in Fields’s comic dialogue. In addition, he often uses a goat as a comic figure. In My Little Chickadee (1940), Mae West places a goat under the covers of their bed and while in the bathroom he smells her cologne, calling it “Eau de Rocky Mountain Goat.” In Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), he drinks “nanny goat’s milk.”

128 

A. F. WERTHEIM

The movie’s poker game sequence rates as one of Fields’s best performances as a card shark. It is the second of three poker playing scenes; the first came in You’re Telling Me and the third in My Little Chickadee. Fields’s skillful poker playing can be linked to his portrayal of con men. His sleight-of-hand talent played a significant role in his poker routines. Early in his showbiz career as a vaudeville juggler, he had displayed his masterful ability to use his hands for the purpose of deception. He fooled the audience as a trickster who pocketed all his pool balls with a single cue stroke while an assistant manipulated strings under the table. Fields played the shell game on the screen, using his hands to move the pieces so quickly that the sucker failed to notice the hoax. The card shark (or cardsharp) has been around for centuries, as evident in The Cardsharps (ca. 1594) a painting by Caravaggio. It especially flourished as a performance art beginning in the early twentieth century and especially during the time Fields was in vaudeville and in the Ziegfeld Follies. The poker resurgence started in 1902 with the publication of The Expert at the Card Table: The Classic Treatise on Card Manipulation written by S. W. Erdnase, a pseudonym. This popular instructional booklet covered about every sleight-of-hand card trick such as bottom dealing, shuffling, and palming.10 As discussed earlier, Fields watched Follies star Bert Williams perform his marvelous poker playing sketch against an invisible opponent using pantomimic facial expressions and body language. Williams’s silent film, A Natural Born Gambler (1916), featured the sketch in which he sang “The Darktown Poker Club.” Besides Williams, Fields could have seen numerous magicians perform card tricks on stage. Mississippi antebellum steamboats were especially known for its competitive poker games between card sharks and naïve passengers. George Devol’s autobiography Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi (1892) reveals poker’s popularity on boats traveling up and down the river. Herman Melville’s classic, The Confidence-Man (1857), takes place on April Fool’s Day aboard the Mississippi steamboat Fidèle, a vessel comprised of passengers masquerading as various types of fraudulent swindlers. Although the novel does not portray a poker game, it describes the characters’ involvement in scam schemes and illustrates Americans’ penchant for gambling and cheating. In Melville’s novel, the steamer becomes a poignant metaphor for the prevalence of hoaxers preying on gullible suckers in American society.

10  MISSISSIPPI RIVER CARD SHARK 

129

Melville writes critically about the prevalence of violence against Native Americans. He delves into the metaphysics of Indian-hating and introduces his readers to John Moredock famous for killing numerous “red men.” Prejudice against Indians was particularly fervent during the mid-nineteenth century when Melville wrote his novel. Mississippi reveals this bigotry in the sequences dealing with the Commodore’s bragging about killing Indians. Nihilism pervades Melville’s novel, the belief that humbuggery rules America. “It is—or seems to be—a wise sort of thing, to realize that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them,” wrote Melville to a friend. Melville’s pessimism and cynicism predates Fields’s skepticism, distrust, and iconoclasm during his life.11 As mentioned earlier, Mark Twain possessed a special relationship with the Mississippi River. Raised in Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the river and a steamboat pilot on the waterway before the Civil War, Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi (1883), a memoir of his experiences— part nonfiction and part fiction—embellished with tall tales. In one chapter, a professor relates a yarn about a steamboat gambler posing as a cattleman who outwits several cardsharps in a high-stakes game of poker. Like the action in Fields’s poker sequence, the cattleman announces a hand of four aces with revolver in hand. “I’m a professional gambler myself, and I’ve been laying for you duffers all this voyage!”12 To impersonate a card shark, Fields needed to possess the skills necessary to fool his competitors: false shuffles, deceitful cuts, stacking, and culling, moving cards to the deck’s top or bottom. Dealing also required special talents to distribute the cards from the bottom (bottom dealing), second from the top (second dealing), and from the middle of the deck (middle or center deal). Fields’s poker playing sequence opens with the Commodore wearing a sporty skipper outfit and a hat labeled captain, puffing his habitual cigar, and surrounded by three players. Seated to his left is a sinister-looking gambler named Andrews wearing a black patch over his eye. Sitting on a stool above the Commodore is another individual who is obviously planted there to tip the Commodore about his competitors’ hands. While singing and humming “Swanee River,” the Commodore shuffles two decks. Feeling that the Commodore’s cards are marked, Andrews says “let’s deal the red ones for luck.” Mistrusting the Commodore, another player declares: “Wait a minute let me cut those cards.” The Commodore deals himself five aces. Noticing his cards are

130 

A. F. WERTHEIM

worthless, Andrews retrieves a better hand by retrieving four aces from the pocket inside his coat. The other opponent also holds four aces. Still holding five aces, the Commodore tries to divert his competitors by ordering another Mint Julep. This gives him time to toss one of his aces over his shoulder. Andrews: I’ll bet the works. McDonald: So will I. Commodore: I’ll just see that then. Andrew: Four Aces. Commodore: Huh? McDonald: That’s funny. I’ve got four aces! Commodore: Oh, don’t tell me! Andrews: There’s only four aces in the deck and the man that holds the first four wins. What have you got? Richmond: That beats me. Commodore: I don’t know. I’ve got to look. I haven’t— Andrews: Well, look! Come on, what have you got? (draws a gun) Commodore: I haven’t—Well, what do you think of that? (laughs) Just a little pair of deuces (laughs). (The Commodore’s cards are turned over revealing five aces.) McDonald: Where I come from there’s only one thing they do with a crooked dealer.13

McDonald throws a knife at the Commodore. Luckily, the Singing Killer (Crosby) has arrived and stops the knife with the back of a wooden seat. The Commodore lights the barrel of two pistols with his cigar. Shots ring out causing the players to begin to run away. The Commodore yells, “Get out! Be gone. Never darken my gangplank again!” Thus ends one of Fields’s classic poker scenes with the Commodore escaping with his life. In Mississippi, Fields’s alcohol consumption becomes a major part of his on-screen persona acquired from his own habit of routinely imbibing. Mint Juleps are his favorite beverage delivered by a steward as a running gag throughout the movie. Early in the film, the Commodore and General Rumford, the plantation owner, have a conversation about drinking. Rumford gives him a jug of liquor. “Oh, thank you. A nice little noggin, yes.” “It’s made right here on the plantation,” says the General, “so you needn’t be afraid of it.” The Commodore assures him, “Never been frightened of liquor in all my life.” (laughs).14

10  MISSISSIPPI RIVER CARD SHARK 

131

Reviewing the script, Joseph Breen wrote to John Hammell, Paramount’s distribution executive, suggesting “that you watch the excessive drinking on the part of the Commodore because of late the censor boards have been rather drastic in their eliminations on this subject.”15 Fields became Breen’s bête noir, a vendetta that zoomed over the years. He also criticized the comedian’s gambling sequence. “We would like to caution you not to show the method of cheating used by the gambler.” Breen’s demands could be excessive. In a letter to Hammell, he asked that Fields’s line while seeing the cigar store Indians parading past the window be deleted. Evidently former Postmaster General, Will H. Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and Breen’s boss, had not seen Mississippi when he wrote a congratulatory letter to Fields on March 18 praising him for his performance in David Copperfield. (Mississippi was released on March 22.) Bill replied thanking Hays: “I am deeply grateful to you for your thoughtful letters and your kind words regarding me in “David Copperfield.” I hope that I can live up to the warm esteem in which my good friends hold me in this picture work.” Bill ended his letter with a sentence dripping in nonFields-like schmaltziness: “I hope you are well and happy and that I will see your sweet smiling face in the near future.”16 Fields reputation as the “Bad Boy” of cinematic flagrancy had apparently not yet reached the Hays Office. During his performance, Fields was able to lambast his favorite targets. “Don’t you think marriage is wonderful?” asks a shipmate. The question allows Bill to utter a zinger: “It’s all right for women. Women are like elephants to me. I look at ‘em but I wouldn’t want to own one.” Statements like this contributed to Fields’s reputation as a misogynist. The accusation, however, is awash with contradictions. Like drinking, his attitude toward women boosted his callous persona on screen. In his private life, Bill experienced considerable pain with Hattie, who legally remained his wife. His relationships with his female partners such as Bessie Poole and others (discussed later) were rocky. By contrast, his affiliations with numerous women within his circle of supporting performers (Elise Cavanna, Alison Skipworth, Kathleen Howard, Mary Brian, Jean Rouverol, Gloria Jean, etc.) were cordial and amiable. “He’s a most loveable person, really, and most considerate,” said Howard, his nagging wife in two films and as Mrs. Murchison, the town’s snob in You’re Telling Me. Howard perceptively understood what she called Bill’s

132 

A. F. WERTHEIM

“delightfully belligerent trait.” “You see, he had such sordid beginnings, had to fight for everything he had.”17 Fields also befriended women in the Follies such as Fannie Brice, Louise Brooks, and Ray Dooley, to name a few. Girls are treated with more dignity in his films compared to boys, who are portrayed often as spoiled brats (Baby LeRoy)—a reflection of Fields’s estrangement with his son, Claude. The best example is in The Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935), which has a nasty stepson named Claude and a charming daughter named Hope. Legend has it that when Fields saw Mississippi he left the theater overjoyed that he had stolen the picture. Given free reign by Sutherland, Fields often embellished his sequences, including making the poker scene three times longer than scheduled. But in the lobby he overheard a woman say, “Wasn’t he wonderful?” There was a slight pause until she added “I could listen to him sing forever.”18 The comment fueled Fields’s opinion of Crosby as an underhanded thief. Plus it added to his feeling already formed from earlier experiences that all singers were lightweights compared to actors. After seeing initial previews, Crosby felt Fields had filched the film and asked Sutherland to cut some of Fields’s footage. The director obliged giving Crosby new love scenes with Joan Bennett and one additional song. A sequence in which Fields plays a large steam-powered calliope was cut. In total, about one-third of the film ended up on the cutting room floor. The increased cutting made the film disjointed, causing critics to wonder if the movie was a musical or a full-fledged comedy. One critic felt that the film had “a story which doesn’t know which way to turn.” Variety’s critic noticed that “Paramount obviously couldn’t make up its mind what it wanted with the film; it’s rambling and hokey…. And it never jells.” The reviewer noticed that the film “may have been severely cut after completion because some bits and sequences are not even followed through, but left in the air.”19 Fields had earlier complained in a letter to the producer Arthur Hornblow pleading with him not to “cut out the scene where I sit on the steps and tell Bing to continue on in case I should not continue with the boat…. The comic should get a bit of sympathy.” Bill’s comment is significant because it reveals his feeling that pathos should be part of his screen persona. The gruff con men he plays should even have a kind side. “Please give it a chance in the first preview,” he implored. “Only

10  MISSISSIPPI RIVER CARD SHARK 

133

the audience can tell us if it does not belong. The opinion of a few sharpshooters in the projection rooms is never dependable.”20 According to the reviews, Fields still outperformed Crosby despite the cuts. Writing in the New York Times, Andre Sennwald declared that the film was “pleasant only when he [Fields] was around.” The Motion Picture Herald critic wrote that Fields’s “comedy, in both dialogue and action, is good for its full quota of laughs.” Variety’s reviewer felt that “Fields works hard throughout the film and saves it, giving it whatever entertainment value it has.”21 The reviews boosted Fields’s reputation but he was still annoyed that Paramount had placed him in a co-starring role. The crooner Crosby and the comedian Fields failed to jell causing the film to appear disjointed. Bill wrote to Sutherland divulging the continual insecurity that dogged him in Hollywood: “I can’t afford at this critical moment, when things are right for me to show up at a disadvantage in any film. I need every little bit of comedy or pathos I did in this film.” After his brilliant performance as the star in It’s a Gift, Paramount had cast him in two costume pictures, David Copperfield, in which he was part of a large ensemble and Mississippi, in which Crosby got top billing. “Please for Christ’s sake, protect me in this one,” he wrote Sutherland. What he needed was a film in which he was the sole star, otherwise he believed his career was stagnating.22

CHAPTER 11

All in the Family

The production of The Man on the Flying Trapeze created one of the most frenzied experiences in Fields’s film career. Among those responsible for the filming was William LeBaron, who had rejoined Paramount in 1932 as a producer. LeBaron’s presence at the studio proved again an asset to Bill’s career. Knowing Fields’s need to star in a feature, he supported producing a partial remake of his earlier silent movie Running Wild (1927). Another significant figure behind The Man on the Flying Trapeze was its director, Clyde Bruckman, who Fields liked from the time he directed The Fatal Glass of Beer. A talented comedy specialist, Bruckman earned his stripes writing and directing silent and sound movies starring Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, and the Three Stooges, among others. Known as “The Gag Man,” Bruckman relied on repeating surefire material from other films, a common practice in moviemaking. Up to the mid-1940s, reusing film jokes, sequences, and plots—doings retreads rather than fresh takes—was such an acceptable practice among movie comedians that it was rarely critiqued. Joke stealing from rival comics became more or less a necessity for those in need of material. Fields, as mentioned earlier, was a habitual recycler, especially using material from his stage sketches going back to vaudeville and the Follies. But many other comedians also indulged in the practice. Joke stealing was a complicated issue. A comic might sue a rival for pilfering a gag. As Anthony Balducci, an expert on jokes, points out: “The comedian’s © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_11

135

136 

A. F. WERTHEIM

code was that a routine should belong to the comedian who could perform the funniest and most timely version regardless who came up with the idea first. In this way the delivery was more important than the routine itself…. A good routine is indestructible. It can be transferred, altered, rearranged, extended and updated, but it can never be wiped out.”2 Through the centuries, comedic themes travelled as fast as wildfires from Aristophanes to Shakespeare and Molière and from Shaw to Beckett. Once a film’s subject proved profitable before long a rival studio was producing a movie with the same topic. Using an undergraduate campus as a backdrop, Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925) was followed two years later by Keaton’s College (1927). Chaplin’s dance of the bread rolls in the Gold Rush was pilfered from Keaton’s 1917 short The Rough House. A minority of reviewers criticized Fields for rehashing old material. The daily Variety critic felt Trapeze was “a repetition of comedy sequences” and its weekly magazine called it “a picture consisting of a string of old mother-in-law gags.”3 Others admired Fields’s talent to take an earlier joke, sequence, or silent picture and create an innovative fresh take. “When Mr. Fields in his necessary search for comic business, is forced to strike up a nodding acquaintance with vintage gags, they seem to become almost young again,” wrote Andre Sennwald. Compare, for instance, these remakes: the silent It’s the Old Army Game to the Talkie It’s a Gift or Sally of the Sawdust to Poppy. Whether silent or sound, both have their merits within their diverse mediums. Enhanced by his inimitable voice, Bill’s screen career zoomed whenever he generated a Talkie that was more humorous than the original silent version. His philosophy of comedy reinforced his proneness to repeat routines that stood the test of time. “The funniest thing about comedy is that you never know why people laugh,” wrote Fields. “I know what makes them laugh, but trying to get your hands on the why of it is like trying to pick an eel out of a tub of water.”4 Fields and his good friend Sam Hardy worked on the story that would become The Man on the Flying Trapeze in Bill’s bucolic home in Encino taking bits and pieces from Running Wild and embellishing the plot with different twists. A prolific talented performer who had graduated from the stage to the screen, Hardy was known for “his sartorial elegance, a stogy, a vividly checkered suit, a rakish derby, and a booming voice.” He played villainous and comic parts in movies, including a role in King Kong (1933). The friendship between Hardy and Fields started when the two performed together in the 1916 Follies. Hardy often

11  ALL IN THE FAMILY 

137

competed against Fields on the tennis court at Bill’s home. They made a compatible writing team. Hardy, a skilled screenwriter created an original story while Bill inserted the comic elements using his favorite nom de guerre, Charles Bogle. After the film was released, Fields wrote Eddie Cantor, that Hardy “was invaluable” to the picture. “He knows all the answers, he can scold the Hell out of you and from his long experience in the legitimate, knows the situations.”5 Shooting nonetheless started on April 7, 1935, without a finished script. Fields and Hardy wrote the dialogue daily at the Paramount stage set. A few times the production came to a halt because there was no script to shoot. After the daily rushes were screened during midday, the company needed to shoot retakes. More delays were caused by late appearances and absences by Bruckman and Fields. The assistant director reported on his daily logs that Bill was often late to work, took long lunch breaks, and sometimes went home early explaining he felt ill. Fields’s health was undoubtedly deteriorating. Besides back problems, insomnia and the flu, he was drinking profusely on the set. In addition, he was exhausted from the grind of making so many films annually and overly stressed by the extra burden of preparing a script.6 The assistant director reported that Bruckman was often tardy. He spent a three-day lost weekend due to his drinking habit, although to save his reputation his absence was reported as an illness. Bruckman’s absences caused Fields and Hardy to temporarily take over the directing duties. According to an article in the film’s press book, Bill wanted Hardy’s advice about how to shoot a take. “In this scene I think I should say the line sternly, but with vigor.” “Right,” said Hardy. “I hoped you would have some other idea.” “Of course not, your idea is perfect,” replied Hardy.7 Despite all the problems involved, the filming took only three days longer than expected and the production costs came within budget. The movie was shot under the working title Everything Happens at Once, a perfect designation that describes all the indignities and calamities Fields’s character, Ambrose Wolfinger, faces in the film. By the end of filming, the name was altered to The Man on the Flying Trapeze. Fields backed the change since he had used it as a temporary title in other films. Its popularity dated back to “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” a trendy 1867 song composed to honor the circus trapeze artist Jules Lĕotard. During the mid-1930s, the song had a resurgence, especially in 1934. That year William Saroyan published his

138 

A. F. WERTHEIM

popular novel, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. The tune appeared in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night and in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) film Mike Fright. The audience buying tickets to The Man on the Flying Trapeze thought they were going see to a picture about a trapeze circus artist. Instead they sat through a domestic comedy that depicted family and marital life as a daring and treacherous trapeze act. The weekly Variety critic felt that Paramount was “capitalizing on the title” of the song. “The authors, producers, and direction didn’t bother for one second tying the title and story up…. There is no trapeze anywhere in sight.”8 But metaphorically there was. The Man on the Flying Trapeze covertly elucidates Fields’s precarious private life and business career: the nadirs and peaks he experienced as a comedian, and the estranged love– hate relationships he had with his wife Hattie and son Claude. The characters in The Man on the Flying Trapeze read like a disguised Who’s Who of Fields’s family and friends. Since he co-authored the movie’s story under his favorite pseudonym, Charles Bogle, the feature can rightly be called the most autobiographical of his films. Ambrose Wolfinger stands out as the most henpeck character in his films. He is a bureaucratic clerk who has worked in the same company for twenty-five years due to his ability as a memory expert to quickly find a file that his boss needs. His talent to recall miniscule details of a transaction is the only reason his employer retains him. According to the Los Angeles Times reviewer, one of the best comical scenes was Fields “reaching into this desk piled high with a great litter of papers and thumbing his way to a four-year-old letter that his employer desires.”9 Fields performs the sequence using his superb talent for pantomime. Kathleen Howard returns for her third time in a Fields’s film as Ambrose’s badgering wife, Leona Wolfinger. Howard’s role is even more stinging than her characters in You’re Telling Me and It’s a Gift. “I hope people don’t really think I’m a nagging wife,” the former Canadianborn Metropolitan Opera contralto and later fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar remarked. “Bill’s stuff is spontaneous; he ad libs as he goes, and if he changes the lines in every take it is up to a good little contralto to think quickly and make a suitable response.” On the set she said that Bill gave her freedom “to do it your own way. He won’t call us down, but tells us to do something as well as we did some other scene.”10

11  ALL IN THE FAMILY 

139

Howard found Fields a “most loveable person… and most considerate,” but with a delightfully belligerent trait due to his “his hard life as a boy and a man.” She felt that Fields lacked nurturing as a youngster. “He has probably never experienced tender ministrations when he was sad or ill.” That was the reason “Bill knows an awful lot about women and doesn’t think too well of them.”11 Without mentioning any names, Howard might have known that her role as a harassing spouse derived from the abominable behavior Fields encountered from his estranged wife Hattie. The opening sequence in the couple’s bedroom depicts the explosive relationship between the two. Their verbal fisticuffs resemble a tug of war in which every criticism by Leona propels a “yes, dear” reply by her husband. Their dialogue illustrates the eternal battle between a nagging wife versus a milquetoast husband. While his wife is in bed ready to go to sleep, Ambrose goes into the bathroom to drink some liquor, which he has stored in a large jug. Pretending to brush his teeth, he rubs his toothbrush on the bathroom cabinet. He gargles with a mouthful of booze and instead of spitting it out he swallows the liquid. His sneaky behavior makes his wife suspicious. Leona: What are you doing in the bathroom? Ambrose: Uh—I’m brushing my teeth dear. Leona: I don’t know what’s come over you lately. You’re always in that bathroom brushing your teeth! Ambrose: Yes, dear. Leona: Are you sure you’re brushing… your teeth? Ambrose: (gargles) Uh—yes dear.

Leona implores her husband “to come to bed and put the lights out.” Ambrose responds with a series of “yes, dear,” “yes, dear,” “yes, dear,” “I’m hurrying dear.” He finally reappears and while sitting on his bed (separate beds to appease the censors) takes each sock off, blows into them, and neatly folds them. “What are you doing now?” questions Leona. “Uh—I’m taking my socks off, dear.” Ambrose takes a fly swatter hanging on the wall and whacks his pillow. “You’re certainly making a lot of noise taking your socks off!” “Yes, dear.” “Please come to bed and put the light out.” “Oh yes dear.” Fields and Howard create one of the screen’s best parodies about the eternal marital battle between a

140 

A. F. WERTHEIM

meek husband versus a harassing wife. Soon Leona hears voices coming from the cellar and pleads with her husband to go down and confront the intruders.12 “Don’t sit there like a bump on a stump! Go down and throw them out. Hurry! Hurry, Ambrose, hurry!… Go down quickly, Ambrose. We’re in danger, I tell you. We’re in terrific danger.” Ambrose takes his time confronting the burglars and wants to put on his socks. “What does it matter whether you’ve got your sock on or not, Ambrose.” “I’ll catch cold down there.” “Oh, Ambrose, hurry, hurry! They’re great murderers—brutes, Ambrose! They’ve got guns. Now, what are you looking for, Ambrose?” “I can’t find my socks. You’re getting me so nervous. I’ve lost my socks.” Instead of getting ready he swats an insect with his flyswatter. “Oh, don’t swat flies. Hurry, Ambrose.” She asks her husband to get their gun. After discovering his wife’s gloves and a bunch of walnuts in the bedside drawer, Ambrose retrieves the pistol. Thinking it is unloaded he pulls the trigger, causing a shot to be fired. Leona screams and falls on her bed. “Did I kill you?” asks Ambrose. “Oh, leave me in peace! Leave me in peace!” “Good, good, good,” declares Ambrose. “I didn’t kill you. (laughs) That’s fine.”13 Hearing the noise, Ambrose’s family enter the room: his crabby mother-in-law Cordelia Neselrode (Vera Lewis), another harasser that Ambrose has to confront. Also present is Ambrose’s mischievous stepson Claude. Ambrose asks Claude to go with him to the cellar but Cordelia defends Claude. “I know you have a heart of gold but if you want to see your poor old mother die of heart failure you go down to that cellar.” “Oh, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you,” replies Claude. In the film, Claude needles Ambrose and among his mischievous behaviors is that he steals his ticket to a wrestling match. Claude is the name of Fields’s real son, a designation that allows Bill to unleash his negative feelings about him. (Fields’s forename at birth was also Claude, a moniker he disliked.) Bill depicts Claude in the film as an unemployed worthless numbskull and a weakling “mama’s boy,” who is protected by his mother. Bill’s wife, Hattie, controlled their son, made false derogatory stories about his father, and limited their association. Claude is portrayed by Grady Sutton, a perfect foil for Bill’s barbs. He first appeared with Bill in the Sennett short The Pharmacist. “We immediately hit it off—because I could keep my mouth shut. From then on he would ask for me, or write a part especially for me. He’d say ‘Grady’s got to do it.’ He would always stick up for you, especially

11  ALL IN THE FAMILY 

141

if you blew a line. He never did what he had done in rehearsal.” Grady recalled a situation that occurred in the dining room scene in The Man on the Flying Trapeze. “He [Fields] is going on like a madman. And a few minutes later I hear the director yell ‘Cut’. He said, ‘Grady why don’t you come in on your cue’. And Bill says, ‘I didn’t give the boy a cue. Leave him alone—I never give cues’. Afterward Bill told me, ‘Now look, son we’ll work it this way. When you think I’ve said enough, well you just butt in.’”14 Among the more than one hundred films Sutton completed by the late 1970s, four were with Fields. “He was a wonderful man, so wonderful.” People like Fields knew “that it’s not just themselves that made a picture good but that every bit player, everybody involved, contributes something.” Asked if there was “an advantage to working with the same people all the time,” Sutton replied: “People that you’ve worked with can just say one word, or give you a look, and you can do it… it’s like going into a friend’s house.” The relationships between Bill and his regular character actors created a symbioses in which both prospered. Loyalty to his prized featured players exemplified one of Fields’s finest traits.15 Only Hope, Ambrose’s daughter, volunteers to go with her father into the basement. Putting his arm around her, Ambrose says: “No you won’t dear. You stay here.” Hope is the only family member in the film who supports Ambrose. She is a prime example of Fields’s favoring daughters over boys in his screen oeuvre. His painful experience with his son Claude caused Bill to favor daughters. He wished often that Hattie had given birth to a daughter rather than a son. Hope also illustrates Fields’s penchant for naming characters after people he knew. Hope is a young British girl adopted by Maud Fendick (Fields’s first paramour after he separated from his wife). The correspondence between Hope and Uncle Bill, as she called him, reveals a mutual attachment. She carried his letters in her school bag and showed them to classmates, who called her W. C. Fields the second. Uncle Bill also sent her gifts, including an autograph book signed by Hollywood celebrities. Fields demanded that Paramount cast adorable Mary Brian as Hope since she had performed similar roles in his silent movies Running Wild (1927) and Two Flaming Youths (1927). She is among Fields’s favorite character actors, appearing in three of his films. Called “The Sweetest Girl in Pictures,” Brian delighted audiences with her dark brown curls, blue/gray eyes, and affectious smile. When Fields lived in Toluca Lake

142 

A. F. WERTHEIM

she resided on the opposite shore. At the Academy’s centennial celebration of Bill’s birth on January 29, 1980, she divulged that all the stories about Bill fighting and feeding the swans on the lake were true. The director Norman McLeod, another neighbor, told her that “Fields feeds them bread crumbs soaked in rye.”16 “Luckily he liked me because he used to request me whenever they had a father and daughter story.” Fields admired her ability to respond to his constant ad-libs. “Fields always wanted it spontaneous. He would ask me to go and do something that we never rehearsed,” she recalled. “He would tell me certain lines that would be the identifying line for me to say whatever he wanted me to say, but he used to say that ‘in between that, you keep doing this, you try to get me to do whatever the thing is and no matter what I say, you just keep after that one point.’” On the set, she recalled that “every corner was lit, because I never knew where he was going to send me to pick up a bathrobe, get this telephone for him, so no day was ever dull working with Mr. Fields.” Brian believed that Fields was never lackadaisical about his performances. “He was really something to see because he was really much more serious about his work than most people ever give him credit.” Looking at the audience at the celebration, she declared “I adored him.” When she retired in 1947, the popular actress had appeared in eighty-two films.17 By the time Ambrose decides to descend to the cellar, there are three people downstairs drinking Ambrose’s applejack: a patrolmen sent by the police department, the burglar Willie the Weasel (Tammy Young, a foil from Fields’s stock company) and burglar Legs Garnett (played by up-and-coming Walter Brennan, who would win three Academy Awards for best-supporting actor by 1940). The three are singing the popular ballad “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away,” written in 1898 by Paul Dresser, Theodore Dreiser’s oldest brother. The burglars recall singing the song as youngsters at the Orlando Supper Club and “when on Saturday nights we used to get plastered on apple jack.”18 Bill does a slapstick pratfall by falling down the cellar stairs and landing at the bottom on a plank with a sharp nail. “Why couldn’t I fall on a small dull one?” Soon Ambrose joins the barber-shop trio of inebriated singers by drinking his homemade applejack. Upstairs Leona is yelling: “It’s a quartet. Merciful heavens, he’s singing with them now!” The quartet escape through the basement window, teetering down the street to the police station where the Judge frees the burglars but sentences Ambrose to thirty days for possessing applejack without a license.

11  ALL IN THE FAMILY 

143

In jail Ambrose resides with a maniac murderer who has killed his wife. The encounter gives Fields a chance to spew his views on marriage when his cellmate tells him that he killed his wife by taking his scissors and piercing her throat. “Wouldn’t you do the same under the circumstances?” “I’d do the same thing, I guess, or probably worse,” replies Ambrose. “But this is the first one I have killed in all my life!” “Oh, that’s in your favor, yes…. They have no more case against you than a sheep has against the butcher.” After daughter Hope provides the bail money her father leaves jail, goes home to get some sleep, and plans to join his family for breakfast. As in It’s a Gift, the conversation at the breakfast table becomes a minefield of explosive arguments among the family members. The sequence cogently reveals Fields’s belief that the American ideal of hearth and home is a sham. Before Ambrose gets to the table, the exchange between Hope and Claude reveals the dissension between the two: Claude: Wonder how the old jailbird is this morning? Hope: If you’re referring to my father, I think it’s very bad taste, and not a bit funny! My father’s not only been kind to you, and during the eight years that you’ve lived here, he’s never said one unkind thing about you. Cordelia: You’re throwing that up to us, are you? And just because poor Claude cannot find work. You needn’t throw that in our face! Hope: I’m not throwing it in your face or trying to be unkind, but I can’t sit here and listen to both you and your son continually belittling my father. He’s been too good to you. Leona: He’s the most trying man ever put on this earth!

By the time Ambrose arrives most of the food is gone, consumed by gluttonous Claude encouraged by Cordelia. “Eat them up, lambkins. They’re good for you.” “Anymore wheat cakes and sausage?” Ambrose inquires. “There would have been if you’d get to the table… when the others got here,” declares Leona. She begins to read a poem by Gertrude Smun [Stein?] and wonders if her husband is listening. “Oh, yes dear. I beg your pardon. Yes. Are you going to eat the rest of that sausage?” “Yes, I am.” “Oh, well, that’s all right.” Finding a slice of toast, Hope wonders if it is warm. “No dear, it’s cold,” her father replies. “It’s all right, I’ve been eating cold toast for eight years now.” Leona

144 

A. F. WERTHEIM

loves the poem, especially the ending “unhappiness is a joy.” “Isn’t that beautiful?” she asks her husband. Knowing he is stuck unhappily in a household with three irritants, Ambrose surely cannot believe that “unhappiness is a joy.” But to appease his wife and avoid any confrontation, Ambrose meekly replies “very beautiful, dear, very beautiful.” Ambrose leaves the table with Hope, who has overheard at breakfast that Claude has a ticket to a wrestling match. Her father admits that he has lost his ringside ticket. “Exactly what I thought!” states Hope. “He [Claude] stole that ticket out of your pocket. I despise him, Dad. He’s a lazy, good-for-nothing, fat, over-red monkey.” She encourages him to ask his boss for the afternoon off so that he can go to the match. Returning to his job, Ambrose tells the company’s president that he wants the afternoon off because his mother-in-law has died from poisoned liquor and he needs to attend her funeral. “It must be hard to lose your mother-in-law,” states his employer’s secretary. “Yes, it is, it’s very hard. It’s almost impossible.” On his way to the wrestling match Ambrose experiences several calamites: Parked along a red-painted curb, he gets several parking tickets by different policeman, rams his car into autos behind him, including an ambulance, which triggers the patient being thrown out the back door. A flat tire leads to Ambrose chasing his car’s runaway wheel down the road and railroad tracks, barely missing being killed by an approaching train (a venerable slapstick sequence à la Keaton). Waiting in line at the wrestling arena, the ticket seller shuts the window in front of him signaling the match is sold out. While standing outside the entrance, a gigantic wrestler is thrown out of the ring and arena, crashes into Ambrose, causing him to end up bruised in a gutter. Seeing Ambrose, Claude declares “drunk again and lying in the gutter.” Spotting his pretty secretary trying to help Ambrose, Claude believes that the two are having an affair. Ambrose’s secretary is played by Carlotta Monti, Fields’s current paramour at the time. “I had small parts in a few of his pictures,” she wrote in her memoir, W. C. Fields and Me. “But I was never sure whether I landed them due to our relationship, my talent or looks, or just because he wanted an ally on the set to side with him in arguments. And there were plenty of those.” She also sometimes served as his secretary taking dictation, including helping him with his scripts. Monti remembered that he told her that “any time a comic idea hits you, write it down. Don’t trust your memory no matter how good you think it is…. He always went to sleep with a pad and pencil

11  ALL IN THE FAMILY 

145

by his side in case a comic idea popped into his head.” Monti felt Bill was an insomniac. “His creative juices flowed freely throughout the long nights.”19 “I am full of admiration for those people who can slumber peacefully at any and all times,” Fields once said. “I sometimes am troubled by nightmares. The worst nightmare I ever have experienced is that I am being awakened from the best sleep I have had in years. I awake from these nightmares to find myself in a cold perspiration.” Due to his bad back, Fields slept for a time on a barber chair in his house. Bill’s insomnia can be related to the number of sleep sequences in his films: trying to sleep on a swing on a porch in It’s the Old Army Game and It’s a Gift, attempting to snooze lying on a berth in a train using a stolen ticket in The Old Fashioned Way, and in the Trapeze bedroom scene, discussed above.20 Returning home from his encounter with the wrestler, a battered Ambrose with a black eye, bloody cheek, and tattered clothes, gives a small bouquet to his wife, who hurls the flowers in his face. Caught in a lie, he sees a house packed with wreaths sent by his co-workers, who believe his mother-in-law has died. Ambrose is again besieged by his wife, mother-in-law, and stepson. Claude begins to berate Ambrose: Claude: What are you talking about? I saw you at the wrestling matches. When I saw you, you were drunk—lying in the gutter—and you had your secretary with you and she was drunk too. Ambrose: Listen, young man. I’ve got enough trouble and have just had about as much from you as I can stand. I did not ask for the afternoon off to go to the wrestling matches, which I admit was wrong. And another I said that was wrong, and which I regret, was that my motherin-law had died. Claude: And you were drunk and you were lying in the gutter. Ambrose: I can’t stand it any longer.

Ambrose knocks Claude unconscious to the floor. He also chases his wife and his mother-in-law throughout their home but Hope restrains him. His wife orders Ambrose and Hope out of the house. As he exits, Ambrose throws a huge wreath onto Claude uttering “Rest in Peace.” Although Hope and Ambrose find a new residence, he loses his job because he lied about his mother-in-law’s death. But his memory is so essential to the company the president decides to let him stay. Knowing

146 

A. F. WERTHEIM

her father’s importance in the office, Hope sweetens his return by negotiating a raise in salary and a four-week vacation with full pay. At Ambrose’s former home, Leona packs her husband’s underwear and socks. Cordelia thinks her daughter is “a perfect fool. Why don’t you let him come and get them himself?” Leona replies “please let me do things in my own way.” Cordelia suddenly blurts “I do believe you’re still in love with that old fool.” Leona retorts, “That’s a fine thing for you to call him after he went out of his way to invite you and Claude to go for a ride in his new car tomorrow.” For the first time, Ambrose’s wife is defending her husband. In the final sequence the members of his family are riding in Ambrose’s roadster when it starts to rain. Ambrose, Hope, and Leona are sitting in front protected by the convertible’s top while Claude and Cordelia are sitting in the rumble seat getting drenched from the downpour. Like many of Fields’s stage sketches and movie plots, the sixty-five-minute film closes on a positive note suggesting that Ambrose has regained his dignity and is now the head of the household. “A henpecked man gets sure-fire laughs,” Fields once remarked. “But the cardinal rule is that he must triumph over the shrew he married or his harridan mother-in-law in the end, after withstanding attempted bullying and severe tongue lashing.”21 Critics agreed that Fields’s fans would immensely enjoy the picture. “When you are told that the picture provides Fields to run wild upon the screen there is little reason for anymore comment. That is all that Fields addicts want to know.” Time magazine echoed: “Man on the Flying Trapeze will please those Fields cultists who are satisfied if the excellent comedian is visible and audible all the time.” Other reporters felt that the picture was marred by a thin story, lack of suspense, and a shoddy and slapdash production. The New Republic’s critic, Otis Ferguson, who preferred Bill’s con-man roles, had little to say about Fields playing a henpecked husband. Instead, he felt Bill was in a “rut” due to Paramount’s “casting him as a bit-player and shock-trooper for the smellers.” But he did call Fields “a national resource: he should be got [assigned] into his one ace picture before his time is out.”22 The mixture of comedy and a tone of seriousness about the American family blends together to create one of Fields’s best films. Andre Sennwald, the New York Times film critic, summed up the movie’s poignancy when he made a daring prediction: “It is possible that the final bibliography of Mr. Fields’s works will list his new picture… as one of

11  ALL IN THE FAMILY 

147

his most important screen triumphs.” A Fields aficionado, Sennwald lauded the comedian’s ability to portray the human condition enhanced by a biting iconoclasm. “For years this great comedian has been building his humorous effects out of futility, frustration and abject defeat…. He finally asserts his battered ego in one of the most satisfying scenes in recent motion picture history…. He runs amuck for a few satisfying seconds, slugging his bother-in-law into insensibility and aiming a brilliantly erratic haymaker at his terrified mother-in-law…. The comedy is frequently hilarious, and it always possesses those overtones of pathos and futility which we Fields idolaters recognize as his cynical comments on the world around him.” Fields was very pleased with Sennwald’s comments, writing that “Andre Sennwald certainly knows his business. I wish all critics were just like him.”23 Most critics, however, gave the film mixed reviews. Watching The Man on the Flying Trapeze about a weak milquetoast husband badgered by his family and battered by life’s obstacles failed to boost the morale of people hurt by the Great Depression, an unprecedented economic calamity when masses of jobless male breadwinners felt emasculated. Instead of enshrining the ideals of home and hearth, as many feel-good Frank Capra films did during the thirties, The Man on the Flying Trapeze lambasted the American family. The movie stemmed from Fields’s own experience with his estranged wife and son and the pain they caused him. Released at the wrong time, Trapeze suffered the same fate as It’s a Gift. What the naysayers could not see was that Fields had pulled off a comic tour de force. “Although not quite up to the superb standards of It’s a Gift,” wrote William Everson, “it was still top flight Fields.”24 The film generated consequences both for its director and star. During Bruckman’s later career, his creativity went downhill by recycling gags and entire sequences from his early films. He even took bits from Flying Trapeze and reprised them in two Columbia shorts during the 1940s. His habit to reuse early material led to losing infringement lawsuits filed by Harold Lloyd and others. Unable to create original scenarios and accused of plagiarism, studios refused to hire him. Chronic alcoholism caused Bruckman’s final demise in Hollywood. Broke and depressed, he shot himself in the head with a 45-caliber pistol, apparently owned by Keaton, in a restaurant bathroom stall in Santa Monica. The filming, which lasted four and one-half weeks, took a terrible toll on Bill’s health. His total salary of about $30,000 was little consolation. Besides insomnia, his duties as writer, part-time director, and

148 

A. F. WERTHEIM

star comedian had exhausted him. During the shooting, he was plagued by grippe and a sore back, which he reinjured playing tennis with Sam Hardy. An acute case of the flu caused him to be confined to bed with twenty-four-hour nursing care. In a letter to Elise Cavanna one month before the film opened Fields admitted that he was “one jump ahead of a nervous breakdown.” He called his sacroiliac injury “the most painful thing I have ever known in my life.”25 The film’s title, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, was an appropriate metaphor for Fields’s roller–coaster show business career. The fifty-fiveyear-old trouper’s journey from vaudeville to the screen saw him swinging from the depths of despair to the heights of success. Several times this precarious path was regularly repeated—from soaring skyward to plunging downward—leaving him in a perpetual state of insecurity. Sick and exhausted, Bill’s worries now caused him to question his future. Was he washed up? Like a death-defying acrobat had he finally fallen head first off his trapeze never to return?

CHAPTER 12

A Vocal McGargle Emerges

As far as his health is concerned, Fields had been living on the edge since his vaudeville years. “In 1900 at twenty years of age, Professor Fisher in Berlin, Germany proclaimed me a lunger,” he wrote to Harry Antrim, his partner in a two-man act when he played club dates in Philadelphia as a youngster. “Again in 1915 in New York City, a Dr. Jerome Wagner put me in front of a fluoroscope and said I had one lung completely gone and the other was full of scars.”1 He had suffered a string of serious accidental injuries while shooting his films (broken neck, a damaged vertebra, and a misplaced sacroiliac). Bill was almost killed while shooting a scene in Two Flaming Youths in 1927. After falling off a bicycle, he broke his third cervical vertebra and lying motionless on the ground a truck almost crushed him. The incident was followed by other deathdefying accidents and frequent hospital-sanitarium recuperations for delirium tremens resulting from his habitual drinking. Driven by the need to keep his name before the public, he gathered the strength to advance his career in search of the elusive goal—fame. His insatiable craving for applause, laughter, and stardom repeatedly drove him to persevere no matter what the cost to his health. The euphoria as a celebrity kept his demons at bay. Renown filled up voids in his life—the lack of family, the inability to sustain a long-lasting love affair, and the resulting aloneness that he constantly felt. After he finished The Man on the Flying Trapeze in May 1935, he was sidelined for ten months until March 1936. At age fifty-six, Bill’s © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_12

149

150 

A. F. WERTHEIM

precarious health and lavish lifestyle had caught up with him. His chronic illnesses included perpetual lung congestion, Paget’s disease, and acute pain in his sacroiliac. His injuries and illnesses left him terribly weak and unable to get out of bed. The inability to appear before the camera for such a long period drove him to despair. Concerned about his health, Elise Cavanna wrote Fields that she hoped that the reports in the papers about his illness were exaggerated and offered to help him. Bill replied: “I have a bad case of nerves, just one jump ahead of a nervous breakdown and have thrown my sacroiliac out, which is about the most painful thing that I have ever known of in my life, but I am beating it and in every way every day, I am getting better and loving you more. Your old sweetheart, Bill Fields.”2 Adding to his depression was the unexpected death of two close colleagues. The first calamity occurred on August 15 when Will Rogers was killed near Point Barrow, Alaska, while flying with Wiley Post in search of route between the USA and Russia. The accident triggered a fond remembrance: “Rogers was the nearest thing to Lincoln that I have ever known. His death was a terrible blow to me.” On October 16, Sam Hardy collapsed on the set while acting in an Eddie Cantor film. Rushed to a Hollywood hospital, Hardy died after surgery to remove an abdominal obstruction. Fields was heartbroken but too sick to attend his friend’s funeral.3 Fields’s only good news came on October 4, 1935, when Paramount signed him to a new lucrative contract. Aided by Bill’s agent Charles Beyer, the studio agreed to pay him $100,000 per picture for three films starting January 1, 1936, based on a salary of $6000 per week. In addition, he was guaranteed 10% of the gross receipts after the movie exceeded twice its production costs. Paramount also granted him equal billing whenever a co-star appeared in his pictures. Despite the agreement, a slew of films proposed by Paramount never materialized: The listed included prestigious titles such as Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, The Count of Luxemburg with Irene Dunne, and a movie version of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, a project Fields desperately wanted to do but it too fell by the wayside. During late summer and early autumn, the fifty-six-year-old warrior trouper went to Soboba Mineral Hot Springs nestled in the foothills

12  A VOCAL McGARGLE EMERGES 

151

of the San Jacinto Mountains. The Hollywood community favored the bucolic health resort, advertised as “a place to rest—a place to play—a place to enjoy life.”4 Its rustic bungalows and lodges decorated with Native American furniture and artifacts reflected its rich history as a mineral springs once favored by the Soboda Indians, who then still resided on a nearby 7000-acre reservation populated by 1200 tribal members. Two of Fields’s best colleagues in the film business—the director Eddie Sutherland and Paramount producer William LeBaron—visited him in Soboda and found him looking terrible. LeBaron favored a remake of Sally of the Sawdust, a silent picture which derived from Fields’s Broadway star performance in Poppy. According to Carlotta Monti, whose anecdotes often lack veracity, Fields tried to convince them by performing a dance, a monologue, and a pantomime with hat and cane. “I’m my old self, boys,” he told them.5 Thinking Bill was trying to con them, the Paramount bigwigs ordered the studio insurance doctor to examine him. Since the physician was on vacation the studio sent a young assistant, who Bill easily hoodwinked and reported that he was healthy enough to do the picture. Returning home to his Encino country estate, Fields still suffered a painful sacroiliac and even found writing a difficult chore. After briefly going on the wagon at Soboda, he began drinking again. In December, he wrote Ralph Huston, a Paramount writer/publicist, who was ghosting an article for him, to temporarily stop his assignment “until I begin to feel somewhat human again so that I can help.” He lamented: “Just when I think I can sit down and do a little work on these things, Grandpa Sacroiliac begins sticking pins in my back.”6 Fields was determined to do a sound version of Poppy. He wanted to complete the Poppy cycle begun on the Broadway stage, converted to the silent picture Sally of the Sawdust, and now the possiblity of a sound version. Having originated the role of McGargle, Bill refused to accept another comedian taking the role. In January 1936, he wrote a letter to a newspaper reporter: “I feel better. I honestly do. I feel as good as I have in months.” The best news, he wrote was that Paramount “has definitely decided that ‘Poppy’ will be my next picture, and I’m already working—mentally—on a lot of gags and situations and comedy lines.” He bragged that he had picked four oranges off his trees and “juggled them without blinking an eyelash.” He wrote that he was sleeping better. “I feel like applauding the lite singing birds instead of throwing rocks at them.”7

152 

A. F. WERTHEIM

By March, he decided to return to Paramount to star in Poppy knowing full well that his health remained risky. A daring gambler with an unmatched fortitude unwilling to surrender, Bill planned on faking his recovery, if needed. If ever there was a symbolic cat with nine lives, it was the ex-juggler turned comedian from Philadelphia. “I feel this is my second time on earth,” Fields said. “I am starring all over again from scratch. It’s all borrowed time I am living on, but I’m certainly enjoying it…. What I’ve gone through and come out of by a narrow squeak has certainly made me appreciate living, something I never did before.”8 “The best news of the season is that W. C. Fields is back at work again,” wrote Richard Watts, Jr. “It is fitting in several ways that Poppy should be the next vehicle for Mr. Fields.” The sound film represented his third attempt to play McGargle, a role that fit Fields’s persona to a T as a “shiftless and loveable reprobate.” In the sound film, “he comes back to the screen as one of its most gallant and illustrious veterans and the only comedian who is the peer of Chaplin.” For “sheer fun … Fields is superior.” “He can handle pathos with the best of them … and there is a certain battered and bewildered meekness about him that invariably makes for the proper degree of sympathetic appeal.” “His greatest quality,” Watts wrote, is “the sheer, hearty, racy humor that bubbles out of the man.” Chaplin’s little tramp is “the misfit in a complicated world and insane world.” His comedy deals with “symbols, sociological significance, and philosophical import.” Although Fields is “willing to be magnificently hilarious … he can’t quite help being a symbol.” The critic recognized that Fields plays two basic comedic roles, the bungling tormented husband and the beloved rogue. Watts perceptively concluded: “He stands for what we would like to think was typical American folk comedy at its highest degree. His blundering henpecked reprobate is the ideal American comedy hero.”9 When Fields first encountered Paramount’s huge back-lot set built in a hanger he eyed two hundred extras milling about at a carnival scene with elephants, banners, a brass band, a steam organ, and numerous booths with sideshow acts from a strongman to snake charmers. (Some critics complained that the indoor set made the action look artificial and stilted and preferred the outdoor rural setting in Sally of the Sawdust.) As the film’s technical adviser, Bill insisted on duplicating the carnivals he had experienced as a trouper: an arena fourteen feet, nine inches

12  A VOCAL McGARGLE EMERGES 

153

in diameter and sawdust three and a half inches deep. He was warmly welcomed back by several actors and by the crew, who were happy to see him return after nearly ten months away from the camera. After shooting a scene, he was encouraged to rest. “Never!” he shouted. “This is my return—the day of my return from the very portals of the grave! The day of my final triumph over my sacra-iliac!”10 Fields, however, failed to outsmart Sutherland, who knew the comedian better than any Hollywood director. After a few days, Sutherland discovered that Bill had more health afflictions. Inner ear problems caused him to lose his balance and fall frequently. “I shot scene after scene with men lying along the sidelines of the picture to catch him when he fell,” remembered Sutherland.11 He needed to sit in a special chair made by studio carpenters and wear a corset strapped around his waist. The stuntman, Johnny Sinclair, was employed as Fields’s stand-in. (Fields wanted Sinclair as his double in his films after he saved Bill from being run over by a truck when he fell off a bicycle and broke his vertebrae while shooting Two Flaming Youths.) A mask of Fields’s face was made, which Sinclair wore primarily for long shots. Fields performed close-ups while sitting with a supporting device strapped around his back. During the filming, the camera repeatedly switched between Fields and his stand-in. “I don’t think Willie was in 25 percent of this picture,” Sutherland recalled. “Fields could barely get around.” The director needed to shoot around Fields and change the script to give extra emphasis to other characters. The director consequently gave Rochelle Hudson, who played Poppy, more sequences depicting her romance with the mayor’s son, a subplot that one reviewer called “artificial.” The end result resembled Griffith’s pandering to Carol Dempster in Sally of the Sawdust—a film with too much Hudson and not enough Fields.12 Compared to Sally, the sound film is more faithful to the play. Using the original stage title, Poppy, the action occurs in Green Acres in 1883, a setting that makes Fields’s late Victorian attire as a medicine show huckster visually more genuine (white stovepipe hat, pelican handle cane, checkered pants, knee-length cutaway coat with brown fur-looking sleeves and lapel, polka dot cravat, and spats). Worn numerous times by Fields on the stage and screen, the classic outfit became an iconic image closely associated with his roles as a sly con-man hawking fake medicine, cheating suckers at poker and the shell game, and pitching the ballyhoo urging the gullible to see his bogus attractions.

154 

A. F. WERTHEIM

The opening sequence derived from the play introduces Professor McGargle as a likeable con man and his sweet adopted daughter Poppy (Hudson): Poppy: Oh, Pop, I’m hungry! Professor: Hungry? Courage, my little plum. The carnival is just around the corner. Poppy: Pop, you’re smarter than any other man I ever saw. Why don’t we settle down in one of these towns? Why, you’d own the whole place in five years, and without stealing anything in it. Professor: My little plum, I’m like Robin Hood. I take from the rich and I give to the poor. Poppy: What poor? Professor: Us poor. Poppy: Us poor is right!

“My little plum” was another term of endearment Bill addressed to his women characters. In If I Had a Million (1932), Rollo La Rue (Fields) calls Emily La Rue (Alison Skipworth) “my little glowworm,” and “my little penguin.” In International House (1933), he has different names for Peggy Hopkins Joyce: “my little cupcake,” “my little fussy fuchsia,” and “my little pineapple.” By contrast, he had many insulting zingers for other women. In The Old Fashioned Way, the wealthy widow Cleopatra Pepperday appears “dressed up like a well-kept grave.”13 As in the stage version, McGargle is again a medicine show huckster, who sells Purple Bark Sarsaparilla. Compared to the silent film, Fields’s raucous voice adds considerably to his sales pitch: “The most scientific discovery of modern times…. Without Purple Bark Sarsaparilla … this mundane sphere of ours would be barren, bleak and dreary…. Will grow hair and also remove warts.” One customer, Egmont, gives him five dollars for a bottle. Realizing he has been cheated, he keeps pestering McGargle for a refund only to be cheated again.14 A reporter visiting the set spotted Fields sitting on a canvas chair, wearing glasses, and a cap that covered his face. Bill suddenly arose “with great weariness and flanked by two bodyguards and a valet carrying a restorative and two canes. He had, it must be said, the aspect of a convalescent.” He heard Sutherland yell “grind.” “Then the cameras turned into a burst of light and Fields was himself again.” He began to perform the old army shell game sequence, the Talkie version enhanced by his

12  A VOCAL McGARGLE EMERGES 

155

shrill voice. “Come on, come all…. This is not a game of chance … it’s a game of science and skill…. Two will get you four.” The visitor saw Fields, looking like his younger self, begin his sleight of hand maneuvers as he moved the shells around the table. “The portentous nose twitched, the smile, with the slit eyes, had the bland innocence of a man picking up the wrong change at the bank. The patter was artless and the walnut shells were lifted and dropped with gaucherie as the sporting populace, in $11.75 mail-order suits, hastened forward to be rooked.” Never give a sucker an even break!15 Fearing an arrest for operating a gambling game when the mayor arrives, the Professor suddenly impersonates a preacher. “Gambling, my dear friends, is the root of all evil. For years I was a victim … of this awful scourge … gambling! A helpless pawn in the toils of Beelzebub! Beelzebub! Beelzebub! Lucifer.” After his lecture, he introduces himself to the mayor. “I am very glad to know you. I am Dr. Eustace P. McGargle—F.A.S.N. Perhaps you have read my book on the evils of wagering? … You haven’t? It has a blue cover. Maybe that will recall it to your mind.”16 Fields switching from con man to God’s disciple is one of his slickest rib-tickling impersonations on screen. The film mostly follows the play’s storyline, which mainly deals with McGargle’s attempt to make Poppy the rightful heir to an estate. The movie nonetheless has a number of original humorous sequences. Among them is a scene in which McGargle sells a talking dog he found to a bartender. “What’ll you have?” the professor asks the dog. “Milk, as usual in a saucer,” replies the dog. Professor: Uh—he wants a little milk, and have it in a saucer. Stand up, Alcibiades. Dog: Oh, my feet are sore. I’ve been walking all…morning. Professor: Oh. Bartender: What kind of a dog is he? Professor: Uh—he’s a cross between a Manchurian Yak and an Australian Dingo. Bartender: Well, that’s funny. There’s some folks right down the road here got a dog exactly like him, but he can’t talk. Professor: Ah, well naturally. I’ve devoted a lot time to this dog. Taught him everything he knows. Bartender: Uh—is he for sale? Professor: Ummm! Well, for a price. Bartender: Well-uh—I’ll give you twenty dollars for him.

156 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Professor: Ummm! I hate to sell him, but—uh—I-I’ll let him go. This breaks my heart. I can’t tell you. Dog: Just for selling me…I’ll never speak another word…as long as I live! Professor: He’s a stubborn little fellow. I’m afraid he’ll keep his word. Bartender: Speak! Speak! Speak!

Another is the sequence when Professor McGargle and Poppy buy hot dogs from a vendor. After applying mustard and horseradish to his frankfurter, McGargle inquires: “You haven’t a little foie gras to run on these things?” The bewildered vendor then tells McGargle he owes twenty cents (Fig. 12.1).

Fig. 12.1  McGargle (Fields) and Poppy (Rochelle Hudson) eating hot dogs at the carnival. Poppy. Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

12  A VOCAL McGARGLE EMERGES 

157

Professor: Very reasonable. I’ll pay you at the conclusion of our engagement. Vendor: Oh, no, you won’t! You’re gonna pay me right now! Professor: Really! I shall return mine, also. Vendor: Listen, you tramp! How am I gonna sell these again? Professor: First you insult me, then you ask my advice concerning salesmanship! You sir are a dunce! … D-U-N-C-E. How do you spell it? Come my little plum.17

A major difference between the film Poppy and the earlier versions is that McGargle is depicted more as a bungling showman under duress by a number of uncontrollable annoyances. The change reflects Fields’s increasing interest in portraying a frustrated Everyman, which he initiated with the Fliverton sketches in the Follies. The disturbances range from a flying insect attacking his face as he plays the dulcimer to running into doors, curtains, and other household objects. “He does heroic battle with his militant shirt front, a club-headed cane, a collar button, and other dread foes worthy of W. C.’s steel,” wrote the Times critic.18 McGargle’s blundering is revealed when he entertains the town’s upper crust at a concert using his Kadula, a string instrument with a base made from a cigar box. Wearing his medicine show costume including his stovepipe hat, he begins his recital: Professor: Ladies and gentlemen. I have the honor of rending for your approval this evening the first Dugijigg of the opera by Schreckensach by Gilka Kimmel and Ossip Pippitome…(sound of bow swishing through air as McGargle exercises his arms) My beloved Kadula-kadula. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got to have absolute quiet. (McGargle tunes his Kadula, which emits an earsplitting screech) Very difficult instrument. Well, that’s much better. That’s much better.

He puts his hat on the floor in front of him and begins to play. The hat suddenly moves and makes circles around him. He vainly tries to hit it away with his bow but the hat continues to disturb his performance. Professor: Oh, drat! (a substitute for damn—one of Field’s favorite expressions to evade the censors who banned four letter words.)19

Another sequence worth mentioning is Fields’s croquet routine, which derives from a skit he performed in the 1916 Ziegfeld Follies. In the film,

158 

A. F. WERTHEIM

McGargle woos the wealthy snobbish Countess De Puizzi (McGargle calls her De Pussy), a role played impeccably by Catharine Doucet. He is invited by the countess to play a game on the lawn in front of her mansion. “Oh, I helped write the game,” the Professor brags. “I used to tour the world teaching croquet and also lecturing on croquet but I haven’t had a racket in my hand for years.” Instead of showing his skill, he bungles every attempt to hit the ball. He trips on a wicket and a mallet’s head, each time taking a nasty pratfall. “What lazy lout left these wires sticking up all over the lawn?” When the handle comes out of the mallet, McGargle jams his finger in the empty hole. His swing is disrupted by rocks thrown from a wheelbarrow by the gardener Egmont (Bill Wolfe, a scrawny looking member of Fields’s acting company), who is angry because McGargle had cheated him when he bought his fake medicine, purple bark sarsaparilla. To get even, the gardener throws a rock that hits him on the head. The countess invites a dazed McGargle to join her snobbish women friends for tea.20 More trouble arose during a scene in which Fields escapes arrest by riding a precarious tall front-wheel bicycle, which was popular during the fin-de-siècle. “That’s about enough,” Sutherland declared after the first take. “No, it’s not, let me do it again,” the perfectionist Fields insisted. “I haven’t got it right.” “Nothing could stop him,” Sutherland said. “An incorrigible liar. Fields is the only man I’ve ever known who had no fear of anything. Nothing frightened him, nothing startled him.”21 Fields stubbornly rode the bike again but this time he fell off and fractured his vertebrae. “Suffering Sciatica!” The stagehands picked him up and placed him on a stretcher. Fields went to Soboda Springs to recover. His devoted younger brother Walter, Bill’s assistant on his vaudeville tours and an ex-boxing promotor, arrived from the East to be by his side. (Fields had been sending Walter and his sister Adele, his two favorite siblings, money each month to help them especially during the Great Depression.) Sutherland and crew members feared that Bill might never return. After a week to a ten-day stay, he surprised them and appeared on the set on April 20 to finish more takes with the help of his brother. Two scenes at the end illustrate Fields’s talent to convey pathos through his facial expressions and by lowering the tone of his voice. The first is when Poppy tells McGargle she is going to stay in Green Meadows. Upset by the news, McGargle tries to change her mind.

12  A VOCAL McGARGLE EMERGES 

159

Professor: Dear, haven’t I been like a mother, a father, an uncle, a brother, a sister, two cousins? Poppy: But you are my father. Professor: My little plum! I can’t lie to you any longer. I’m not your father. Poppy: Pop, you don’t mean that! Professor: Yes, I do, dear. I found you at a circus when you were three years old.22

To escape arrest, McGargle steals the mayor’s horse and gallops away. Soon he is caught and returns to town. McGargle tells Poppy why he could not escape: “Fortunes of war, my dear. I never thought much of that horse and he dropped dead right in front of the police station.”23 In the final scene, which closely follows the play, Poppy tells McGargle that she is the real heiress of the Putnam estate. Poppy: Isn’t grand? Now we have a beautiful home and we can settle down. Professor: That’s marvelous. And if we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you one little piece of fatherly advice. Poppy: Yes, Pop. Professor: Never give a sucker an even break. (They embrace. Poppy exits.)24

With the famous maxim about suckers restored from the play, McGargle prepares to leave by himself. On his way out, he steals the mayor’s hat, cane, opens a box to grab a handful of cigars, walks to the door, exits, turns right, and disappears as the film fades out. “Naturally it would be ruinous for any other comedian to end a picture on such a note, but with Fields it was just the sort of thing that worked best,” said LeBaron. “And the audiences just loved him for it.” Fields, he felt, “got away with this sort of thing as no one has ever done. This was because of the sort of elfin charm the man had, along with a tremendous mastery of pantomime and air of timing.”25 Despite all the interruptions, the filming finished on April 22, 1936, only three weeks longer than expected. Sutherland acknowledged that without Fields’s eagerness to complete the picture it would have finished way over schedule. After Poppy was released on June 19, box-office business was brisk, especially at the Paramount Theaters in New York and Los Angeles. “POPPY, REGARDED AS W.C. FIELDS TRIUMPH, HELD OVER” headlined an article in the LA Times and its Broadway critic entitled his article “FIELDS AT BEST IN POPPY.”26

160 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Other reviews were mixed primarily due to critics who noted Fields’s absences. William Everson felt that “there were long passages where the Fields character disappears completely, while the secondary leads take over the story-line.” The Daily Variety critic perceived the problem: “Slow and lacking smoothness, Poppy needs straightening out before it will please many other than out-and-out W. C. Fields fans.” The critic Frank Nugent, who had succeeded Sennwald, at the New York Times, called the story “painfully frail…. Be warned: it’s as thin as a whisper. Anyone who takes the screen from him is a usurper and an upstart.” A few critics preferred the silent version featuring Griffith’s New England rural setting compared to Sutherland’s cluttered and artificial set on Paramount’s back lot.27 Despite his reservations, Nugent lauded Fields’s performance. “The real news… and the occasion for our rejoicing is this: that man [Fields] is here again,” stated Nugent. Once Fields is on screen his battle with “the forces of nature and of circumstance” take over. “Have you ever seen Mr. Fields in a fight to the finish with a shirt front, a croquet mallet, a suspender strap or a cigar-box fiddle?…With what suavity of nature, what nasal tone, what grandiloquence of elegance and poise does he invest his every word.” He “is compelled to exert every ounce of his timorous strength, every modicum of his transparent guile, every particle of his sublime patience, to withstand the combined onslaughts of his human or inanimate opponents. But Mr. Fields triumphs—as Mr. Fields always triumphs—and it is a glorious victory, for him, and for comedy.”28 According to legend, Fields fainted after he completed the last scene from the pain in his back and exhaustion from the ordeal of working on the picture. Despite his fragile health, Bill had accomplished his goal to compete the Poppy trilogy. As the reviewer for the Literary Digest noted: “Fields put his trademark on the role twenty years ago when he turned the jumble-shop stage show of the same name into a comedy triumph. Then he made a silent film version. The present talking-singing version is all that any Fields addict could ask.”29

PART IV

Off-Screen

CHAPTER 13

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The trajectory of Fields’s love affairs reveals a frustrating search for the right companion to assuage his aloneness. His search for the one woman to permanently fill up the void in his life never materialized. He was never a lothario or womanizer. Indeed, his relationships ranged from short-term affairs to multi-years liaisons. A pattern emerges that Fields’s amours were mainly with performers in show business, particularly chorus girls and neophyte screen actresses, and never with Broadway headliners and cinema celebrities. As an itinerant thespian, angst-ridden film comedian, and restless personality, Bill was afflicted with a chronic wanderlust, an inability to settle down domestically. He was plagued by a constant need to move on, especially if caught in a volatile relationship, which happened repeatedly. Before Bill began his sound film career in Hollywood in 1931, he had four significant relationships that mainly resulted in bitter endings: • Hattie was a chorus girl he met in the Monte Carlo Girls, a burlesque show, in 1898. They married in 1900 and their son Claude was born in 1904. The two separated in 1904, partly due to Bill’s refusal to end his show business career to placate Hattie. Bitten with restlessness and a passion for show business, Fields possessed an ardent aversion to domesticity. Hattie wanted him to stay home and rear a family; Bill desired to follow the yellow brick road to fame. A staunch Catholic, Hattie created a major calamity in Bill’s life © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_13

163

164 

A. F. WERTHEIM

by refusing to divorce him. The ordeal caused a lifelong animosity between the two and a painful estrangement between Fields and their son Claude. Bill’s inability to remarry created irreparable harm to his longer relationships. • Maud Fenwick, who Fields met in England and brought to the USA, contributed to Bill’s breakup with his wife. They engaged in an extramarital affair for ten years, 1904–1914. A caring and compassionate woman, they corresponded up to the time of Fields’s death. Their letters suggest that she might have been the love of his life. • When Fields met Bessie Poole, a chorus girl in the 1916 Ziegfeld Follies, Bill ended his affair with Maud and pursued a shaky relationship with Bessie. Their son, William Morris, born in 1917, was left with foster parents to raise. After the two separated around 1924, Bessie became a chronic alcoholic and died after being injured in a bar fight and afflicted with stomach ailments. She had possibly drunk poisoned alcohol in a speakeasy. Before her death, Bill paid Bessie money as part of an agreement, which enabled Fields to declare that he was not Morris’s father. • Fields’s encounter with Linelle Blackburn, a chorus girl in the play Poppy (1924), contributed to ending his affair with Bessie. Linelle’s Southern charm captivated Fields. She performed with Bill on stage as an assistant and traveled with him to Hollywood in 1927. Although Bill was twenty-four years older than Linelle, her letters reveal a mother (Blackburn)   and son (Fields) attachment based on her need to take care of Fields. Their letters expose Fields’s deepseated need to be mothered, to find the nurturing he lacked as a child and never received from past female relationships. They parted in 1931 when Bill made his second trip to Hollywood. Three years after Field moved to the movie capital, he started his last major affair. Bill’s love life had reached rock-bottom making him vulnerable to alluring women who were attracted to him. One day in 1934 at the Paramount lot, he was asked to pose for some publicity stills with an exotic-looking beauty, whose light olive features stemmed from her Latino ancestry. She had impressed the studio’s brass so much that they had borrowed her from RKO where she was under contract. Dressed in a grass-skirt Hawaiian outfit with flowers pinned to her ultra-long black

13  THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER 

165

hair that ran down her back, she walked through the studio’s eye-gazing crowd toward her appointment. Carlotta instantly recognized Fields, who was wearing his stovepipe hat from his movies. When introduced, Bill took his hat off, put it over his heart, and bowed. “It is a pleasure, my dusky beauty,” he said. Born Carlotta Montijo in 1907, she was twenty-seven years younger than Fields. Besides his stardom, she found him a good catch: “Blond, trim-figured, and handsome, with an unblemished complexion and bright blue eyes. … The omnipresent martini had not as yet exacted its toll on his physiognomy.” She was on the rebound from a recent affair with a professional wrestler while Bill was in limbo. “He looked cute and cuddly. I wanted to mother him, smother him with attention, please him.”1 Carlotta called Bill “Woody” (“Woo-dy” as in moody) while Fields nicknamed her the “Chinaman,” since she loved wearing Chinese outfits. At age fifty-four, Bill was certainly flattered that he had snared a stunning young Latina with flowing raven-colored hair and seductive luminous dark eyes. “An Olympian goddess of beauty if I ever saw one,” he called her on their “first” date. He initially indulged her with polite Victorian manners and gallant adoration, calling her “my little bird of rare plumage,” and presented her with a $500 black onyx cloisonné makeup case. “He was very continental and he was very sweet, he’d pull my chair when I’d sit down for dinner,” Monti recalled. “As raucous as he was on the screen, he was a real gentleman in real life.”2 “Come live with me,” Bill said while caressing her hand. At the time, he was living in his large house and spacious grounds in Encino. “You will have a new career here, running my household. I’ll give you an entire wing of the house for yourself.” He paused for a few seconds, thinking of what to say next. “I need you.” A blunt statement followed by Carlotta’s “yes.” Those three words—“I need you”—revealed Bill’s longing to fill a huge void in his life. The perceptive Chinaman noticed it: “Woody seemed starved for real love and I gave it to him in large quantities.”3 The first night, the two “consummated our love,” recalled the Chinaman. “It was ecstasy.” “He was as much a perfectionist in his lovemaking as he was in his juggling.” But his ardor did not last long. “His virility drowned as his libido became soaked in alcohol,” recalled Monti. “The romance was really over after the first few months.”4

166 

A. F. WERTHEIM

After the passion cooled, Woody suddenly switched to an abusive tone. “You are never to leave me or I’ll have you drawn and quartered,” he warned. “I never will,” replied the Chinaman, a three-word promise that she soon regretted. “A vow that was to be broken several times, only to have me swear it would never happen again.”5 Why would a woman twenty-seven years younger than Fields desire to become his “trophy” mistress? “I always liked older men,” Carlotta would answer, especially “when I was very young.” Most friends thought Carlotta wanted Bill to help her movie career and was after his money. Blinded by infatuation, Bill initially failed to perceive Carlotta’s volatility. Sooner or later, he would discover her true motives and rebel against her—the same way he treated anyone who betrayed his trust. “It was my Woody who turned out to be the demonical monster—but a very kind one,” she wrote about his dual personality. Fiery, fierce, and forceful, Monti fought with ardent ferociousness against his demands. Their stormy relationship was a battle between two inflated temperamental egos—trapped in a match made in hell. They both seemed to thrive on their unending confrontations.6 The Chinaman soon discovered that running Woody’s household meant much more than overseeing the staff. In Fields’s probate estate hearing, Carlotta told the judge that she became a “Jill-of-all-trades.” Her duties included the following: secretary, nurse, gag-writer, cook, purchasing agent, walking companion, court jester, and drawer of the bath. Carlotta was a sounding board for Woody’s jokes. If Carlotta didn’t laugh, Bill would discard the gag. A former dancer and singer, the Chinaman lacked an avid ambition to become a movie star. Fields gave her bit parts in two movies, playing her real-life role as a secretary in The Man on the Flying Trapeze and as a receptionist in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. Before that, she had parts in two serials and appeared in Night Cargo (1936). Bill asked William LeBaron if he could help Carlotta find other parts. She was taking voice lessons, he wrote, and has lost weight. “She has never look better in her life.” LeBaron replied that he would talk to the head of casting but his overtures failed to obtain any movie roles.7 Woody “never got drunk … he did consume two quarts of alcohol over 24 hours.” Carlotta claimed that she got Woody to quit drinking for a year in 1937. Fields once told her: “For my part, I have tried everything offered by the distillers and brewers. Each one affects me differently. … In the long run, and for a continuation drink—and by that

13  THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER 

167

I mean twenty-four hours—give me martinis. They work fast, and the sensations are lasting. They prick my mind like the cut of a razor blade. I work better with them inside me.”8 The most publicized fight between the two occurred late at night on September 23, 1937, in Fields’s Bel Air house. According to Fields, the altercation started when his sleep was disturbed by an argument between Carlotta and the butler. Angry about being awakened, he started swearing at the Chinaman. Carlotta said that Woody started the argument with her, which the butler later joined. Both called the police causing them twice to visit the house for what they reported was “domestic trouble.” She accused Woody of breaking a walking stick over her head and hitting her with a rubber hammer. The spat led to her being thrown out of the house. Later, she hired an attorney to sue Fields for damages. The suit ended in a settlement in which Fields paid her $6300. Four days after the incident, Fields wrote to one of Monti’s friends that she should see a physician. “Please do anything you can for her. I know you will, it will help me to. I am anxious for her to get well.” Her friend replied to Fields that Monti told her that “you are the only Dr. she needs or wants. My advice is to see her as she becomes more provoked the longer you are away.” Before long, she was back in Fields’s house.9 The volatile spats continued unabated and usually culminated in Carlotta leaving. Asking for forgiveness, she soon begged to return. When Fields’s solitude without her became unbearable, he gladly welcomed her back. The pattern was continually repeated in an abusive cycle of ruckus → removal from his house → welcome back → soon another ruckus. Bill wrote Maud Fenwick, a former amour: “That Mexican girl who caused so much bad publicity is back again causing me more grief. What a sucker I am for punishment.”10 As Fields increasingly distrusted Carlotta, their association entered a new phase. He thought she was having an affair with another man. “He always had me followed by detectives,” Carlotta believed. He once ordered Carlotta to guard $55,000 in his safe while he was away for the day. She instead went to a party. Furious, Woody asked his agent to find out “what that witch was doing.” He believed she had escaped to Mexico City with the money. “I’ll have her extradited!” he told his agent. “I really should have taken the money,” she later declared to an interviewer.11 His distrustfulness evolved into an acute paranoia about people in general. Fields feared intruders in his house and worried about servants

168 

A. F. WERTHEIM

stealing his money. Once Fields lost faith in another person, that individual became persona non gratis, a pattern he followed all his life. As Fields aged, his curmudgeon streak and paranoiac suspicions intensified, causing a reduction in his acquaintances. A loudspeaker system was installed in every room in his Los Feliz house and around the grounds so he could spy on everyone. Another was placed at the front gate to keep uninvited guests away. One time, he heard visitors say “I wonder if we will find the old devil as cross as usual.” Fields retorted: “Go to hell. Get the hell out of here.”12 The roots of his paranoia had started when he was a naïve trouper in burlesque and was left stranded in Ohio when the manager absconded with the receipts. Without his salary, he lacked money to return to New York until the ticket taker at the railroad station lent him the fare. During his initial vaudeville tour in San Francisco in March 1900, he feared losing $125, his first week’s salary, so he bought a ring. “That ring kept me awake at nights for fear it should be stolen or lost.”13 So he decided to sew it in the pocket of his pajamas. Worried that these incidents could happen again, Fields opened bank accounts in the USA and foreign countries. The more Bill experienced the cutthroat practices in showbiz, the more distrustful he became. “I’m always scared,” he told a movie magazine writer. “I’ve been thrown out on my ear so often. This game’s just one merry round of being thrown out and discovered all over again. You never know when the guy with the dough will decide when you’re through.”14 He kept a huge amount of cash, perhaps as much as $200,000 in his home, which caused him to worry that robbers, servants, or Carlotta would steal the money. His paranoia caused Bill to sleep less, rise after two hours, and to walk around his house looking for intruders. Betrayals by friends and domestic partners added to his bleak view of human nature, a dark underworld inhabited by malicious con men, mischievous moguls, income tax investigators, money-hungry doctors, conniving lawyers, ruthless bankers, hypocritical churchgoers, and other nefarious types that surface in his stage sketches and films. “Fields was suspicious of all but a handful of people he met,” Carlotta declared. “He figured most of them wanted something from him.”15 His mistrust was displayed on the screen when he played the victim assaulted by his many adversaries—dictatorial wives, overbearing mothers-in-law, cantankerous children, noisy neighbors, prohibition agents, censors, and inanimate

13  THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER 

169

objects. All of these bête noirs became ammunition for his biting iconoclasm. “A sacred cow was only a hunk of meat to be barbequed,” observed Carlotta, who was privy to his animosities. “Single-handedly he wanted to fight the entire social system.”15 While in charge of Fields’s correspondence, Carlotta noted the numerous checks made out to Hattie. “That’s when I first suspected that his marriage of years before was still legal.” She inquired why he didn’t divorce her. “I never married her” he lied. The characteristics of Carlotta and Hattie derived from the same mold. They shared similar traits that made Fields’s life with them miserable—femme fatales with temperamental, controlling, and mischievous characteristics. Although Fields might not admit it, he was a sucker for such women. Propelled by an insatiable need to be loved, Bill’s infatuations blinded him to their true personality. They were two rivals for Fields’s affections but at different times. Harriet opened the first act; Carlotta the last. His love life was like a roller coaster as he moved from one affair to another. To quote Carson McCullers, Bill’s heart was a “lonely hunter.”16

CHAPTER 14

Battling Sickness

After finishing Poppy, the fifty-six-year-old trouper plunged headfirst into another season in hell. Fields returned to Soboba Hot Springs near San Bernardino to recover. As the news of his frail health spread, Poppy’s opening drew notices that the film might be the last opportunity to see Fields in a movie. After a quick visit, the director Gregory La Cava, Bill’s friend and golf partner, believed he was going to die. Fields answered a trade paper that he was at death’s door. “I am not at death’s door, I am dead, didn’t you know? Come up and have a drink at the cemetery with me.”1 Several days after he finished Poppy, Bill received the news that Tammany Young, veteran character actor on the stage and screen, had died in his sleep at age 49. Young had excelled as Fields’s straight man for five years and taken other roles in his films, including a recent part in Poppy and as Willie the Weasel, one of the burglars who broke into Ambrose Wolfinger’s house in The Man on the Flying Trapeze. He is best remembered as Dr. Busby in Six of a Kind, feeding lines to Sheriff “Honest John” Hoxley as Fields plays pool while telling a tall tale. As a member of Fields’s fraternity of devoted character actors, he always knew that Bill would cast him in his films. Coming on the heels of losing Will Rogers and Sam Hardy, Young’s death was the final straw that precipitated Fields spiraling into a grave depression that made his illnesses worse. Bill would not make another film for eighteen months. Suspicious that Fields might never make another picture, Paramount sent its insurance © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_14

171

172 

A. F. WERTHEIM

doctor to inspect his condition. The physician’s report caused the studio to delay his new $6000 weekly contract for three months starting June 1. Besides his injured sacroiliac, he was now diagnosed with multiple problems: Paget’s disease (“which is said to make one’s bones as pliable as an old rubber boot,” Fields wrote); polyneuritis (inflammation of the nerves that made his entire body sensitive to touch); and lung congestion causing acute pneumonia. Hoping to numb his pain, Bill increased his daily liquor consumption to two quarts of liquor. In a letter to his British friend W. Buchannan-Taylor, Fields added more complications: “Catarrh of the stomach, arthritis, nervous breakdown, toxemia, and dehydration.” With tongue in cheek, he lambasted his physicians, “I don’t believe any of them—not even the one who came to see me at Christmas disguised as Santa Claus.” The next eighteen months swelled his hatred of deceitful doctors noted for “really brilliant work in isolating fees.”2 Dr. Jesse Citron, a physician who practiced in Hemet, near Riverside, was employed to oversee Bill’s care. An ominous-looking individual, Citron’s bespectacled face displayed piercing eyes radiating through oversized glasses and a stub of a mustache between his nose and lips. Whoever recommended Citron should have checked his record. He had earlier practiced in Beverly Hills as an obstetrics specialist where he served as a personal physician to film celebrities. One of his patients was the silent screen star Alma Rubens, a drug addict, who received illegal quantities of narcotics from Citron before her death in January 1931. Although indicted for his actions, a Federal Court dismissed the case. Citron’s license was nonetheless revoked by the State Board of Medical Examiners. But in February 1934 it was reinstated. Fields was therefore placed under the care of a doctor with a shady past. To help Bill sleep, he prescribed for his patient twice-daily injections of Pernoston, a powerful intravenous barbiturate, introduced in 1928 by a German physician, but banned by the American Medical Association due to its toxic effects on the liver and was reported to occasionally cause death. Bill’s pneumonia deteriorated further at Soboba Springs under the watchful eyes of Magda Michael, his pert and prim secretary and caretaker who resided in a bungalow next door. She had been hired in 1934 because Bill needed an assistant who could dictate his correspondence, scripts, and other writings. On her initial visit, the thirtyfive-year-old divorcee brought a new Dictaphone, which impressed

14  BATTLING SICKNESS 

173

Fields. The comedian soon noticed that she was very quiet “like a little mouse.” “That’s it,” he told her, “I’m going to call you Mickey Mouse.” (The popular Disney animated character was then at the apex of popularity, highlighted by the 1935 Technicolor film The Band Concert, in which Mickey directs the William Tell Overture.) Efficient, dependable, and amiable “Mickey Mouse” became a godsend for Fields. He immediately doubled her salary from five to ten dollars a day. Soon, Magda was managing his household starting with planning his food menus in the morning. She oversaw his massive correspondence, time schedule, and performed many other responsibilities. Fields found her so trustworthy that he felt free to discuss confidential subjects with her, including his will. “Well my dear, I think we’ll go over the will today,” Fields constantly told her. They discussed changing his will so many times that Magna thought to herself, “Oh, no, not that again.”3 Michael was seen chauffeuring Bill around Hollywood in one of his four automobiles. She accompanied him to film and radio studios where together they reviewed his scripts. When his autos needed an outing, he told her to “exercise the cars.” With a container of ice and a stash of martinis, Bill sat in the backseat as Magda drove each car to the top of a hill, where he gazed at nature while drinking a martini. His most luxurious car was a 1938 Cadillac Series 90 V-16 Fleetwood limousine installed with an electric martini mixer. Fields’s 16-cylinder Cadillac roadster was equipped with a barber chair, which Bill needed for rest and sleep due to his injured spinal vertebrae from accidents. Magda felt that many legends about Fields were untrue. Except for the few times she worked for others, Michael was with Fields for twelve years, including the last three years of his life and was named executor of his will. One time, he told her “When I kick the bucket I want you to have something.” Not wanting her to leave, he established a $5000 bank account in both their names. “He knew the bank account would provide an incentive for me to stay. He was out of the ordinary, but in a nice way,” she said. “My memories are of the human things about him. In the twelve years I knew him, he never spoke an unkind word to me, although he had a violent temper. I learned his likes and dislikes. I was kind to him and I think he appreciated it and trusted me.”4 She grew to know Bill during the comedian’s euphoric and bleak times. Interviewed twenty-eight years after his death, she disagreed with people who “want to say he was some kind of a nut, an old sot who was always threatening to shoot someone. He was out of the ordinary,

174 

A. F. WERTHEIM

but in a nice way. My memories are of the human things about him.” Although “Mickey Mouse” thought him impulsive, she found him also softhearted and sensitive, a magnanimous man who avoided “hurting the feelings of common people.” His love for nature, especially the beauty of a single rose, surprised her. “Every morning he would pick two roses, one for my desk and one for his.” He talked to his flowers in his garden at his Encino home. If a plant was behind schedule, he would order it to “Grow, damn you, grow!”5 Michael noticed other idiosyncrasies. She often came to work and found Fields playing different roles. Wearing a deerstalker hat and Sherlock Holmes Pipe hanging from his mouth, Fields imitated a prim and pompous Englishman. Another time, he impersonated an old salt seafarer with a yachtsman’s cap. Bill loved to play pranks on people. Once Fields and his pal Sam Hardy were drinking by the pool when she was asked to join them to dictate a letter. Hoping to embarrass his prim secretary, Fields dictated a letter full of swear words. He then asked her to read it back, which she calmly did. “I knew it was a gag…. They expected me to be shocked, but in the end they were the ones who were embarrassed.”6 When Bill’s temperature reached 104 degrees, he began coughing up blood and had difficulty breathing. The patient’s critical condition caused Fields’s caretakers and Dr. Citron to realize that Soboba Springs lacked the facilities Fields urgently needed. They insisted that he be transferred immediately to a nearby hospital. Hating hospitals and its association with death, Fields initially balked. But when informed about his grave ailments he finally agreed and was rushed by ambulance to Riverside Community Hospital. After arriving on the night of June 12, Fields was placed in an oxygen tent. The local doctor summoned to examine the patient concluded that Bill had a serious case of bronchopneumonia. Citron called a Los Angeles pneumonia specialist who drove to Riverside to assess Fields’s illness. After he learned about his ailments and that Bill downed two quarts of liquor daily, he glumly predicted that Fields would not live. Telegraph and telephone messages from the USA and England inquiring about Bill’s health deluged the hospital. Initial newspaper accounts tended to downplay his dire condition. A few days after his admittance, an article on the front page of the Los Angeles Times was headlined “W. C. FIELDS SHOWS GAIN IN RIVERSIDE HOSPITAL.” Fields was “resting comfortably and to be showing improvement.”7

14  BATTLING SICKNESS 

175

The widespread publicity about Bill’s battle with multiple ailments reflected the public’s adoration of Fields at this point in his career—a reverence for a humorist who had generated so much laughter for millions during the hard times of the Great Depression. In addition to Poppy, his roles in David Copperfield, Mississippi, and The Man on the Flying Trapeze had elevated his popularity. James Agate, among the best-known literary figures in England and a connoisseur of the stage and screen, wrote after seeing Poppy: “W. C. Fields nearly died before making Poppy. He has nearly died since, and I doubt if he will ever be well enough to make another picture. That alone gives Poppy special claims on our interest and sympathy. This may be your last chance to study one of the great comedians of all time—a figure comparable with Chaplin, in some respects even Chaplin’s master. Chaplin, for reasons that seem to be adequate, shirks speech. Apart altogether from the sentimentality of is outlook, this alone is enough to date him. Fields is essentially a modern, a realist who takes life as it is.”8 After a week in the hospital, Bill’s temperature dropped to 100 degrees but he was still listed in critical condition. “He’s holding his own,” declared Citron. “He’s a lot better than he was. He keeps the hospital in an uproar when he’s feeling good.” The doctor showed him a newspaper clipping that said “you’re improved, so you’ve got to get well.” “Yes, Doc,” Fields quipped, “and if I die tonight, they can say I died improved.” Bill thought the oxygen tent was like an airplane cabin and any disturbances caused him to yell: “Wow, we’ve hit an air pocket.”9 Bill complained about the hospital beds and bare ceilings. “I consider myself an outstanding savant on the bed,” the insomniac boasted. “I have slept on everything from park benches to barber chairs, and from Louis XV specials to a bunk in my trailers.” He lay for hours staring at the hospital’s blank ceiling. “Hospital ceilings should be generously decorated with intricate lines …a mystic maze, possibly, that would keep the patient’s mind off his discomfort.”10 A reporter asked him about his mood in the hospital. “Didn’t you get pretty low at times?” “Say,” Bill replied, “there are two sides to every picture. A swell, pretty side, and a lousy one. Well, you can look at either one, but who the devil wants to look at the lousy one?” The reporter believed that Fields’s honest remarks reflected his outlook on life. “He prefers to chuckle instead of moan. The most tragic thing can, and does have a funny twist to it and Bill Fields can always see it.”11

176 

A. F. WERTHEIM

On July 5, 1936, Bill was taken by ambulance to Las Encinas Sanitarium in Pasadena where he would spend the next nine months in a comfortable bungalow. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, Las Encinas was among the crown jewels of Southern California sanitariums. Publicized by railroad brochures, orange crate art, and business interests as “Nature’s Great Sanitarium,” the region attracted thousands of health seekers who helped boost Los Angeles’s population growth. Dr. Walter Jarvis Barlow, one of its founders, had arrived in Los Angeles in 1897 hoping to cure his consumption and many patients afflicted with tuberculosis, then the world’s most deadly disease. With financial help from his wealthy patients, Barlow and four other doctors founded the Pasadena sanitarium in 1904 and named it Las Encinas after the numerous oak trees found on its twenty-nine rambling acres. By the 1930s, new buildings on the grounds were drawing patients afflicted with other ailments, including alcoholism, drug addiction, mental problems, and nervous disorders. Its wealthy clientele included numerous film celebrities, who found the sanitarium an ideal milieu away from Hollywood’s madcap atmosphere. Surrounding the attractive sprawling two-story California Craftsman-style main building with its gables and shingle roof were dozens of rustic bungalows, smaller structures, which emphasized blending the edifices with their natural surroundings. The sanitarium’s doctor reported that Fields was feeble, emaciated, confused, running a high temperature, and still suffering from pneumonia. Learning that Fields’s downed at least a quart of gin per day, the doctor insisted he “go on the wagon.” Laying off the booze created an acute bout of delirium tremens. “It is hard to tell where Hollywood ends and the d. t.’s begin,” Fields quipped. “They’re terrible,” he said. “You really see things.” Once while sitting on the hospital’s porch he looked “across the lawn and there these midgets in short pants riding at me out of the trees on bullocks, elephants, and crocodiles … and when they charged there on the porch I dodged. If I hadn’t dodged they’d have gotten me…. The best things for d.t.’s is to lie on your back looking up. This keeps the alligators and midgets on the ceiling. If you lie on your side, it’s quite a job getting them off your pillow.”12 While at the sanitarium, Bill grappled with a family problem that presented considerable anxiety and inhibited his recovery. During June 1936, his estranged wife Hattie learned about Bill’s ill health in several letters from Georgie Hargitt, her friend and confidant in Los Angeles.

14  BATTLING SICKNESS 

177

One envelope included a clipping that Fields had pneumonia. Hargitt encouraged Hattie to go to Los Angeles as quickly as possible to prevent being left out of Fields’s will. Bill went ballistic when he learned that Hattie and his son Claude had arrived in Los Angeles under the pretext that they had come to give him support. More troubling was that they were considering moving to the city permanently. His wife and son were the last two people he wanted around him. Their sudden appearance, he thought, would not only add to his problems, but the stress might also make his health worse. The news also upset his brother Walter, who had remained by his bedside. When he heard that Harriet and Claude were coming to Los Angeles, Walter hastily returned home in order not to confront Bill’s wife, who he disliked due to her causing numerous problems for his brother. In February 1936, Claude wrote Fields the “numerous occasions throughout my life I have asked to hear from you & on other occasions even sought to see you…. Your reception of me is something even time cannot efface…. I shall never forget your boisterous biliousness the first time I appeared at your Encino house gate. You threatened among other things to punch me in the nose that was a typical example of paternal appreciations.” Claude reminded him that he had traveled “over 3000 miles to see you and to offer… wishes for a speedy recovery.”13 Their meeting “lasted about twenty minutes,” Claude  wrote. “I said nothing which would have excited you or aggravated your condition. I called personally several times thereafter you persisted in your refusal to see me…. You mentioned at the time of my visit to have a long talk with me and I reiterated my willingness and readiness to confer at your convenience. I am still waiting.”14 Their meeting failed to mend their relations. Although Fields told the sanitarium’s staff not to permit Harriet and Claude to visit, they slipped by the gatekeeper several times insisting they were the patient’s wife and son. “When I came to California to live in 1936,” recalled Hattie, “I was amazed to find how corpulent he had become because of his drinking.”15 By December 1936, Hattie and Claude had moved to an apartment on Gale Street in Beverly Hills. In a letter to his favorite sister, Adele, Bill wrote: “The only reason they are out here is in case anything happens to me.

178 

A. F. WERTHEIM

When I was in the sanitarium they were on my tail every minute and ready to pounce on any money that I might leave. They have established residence in California. They act like a couple of vultures and the sanitarium would never let them in.”16 His relationship with Hattie had soured recently due to the mentioning of his marriage in newspapers and magazines, which set off a firestorm. “The Secret Marriage of Hollywood’s Bachelor,” published in Screen Play, specifically addressed Fields’s marital state. “I have been married,” he admitted to the reporter Ralph Parker. “It didn’t last very long.” Most of my friends do not know I was married, he told Parker. The writer tried to pry further into the comedian’s private life without success. “I can’t talk about it… the reason I’m a bachelor is that I’ve been married.” The interviewer ignited Fields’s rawest nerve. The comedian’s “wry smile,” wrote Parker “hides a heart so bruised that after twenty years he cannot speak of the one woman he loved enough to marry.” Fields was fortunate that the article was printed in a movie magazine with low circulation and that possibly Hattie never read it.17 But she did read two articles about Fields’s marriage in Liberty magazine, a well-respected publication advertised as “A Weekly for Everybody” with a readership of three million. The furor exploded when the magazine published “The Most Melancholy Funny Man on the Screen” written by Clara Beranger on February 15, 1936. “He has always refused to explain why he never married…. In the Follies and the movies he has been surrounded by ‘glorified’ women…. Yet he has stayed single.” The author surmised that Bill possessed a “hobo attitude of mind acquired during a long period of not being accountable to any one for his actions or his time. He knows that marriage means adjustments…. With the exception of stage appearances, W. C. Fields has never been regular about anything in his life.” Beranger poses an interesting interpretation linking Fields’s wanderlust to his poor relationships with women. After receiving a letter later from a reader who suggested Fields was married, Beranger defended her opinion. “Fields has consistently refused to discuss marriage with his friends, associates, or newspaper people. So there is no definite way of confirming or denying the report. However, Fields has always been regarded as a bachelor by his friends in New York, Hollywood, and the general opinion is that he has never married.”18 The article caused Fields while in his sanitarium to wire Hattie, warning her not to “talk to any reporters concerning my private life.”

14  BATTLING SICKNESS 

179

The article in Liberty is “unauthorized … which the studio does not approve…. There have been too many stories regarding my life, my salary and my health, which are causing me irrepressible harm.” Bill reminded Hattie that his bad health prevented him from working for a year and he “may never be able to work again.” Fields reiterated: “Please do not mention this stuff if you wish to help me.”19 Furious about her husband’s accusation that she had talked to the press, Hattie telegraphed Bill the next day. “You need have no fear of my talking to reporters of your private life as you are too adept at that game yourself even at the sacrifice of Claude’s and my character. I shall nevertheless continue my usual silence.” She felt her husband was wallowing in “self-pity.” “That is what you have been injecting into the magazines and press for years at the jeopardy of my character and also putting further stigma on your son…. I have never hurt you in any way but have stood humiliation for a life time from you. Therefore this issue of Liberty adds only one more.”20 Claude defended his mother by sending his father a stinging telegram three days later. Claude was now thirty-one, a graduate from New York University’s law school, and was beginning his career as an attorney. The strong statements he wrote reflect Claude’s maturity and the forceful arguments of his legal schooling. “I demand that you have the next issue of Liberty corrected which jeopardizes character of my mother and I warn you against further lies and misstatements. Mother has always been too lenient with you but I refuse to have her endure this gross humiliation. At all times we have avoided publicity and scandal.”21 Fields responded in a letter five days later from Las Encinas Sanitarium where he was still recovering from several illnesses. In response to his son’s demand to correct the statement about his marital life in Liberty, his father wrote back sarcastically: “Have had all presses stopped, magazines, newspapers, etc. all over the world, in which my name appears. I assure you nothing will be published from now on without your O.K.” He took some hurtful potshots at his son, reminding him that for thirty-two years he had “unfailingly remitted money to your mother. What have you contributed to the up-keep of the household in all this time?”22 Considering his show business income, Claude believed that his father’s weekly allowance to his mother ranging from $50 to $75 was a “niggardly stipend.” “Imagine you, W. C. Fields,” he wrote, “without an automobile, or suitable living quarters and being forced to live in a furnished room for years as Mother and I were.” To his credit,

180 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Claude worked his way through college and law school by playing in an orchestra at events. Believing his son should be as self-sufficient as he had been, his father refused to give him money for his education.23 Fields reminded Claude of the pain he had caused. “Now, Claude, when you were a boy you once told me that you would never look at me or talk to me when you grew to manhood, which will probably never come.” Claude defended himself: “At different times since my teens I have asked you to see me so that we might talk things over. You have been adamant in your refusal.”24 The breakdown of their relationship had occurred about twenty years earlier when Claude appeared at his father’s dressing room at the 1916 Follies needing money for shoes. The event caused Fields to never want to see Claude again until he matured. Claude too was offended. But one correspondence suggested that Fields wanted to make amends. “I hope you didn’t mean it as I so wished you to be my friend and comforter as I am lopping off with a slipped sacroiliac, arthritis of the spine, Paget’s disease, and just finishing with a nervous breakdown.” The letter reflects the love–hate relationship Fields had with his son.25 More furor occurred when another Liberty article was published on September 4, 1937, which referred to Fields’s marital state. Written by Frederick James Smith, the piece was entitled “Is His Nose Red: Inside Facts about the Great Fields-McCarthy Vendetta.” Since the piece was mostly about radio, Smith wrote only one sentence about Bill’s married life. “He insists, despite the many stories to the contrary, that he is unmarried.” Annoyed that Liberty had again printed a statement regarding his marital life, Fields quickly dispatched a telegram to Fulton Oursler, Liberty’s editor, asking for a retraction. “Would it be presuming too much were I to ask you to say that I did not discuss my marital status… in my interview? These little references cause me a great amount of annoyance and puts me to considerable expense.”26 Oursler was exceedingly cooperative: “Thank you for your friendly protest and I regret that you have been caused any distress. We shall make ample explanation and set you right with millions of your admirers.” Liberty’s disclaimer published six weeks later was written in a jocular manner. Its tone suggested that Oursler wished not to offend either Fields or Smith: “W.C. Fields wires bewailing the fact that our Frederick James Smith quoted him on the subject of marriage…. But Mr. Smith

14  BATTLING SICKNESS 

181

says it was all in good fun—and, anyway, no one could think that W. C. Fields meant any harm to any one—except Charlie McCarthy.”27 The controversy, however, was far from other. In an effort to settle the question, Liberty printed a short piece a year later headlined “IN JUSTICE TO MR. FIELDS.” “On various occasions in the past, Liberty has inadvertently published statements to the effect that W. C. Fields is unmarried. While these assertions were published in good faith and with full belief in their truth, it now comes to our attention that in fact Mr. Fields was married thirty-seven years ago and his wife and son are now living in Beverly Hills. Liberty is always glad to correct any misinformation given its readers in prior articles.”28 On that note, the three-year off-and-on harangue about Fields’s marital state in Liberty ended. Fields nonetheless continued to fear that any publicity about his private life might damage his career. Bill was also suffering from anxiety about his pressing need to propel his film career. Fields was interviewed by a reporter, who encountered him taking a stroll around the Las Encinas grounds. “He’s really feeling himself again,” the newspaperman discovered and expects to back at the studio in about a month. “I’ve been in the clutches of science,” Fields declared. “Marvelous thing, science, marvelous. It has not only put this old chassis back in the used car market, but actually stepped up the motor. You may quote me as saying I am amazed at the improvement. I can now stop or start on a dime.”29 Bill was a fighter. His show business career encompassed multiple times when he reached rock-bottom only to achieve another highpoint as a comedian. He once was asked by an interviewer: “If you had your life to live over again, would you do the same things you’ve done?” “Yes” was always his answer. “I’ve been broke hungry, sick, stranded miles from home, out of a job and everything else…. I’ve survived a half dozen depressions, robbery, stock-market crashes, bank failures and a broken neck. And I’d go through them all again if I could be guaranteed that the rest of my life would be just the same as it has been.” What was the secret of his ability to survive? Laughs, he said. I “think back over the laughs I’ve had, and it cheers me up. I’ll be well again before long—and I’ll enjoy some more laughs in a hurry. I’ll need them.”30

PART V

From Radio to the Screen

CHAPTER 15

Radio Saved My Life!

One day, during Fields’s long Las Encinas Sanitarium recuperation, a nurse brought a radio to his room. “What is the name of this new instrument of torture?” Fields asked. “This is a radio,” the nurse replied. “Does it break bones, tear limbs or just torment melancholy souls, my little chickadee?” “It plays music and talks.” “Take it away and muzzle it... It annoys me.”1 Fields showed little interest in a gadget housed in a wooden box with a speaker, dials for volume and to change a station, and with tubes in the back. Bill once claimed that he had earlier tossed a radio in his house into an ashcan. Although temporarily unable to read due to an eye problem causing double vision, Bill vehemently refused to have a radio by his bedside at the sanitarium. The persistent nurse refused to surrender to her patient who finally accepted the challenge “Throwing all caution to the winds, I lunged at it boldly and seized it by the throat with one hand while tweaking its nose with the other. And what did the gadget do? Did it strike back at old W.C. with demonical fury? Ah, no indeed, perish the thought. It began filling my etherized abode with most soulful melodies, like chords of heavenly harps they were.”2 To his surprise, his radio became an “inseparable” companion. “I came to love that little gadget most dearly—radio, I believe they called it, yes, so it was ... Hour by hour and day by day I would listen to the gadget most attentively, with rapt attention, one might say, one might say ... It wasn’t long before Jack Benny and Bing Crosby meant © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_15

185

186 

A. F. WERTHEIM

more to me than my nearest and dearest kin, yes, I am ashamed to say, more than my dear old father ... They ought to sell radios in stores now, yes indeed. They ought to invent slogans, slogans that read a radio a day will keep dandruff away, or a radio with every dinner pail. It’s a coming thing radio, so it is, so it is. It ought to be, yes indeed. It saved my life.”3 Fields never missed a show “from the Lux Theater on Monday to Jack Benny the following Sunday.” If the reception was poor in his room, he rang for an attendant to take him to a spot where he could listen. Fields wrote Benny about his radio show: “This is probably ‘stinko’ but I listen to the program so assiduously every week that I am beginning to feel part of it.” He told a radio publicist that “I don’t know what I’d have done without the radio. Yes I do—I’d have gone nuts!”4 Radio had burgeoned into an extremely popular entertainment form during the late 1920s and early 1930s when programming became more commercialized and sales of sets mushroomed. Manufacturers began producing large luxurious products for the upscale market as well as smaller ones that cost less. Radio’s popularity derived from three unique features: simultaneity (listeners could instantly hear events as they occurred); imagination (pictures in the mind about what they heard); and a person-to-person quality (an intimate relationship to characters listeners habitually heard every week). At least one-third of American households gathered around their radio in the evening hours to hear their favorite programs. Major networks claimed that their nationwide broadcasts reached up to sixty million people. Radio became a large moneymaking enterprise ruled by large networks as well as sponsors backed by their advertising agencies anxious to sell their products to consumers. By revolutionizing coast-to-coast communication, the airwaves forged a mass media by presenting a potpourri of entertainment for a huge audience of diverse listeners. Fields had actually tried radio when it was in its infancy. On January 12, 1924, his comments were broadcast at the annual banquet of the Motor and Accessory Manufacturers Association at New York’s Astor Hotel. Despite noise interference, “the scraping of a stringed instrument” and “some squeaks,” listeners at home could hear “the crowd of men” in the banquet room “hysterical with laughter” while Fields spoke.5 A week later, he performed on WEAF, a New York local station, on a variety program that also featured a pianist and a baritone. Feeling that the audio format was incompatible with his forte as a visual comedian, these initial experiences caused Fields to shun radio.

15  RADIO SAVED MY LIFE! 

187

Despite his attitude, Bill made some sporadic appearances on the airwaves during the early 1930s. The broadcasts were mainly promotional pieces for his films. These publicity programs and short appearances on scattered shows failed to excite him. “I had been sour on radio,” Fields admitted. “To me, it was merely an unpredictable novelty.”6 Bill’s Follies colleagues were meanwhile starring in hit programs: The Eddie Cantor Show, Will Rogers’s famous topical talks on The Gulf Show, and Ed Wynn as the Fire Chief. In 1936, Fanny Brice introduced Baby Snooks, a mischievous youngster, on The Ziegfeld Follies on the Air. By 1944, Brice starred in her own broadcast, the half-hour CBS Baby Snooks Show, a situation comedy hit that lasted until her death in 1951. Fields’s failure to make a full-time commitment to radio during its early Golden Age created consequences similar to his late start in silent films. “Radio isn’t going to interfere with my film work. That comes first,” he once said. Fields’s slow start in the medium caused a loss to radio’s history, especially since his pungent voice was perfect for the aural medium. Despite offers, his name was never attached to his own program such as the Jack Benny Show. In a letter to Benny, he realized how important it was to create interesting types. “I never miss your air show and it seems that I appreciate it all the more with every broadcast. It is something to look forward to on Sunday evening.” A regular radio weekly program in which he impersonated a henpecked con man with a belittling wife might have had a long run.7 A significant event that helped change his negative attitude about radio occurred when Fields received a letter from Adolph Zukor, Paramount’s chairman. “Bill, I won’t feel my Silver Jubilee is right, unless you’re in it somewhere. If we send a man here to hook you up, do you think you could go on with the broadcast?”8 Although still convalescing in Las Encinas Sanitarium, he could not turn down his boss, who was still one of the most powerful potentates in the industry. Fields therefore agreed to make congratulatory remarks honoring Zukor’s twenty-five years at Paramount via a hookup from his bedside on January 7, 1937. Fields joined nearly twenty Paramount studio stars on the broadcast. “They brought a little black gadget called the microphone to me,” Bill recalled. During his less than five-minute spot, his peerless voice came over loud and clear. Fields’s short sketch involves his frustrating attempt to call Jack Benny due to an inept rude telephone operator, who cannot understand Bill’s request. Listeners hear an amusing repartee

188 

A. F. WERTHEIM

between Fields and the operator, who he calls “my little petunia,” “my little plum,” and “my little prune whip.” Bill becomes annoyed with the operator, who never gets Benny on the line. “Just lie back on your pillow,” Fields says, “and I’ll send him a telegram.”9 According to legend, his short repartee on the Zukor program launched his radio career. “Everybody said I was good,” Bill declared.10 Fields’s comments gained the attention of executives in the radio department at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, which asked Fields to join their show, The Chase & Sanborn Hour. Advertising agencies, anxious to promote their clients’ products, were the most powerful entities in the broadcasting business. They controlled script development, censorship, and the hiring of performers, among others. Their show, which promoted Standard Brands’ Chase and Sanborn’s coffee, starred the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his alter ego, the brash precocious dummy Charlie McCarthy. An admirer of Fields’s humor, Bergen felt Bill would be an excellent addition to his program. The ventriloquist had earlier received a telegram from Fields, stating how much he respected his timing and humor. Unable to obtain a movie role due to his health, Bill thought radio might be easier to do than a film. After nearly a nine-month stay, Fields left Las Encinas Sanatorium during March 1937, convinced that the airwaves were a means to make money and to keep his name before the public on the Bergen–McCarthy broadcast. Fields snagged the Thompson agency’s lucrative bait, a reported $5000 per broadcast for 16 weeks starting May 9, 1937. To reach the top as a ventriloquist Bergen needed to ascend the slippery ladder of show business in a specialty that had a precarious reputation. “Ventriloquism is one of the oldest known arts,” wrote Bergen. His forte (called a “belly speaker”) derived from the Latin word venter (belly) and loqui (speak) and evolved from an ancient mystical art found in religious practices. “Historical records show that it has been practiced since the beginning of civilization.” Used as “an art of black magic ... mysterious voices spoke from the empty air, from the life less bodies of idols and from the dark shadows of temples.” Priests from “pagan tribes made noises come out of their idols” to frighten and command their worshipers. The Greeks practiced gastromancy, a belief that the voices of the dead resided in the stomach of the ventriloquist, who deciphered the sounds and predicted the future. Its reputation declined during the rise of Christianity when ventriloquists were viewed as instruments of the devil and the voices of demons. During the Middle

15  RADIO SAVED MY LIFE! 

189

Ages, it was declared a form of witchcraft and conjurers were subject to imprisonment or death.11 Once it shed its affiliation with the underworld, ventriloquism was able to become a successful performance art. During the eighteenth century, ventriloquists appeared with itinerant troupers who entertained at English markets or fairs. Around 1750, the Austrian Baron von Mengen was among the first to use a talking wooden doll with moveable lips on stage, synchronizing the movements with his ventriloquial voice. By that century’s end, ventriloquism had become a popular entertainment in England at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre where performers threw their voice as if it came from long distances. Acts using puppets came of age during the latter part of the nineteenth century in British music halls and US vaudeville. According to Joe Laurie, the guru of showbiz, ventriloquism is actually “done by taking a deep breath and then letting it escape slowly, the voice sounds being modified by means of the upper part of the throat and the palate; the tighter the throat is closed, the further away the sound seems to be.” Stomach muscles are also employed “to assist the diaphragm to give vocal and tonal strength to the voice,” wrote Valentine Vox, considered among the world’s masters of the performance art.12 The art of throwing your voice (“distant ventriloquism”) to a speaking doll or dummy on your lap, a walking figure, puppet, inanimate object, or animal fascinated audiences from children to adults. Besides mastering the technique, a successful ventriloquist needed to give his speaking figure a definite personality. Among the headliners were Arthur Prince and his puppet Sailor Jim, a music hall favorite, and the Great Harry Lester, who walked among the audience with his dummy Frank Byron whistling a tune. During the early nineteenth century, Richard Potter is considered the first popular American ventriloquist known for imitating the sounds of birds and animals. Starting in 1896, Fred Russell, an Englishman known as the father of modern ventriloquism, exchanged witty repartee with a sassy dummy on his lap named Coster Joe, whose Cockney humor generated laughter from fans. He caused the “the personality of the figures” to overshadow “that of the ventriloquists whose vocal skills became subordinate to their animated partners.”13 Once popular stage entertainment became commercialized, ventriloquists lacked the prestige of other performance artists. Its subtle deception failed to excite audiences compared to the sensationalism of a strongman (Sandow), a master escape artist (Houdini), or an exceptional

190 

A. F. WERTHEIM

trick juggler (Cinquevalli). “Ventriloquists ... hung from the lowest rung in vaudeville,” recalled Edgar Bergen’s daughter, the famous actress Candice Bergen.14 Given its questionable entertainment value, Bergen needed to traverse a long road to become a star ventriloquist. Born in 1902 as Edgar Berggren, he was the son of Swedish parents, hardworking immigrants who worked a dairy farm in Michigan. His Scandinavian heritage was manifested in his fair skin, tall height, strikingly handsome looks, and thinning blond hair, which left him half bald once his photographs graced radio magazines. As the second son in the family, he grew up shy, moody, and reserved with a reticent countenance shielding his true self. His diffident personality ironically gave birth to his fame—the uninhibited Charlie McCarthy, his alter ego, who enabled Bergen to burst out of his shell and express himself. According to legend, the youngster saw the Great Lester perform in Chicago, visited his dressing room, and was given a few tips. For a quarter, he ordered The Wizard’s Manual, which taught the arts of deception and secrecy from hypnotism to ventriloquism. He spent hours learning how to project his voice, use his diaphragm, and control his lips. He scared his mother by making her home-cooked apple pie talk and causing chaos around the farm by generating loud noises from other objects. Bergen wanted to develop an act with a dummy figure with a strong personality. The inspiration came from a witty and cocky Irish newsboy called Charlie, who he often saw hawking his ware on Chicago streets. Bergen gave his sketches of the newsboy to a barkeeper, also a skilled woodcarver, who made a figure with a head made of pine and a nine-inch broomstick backbone attached to the neck by a disc. Bergen manipulated the dummy’s movements by a rubber band that stretched from the back of the neck to the top of the skull, and his mouth shifted by trail cords affixed to the lower jaw. Bergen named his partner Charlie, after the newsboy, and McCarthy after Theodore Mack, the woodcarver. Wearing hand-me-down clothes, overalls, and a cap, Charlie initially resembled a mischief-making urchin. The embryonic Charlie enabled Bergen to launch a career, and it served as the prototype for the evolution of future McCarthy figures. Bergen’s road to the top was long, hard, and covered with pitfalls. Edgar and Charlie hopped trains along the “Sawdust Trail,” from traveling tent shows to dingy small-time vaudeville venues. Later, he joined the more respected Chautauqua circuit where he toured churches, town

15  RADIO SAVED MY LIFE! 

191

halls, and schools. Charlie resided in a trunk for ten years, the inside serving as his bedroom, while Bergen slept outside on its hard surface. Candice Bergen recalls that Charlie sometimes refused to go to bed. “O, please, Bergen don’t lock me up! Please help me! Bergen not the trunk!”15 His daughter remembered Charlie as a family member with his own room, an ersatz brother who often joined the family for dinner. In 1930, the duo reached the apex of big-time vaudeville, playing Broadway’s Palace Theatre. But Bergen’s appearance came at the start of the Great Depression. Just when he was finally achieving success, Bergen found himself out of work, the victim of a sweeping revolution in popular entertainment. Films with sound had arrived, and radio was commencing its Golden Age. “Vaudeville was dying,” he told his daughter. “We thought we were through, Charlie and I.” In addition, “everybody looked down on ventriloquism.” Although reserved, underneath Bergen was a determined fighter. “I decided on desperate measures,” said Bergen. “I revamped my whole act. I had a dress suit and a monocle made for Charlie, and the same for myself.” With their new sophisticated look including white tie, top hat, and tails plus Charlie’s new voice with a British accent, they entertained at Chicago’s fashionable supper clubs, upper-class parties, and Manhattan’s chic Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, where they suddenly became the toast of New York’s high society. The publicity led to an engagement in 1936 on Rudy Vallee’s radio program, starring the popular “Vagabond Lover” crooner. A critic from Radio Review noted their uniqueness: “Humor is situational and character-bred rather than gaggy ... joshing idiom with vocal mannerisms thrown in ... An artiste— in the old and best meaning.”16 Their appearance led to a thirteen-week contract on the Vallee show. Before long they had an 8 p.m. Sunday-night program commencing on May 9, 1937, with Bergen and Charlie, The Chase & Sanborn Hour on the NBC-Red network. As a moralistic, fatherly type who tried to teach misbehaved Charlie right from wrong, Bergen played the straight man who fed his partner lines that gave McCarthy sharp rejoinders. The fast-paced show led to one joke topper after another. The brash, precocious youngster enjoyed ribbing Bergen about his baldness, stinginess, and the movement of his lips. “You can say that again, Charlie,” said Bergen. “Not without you moving your lips,” Charlie retorted.17 Bergen’s other talents more than compensated for his partner’s critique: a master of timing, vocal modulation, and manipulation. Although unnoticed by

192 

A. F. WERTHEIM

the radio audience at home, Charlie was much more than a dummy who sat immobile next to Bergen. The ventriloquist made Charlie come alive through “an incline of the head to appear querulous, slow sidelong glances, looking an antagonist up and down before skewing him with an insult, or flirting with an an attractive starlet before proposing a night on the town.” Charlie possessed a lecherous side. Once an actress refused his invitation to play post office. “Why that’s a kid’s game,” she told him. “Not the way I play it,” retorted Charlie.18 Charlie became so real that fans often referred to him as a living person. They bought tons of different souvenirs with Charlie’s image, including dolls, mugs, cuff links, tin toys, and spoons, among other objects. The sponsors “introduced me to Charlie McCarthy,” Fields reminisced. “Perish the thought, yes, twice perish the thought. Redwood for a nose!” Bill’s debut on the hour-long inaugural broadcast of The Chase & Sanborn Hour set the tone for all the guest spots that followed. His appearances operated on a sure-fire formula. Fields and Charlie hurled insult jokes at one another, a war of words to see who could top the other with a cutting rejoinder. “That was the beginning of a loveable feud,” said Bergen. The bickering stemmed from an ageold sure-fire comedic formula: the big guy vs. little man and comic vs. stooge wordplay on the popular stage. Since never-ending battles with an adversary were part of human nature, radio listeners could readily identify with the wrangling. Similar bogus feuds between performers on comedy shows were flooding the airwaves—the popular Jack Benny vs. Fred Allen and the Bob Hope vs. Bing Crosby rivalries being two examples. Fields joked about Charlie’s forty-pound frame carved out of basswood and his arms and legs stuffed with wood wool. He lampooned Charlie’s $1000 wardrobe with its numerous outfits, especially his posh appearance as an aristocratic wearing a top hat, tux, tails, and a monocle. Charlie’s barbs were aimed at Bill’s large red nose and habitual drinking. His favorite signature line: “So help me Bergen, I’ll mow him down.”19 On the first program, the two antagonists lit up the airwaves straightaway with their verbal fisticuffs. Fields: His face looks as if it were hewn out of a piece of sassafras root. Charlie: Oh, is that so? If they had to cut your face out of a piece of wood, they would have to use redwood for a nose—and an ample bit of it, too. I’d say... Fields: Redwood for a nose! He’s a fresh little punk isn’t he... He’s full of termites! Take him away from me, he draws flies.

15  RADIO SAVED MY LIFE! 

193

Charlie: (Laughs) He’s drunk. Fields: Yes and I’ll be sober tomorrow and you’ll still be full of termites.

“It’s all new to me,” Fields said after the program. “It’s like starting over again. Just think on one broadcast I say to more people than Booth and Barrett did in their whole careers.” A reporter asked him if he was nervous before his first broadcast. “I hadn’t faced an audience in ten years,” said Fields, thinking about the last time he was on stage, which was actually seven years. “But the minute I heard the first laugh I was all right—I knew they were with me.”20 The coast-to-coast network broadcasts were a breakthrough in mass communications. That listeners on the East Coast and West Coast could hear the same program simultaneously was at the time truly breathtaking. During the 1930s, owning a radio resulted in a total audience that could reach sixty million people. Bill benefited from the fact that 65% of radio audiences preferred comedy more than any other type of programming. The airwaves became so popular that newspapers hired their own radio critics, and a flood of radio magazines appeared on newsstands. Most radio’s star comedians came from vaudeville or Broadway revues: Benny, Cantor, Wynn, Brice, and Hope, to name a few. The popularity of radio plus the advent of sound films sounded the death knell of vaudeville. Not every stage comic was a success on the air. “Radio is not kind to comedians,” wrote Alton Cook, the New York World-Telegram radio editor. As Cook suggests, mike fright made “monkeys” of some comedians. “A script that kills the boys in rehearsal often sounds sour on the air.” Bad radio ratings caused some stage comedians to fall by the wayside. “With radio elevating lesser ones of the stage and snubbing the great ones, it all adds up to a cheer of relief that W. C. Fields was one of the great men of radio in his few minutes last night.”21 Critics and colleagues gave Fields kudos after his first show. “A new radio star was born Sunday night when W. C. Fields, after years of success on the stage and on the screen, ran riot in the loudspeaker,” wrote one radio reporter. “He is one comic in radio who excites wholehearted laughter. One doesn’t chuckle with Fields; one howls.” Jack Benny wired: “MUST TELL YOU I HEARD YOUR FIRST BROADCAST SUNDAY AND THOUGHT THE PROGRAM SWELL AND THAT YOUR TWELVE MINUTES WAS THE FUNNIEST I EVER HEARD IT WAS REALLY SENSATIONAL.” After a few weeks, Fields was such

194 

A. F. WERTHEIM

a big hit that his appearances helped Bergen’s show to become the top program on the airwaves.22 Fields’s pungent voice was perfect for the aural medium. The way he uttered his lines became the key feature of his performance. Radio humor depended on the voice to create a character. Sound effects might duplicate physical action but without the power of speech the broadcast fell flat. Huddled around the radio in homes across America, audiences heard Fields’s voice crystal clear. Its tone, inflection, and rhythm made the comedian’s barbs bristle and the boisterous characters he imitated very real. Bergen played the referee who vainly attempted to end the verbal jousting between Bill and Charlie. According to Bergen, considerable adlibbing occurred during the broadcast. “We both got in toppers and got into trouble a couple of times. Bill liked dirtying up the script.” Fields played the character of a “grumpy disagreeable man,” said Bergen. Charlie called him the “softest hard-boiled egg he ever met.” Bergen recalled the time when he met Fields at his home to discuss the upcoming show. “He was a very gracious host, always good food and good liquor. But when we got to the show, he was just like a fighter in the ring. He admired anyone who could give him a good fight. And no holds were barred.” Arriving at the studio for the rehearsal, Bill sat at a table with his hat on, munching a toothpick and reading the script with his glasses.23 The tête-à-tête feud resembled Fields’s disputes with impertinent brats begun on the stage and continued in his movies—his nemesis Baby LeRoy being the most infamous. The sassy loud-mouth Charlie acted like the many mischievous boys Fields pretended to despise on screen. “A dummy is like a child,” Fields stated. “If a comedian’s going to hold his own he has to get down to the dummy or child’s level and fight with him, like I did with Baby LeRoy,” Fields felt. Charlie “was worse than Baby LeRoy, whom I finally vanquished after several years of intense feuding.” The jousting between Bill and Charlie resembled two dueling fencers but instead of swords they battled with words. “I’ve become a straight man to a dummy,” bemoaned Fields. “The ignominy of it all!”24 Fields’s imbibing (nearly two quarts of liquor daily) and beet-red bulbous proboscis were prêt-à-porter fodder for smart-aleck Charlie’s barbs. Fields’s son Claude felt that his father’s nose “was a source of embarrassment to him, but later he capitalized on it, as he did most things, and it became one of his trademarks.” Fields’s large bulbous nose (“the original half man and half nose”); his liquor addiction (“an alcohol lamp”); and Charlie’s wooden frame (“the woodpecker’s

15  RADIO SAVED MY LIFE! 

195

pin up boy” and a “termite’s flophouse”) typified the name-calling between the two. “Tell me, Charles, is it true your father was a gateleg table?” Fields asked on a broadcast. “If it is—your father was under it,” retorted Charlie. “Why don’t you have your breezer tattooed blue for the duration of the dimouts?” uttered Charlie. Fields replied, “Silence, you frustrated hitching post, or I’ll cut you down to a pair of shoe trees” Charlie: “Is it true, Mr. Fields, that when you stood on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, forty-three cars waited for your nose to turn green.” Fields: “Go away, you woodpecker’s blue plate, before I take my saw and pedicure your tootsies.”25 Sometimes Bill arrived at his radio broadcasts with a cane as a weapon for self-defense and a saw to slice Charlie into pieces if he did not keep his mouth shut. The exchanges were enhanced by a sound effect specialist emulating a saw cutting wood. These talented audio professionals appeared on the broadcast stage with all types of equipment necessary to mimic sounds necessary to give a program more realism (Fig. 15.1). Bergen occasionally played the straight man who set Fields up to deliver some one-liners. “What are you suffering from Mr. Fields?” “Well I am suffering from Ralfadaldo, complicated by a stubborn case of dandruff.” “Mr. Fields, what would your father have said if he knew you drank two quarts of whiskey a day?” “He would have called me a sissy.” Although Bill arrived at the broadcast with a thermos of martinis, recalled Bergen, he never appeared drunk. “We protected him whatever condition he was in,” Bergen stated.26 Comedians who had their own show or held long contracts for guest appearances such as Fields faced considerable pressure to have fresh material every week. This was a new experience for Fields. As an entertainer on the stage in vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies, Bill could repeat a sketch nightly without worrying about a returning audience. Nor did Fields encounter this problem during his film career unless he was recycling material from a silent to a sound movie. Because his health was still frail, the need to develop new material weekly on radio produced considerable stress. “Every night on the air is like opening a new show on Broadway,” he declared. “And when it’s over you breathe a sigh of relief, some guy grabs you by the sleeve and says ‘What do you think you’ll do next week?’” Bill found the radio business stressful, especially the brief time one had to generate laughs. “On the stage, if you flop in the first part of the show, you may make it up in the last part,” he asserted. “But on radio, when you have just ten minutes, you have to make every

196 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 15.1  Radio’s vocal warfare: Fields, Charlie McCarthy, and Edgar Bergen (Courtesy Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS)

minute count, squeeze down every gag to its minimum wordage, and, on top of that, be nonchalant. As if you’re ad libbing.”27 If Paramount should offer him a new picture, Bill wondered if he could manage both radio and a movie. The Thompson agency assigned Dick Mack to help write Fields’s dialogue. Early in the week, Mack visited Bill’s home and together they tackled the script. As the time for the broadcast neared, Fields either changed most of the lines or wrote his own material. He would tell the producers at the rehearsal that he had not made any cuts. Before the broadcast, a script needed approval by the advertising agency, the most powerful commercial enterprise in the radio business along with NBC and CBS. The agency’s representatives often oversaw the writers in script-making meetings. A draft needed to be sent to the

15  RADIO SAVED MY LIFE! 

197

agency one week before the broadcast. Radio celebrities and their writers were obligated to make any changes requested by the agency. Censorship departments at the agencies and networks carefully combed the script looking for any embarrassing language that might offend listeners. The repressive rules challenged Fields’s belief in free expression. As in the movies, he regularly fought the powers that reigned over his scripts. He often refused to file his script beforehand. “We wouldn’t show the damn thing to them—the hell with them,” Fields informed his secretary. Censorship drove him into a frenzy. “What right has anybody got to censor anything? Who can say what’s right or wrong? Wasn’t it Schopenhauer who said that nobody knows right from wrong?”28 Bergen let Fields improvise freely during the broadcast. “A lot of that stuff between Bergen and me was on the spur of the moment,” Fields said. He felt that Fields wrote “some lovely jokes and we would put toppers on them, which were real good.” The sponsor and the network were always worried Bill would tell an off-color gag. “Sure he’d ad-lib, but Bill never said anything too dirty,” recalled Bergen.29 Fields quit the show as a regular guest in September 1937 citing several factors: ill health, lack of good script material, the pressure of a new show every week, and the fear of eventually flopping. Bill also felt that his material “compared badly with the Charlie McCarthy routines,” which Bergen wrote. The comedian had earlier written John Reber, head of the radio department at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, complaining about the quality of writers assigned to him. I “need ten minutes of dynamite every Sunday.... I must have material—and not fair material, or good material, but great material.... With about two or three broadcasts similar to last week’s, I will be washed up on the air. Good writers are most essential. I can’t write everything myself, hold my position on what everyone including myself considers the finest show the air has ever produced. I am so God damned fearful of losing your esteem and the publics that I wish to quit now before I turn sour.” Reber was disappointed about his resignation. “You are a powerful stroke in the Chase and Sanborn crew, pulling the heavy oar in the race for top place.” Fields’s most persuasive reason for quitting was that he had finally received an offer to star in another Paramount picture.30

CHAPTER 16

The Big Broadcast of 1938

The film was The Big Broadcast of 1938 scheduled to begin production in September. Bill concluded that he could not do his radio program and appear in a film simultaneously. Significantly, Fields’s radio appearances paved a return to the movies after a fifteen-month hiatus primarily due to his ill health. The surprising news was a lucky break. Jack Benny, a Paramount leading light in The Big Broadcast of 1937, turned down the role because he felt another Big Broadcast so soon was repetitious. “Then W. C. Fields, who had previously been very ill, recovered and was written into the film,” reported the Times. “He is on the set a 9 each morning.”1 Fields’s successful appearances with Bergen and McCarthy had helped him attain a lead role in The Big Broadcast of 1938, considered a movie with a radio theme. During the 1930s, studios had a symbiotic relationship with broadcasting networks. A large number of radio stars performed in films and cinema celebrities appeared on the airwaves. The moneymaking interchange was encouraged by both mediums but sometimes the swapping became chaotic. Film actors left their sets to rehearse their broadcasts or go on the air, which caused shooting to be delayed. Paramount had more radio stars than any other studio. During a typical month in the mid-1930s, fourteen Paramount celebrities had their own radio show while twenty-four made guest appearances. To oversee the problem, Paramount established a radio contacts department in April 1937 to coordinate the broadcast scheduling of their film stars so that their © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_16

199

200 

A. F. WERTHEIM

appearances in the two mediums went smoothly, prevented overlaps, and avoided conflicts. Realizing the popularity of radio stars, Paramount executives produced four Big Broadcast pictures during the thirties (1932, 1936, 1937, and 1938). The formula allowed producers to include numerous radio stars doing their specialties in a single film, which resembled a variety show accompanied by a plot. During the decade, movies featuring an all-star cast with the performers entangled in numerous subplots were in vogue. The formula guaranteed a successful moneymaking sequel with a ready-made audience anxious to see the next radio picture. Paramount needed to find radio stars with the talent to transfer from an aural to a visual medium. Bill excelled in both areas. “Fields’s genius … lies a great deal in his ability to combine verbal and visual traits in his comic character,” wrote the film historian Donald McCaffrey. Paramount conceived two ways to feature their talent for the broadcast arena. A conventional approach starred a radio personality in a feature-length movie such as the boisterous singer Kate Smith who played a farm girl in the flop Hello Everybody (1933). A more successful method was the radio picture (The Big Broadcast films) with several celebrities from the airwaves performing their musical and comedy scenes after being introduced by a master of ceremonies in a broadcast station. The cast in The Big Broadcast of 1938 featured numerous well-known radio performers, among them Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, Ben Blue, and Bob Hope, who entertained the shipboard passengers in a floor show. Between the comedy and musical numbers, several romantic subplots were interwoven into a flimsy plot.2 At age thirty-four, The Big Broadcast of 1938 was Hope’s first major feature film after a career in vaudeville and as a headliner in several Broadway musical comedies. As the emcee who introduced the film’s shipboard entertainment, Hope made several amusing quips. But his highpoint was a love duet with young songstress Shirley Ross, “Thanks for the Memory.” The wistful tune was so sensational that Hope adapted it as his theme song and ritualistically sang it at the close of his numerous radio and television programs. The Big Broadcast pitted Fields and Hope at different stages of their career. Bill had eight more years to live, a period mixed with exceptional comebacks and serious ailments caused by his drinking. A much younger comedian, Hope befriended the veteran Fields during the shooting. The two chatted in Bill’s dressing room where they shared experiences

16  THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 

201

in vaudeville, discussed the philosophy of comedy, and exchanged jokes. Both comic showmen obsessed with fame and possessed with demonic determination had worked tirelessly to reach the top. A newcomer to film, Hope watched the veteran Fields perform on the set, admiring his timing and how he milked a comedy routine. Hope called Fields a “rare comedy genius” and “an enormously inventive comic.” Fields once wrote in a letter to Hope: “Many thanks for the various plugs you have given me on your [radio] program. Best wishes and continued success.” Some of these so-called plugs, however, were gags at the expense of Bill’s drinking.3 The two comics differed in their style and delivery. Hope was a smartaleck brash wisecracker who told snappy one-liners in a fast-paced monologue. He usually avoided comments about social problems due to his avid support of traditional American values. By contrast, Bill was not a one-line jokester. His routine instead evolved slowly until he sensed that it was the time to deliver the punch line. Fields was, moreover, a poignant social satirist whose underdog rogue characters on screen lampooned sacrosanct subjects. During the production, Fields had an explosive conflict with the well-respected director Mitchell Leisen, a battle that ranks high in his confrontations with studio superiors. Leisen became known for his witty romantic comedies and radio pictures since he had directed The Big Broadcast of 1937. “Mitch was one of the greatest directors this town has ever known,” wrote Dorothy Lamour, who appeared in several of Leisen’s films.4 The animosity between Leisen and Fields spawned havoc on the set. “He was the most obstinate, ornery son of a bitch I ever tried to work with,” declared Leisen. When irked, the director could become as temperamental as Fields, whose hatred of authority had hardened with age. “Just to louse you up,” Bill told him, “I’ve decided I’m not going to do that routine after all.” The two argued over lines until an exasperated Leisen surrendered and formed a separate unit for the comedian with another director, Ted Reed. According to Leisen, Fields would disappear to study his lines and return two hours later soused. Since Fields was in a separate unit, Leisen needed to know the last line of his scene, so he could dovetail it into the plot. “Sure, sure, I’ll give it to you,” he said. But he never did.5 Another incident occurred when Metropolitan Opera star Kirsten Flagstad sang “Brunnhilde’s Battle Cry” from Wagner’s Ring cycle. Bill

202 

A. F. WERTHEIM

asked who she was. “That’s Madame Flagstad” someone said. “Oh, I thought it was a screeching parrot.” His comment was caught on camera, causing considerable hullabaloo. Fields wrote to LeBaron that he had “confidence” that his remark “is not overstepping any bounds of propriety or good taste.” When Leisen learned that Fields’s comment could create a libel suit, he ordered the negative burned. Once the shooting ended Leisen had a heart attack in his home and was bedridden for six weeks.6 In the film, Fields plays a lead role impersonating two twin brothers with different characteristics: S. B. Bellows, a bungling trouble-maker, and T. Frothingell Bellows, a wealthy sly double-dealer. They own a luxurious liner, the Gigantic, which competes against the Colossal in a transatlantic race. T. Frothingell asks his ne’er-do-well brother to sneak aboard the rival boat and do some damage so that their ship wins. But S. B. mistakenly boards their own vessel and wrecks the liner. Despite the destruction, their ship wins in the end. Although Fields’s role is scattered haphazardly throughout the picture, he achieves some hilarious comic scenes. Fields had agreements with Paramount to author his own scenes and develop screenplays with payments as high as $25,000. He also earned $101,000 for The Big Broadcast or about $6000 per week for 17 weeks. Paramount purchased five comedy routines he had written. The subject of the sketches included a barber shop, an orchestra, a gas station, a golf course, and a pool room. Only the last three were used, but they were considerably changed and expanded. Although Bill did not receive writing credit, the three sequences became Fields’s most humorous performances. On his way to play golf before arriving at the boat race, S. B. has his chauffeur drive his convertible to a gas station. A line of gas station attendants wearing sleek uniforms line up to greet Bellows. As he stands up in his car smoking a cigar, they greet him blowing their bugles. S. B., a frivolous pompous character known for causing disasters, orders the attendants to fill his car with gas, put fluid in his cigarette lighter, and to fix a flat tire. The tire over inflates propelling Bellow’s car to rise off the ground and return with an enormous thud. “What kind of service do you call this?” he tells the attendant. By now, Bellows is highly annoyed and starts to drive off with a flat tire. “Out of my way before I hit somebody,” he yells. The car smashes into one of the pumps, causing gas to flood the station. As Bellows leaves, he throws his lighted cigar into the gasoline.7

16  THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 

203

S. B. arrives at the golf course with an autogiro, an ingenious golf cart—a motor scooter outfitted with airplane wings and a propeller in the rear. Fields’s zany golf routine is entirely different than his earlier ones. Anxious to play a few holes before boarding the ship, he zips around the course in his scooter followed by a handful of caddies, who need to jump out of the way or get run over. “Gang way, boys,” the bossy golfer shouts. “Funny thing about that [contraption], I used to play a lot of golf. Eighteen holes took the better part of a day. So I got the idea for that scooter to whizz me ‘round the course so I could manage in an hour. I’m not fooling. I mean it. … The studio stuck it in the picture for a gag.”8 Dressed in slacks, shirt, and tie, Bellows arrives at the first tee. “Come on snails, get the lead out” he yells to the caddies who have not yet arrived. He takes several clubs from his golf bags until he finds the correct one. “You’re all teed up sir,” a caddy tells him. Insulted, Bellows replies: “What do you mean I’m all teed up, don’t be rude.” He selects a putter to drive a ball toward a 420-yard hole with the wind blowing in his face. “Stand clear, boys, and keep your eye on the ball,” he tells the caddies. After teeing off, he drives down the course and discovers that his ball is still in the air. After it descends, he hits another good shot. “It’s a lily!” he shouts. To pitch a ball out of a sand trap, he selects what he calls a 404 elephant dung one hundred percent dynamite club. He takes a swing, misses the ball, and his club emits a large cloud of sand and dirt that causes the caddies to scatter. “Hope I didn’t hit anybody,” Bellows says. As in his other golf routines, the caddies are the fall guys who take considerable abuse. Bellows steps on a club lying on the ground that hits him in the rear. He accuses the caddy behind him and knocks his hat off. In the hat are a bunch of used golf balls. “Pick up those lost balls,” he orders. “You’re a kook,” he tells him. “Understand not to be confused with cooking; not a good-looking kook either.” Leisen was displeased with the length of the golf scene. “That interminable golf routine scene of his. My God! It goes on for 45 min!” The director did not like Fields repeating old sketches. One time the director caught Fields using the same routine that he had used in his last picture. “This one is different” said Fields. “In the other one it is a bottle of whisky, in this one, it’s a bottle of gin.”9 Bellows next gets into his autogiro with the wings extended and flies off. As he crosses the ocean, he is petrified by a huge goose that flies by his airplane. He spots the two ships below racing against each other.

204 

A. F. WERTHEIM

By mistake, he descends on his own boat, the S. S. Gigantic, thinking it is the rivalship, the S. S. Colossal. On the boat, Bellows challenges Lord Droopy (Lionel Page), a naïve English passenger to a game of pool. The four- and one-half-minute sequence ranks among Bill’s most humorous pool scenes. Not only does the scene portray his trick shots but also reveals his deceitful character as a hustler. Dressed smartly in shipboard attire, Bellows is an expert pool shark who knows that the nobleman has never played pool. Eager to make a quick buck, he gets Droopy to bet on the game. “Shall we say a pound?” the Englishman asks. “Make it ten?” replies Bellows. He hoodwinks his opponent whenever he is not looking. Bellows uses his hand and crooked cue to push his balls into the pockets and to prevent Droopy’s shots from going in. To distract his opponent, Bellows puts his straw boater over his opponent’s fedora, asks him to carry his coat, and sticks his cigar in the Lord’s mouth. Bellows tells him to stand behind him so that he cannot watch his shots too closely. “I don’t want you to say I cheated afterwards.” When Fields clears the table with one shot his opponent thinks that the rolling ship caused the feat. Fields inadvertently shoots a ball through an open porthole where a lady is sitting on the deck eating ice cream and it lands on the dish. “Silly old monkey!” she blurts. A missed shot causes Bellows to rip the tabletop with the end of his cue. “How do you expect anyone to play pool on a moth-eaten torn table like that,” he informs the steward. As he exits with the English Lord, he yells “is there a lawyer on the ship?” Once again, Fields has used his beloved pool table act to create a laugh-getting sequence. A visitor to the set who witnessed Fields “trimming a harassed English gent at pool” wrote that “the scene was so funny that it reminded him of Milton’s line about ‘Laughter holding both sides.’”10 During the filming, accident-prone Fields experienced two incidents. A mirror exploded triggering glass to fly in all directions. One piece slashed Bill’s head causing him to rant: “Gonna sue, get me my lawyer, gonna sue.” The other accident occurred on shipboard when Fields explained to newsmen how the radio powerhouse worked. He accidentally touched an electric coil with his umbrella causing an explosion. Bill fell backward but luckily covered his face to prevent being burned. “Remember boys,” he bellowed, “women and children first. Give me a baby, I’ll hold it on my lap.”11 Overloaded with too many radio stars and an inane cumbersome plot, The Big Broadcast ends up as a disjointed film with a lack of continuity.

16  THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 

205

“Variety is offering a $10,000 prize to anybody who can describe the plot,” quipped Hope. The overlong film also demanded considerable cutting. William LeBaron wired Bill from San Francisco after seeing a preview: PICTURE WENT GREAT LAST NIGHT EVEN THOUGH PAINFULLY LONG THEY LAUGHED BIG AT GOLF AND POOL TABLE AND ALL YOUR STUFF ONLY CUT NEEDED ARE A FEW LINES THAT WENT FLAT REST OF PICTURE NEEDS LOTS OF CUTTING … ALL MY LOVE AND KISSES.12 Bill had little confidence in the director or producer making demands for shortening or cutting sequences. “I merely have to take another’s word that a piece of business went good, or went badly—which isn’t satisfactory. Because it’s a known fact that when someone doesn’t like a gag personally, he can’t hear the people around him laughing.”13 After Fields saw the film, he wrote LeBaron a long letter suggesting numerous changes. Fields’s suggestions were mostly ignored. By the time the movie was released the 130-minute film had been trimmed to 97-­minutes, which resulted in the shrinking of Bill’s sequences. Despite the shortening, the final cut received mixed reviews. Variety called the movie “pictorially original and alluring” combining “spectacle, melody and dance. The rejuvenated Fields at his inimitable best.” Fields garnered a few kudos from several other critics. “A big cast with plenty of big names, but a big disappointment, except for W. C. Fields,” wrote a reviewer. Time magazine echoed the same opinion: “Shipshape when Great Man Fields is on deck, it lists badly whenever he goes below.”14 Frank Nugent, the New York Times film critic, wrote the most damaging assessment. “The hodge-podge revue being offered at the Paramount is all loose ends and tatters, not too good at its best and downright bad at its worst.” Fields’s “rasping voice has lost its fine nasal resonance, as though some one had scraped the rust from the old trombone.” He found the three sequences detailed above “almost up to par, but the rest is sub-strata Fields. The shadow of his radio debacle with Charlie McCarthy has fallen upon the script.” The brash egotist who trades insult jokes and barbs with Charlie causes Fields to revert to stale gags about his nose, booze, and health. “W. C. who never had to stoop so low before, makes a Durante-like play upon his nose and jokes morosely about strong drink and the d t’ s,” commented Nugent. “We prefer to forget it.”15

206 

A. F. WERTHEIM

During the early shooting, Fields recognized the problem. Having mostly played low-income and middle-class characters, Bill believed that rich individuals were not funny. As S. B. Bellows, he was impersonating a wealthy ship owner. Before the shooting, he went to studio executives complaining that he was not comfortable with the part. Hoping to disguise Bellows’ affluence, Fields changed the character into a bungling fool who sabotages his own boat. The modification caused Bill to sometimes overact and to focus on Bellows’ zaniness. Fields therefore ends up impersonating a character that is foreign to him—a frivolous, boisterous, inept, and obnoxious personality, whose devilish behavior causes multiple disasters. Desperate to do a film, Fields had little choice but to accept Paramount’s offer to appear with numerous stars in The Big Broadcast. An ensemble film was not his forte. “It was not really his sort of movie, being a rambling musical extravaganza studded with foolish subplots,” wrote Nicholas Yanni.16 By contrast, Fields had excelled as the sole star in his last two films, The Man on the Flying Trapeze and Poppy. Among the fifteen sound feature films Fields completed with Paramount, only seven gave him a lead role. The Big Broadcast of 1938 became the last film in the series. The Paramount brass decided to feature its comedians in less elaborate spectacles and in first-rate productions, exemplified by Hope and Crosby in their successful Road pictures. Before The Big Broadcast opened on February 18, 1938, Paramount executives had already spotted Hope’s potential to become a comedy star and had already signed him for other films. Paramount’s decision to champion Hope generated a financial bonanza for the studio. During the forties, Hope rose to become the number one box-office star by 1949. The comedian forged an unparalleled record of achievements—a cornucopia of radio, television, films, variety shows, and books (penned by gag writers), among others. Through publicity, public relations, and salesmanship backed by a loyal staff, Hope created a brand that reflected unabashed patriotism, staunch conservatism, and a slick countenance that camouflaged his personal frailties. He enhanced his reputation as America’s ambassador by entertaining troops abroad during World War II and the Vietnam War, by befriending presidents and royalty, and by promoting charities. For millions, he became a beloved celebrity who received weekly thousands of fan mail letters. His fame, however, eventually crashed. Hope died at age 100 in 2003. The comedian lived so long that his reputation faded as the twentieth

16  THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938 

207

century progressed. He became a has-been, a victim of show biz’s ruthless schlep to obscurity. His style and gags became outmoded and his promotional flag-waving found him out of touch with the vast social changes erupting during the 1960s. During that period, Hope’s tarnished legacy nosedived while Fields’s reputation soared. Although Bill had been deceased for fifteen years, he got the last laugh. Before that time, however, Fields and Hope were rivals since both were under contract with Paramount during the filming of The Big Broadcast. Compared to Hope, who was 23 years younger than Fields, the latter was now viewed by the studio brass as an aging comedian. They felt Fields’s stardom was fading due to his reputation as an unreliable film actor burdened with frail health due to his alcoholism. He had become a cog in a vast commercial industry—the studio system—a merciless enterprise whose main motive was profitability. After the film was released, Bill was confronted with other problems at Paramount, causing him to worry about his future. Plagued again by that deep-rooted demon from his past—insecurity, anxiety, and self-doubt—Fields became consumed by angst. Had he reached a precarious point in his screen career in which he was now considered poison by the Paramount bosses?

CHAPTER 17

The Paramount Purge

“W. C. FIELDS IN ROW WITH PARAMOUNT” was the headline in a short, but ominous article buried in the back pages of the Los Angeles Times on May 4, 1938. “Executives of the Paramount studio were at loggerheads yesterday over the writing of a story for his next picture. Reports that the situation had reached a stage where the balance of Fields’s contract was to be bought off and his name taken from the company’s roster were denied yesterday by a spokesman for the studio. It was admitted, however, that the picture was placed on the indefinite list.”1 Fields’s contract had been extended to February 26, 1938, but the studio was getting “cold feet” about offering a new agreement. Fields was scheduled to write a new script with the help of studio writers for a film scheduled to go into production in May 1938. The comedian’s contract with Paramount included permission to write his own screenplays at a salary of $2500 weekly. Due to sickness, Bill had only completed ten pages of the scenario by April. Word of the delay was relayed to Zukor, who was displeased with Fields’s slowness. In panic mode, Bill wrote Zukor a letter putting the blame on the writers whose “unplayable, trite dialogue” caused him to “do a re-write job on every occasion.” Plus the writers had lifted jokes and situations from other sources, including his own work. “Most of these writers do not go to the trouble of even varying the dialogue or situation to the slightest.” He promised to complete his writing in less than ten days. Fields ended the letter promising he would work “with as much speed as possible. © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_17

209

210 

A. F. WERTHEIM

… I wish to assure you that I esteem your friendship and it would deeply grieve me if by hook or crook or some misunderstanding you would lose the regard I know you have for me.” Five days later, he sent Zukor a longer treatment, stating that the studio now had “thirty-five full pages with playable material.”2 Bill depended on Zukor’s goodwill because he had developed good relations with him starting with participating from his sickbed in the broadcast honoring his silver jubilee at Paramount. In his pleading, Bill might have forgotten that Zukor, a small man with a Napoleonic complex, was propelled by his guiding light—merciless and profitability. “Ruthless Zukor” was the title of W. W. Hodkinson’s unpublished memoir years after he was axed by Paramount. Hodkinson, a film pioneer, had operated the studio’s initial distribution system and created its mountain logo. In both stature and vision, Zukor believed that “softness in this business, compromising, being the nice guy would not get you very far.”3 Not even his guardian angel, William LeBaron, who called Fields the “most fascinating person in the world,” could save him.4 When LeBaron replaced Ernst Lubitsch as Paramount’s production chief, he scored a coup by bringing sultry Mae West to Paramount where she quickly rose to fame as a box-office star. Despite his growing reputation, LeBaron was terminated by Frank Freeman and he left to become a producer at 20th Century-Fox in 1938—the year Bill was hanging by his thumbs without his savior at Paramount. Fields faced a new regime at Paramount that endangered his career. Due to the studio’s bankruptcy in 1933, it was reorganized by 1936 with a new management team led by two former theater exhibitors, Barney Balaban, who replaced Zukor as president, and Frank Freeman, who was appointed vice president overseeing production. Despite his responsibility for the studio’s collapse by overleveraging his huge prized Publix theater chain, Zukor was crowned chairman of the board, an honorary position that still gave him status as Paramount’s powerful monarch—the founding father—overseeing the gigantic factory. Both Balaban and Freeman shared a strong market approach to fiscal operations, a policy aimed at cutting costly productions and dismissing high-salaried stars, what Fortune called the studio’s “deadwood clearance program.”5 Gone were such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, Frederick March, and Carole Lombard. Tight cost controls led to fiscal conservative programming, which included less exorbitant extravaganzas and stylish productions and more moderately priced movies. The policy caused the

17  THE PARAMOUNT PURGE 

211

departure of famous filmmakers Ernst Lubitsch, Josef Von Sternberg, and Rouben Mamoulian. The two leaders created a modern vertical-integrated corporation that propelled Paramount to record-breaking profits and fiscal solvency by the mid-1940s. Paramount’s new ultra-commercial conservative goal, which included leadership control over production, distribution, and exhibition, was completely antithetical to Fields’s hatred of authority. Nothing was more anathema to his individualism and iconoclasm than being a cog in a machine. Fields’s impetuous behavior—drinking on the set, fights with producers and directors, unpredictability, and capriciousness—caused him to be targeted by the new brass. Paramount wanted to develop its list of new rising stars such as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, and Veronica Lake, among others. Balaban and Freeman favored comedy over other genres whether sophisticated, farcical, or musical. By March 1937, the studio had a surfeit of twenty-four comedians. Among them were fifteen new arrivals, many from radio, humorists that made Paramount the leading studio devoted to producing comedies. Besides Hope, the studio’s list included Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Joe E. Brown, and Bob Burns. Paramount also had superb directors specializing in comedy such as Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, and Mitchell Leisen, among others. Hope’s sudden stardom at Paramount must have especially irked Fields. “The start of his [Hope’s] 30 Paramount years coincided with the end of W. C. Fields’s 13,” wrote the studio’s historian.6 The presence of Hope sealed Bill’s fate at Paramount. The Big Broadcast became Fields’s last picture with the studio. On May 10, the screen news in the New York Times reported: “FIELDS QUITS PARAMOUNT.” Fields and the studio had severed relations and the comedian has received his release from the studio. Fields had been working at Paramount since 1925, completing fifteen silent and sound features in thirteen rocky years—beginning as a neophyte and rising to the top of his profession, only to find himself fired and abandoned.7 Feeling bitter and betrayed, Fields felt that he had become a scapegoat for The Big Broadcast’s fiasco. “When my stuff proves to be the outstanding feature 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.” In late May, Bill wrote his Philadelphia pal, the noted

212 

A. F. WERTHEIM

songwriter and vaudevillian Jack Norworth, a letter that revealed Bill’s indignation. “Maybe that I have outlived my usefulness. Either way it’s O.K. with me. However, when they told me to screw, I had the presence of mind to grab the salary check for the whole picture and quite a goodly sum for some writing I did for them. And if that be larceny, let them make the most of it.” Although embittered by the manner he was mishandled by the studio, the resilient trouper refused to give up.8 In order to keep his name before the public and needing a salary until he could resurrect his film career, Bill relied again on radio appearances. Before the Paramount purge, he had starred in a dramatization of Poppy on the Lux Radio Theatre on March 7, 1938, hosted by the legendary directorproducer Cecil B. DeMille. Broadcast before a live audience at the 965seat Music Box Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, it was among the many shows that moved from New York to the film capital starting in the mid1930s. The new location enabled the popular CBS Monday evening broadcast to lure screen stars to do radio versions of their stage plays and motion pictures. Anxious to sell their Lux soap, the sponsor Lever Brothers signed Broadway performers such as Fields who had starred on stage in Poppy. “I saw it as an opportunity to bring the living theater, good drama, possibly great drama, into the living rooms of American homes,” wrote DeMille.9 DeMille possessed the magnetism to attract stars and give the show a degree of authenticity. “Greetings from Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced at the program’s start and at the end: “This is Cecil B. DeMille saying good-night to you from Hollywood.” DeMille often arrived at the studio in his favorite riding attire, puttees, britches, and crop. In between acts he told tales about Hollywood and chatted with diverse film personalities ranging from stars to stunt men. He claimed that forty million listeners tuned into the Lux hour at its peak. DeMille felt the show reached a diverse audience. “It meant families in Maine and Kansas and Idaho finishing the dishes or the schoolwork or the evening chores in time [could] gather around their radios. It meant the shut-ins, the invalid, the blind, the very young, and the very old who had no taste of the theater.”10 During the show’s approximately forty-five minutes on air the Poppy broadcast included mostly the highpoints of the stage play and the silent and sound films. As soon as McGargle and Poppy (Anne Shirley) arrive at the carnival scene, he orders hot dogs from the stand operator. The penniless McGargle refuses to pay him twenty cents. “You tramp! You’ve eaten more than half of them. How do you expect me to

17  THE PARAMOUNT PURGE 

213

sell them now?” “First you insult me,” McGargle replied. “Then you ask my advice on salesmanship. Come my little lamb.” Soon a crowd has gathered to see McGargle and Poppy entertain the throng. McGargle introduces Poppy, “the flower of the song world, in a song recital. And I shall accompany her on that noble instrument the Kadoola-Kadoola.” Afterward, McGargle pitches Purple Bark Sarsaparilla, “the wonder cure. A remedy for man or beast. It will grow hair on a billiard ball.” In a new scene, an angry woman who has bought a bottle of the “wonder cure” appears. “You sold me this stuff for my dyspepsia! I spilled a little on the floor last night and my cat licked it up! … He’s dead!” “Overdose!” McGargle declares. “He should have only taken a nip—cat nip!” McGargle gives his classic spiel about the shell game. This is the last time he will holler these legendary lines that he “unconsciously absorbed” as a youngster from Professor Dailey and other small-time con men pitching their gambling games in Philadelphia. “So if Prof. McGargle” and all the other rogues that followed him “seem like real people that is the reason why,” stated Bill.11 Fields’s voice over the airwaves enhanced his salesmanship: “Step right up, gentlemen. The fascinating scientific game of find the little pea. I move the shells around the table so you win. Two will get you four, four will get you eight. A boy can play as well as a man. It’s the old army game.” Fields added a new tall tale to characterize McGargle as a boastful raconteur: “Did I ever tell you the story of how Mulligan and I—pardon the tear—drove … into the Winnimicca River, each with a canoe under his arm. When we approached the opposite shore, we were confronted by ten … twenty … thirty … fifth thousand Indians. There they stood with their tomahawks raised high above their heads. Mulligan and myself unsheathed our bowie knives and cut a path through this wall of human flesh, dragging our canoes behind us.” (Fields pilfered the last sentence from Mississippi (1935) in which he tells a tale about fighting Native Americans.) The emotional scene in which McGargle leaves Poppy again illustrates Fields’s ability to shift from comedy to pathos. McGargle: It’s the truth … I found you with a circus when you were three years old. Listen! The bloodhounds are on us. I must go! Poppy: But Dad!

214 

A. F. WERTHEIM

McGargle: Here, my plum. I empty my pockets for you. Take all my worldly goods. Three dollars in cash and the shell game and some private papers. They are all I have. Poppy: Dad! You can’t leave me now. McGargle: I must. Goodbye, my plum and bless you. And one word of fatherly advice before I go. Poppy: Yes, Dad. McGargle: Never give a sucker an even break.

The broadcast of Poppy is among the finest performances Fields did on the radio. Frank Woodruff, the program’s director, commented that “Fields [was] superb and played for radio laughs rather than studio laughs.” After playing McGargle in Poppy numerous times, the character had become part of his psyche. Plus he knew most of the dialogue by heart. “I enjoyed doing the broadcast and have abundant respect and appreciation of C. B. DeMille’s ability and kindly, patient counsel,” he wrote to the Thompson agency the day after the broadcast. “Everyone was so goddamned nice to me, I was afraid they wanted to borrow money.”12 Fields’s broadcast affixed another addition to his Poppy performances. Over a span of fifteen years (1923–38), he enacted the story in four different mediums—Broadway theater, a silent picture, a sound film, and radio. The four-prong achievement stands as a tour de force in his canon. On June 5, 1938, he returned as a guest on NBC’s Chase & Sanborn Hour with Bergen and McCarthy. The program marked a change in his repertoire. His feud against Charlie continued, but he was also given a second spot, which was usually a short sketch that allowed him to play a character. Broadening his role was a wise decision. Although Bill’s feuding with Charlie was often hilarious, the formula could become overused for the same weekly listeners. To be successful over the long term, a comedian needed to play an amusing personality who had rapport with the listeners, exemplified by Jack Benny’s success as a skinflint. Unless new material was found, a performer was on a fast “treadmill to oblivion,” as the radio comedian Fred Allen wrote.13 The program’s second part, the Fields-McCarthy repartee, damaged the relationship between the comedian and the ventriloquist. Fields’s improvised remark about Bergen’s toupee caused the normally reserved ventriloquist to explode. Using Charlie, he unloaded a verbal attack on Bill, questioning why he was not at Paramount anymore. “Why did Paramount fire you?” the impudent rascal asked. Fields retorted: “Skip it, will ya? Everything you tell that kid goes in one knot hole and out

17  THE PARAMOUNT PURGE 

215

the other.” “You must have done something,” inquired Charlie. “I’ve done nothing,” replied Fields. “They said, that’s why you’re fired. You do nothing.” “That’s funny,” Charlie rejoined. “Not so funny,” Fields declared just before he lost his temper. “Shut up, will you. Edgar, keep him quiet” or I’ll saw off Charlie’s leg “and use it to beat the sawdust out of his head.” A furious Fields said good night and walked off the broadcast before he had finished his spot. For a time, the comedian and the ventriloquist were unable to repair their friendship. The hullabaloo caused Fields to resign from the program. The Thompson agency spread the rumor that they had fired him, which caused Bill to compose an irate letter to Danny Danker, a top executive at the company. “I was not let out of the Chase & Sanborn program. I resigned from a very fine program because of inferior material, not up to Chase and Sanborn standards. I practically wrote all my own material and couldn’t stand the grind alone … I have been in the top brackets in the amusement world since 1897 in every part of the world and every branch and if rumor be true, I am singled out and condemned to oblivion because I do not agree with these so-called writers, mostly males who sit down to pee. … I never desire to do any high and lofty tumbling for Chase and Sanborn again. I have plenty of mola—meaning spondulix—as we college boys say and am not begging for a job.”14 Seven months later on October 15, 1938, Bill began a new show for four consecutive weeks—Lucky Strike’s Your Hit Parade—NBC’s blockbuster program that reached a huge nationwide audience. On Saturday evening, the family gathered ritualistically around their set to hear the week’s top ten songs. The broadcast originated in New York, but Fields’s spot was aired from a Hollywood theater before spectators. The 45-minute show kept listeners in suspense by playing the top three songs last. Fields’s appearances in Your Hit Parade gave him the opportunity to depart from the formulistic insult jokes on the McCarthy programs and to return to playing a rogue character that was more conducive to his comedic style. A year earlier he had received a letter from an executive at Lord & Thomas, the advertising agency that represented Lucky Strike. It warned Fields that the McCarthy program was limiting his talents. “Your own field is much wider than gags and wisecracks. And there is the danger in the present set-up of being confined to this. There is further danger in the fights with McCarthy playing out … which very honesty I don’t think is big enough for you.” He needed a new show.

216 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Taking his advice, Fields joined Your Hit Parade, which provided the opportunity to perform sketches on two programs. He told tall tales, one about encountering a talking seal while swimming to Catalina Island and another about befriending a rattlesnake that snuck its fangs into a robber that intended to steal his possessions. Another features Larceny Whipsnade who talks to his lawyer whose house is on fire. He chats so long that the latter is unable to call the fire department. Fields plays the larcenist Whipsnade in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939). These hyperbolic stories illustrate Fields’s “gift for picturesque exaggeration for comic effect,” an age-old tradition in American humor, wrote columnist and later TV celebrity Ed Sullivan.15 Besides impersonating Whipsnade, the Hit Parade program revived two of his well-known characters from the stage and screen. He played Snavely in Stolen Bonds and Dilweg in The Pharmacist. Without being accused of redundancy, Fields took earlier material and adapted it to a new medium, radio. Heard over the nationwide NBC network on one of radio’s most listened to programs, Your Hit Parade, both stories attained a much larger audience compared to the stage and screen versions. After four programs, Bill quit the show citing the pressure of both radio and movie commitments. “I have been unfortunate in not being able to find suitable writers. … I was forced to dispense with the material submitted and write my own spot,” he wrote George W. Hill, Jr. president of the American Tobacco Company. “I fully understand how the difficulty of finding a suitable writer, coupled with the pressure of a new motion picture, put you in an almost impossible situation,” Hill replied.16 Wishing to return to the screen, Fields devoted himself to writing while appearing on the radio. Paramount’s firing could have driven him into a period of depression, but this time his resourcefulness came to the rescue. He had always staged a comeback after experiencing impediments to his career. That knowledge plus the fact he was still a popular comedian kept his demons at bay. The Hollywood press reported that he received several tempting offers. One came from Harold Lloyd to produce a series of comedies. “W. C. Fields was one of the greatest comedians of any era,” Lloyd once said.17 But his film, Professor Beware (1938), exceeded production costs causing Lloyd to invest his own money and failed at the box office. His financial woes were possibly the reason that his proposal to work with Fields never materialized.

17  THE PARAMOUNT PURGE 

217

Another proposal caused Fields to make one of the greatest mistakes of his career. An offer came from MGM, which was casting actors to perform lead roles in The Wizard of Oz. Among the parts, the studio suggested for Fields was playing the role of The Wizard. He was promised a guarantee of $5000 per day for approximately ten days of work. He started writing small drafts of sequences and gags until he began to have second thoughts about the role. He thought he deserved more than MGM paid; his salary was the same he received for David Copperfield. MGM was only proposing a one-picture deal, but Bill wanted a multi-year contract with a studio. The strongest reason Bill refused MGM’s offer was that he was involved in serious negotiations with Universal Studios, which was interested in producing his next film. Since Fields’s movie for Universal and The Wizard of Oz were scheduled to begin around the same time, Bill had no choice but to decline an extraordinary opportunity to co-star in a film destined to become a cinema classic.

PART VI

The Universal Years, 1939–1941

CHAPTER 18

Battling Universal

Universal, which opened on March 15, 1915, was Hollywood’s oldest surviving studio. Its inaugural was highlighted by a stupendous gala celebration hosted by the cinema pioneer and studio chief Carl Laemmle. Under his visionary leadership, Universal quickly rose to become a leading cinema enterprise. Its enormous sprawling 230-acre Universal City campus landmark on the former Taylor Ranch in North Hollywood housed a massive number of facilities for filmmaking—a 300-foot-long open-air stage that allowed companies to shoot movies simultaneously, a zoo housing animals for adventure pictures, a “bull pen” building for wardrobe changes, and huge backlot sets recreating an English village, an African veldt, and the main street of a Western town, among others. The giant complex established the “West Coast as the country’s film center … enabling Universal to emerge as the world’s busiest studio.”1 The year Universal opened Fields acted in his first silent one-reel shorts, Pool Sharks and His Lordship’s Dilemma, shot in Gaumont’s primitive facility in Long Island. Unimpressed by the experience and mesmerized by the lure of the Broadway stage revue, the Ziegfeld Follies, the comedian walked away from making movies, never to return until ten years later.

© The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_18

221

222 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Although Universal’s filmmaking factory was forward-looking in conception, during the 1920s and 1930s, its motion picture output was disappointedly backward-looking. A studio historian called Universal antediluvian in its outlook, “reactionary,” “dowdy” in its subject matter, and more interested in newcomers rather than cultivating stars. Under Laemmle, the studio favored serials over features, “two-reel dramas, one-reel comedies, and spilt-reel documentaries.” Its features were “geared to inexpensive mass production of mainly action-oriented movies.” Lacking ownership of a theater chain, the studio was forced to exhibit at smaller venues, many in rural areas. There were exceptions to the studio’s mediocrity, especially films made by its talented directors Erich von Stroheim, John Ford, Lois Weber, and other women who made Universal a leader in female filmmakers.2 Joining Universal Pictures represented a new experience for the comedian. He was now under contract with a well-known long-standing studio but with much less prestige than Paramount. Along with United Artists and Columbia, Universal belonged to the Little Three Hollywood studios in comparison to the Big Five (Paramount, MGM, RKO, Warner Bros., and 20th Century-Fox). The Little Three were labeled major–minors: major because the filmmakers produced some A-class feature films, but minor because they relied on circulating their products via separate distribution arrangements rather than studio-owned theater chains. Less assets and profits as well as favoring the production of low budget B-class movies also set them apart from the five more powerful moneymaking studios. Compared to Paramount, its stars were less in number and many lacked celebrity status. Needing to boost its star list, Universal immediately snared Paramount rejects, which included not only Fields but also Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, to name a few. Faced with serious financial problems, Universal was nearly bankrupt when Fields signed his contract in 1938. Two years earlier, cash flow difficulties forced Laemmle to take out a $750,000 loan from J. Cheever Cowdin’s Standard Capital Corporations, using as collateral his stock shares in Universal. If Laemmle failed to repay within ninety days, Cowdin’s company could take possession of Universal. When Universal’s debt continued to escalate due to unexpected production expenses, Cowdin acquired the studio and advertised its productions under the rubric “The New Universal.” The new leadership, which

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

223

concentrated on less prestigious low-cost pictures, caused an output of mediocre films. Their A-class productions focused on a single star, especially their prized contract artist, the winsome teen-age soprano Deanna Durbin, who at age 14 did her first Universal film in 1936. The five extremely popular musical movies (1937–1939) she appeared in saved the studio from bankruptcy, but it also triggered run-of-the-mill “young adult” musicals. That Universal’s new corporate types needed to rely on Durbin to save the studio spelled trouble. During 1938, the studio’s on-going fiscal crises propelled Universal to restructure. A new management team was appointed, Nate Blumberg as president and Cliff Work as production head, two former RKO theater owners without filmmaking experience. By 1941, the new regime “converted a net loss of $1.1 million into a net profit of $2.4 million.”3 They concentrated on improving Universal’s exhibition strategy: low budget B horror films starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, as well as class B Sherlock Holmes detective mysteries featuring Basil Rathbone. The studio also produced comedies showcasing Fields and Mae West, plus film newcomers Bud Abbott and Lew Costello. An old-fashioned duo team, Abbott, a tall straight man, and Costello, a short obese comic, the team’s frenzied repartee gave audiences so much hilarity that they became the nation’s top bananas during the 1940s (along with Bob Hope and new comics such as Danny Kaye and Red Skelton). Desperate for escapist laughter during the horrors of World War II, Americans found relief in the hysterics of Abbott and Costello. By comparison, Fields’s subtle dark comedy in a climate of wartime flag waving and wishful hopefulness lost flavor with the public. Fields’s first contract with the studio, signed on August 4, 1938, spawned multiple issues, especially his writing responsibilities, which obligated him to “provide a complete story outline, treatment, and final script of [a[film” by November 1, 1938. Fields was ordered to closely collaborate on the writing with Lester Cowan, the producer. A former Motion Picture Academy executive and freelance independent producer, Cowan had only one major film with John Ford to his credit and his lack of experience perturbed Fields. The monetary payments were lucrative, including an advance, financial remuneration for story outline,

224 

A. F. WERTHEIM

treatment, and completed script, $15,000 a week while acting, and $50,000 upon completion. A further enticement gave Bill 20% of the gross proceeds over $600,000.4 Since the contract gave Universal final say over the screenplay and rights to the final film, the agreement gave Fields little independence. After reading the document, Bill was furious, calling it “asinine and dull” and full of “superfluous legal verbiage and ambiguities.” Fields wrote Cowan that the contact was “so iron clad” and full of numerous “silly clauses in which you could claim damages, that I would feel so nervous, it would be impossible for me to go ahead and make a picture.” The studio demanded that Fields “furnish Universal with copies of the outlines, treatments, and scripts and that each version of the script will substantially follow the story outline.” More disturbing was that the contract gave Universal “the right to select changes/rewrites/revisions to his screenplay and the film.”5 With their relations healed, Fields wanted Bergen in the cast. He wrote Cowan that he “conceived the unselfish idea of bringing Edgar Bergen to Universal with me in a picture. I only had the welfare of the studio in mind. Had I been a selfish ham, I would have thought only of me. I could see big B.O. with a good picture—that was all that mattered.”6 Bill offered to write Bergen’s dialogue but to avoid squabbling, the two were assigned different writers. But in advertising, Fields retained top billing over Bergen. Both agreed to hire George Marshall, a former silent screen actor, to direct the film. An experienced comedy filmmaker, Marshall had worked with Laurel and Hardy and Will Rogers. As he did numerous times during his film career, Bill drew from his collection of past work to create the story. An unproduced screenplay from 1933, Grease Paint, provided the film’s core as well as his silent movie, Two Flaming Youths. Fields was credited with writing the original story using his favorite pseudonym Charles Bogle. As background, Bill undoubtedly used his memories as a neophyte trouper performing in late nineteenth-century shoestring al fresco entertainments. He was returning again to successful familiar territory as a loveable circus trickster. The title Bill selected, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, also reflected a favorite Fieldsian theme—con men preying on gullible suckers.

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

225

The filming, which started on November 21, turned into a nightmare. On the first day, there was no script. Production notes continually complained about the slowness of making the picture. “Progress has been exceedingly slow and we have no way of determining just when shooting may be completed and how much this production is likely to cost,”7 A major problem was the absence of script material. Nearly four weeks after production started, all the parties finally agreed to a shooting script. Fields’s inaugural appearance at Universal was off to a rocky start. In You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, Fields plays the circus owner, Larson (larceny) E. Whipsnade, the aforementioned main character from a Hit Parade broadcast. (Although Fields claimed that Larson’s surname derived from a dog race track, more than likely it stemmed from the huge ZSL Whipsnade Zoo outside London.) Most significantly, Bill is back playing a McGargle-type rogue owner of a debt-ridden circus, a role he had superbly portrayed in several films about itinerant small-time troupes (i.e., the Poppy trilogy and The Old Fashioned Way). Why did Fields title the film You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man? The answer is revealed near the beginning when Whipsnade is selling tickets to his show at the circus wagon. Fields undoubtedly drew from past memories when he saw ticket sellers short change naïve customers at museums and sideshows. In exchange for purchasing tickets, Whipsnade gives customers a wad of bills, which makes them think they have doubled their money and cheated Whipsnade. “No mistakes rectified after leaving the box-office window!” warns Whipsnade. A man in the crowd yells “you are dishonest.… I want everybody to know—he cheated me!” An insulted Whipsnade snaps back “sir, you impugn my honor. As my dear old grandfather Litvak said just before they swung the trap, he said: ‘You can’t cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a champ.’” Whipsnade has actually cheated his customers. If they had counted their money immediately and not walked away thinking “they have rooked the smart circus aleck,” they would have discovered that Whipsnade had underpaid them. The moral: “You can’t cheat an honest man but you can cheat a dishonest one.”8 The film teamed Bill with Bergen and McCarthy, cast as performers in Whipsnade’s circus. Bergen and his alter ego were already well-known on the Universal lot. The duo had won over movie fans when featured in

226 

A. F. WERTHEIM

the studio’s 1938 film A Letter of Introduction as well as in The Goldwyn Follies. A year earlier, Bergen was awarded an Honorary Oscar, a wooden statuette, for his creation of Charlie McCarthy. Each morning at nine o’clock, the cast and Universal’s chief production staff held a script conference. All the leading performers sat on chairs in a circle, including Charlie McCarthy, who had his own tiny chair next to Edgar Bergen. Charlie started to make wisecracks at several sessions when Fields’s script was read. “I don’t find that exceptionally funny, do you … Ugh, calls that humor!” Everyone laughed except Bill who became increasingly annoyed. Finally, he turned to Charlie and bellowed: “You are barred from the studio until you are needed in front of the camera, do you understand me?” “You better do what the man said,” Bergen told Charlie, who was banished from the set.9 The story switches back and forth between Fields’s comedy sequences and a romance between Bergen and Vicky, Whipsnade’s daughter. Vicky, however, wants to marry a wealthy suitor, the son of the pompous rich Bel-Goodies, in order to get her father out of debt. Vicky was played by twenty-year-old Constance Moore, a band vocalist, radio singer, and Texas ingénue. Looking back, Moore believed her role propelled her career. “It was terribly exciting to me, not only just to be playing Mr. Fields’s daughter, his leading lady in his movie, but it was the first lead in what we used to call an ‘A’ movie for me,” she recalled at the centennial celebration of Bill’s birthday on January 29, 1980, held at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.10 Fields has several hilarious scenes as a ne’er-do-well showman one step ahead of the sheriff. To evade the law, he impersonates Schickelgruber, a German with an exaggerated accent who wears a large mustache made of rope. Whipsnade has trained his elephant Queenie to give him a warm shower by spouting water from the animal’s trunk. “Hold it longer— heat it up a bit!” he orders Queenie. While showering, Whipsnade utters a zinger that slipped past the censors: “I’d rather have two girls at twenty one each than one girl at forty-two.” Joseph Breen, however, insisted that in the shower scene “there must be no exposure of his person beyond the head and shoulder.” After his shower, Fields walks around the grounds naked but circus wagons and other paraphernalia cover his lower body. Fields ignored another Breen order—“any unnecessary showing of liquor and drinking must be stopped.” Not only were liquor bottles shown but Bill utters one-liners dealing with his drinking: “Keep

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

227

your hands off my lunch” and “some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.”11 The Times critic, Frank Nugent, reported that during his visit to the set numerous takes were ruined by laughter. “The grips, juicers, and director simply couldn’t help themselves.”12 In another amusing sequence, Whipsnade imitates a ventriloquist wearing a false walrus mustache attached to hideous false teeth. He exchanges gags with another dummy, Oliver, who sits on his lap. Other laugh-getters include Fields impersonating Buffalo Baba, the bearded lady sharpshooter riding a Shetland pony. His slapstick routines include the box-office window falling on his hands, getting his foot stuck in a bucket as in The Fatal Glass of Beer, and a pratfall falling down steps. When Whipsnade crashes a party hosted by the rich Bel-Goodies, Fields lampoons the upper crust as he did in Her Majesty Love. He drives up to their mansion in a chariot wearing an opera cape embroidered with the name of his circus. Looking at the guests, he remarks, “All of the crème-de-la-crème is here tonight … they have noblesse oblige … we have acrobats.” At the party, Whipsnade brags about his exploits as a wild animal collector. He tells a rattlesnake tale that causes the snobbish Mrs. Bel-Goodie to faint. “Evidently she’s had too much to drink,” he quips. He challenges a guest to play ping-pong, bragging that “I was champion of the tri-state league and the Lesser Antilles many years ago.” The wild match causes Fields to hit a ball that enters a ladies’ mouth. The match concludes with Whipsnade slipping on a carpet in another room. Having endured enough of Whipsnade’s antics, Mr. Bel-Goodie calls him an “egregious tartuffle.” “Is that in my favor?” asks Whipsnade. “Declare yourself. Is that a male or female tartuffle?” The episode at the house convinces Vicky that the Bel-Goodie family are snobs, and she decides to marry Bergen. At the end, Whipsnade escapes arrest once his circus caravan crosses the state line. The film illustrates Fields’s perpetual dislike of wealthy snobs and the nouveau riche in his movies, a viewpoint that can be traced back to the depiction of the snooty Mrs. Murchison in So’s Your Old Man (1926) and the rich Von Wellington family in Her Majesty Love (1931), among others. Siding with the underdog was one of Fields’s fortes and especially appealed to the unemployed during the Great Depression. After fifty-seven days, the production, which cost about $700,000, disbanded after shooting 108 minutes of dialogue. For the exhibition,

228 

A. F. WERTHEIM

the film was slashed to 76 minutes. Fields wrote a five-page report complaining that the cuts eliminated sequences that hurt the movie and spoiled his scenes. “Every gag has been cut in order to kill me. I can’t believe anyone connected with a picture could be so ignorant of values.” Bill complained: • “Everything about the picture is jerky and disconnected—nothing rolls along smoothly.” • “All scenes in the Bel-Goodie home are cut too short, giving a choppy effect.” • “In the chariot scene, they cut out the jail gag, about the horse dropping dead in front of the police station. Why are all these important details omitted?” • “All the details in cutting have been obviously neglected. It makes the difference between a high class picture and a two reeler.” • “The music accompanying the circus scene is very bad and detracts from the action.” • “Make the beginning quicker—they show the titles too long.”13 Fields also believed that the director George Marshall knew little about comedy and had ruined the film. A perfectionist, Marshall made excessive takes that Fields felt were unnecessary. After seven takes depicting Fields walking from the ticket booth to his bathing area, Bill decided to ignore Marshall and sat inside drinking martinis with his assistant Cheerful (played by the legendary Eddie Anderson, Rochester on the Jack Benny radio show). Marshall kept constantly banging on the door until there was no sound. “I bet they all went home,” said Anderson. “They’re a tricky lot,” retorted Bill. “They’re out there all right.” About an hour later, Fields shouted to the director, “Now, George, we’re ready. If you do it right this time.” Opening the door, Bill discovered the set was empty and that Marshall and the crew had gone home. Although Bill had mostly sipped sherry before each shot, the director reported to Blumberg that Fields’s imbibing on the set slowed the filming. “I once took a sip of that sherry and it almost took my head off,” recalled Marshall. “Bill Fields never made me laugh. He was one of the meanest men I ever knew.” Fields wrote in his exceedingly long comments file about the filming: “Mr. Marshall’s future depends on his pigheaded-ness.”14

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

229

Arguments between the star and director led Universal to hire Eddie Cline, a former Keystone Cop and Mack Sennett gagman, to head Fields’s unit, which helped the picture’s progress. The production manager reported that “the Fields unit has shown a very definite improvement on both quantity and quality of work.” Cline had directed Fields at Paramount beginning with Million Dollar Legs. He stood in for Fields during rehearsals and for the take just let “him run with it.” They sometimes argued due to the director’s hostility to Fields’s constant ad-libbing, which Cline often edited out later. A heated quarrel with Cline caused Fields to walk out and never return. A double was used for the final sequences. “I am tough to get along with when dealing with incompetents,” Fields wrote in his comments. “I fight for what is right and what will save the studio money and get the best possible effects on the screen. If that is being tough to get along with, I am tough.”15 Everett Freeman, who co-wrote the screenplay, called the atmosphere on the set “fireworks bordering on verbal mayhem.” After staying up all night, Freeman showed Bill the script in the morning. “He would crumple it, throw it back to me, and growl demandingly: ‘When do I play the death scene with my wife?’” The writer encountered Fields in his late fifties when all his earlier habits had grown into obsessions. He had a “firm policy of never taking advice or direction from anybody.… Suspicion and hostility ruled him to the point of paranoia, affecting his work, and his treatment of associates.” Freeman nonetheless felt he was an “artist” who “knew every nuance of what and wasn’t funny.… Reprehensible as he could be … mean and cutting too—there never was, with the exception of Chaplin, a comedian like him, and probably never will be.”16 In a long letter to Cliff Work on January 27, Fields wrote that the cuts made his character appear to lack pathos. He complained that a scene had been left out that showed the “transition from low comedy to pathos, which has been employed by the finest writers since the days of Indian and Chinese drama and has not been altered.” Why was the sequence eliminated showing Whipsnade grieving about his ex-wife, the acrobat Gorgeous, killed doing her trapeze act? The movie “is overloaded with two-reel comedy and no story, no pathos, no believable characters. The humanness and the truth have been deleted.”17 Fields was angry that the final product failed to portray Whipsnade as a kindhearted figure. This fact was especially critical to Bill since the rogues in his earlier films had mostly been depicted as sympathetic and

230 

A. F. WERTHEIM

congenial characters. He had always believed in presenting multidimensional personalities on screen capable of misdeeds but who also possessed a compassionate side. Fields’s screen persona mirrors Bill’s own complex personality comprising antithetical characteristics. Any attribute attached to the comedian could often be contrasted to an opposite trait—kind vs. mean for example. Frank Nugent, the New York Times critic who had ripped The Big Broadcast apart, agreed with Fields that his characterization of Whipsnade lacked pathos. Nugent called Whipsnade “a scamp, but not a loveable scam; a blusterer who bullies for the sake of bullying, and not to conceal a tender heart. Whipsnade is not the Fields we have known. We want no part of him. He is something created by radio, the result of nagging and being nagged by a pert ventriloquist’s dummy.” William Everson agreed that Whipsnade was “an almost total scoundrel, an unrepentant chiseler forever on the run from the law.” Bill’s tirades with Charlie on the radio spawned an arrogant personality that Fields transferred to the screen, beginning with the destructive T. Frothingell Bellows in The Big Broadcast of 1938. Both Bellows and Whipsnade were figures completely at odds “with the qualities that had endeared him to millions.”18 Adding to the problem is that Fields’s angry repartee with Charlie is repeated throughout You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. As in their radio programs, the retorts deal with Bill’s red nose—“Are you eating a tomato or is that you nose.” And Fields lampooned Charlie’s wooden frame—“You must come down with me after the show to the lumberyard and ride piggyback on the buzz saw.” Charlie: Nobody’s going to find me after the show. Whipsnade: Yes they are. You’ll be hanging in my window as a Venetian blind. Charlie: That makes me shudder. Whipsnade: Quiet or I’ll throw a woodpecker on you.

The film contains numerous Bergen routines as a ventriloquist exchanging barbs with Charlie, including sawing him in half, causing the film to morph into a radio picture when they are on camera. In fact, Bergen ended up with more scenes than Fields in the picture.

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

231

The movie in total also looks stitched together with a series of fleeting vaudeville acts chiefly from Whipsnade’s sideshow. On the positive side, the film allows Fields to return to his signature role as a sideshow barker, a part he perfected in The Old Fashioned Way. Whipsnade’s flamboyantcy occurs when he sells tickets to his sideshow featuring two tall bearded twins: “This way, ladies and gentlemen, this way. Right on this platform. The world’s greatest novelty, The Pronkwonk Twins! Elward and Brentwood. Elwood is ten minutes older than Brentwood and has been in a hurry ever since. Ladies and gentlemen, Brentwood is the smallest giant in the world, whilst his brother Elwood, is the largest midget in the world. They baffle science.” Adding to Whipsnade’s callousness is the bossy manner in which he treats his employees. He degrades Chester Dalrymple (Grady Sutton) as a lazy worthless dumb assistant and kicks him out of his office. He directs bigoted remarks to another assistant Cheerful (Eddie Anderson) telling him to “be the loving little piccaninny [italics mine] you’ve already been.” Piccaninny is a racist and derogatory slur used to describe African-American children, particularly during the Jim Crow era as well as into the twentieth century. The most egregious scene occurs when he enters a tent where his black workers are singing “Gwine to work all night, gwine to work all day.” While there Whipsnade makes discriminatory comments about the Ubangi from central Africa who pierce their lips with wooden disks and extend them to extraordinary length. The Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus first advertised them in their sideshow as “monster Ubangi savages with mouths and lips as large as full-grown crocodiles.”19 Fields’s prejudicial comments here contradicts with those times when he supported equal rights for African Americans in his private life.20 Whipsnade: Say, who’s the head Ubangi around here? Worker: The head what? Whipsnade: The head eageroonie. Cheerful: You ain’t by chance referrin’ to one of us colored boys, are ya? Whipsnade: I’m referring to the head Ubangi. I want to tell him how to make an easy $5.

Fields complained to Work about using a double in scenes without his consent. A double, he wrote to Work, should only be used “to protect the

232 

A. F. WERTHEIM

actor from danger” or if the star is unavailable to “perform the required services. None of these conditions existed.” Bill also believed changes had been made to his original story without being consulted and that the independence Universal had guaranteed him had been violated. “You can’t treat contracts, written or verbal as scraps of paper and expect to have the confidence and respect of the people … I’m going to start a suit here if you do not live up to your contract … It looks to me like sabotage—someone with the reins in their hands, is ruining this fine picture.”21 To address Bill’s concerns, Cowan suggested calling a meeting with Fields, Work, Marshall, and Bergen, in which “everyone can lay his cards on the table so that we will know where we stand” and a “consensus of opinion can be reached as to what additional scenes are required for the picture.”22 But the meeting never occured. Work wrote Bill that the studio had honored his contract. “All of your complaints have been discussed and have been the subject of considerable correspondence between us. However, we do feel that it is advisable at this time to state again the position heretofore taken by us, namely, that we have complied in all respects with our contract with you.”23 Work informed Bill that Blumberg wanted to immediately proceed with the movie’s release on February 17. The night before the premier members of the Masquers Club, a prestigious actors’ guild, met at a banquet to honor Fields’s forty years in show business. “It is forty-two or forty-three to be absolutely correct”, he wrote to his amour Maud Fendick during his vaudeville years. More than five hundred guests from show business and other fields attended the tribute, including Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Groucho Marks, and Harold Lloyd. In the audience was also Fields’s son Claude, now age 34, whose presence triggered a lukewarm reception. “While I was sitting at the speaker’s table one of California’s junior lawyers, age about thirty-five, came to the table and greeted me with ‘Hello Father,’” he told Maud. “I returned the salutation and the matter was at an end.”24 Claude and Hattie were now residing in Los Angeles, but Bill had reconciled with neither of them.25 The event was held to actually roast “the great man,” as Fields now liked to call himself. Willie Collier, a deadpan comic serving as

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

233

toastmaster, introduced Bergen and McCarthy, who engaged in a repartee that lampooned Fields. When the ventriloquist announced that he was going to laud Fields, McCarthy wanted to go to the bar. Looking at Fields at the head table, Charlie confessed that “I do have a lot of fun hating you.”26 Since Fields disliked such mushy occasions, which often became overly sentimental, he felt awkward. Warm kudos from troupers who had shared his uphill climb nonetheless caused Bill’s eyes to turn misty. Called upon to talk, Fields approached the dais gingerly as the crowd stood and applauded. After thanking the guests for the reception, he read some amusing congratulatory telegrams that poked fun at his eccentricities. “I felt very silly but managed to get nervous,” he divulged to Maud. “I at least was natural.”27 The last speaker was Leo Rosten, a noted renaissance man—social scientist, film historian, humorist, prolific writer, and expert on Yiddish culture—best known as the creator of the comic figure, the immigrant H*Y*M*A*N* K*A*P*L*A*N*. It was past midnight and the guests, tired of the “gooey sentiment,” wanted to go home. Feeling he had to keep his remarks short, Rosten was suddenly tongue-tied. A poke in his ribs by Red Skeleton, a popular side-splitting clown on radio, caused Rosten to rise from the speaker’s table. But it was not until George Burns urged him to “say something” that he started to speak: “The only thing I can say about Mr. W. C. Fields, whom I have admired since the day he advanced upon Baby LeRoy with an ice pick, is this: Any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.”28 The crowd roared so loud it sounded as if the entire room was shaking. Rosten unleashed an adage for posterity that stuck to Fields as a comedian who abhorred dogs and babies in his films. Did Fields hate dogs and babies as Rosten’s remark implied? Or was this another fabrication hyped by studio publicists and movie magazine writers? The inference made good copy and became a running gag in Fields’s films both before and after Rosten’s statement. Like his severely blemished proboscis and drinking exploits, Fields capitalized on playing characters who abhorred canines and “enfant terabl.” Fields’s aversion to dogs dates back to his boyhood when he delivered newspapers and was chased by barking animals. “Dogs were always a menace to Bill, use to chase him away from places as a kid,” said

234 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Kathleen Howard, one of Fields’s favorite nagging wives in his films. “He never knew them as friends, but as guards that barked ‘keep out’ to him.”29 In his silent films, Bill portrayed characters who disliked canines, but by the mid-1930s Fields starts being kinder to “man’s best friend” on the screen. In his private life, he actually owned dogs. “He loved dogs,” Carlotta Monti remembered, especially schnauzers. “But he was terribly jealous. He wanted the dog to only like him. If it got friendly with anyone else, he’d give it away.”30 Fields had pets at his houses both before and after he moved to Hollywood. He owned a dog named Patsy or Rin Tin Can that Shorty took on the train when Fields drove to California in 1927. When he lived in Great Neck, Long Island, in 1928, locals saw him drive around town accompanied by a fox terrier. A photograph snapped in the mid-1930s shows Fields in front of his Encino country estate with a dog on the lawn. His screen persona as a dog-hater was primarily a comic device to generate humor. At Broadway’s Rivoli Theatre, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man broke the venue’s box-office record. The movie was equally popular in large cities across the country from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles. Near the end of the year, Fields received notice that the film had grossed $828,410.46 worldwide, a figure shy of the $1million threshold he needed to collect 20% of the proceeds. After seeing the film, Everett Freeman called it “an embarrassing hodgepodge, making no sense whatsoever. Imagine my surprise when the film received almost unanimous praise from the critics, who applauded its courageous departure from formula and its avoidance of run-of-the-mill Hollywood clichés.”31 Although You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man became Universal’s second-best grossing film in 1939, the reviews were mixed. The sequences with its rapid intercutting of long shots and close-ups “have a mutilated look,” others are “pointless” and “trail off into bored slap-stick,” wrote Nugent in the New York Times. “The traveling circus background offers rich field against which the characteristic antics of Bergen and Fields are projected,” commented the Variety reviewer. Despite these flaws, William Everson felt that Fields’s comedy scenes saved the film. It “was a good movie, well-paced,” he concluded. “His comeback was off to an auspicious start.”32 Or was he? Behind the scenes, the filming of You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man produced unending squabbles between Fields and Universal.

18  BATTLING UNIVERSAL 

235

Bill’s caustic relations with studio heads both on and off the set raised contradictory questions: Would Universal dump Fields due to his conduct? Or would the studio—desperate to keep its list of stars—bury the hatchet? As happened so many times in the comedian’s career, Fields was again left hanging by his fingernails wondering about his future. This time it was not Paramount but Universal Studios. And if Universal sacked him, the chances of surviving in Hollywood were slim to none.

CHAPTER 19

Combustible Co-stars

Universal left Fields hanging by his fingernails for months. By April, Bill became increasingly frustrated about the studio’s procrastination, writing: “Will you please find out from whoever is in charge of the deciding of what picture we are to proceed with if they wish the South American story or the story of the theatrical mother and the infant prodigy with the inebriate father, who is aced out of the family.” Still bitter about the first film he completed with Universal, Fields insisted that the studio “drop me a line here at the house…. Tell them not to phone me as I want to keep everything on record from now on. I refuse to be shuttled around on this one as I was in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man.”1 Universal wanted to make a parody of the numerous Class-A Westerns filmed during the last half of the 1930s. Variety reported in 1939 that Hollywood was churning out “the rootin’, tootin’, shootin’est, bowieknife-wielding bunch of ride-em’-cowboy, major budget westerns the picture biz has witnessed in a decade.” The nostalgic iconic Western picturing a forgotten time was escapist fare made for people slowly coming out of the Great Depression.2 Fields wrote Carlotta Monti on May 12: “Am busily engaged in lining up a picture for Mae West. The idea is hotter than a firecracker.” Seeking box-office potential, studios were teaming two stars in the same movie. Hollywood producers habitually repeated the same successful formula—the many Hope-Crosby Road movies being a prime example. According to one story, the inspiration for a Fields-West picture derived © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_19

237

238  A. F. WERTHEIM

from Universal co-staring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again (1939), a lampoon of Westerns. Pairing Bill with Mae was a bold moneymaking idea. A Universal executive told West: “We have in mind with your combined comedy talents you two would tear audiences apart.” “Laughing, I hope,” she retorted. “It was a daring concept and a mad one, but the times were mad.”3 As former vaudevillians, Broadway troupers, and leading Paramount performers, they shared experiences in common. Bill had encountered Mae along the vaudeville trail, and he had a dressing room next to her at Paramount. Coincidentally, they had the same mentor, William LeBaron, who met West in 1911, while she was treading the burlesque circuit. That year she appeared in her first major stage show, A La Broadway, at Jesse Lasky’s Folies Bergère theater-restaurant in Times Square. LeBaron recalled West as “a peppy, vivacious tomboy who was slightly and very delicately formed” and whose “hoydenish routine and remarkably delivery of the songs stopped the show.” Known as “a cool and well-liked veteran,” LeBaron later recruited West to sign with Paramount in 1932 (the same year Fields joined Paramount), and as studio chief, he produced most of her films.4 Compared to Bill’s slow rise to celebrity status at Paramount, Mae’s was meteoritic propelled by two titillating 1933 sensations, She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel. While at Paramount, West completed eight features from 1932 to 1938. Her earliest films were moneymaking sensations, which greatly pleased studio executives then fearing bankruptcy. As the studio’s top luminary, she earned $300,000 per film. But West’s final two pictures in 1936 and 1938 were flops with the critics and at the box-office. A year earlier, a review of her 1935 film Goin’ To Town was by-lined by Andre Sennwald: “ON A SWAN SONG: Mae West’s New Film Suggests That the Great Lady Is in Decline.” Paramount executives wanted her to do something different than her Diamond Lil characterizations. “Naturally I disagree,” she wrote. “Then I get a reputation for being obstinate, hard to handle. Well, I’ve always had to battle for my rights.” Mae and Bill, two strong egos, shared a reputation for intransigence and rebelliousness. And like Bill, she became an embittered Paramount castoff saved by a life raft thrown by Universal.5 Universal paid West $50,000 for her appearance in My Little Chickadee plus her contract gave her an option for two additional films. She also received 25% of the film’s “net proceeds after deducting twice production costs, distribution charges and other profit-sharing salaries

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

239

from gross receipts.” (Seven years after her death in 1980, West’s estate finally received $117,600 from her profit-sharing agreement.) By contrast, Fields compensation was $150,000 plus 20% “of gross proceeds in excess of 1.7 times negative costs.” The disparity in salary reflected Universal’s view that West’s celebrity status was on a downward spiral; while the studio felt Fields had sustained his stardom despite his battles during the filming of You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. After her illustrious career, she was resentful about Fields’s higher salary and being downgraded. “I sort a stepped off my pedestal when I made that movie,” West later remarked about My Little Chickadee.6 Although Mae and Bill never developed a close friendship and were often envious of each other, they had a professional relationship due to sharing their long road to fame in show business. Bill called West “a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra,” and “my little broodmare,” but he respected her acting ability and comedic gift, once naming her his favorite actress in the New York Sun. In a 1940 interview, West told Louella Parsons, a leading Hollywood columnist, that “there is only one Fields and why should I or anyone else try to change his style?” After My Little Chickadee had become a distant memory, she wrote in her 1960 memoir that “Mr. Fields is a remarkable fella. I always enjoy his brand of comedy…. A great performer.”7 Using her sultry voice and swivel hips, West satirized bourgeois sexual taboos and prudishness that constrained individual freedom. Hoping to bypass the censors who hounded her, Mae possessed a flair for comedy using sly one-liners, double entendres, and innuendos. Mae told a magazine writer on the set that she and Bill had different comedy styles. “We understand that the more we build each other up the better our picture will be.” While watching her perform, the magazine author admitted he “was charmed, fascinated, and hooked. Every move she made was the Mae West I had hoped she would be. Not only the gestures, the voice, and the strut, but what she said and how she said it. The upward tilt of the eyes, the palm of the hand on her hip.”8 West was idolized as a pathfinder who stood for sexual liberation while Fields was celebrated for vilifying the nation’s sacred cows from institutional marriage to society’s shams. West was PCA’s most notorious bête noir. Joseph Breen expunged Mae’s brash sexual bravura in her final Paramount picture, Every Day’s a Holiday (1938), causing her character, Peaches, to be stripped of the “bold womanish style that had made her popular.” He cut West’s dance

240  A. F. WERTHEIM

sequences and insisted that her character should not display any “indication of sex” and “undue exposure.”9 West’s daring crusade against censorship and inhibitions reached its high point on December 12, 1937, while making a guest appearance on The Chase and Sanborn Hour starring Bergen and McCarthy. West and Don Ameche, the broadcast’s announcer, performed a sketch about the Garden of Eden, an eight-minute takeoff on the biblical story, which infuriated religious groups. Playing Eve, Mae asks the snake in the Garden of Eden to fetch the forbidden apple. When the snake declares that Adam will never eat the apple, Eve declares, “He will if I feed it to him like women are gonna feed men for the rest of time.”10 Defenders of clean family entertainment on the radio berated the sketch. An editorial accused West of violating the “sacred precincts” of the home “with shady stories, foul obscenity, smutty suggestiveness, and horrible blasphemy.” A congressman demanded that the FCC take punitive action against NBC for permitting “this foul and sensuous radio program” to enter American homes. NBC received a strong letter from the FCC reminding the network of its responsibilities to prevent the broadcast of obscene material. She was consequently barred by NBC from further broadcasts and ordered that her name must not be mentioned on the airwaves. “The radio people had egg on their faces and their copies of the King James version,” remarked West. “To pacify some pious frauds among the radio audience, I was persona non grata on radio until the heat was off.”11 Despite some similarities, the pairing of West and Fields was far from perfect. They differed in their performance styles and divisive personas, a divergence that inhibited meshing their brands of comedy. “The misogynist edge to Fields’ humor was inappropriate for West’s dominant sexual personality,” wrote Carol M. Ward, author of West’s Bio-Bibliography. “She needed competent, attractive, but weaker men as supporting actors to embody her vision of romantic and social relationships.”12 Being an avid teetotaler, West’s admiration for Fields was tempered by his drinking. “I never like to work with actors who drink on the job. They aren’t dependable as a rule, and you can’t tell when, inspired some daffy alcoholic whim, they can ruin your performance…. Being a nondrinker myself, I’m sensitive to fumes, especially when breathed over me at close range.” West’s contract apparently included a clause permitting her to have Fields removed from the set if she found he had been drinking. Her priggish opposition to drinking differed from her persona as the “empress of sex.”13

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

241

Bill disguised his liquor on the set in various ways, including putting his cocktail inside a wrapped bottle of Coke. Whether anecdotal or not, a story circulated via the grapevine that one day Fields was ordered off the set due to West finding him inebriated. “I’m afraid Bill has slipped off the wagon this morning,” the assistant director told Mae. “He’s telling the kids actors to go out and play in the traffic.” Fields was overheard calling firemen speeding to a nearby blaze “damn drunken housepainters.” Learning from Eddie Cline, the director, that there were scenes they could shoot without Bill, West told him, “All right, pour him out of here.” The assistant director informed Fields: “Bill, you can go home. We won’t need you until tomorrow morning.” “Oh, ya-as?” Fields retorted. West recalled that “his puffed, bloodshot eyes gave me a side glance. ‘Ya-as,’ he said again with an old-world courtesy, tipping his hat to me. And he walked out with a sheepish look.”14 Bill and Mae, two of Hollywood’s brash performers, were a combustible pair, explosive egos who clashed over the script, which caused long delays in the production of My Little Chickadee. Nearly one year lapsed between the premiers of You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man and My Little Chickadee. By the time shooting commenced, the script had passed through so many hands that it was hard to tell who deserved to be credited. Once he learned about teaming with West, Fields rushed to his desk to develop what he called an original “epitome.” “This is a very rough outline of the story. I have purposely omitted details as I know Miss West will want to write most of her own dialogues and scenes.” Unlike Bill’s shorter outlines, some rumored to be written on the back of envelopes, this story, entitled “December and Mae,” was four pages long. Fields set his epitome in a favored time period, the late nineteenth century, the backdrop for films in which he had played itinerant troupers and con men. Mae had likewise gained fame performing Gay Nineties femme fatales, including as the lead in her famous Broadway play Diamond Lil (1928) and film Belle of the Nineties (1934).15 Unhappy with Fields’s story, Universal wanted to assign a writer to develop a working script and hired Grover Jones, a prolific journeyman screenwriter. When Bill read Jones’s script, he was furious about the manner his character was portrayed: “In the story I am a bum instead of a colorful grafter; all the color has been taken out of my character; I am playing a sap; he has Mae West and myself bitter enemies.”16 Bill also vented his spleen in a telegram to Mae, who lived in a luxurious five-room residence at the Ravenswood Apartments, a historic art

242  A. F. WERTHEIM

deco building in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles. She resided in a style befitting her persona: surrounded with gold Louis XV furnishings, a nude statue, paintings of the diva, and twenty-six mirrors, including a huge clover-shaped one enveloping her boudoir. Fields wired: I want you to know that i had nothing to do with this script and you will note that it does not follow the outline of the epitome of the story that i suggested we do…. We will probably have to get together in the end and write the tome ourselves. i want you to be assured that i will do nothing on the story without first mulling it over with you and i also want you to know i have great admiration for you as a writer, an actress and for you yourself.17

Approximately a month later, Fields wrote Cliff Work Paramount’s new chief of production that he had not yet heard from Mae. “I feel so Goddamned out of things and so alone and working so much in the dark that it’s got me nuts…. I have given this story five months of my undivided time, Sundays included, and long into the nights…. I have been trying to hold this thing together with sincerity, integrity and conscientiousness and I expect others to act likewise.”18 Bill shared his disgust in a letter to Nate Blumberg, Universal’s president, stating “I conceived the idea of Miss West and myself making a picture and have devoted five months to thinking and writing on it, and am no nearer the starting now that I was then…. If you do not see a remedy or any solution, I will be willing to return the five thousand dollars advanced on script and void the contract until some future date, when a more satisfactory understanding to all concerned can be arranged.”19 Fields disliked Jones’s second draft even more. Hoping to convince Work that Jones’s script was mediocre, he wrote: “There is no sparkle…. There is no interesting scenes or smart dialogue and it doesn’t move…. To my mind he has missed the characters of both Miss West and myself…. Now I ask you, Cliff, has he written this for Fields or Shirley Temple?” In a follow-up letter, he explained that “the work I’m doing on the screen differs from that of anyone else. My comedy is of a peculiar nature. Naturally no writers have been developed along the lines of my type of comedy and that is why I sometimes have differences with writers, supervisors and directors alike…. The writer, director, supervisor and the assassin of humor, known as the cutter, must have faith in me and believe in me and not hate me or at least be friendly toward me (I’ll settle for neutrality).” In the same letter, Fields offered Work

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

243

a solution. “I know how to make a West-Fields’ picture. I know how it can be done with expediency and economy…. Give me the final say on cutting, the supervising and directing and I will write the story gratis—free…. Eliminate factional disturbances … Make it a Mae West-W. C. Fields picture and if we are outstanding in the picture, it will sell plenty.”20 Work waffled on Fields’s solution by replying that he did not want to interfere. He replied pleading for “cooperation and collaboration” among all involved. “Billy, please believe me, Universal does not want to start the Bill Fields-Mae West picture by taking a ‘position’…. Universal only wants a good picture…. I feel sure that all of the people connected with this venture are sincere and want to merely to help. I feel sure that if a proper spirit is shown by everybody, the contribution of each will result in a fine achievement for everyone…. I know that you, as a top man in the business for God knows how many years, will find a way to work things through.”21 Work’s position caused Fields to vent his frustration: “Now whom am I to go to who is in authority? This run-around stuff is not practiced by thinking men. It differs from diplomacy as truth differs from deceit. I’ve got to know whom to go to with my grief or for consultation or advice…. Give me the authority I asked for.” Bill warned Work that “You have a great set-up with Miss West and myself but it is being strangled…. I cannot see how we will ever make a picture.”22 Field’s was hoping that West felt the same way, so he wrote Mae again pleading for her support. He reminded Mae that he left her scenes out because he had great faith in her writing. As for Jones’s two scripts, he wrote Mae that he “has failed by a country mile to get either of our characters.” He ended his letter asking Mae for her understanding: “I feel we must understand each other thoroughly and that we must get together for a chat if we are to make this opus. I am so thoroughly disgusted I have asked them several times to let me out of my contract.”23 West was a prolific author who wrote her own vaudeville sketches, Broadway shows, and screenplays. She started writing plays in 1926, beginning with Sex, which ran for 375 performances, and thereafter authored all her theater productions through 1931. Her most sensational Broadway show, Diamond Lil (1928), a drama of the underworld, became the basis for her second Paramount film, She Done Him Wrong (1931). In addition, Mae authored six books, including novels, an autobiography, songs, and numerous unpublished scripts, treatments, and synopses.

244  A. F. WERTHEIM

West’s writing style, described as “epigrammatic, laconic, and oblique,” differed from Fields’s comedic wordplay. “You need more than a college education to write my stuff,” she once declared. “My style of writing is as distinctive as Eugene O’Neill.” Fields’s style, by contrast, was called “rococo.” “His dramatic structure is intentionally all ornament and no edifice. His dialogue—a mélange of verbal scrimshaw curlicues and Gongoristic embellishments—is a remarkable instrument of mirth.”24 Bill and Mae were talented wordsmiths who could manipulate language to suit their style. Fields was overjoyed when he finally read West’s script with the working title “The Lady and the Bandit.” In a letter to Work on September 28, he communicated his strong support for her story: “I have read the Mae West script and I must admit that it is a far better script than mine. I will go further and say after some collaboration which Mae West has graciously acceded to, it will be a perfect vehicle for Miss West and myself. During my entire experience in the entertainment world, I have never had anyone catch my character as Mae West had. In fact, she is the only author that has ever known what I was trying to do.” According to West, Fields said in a story conference: “My last argument is we do Miss West’s story or we do nothing.”25 Bill’s kudos for West forged a significant step in finally making the film a reality. Compared to his earlier letters to Work, Bill’s tone became conciliatory. He wrote: “Nobody wants more peace more than I do. That is why I am willing to do everything that is asked of me…. My experience in making people laugh are so abysmally different to those of you executives. You probably have a newer and more up-to-date idea. I am not set in my ways and I can change. I shall abide by your judgment. Just give me a starting date and I will respond like a fire horse to an alarm.”26 Filming finally commenced on October 30, 1939, approximately seven months after deliberations started and one day before the contracts for the co-stars would have expired. The studio’s production manager estimated that with a 136-page screenplay the picture would take forty-two days. The shooting went fairly smoothly and finished on January 5; 14 days over the original schedule and within an expected budget of $630,000. Only on one occasion near the end of shooting did the production manager report that “the temperament of our two personalities were inclined to retard our progress a little bit.”27 The conflicts between Fields and West on the set were largely a “Battle of the Ad-libs” with each trying to top one another. “You are the

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

245

epitome of erudition,” Twillie tells Flower Belle. “Double superlative, can you handle it?” Mae retorts: “Yeah, and I can kick it around too.” West felt Fields “is a living embodiment of quiet emphasis. That’s why your attention is attracted to every move he makes. And this is why those little ad lib asides you hear him mutter on the screen make you strain your ears to catch every word (and that’s what drives his fellow performers nuts).”28 Bill confirmed his feelings in a short letter to the director Leo McCarey, who he had asked earlier to help with the story. “So as not to cause any dissension, I am letting Miss West have here way with the script. She has written it and I will add a few scenes and that’s about it.” West agreed to have Bill’s name put on the writing credits. The arrangement gave Fields enough independence to alter his dialogue and improvise. He consequently enriched the film with numerous memorable scenes.29 Moviegoers first see Cuthbert J. Twillie (Fields) trying to board the train to Greasewood City by lying on the tracks. The engineer stops the locomotive when he spots Twillie lying on a travois attached to a horse ridden by Clarence, impersonating a Black Crow Native American, played by his good friend from vaudeville George Moran, of Moran and Mack (Two Black Crows). (After Mack was killed in a car accident, Moran went on the skids. Wishing to help his colleague, Fields convinced Universal to hire him.) “Hey, what are you doing down there?” asks the train’s engineer. “Ah, how do you do, sir,” replies Twillie. “Have you any private cars on this train? Room and bath with exclusive bar?” “No! Only day coaches,” the engineer replies. “Drat! Allow me a half a tick to collect my portmanteau and some very valuable belongings.” Dressed in an oversized stovepipe hat and a white flower in his buttonhole, he boards the train carrying a carpet-bag full of fake cash. Twillie sits next to the noisy busybody Miss Gideon (Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz). Sitting in the same car is Flower Belle Lee (West), who had been caught in an illicit affair with the Masked Bandit, after he kidnapped her during a stagecoach robbery. She has been ordered to leave Little Bend by Miss Gideon and her righteous flock until she mends her behavior by marrying an upright husband. Suddenly, a band of Indians start to rob the train. Using two six-shooters, Flower Belle begins to kill most of the attackers. “There he goes in a shower of feathers,” Flower Belle remarks as an Indian falls off his horse to the ground. Meanwhile, a

246  A. F. WERTHEIM

petrified Twillie is assaulted by an Indian who shoots a barrage of arrows near his head. “I hate you!” he exclaims. Trying to escape to the next compartment, he is spied in the open by an Indian whose arrow whizzes near his ear, causing him to grab it and throw it back. Spotting a child with a slingshot, he tells him to “go in there and fight like a man!” The sequence is significant because it depicts Flower Belle as a formidable robust personality in contrast to Twillie whose actions are foolish. The difference between them, resiliency (Flower Belle) vs. ineptitude (Twillie), is revealed throughout the film. Spotting Flower Belle sitting alone, Twillie asks Miss Gideon, “Who’s that vision of loveliness up there? Pardon me. I’ll be back.” Twillie sits opposite Flower Belle dressed splendidly in her Gay Nineties iconic dress—a voluptuous permutation of frills, ruffles, and plumes. Acting like a gentleman, Twillie politely presents his card (Fig. 19.1). Flower: (reads card) Cuthbert J. Twillie—novelties and notions. What notions have you got? Twillie: Quite a variety. Some maybe new to you. Whom have I the honor of addressing, my lady? Flower: They call me Flower Belle. Twillie: Flower Belle—what a euphonious appellation. Easy on the ears and a banquet for the eyes. Flower: You’re kinda cute yourself. Twillie: Thank you. I never argue with a lady. Flower: Smart boy.

With the introductions over, he flatters her with more flowery endearments. Twillie: I understand you need a cicerone—a guide. Flower: I need more than that honey. Twillie: (Looking at her hand) What symmetrical digits. Soft as the fuzz on a baby’s arm. Flower: But quick on the trigger. Twillie: (kissing her hand) Do you mind my dove? Flower: No go ahead and help yourself. Twillie: Would you object if I availed myself of the second helping… Flower: You’re compromising me….You’re so flowery you ought to have my name. Twillie: It would make me very happy to give you mine. (Twillie gives her an amulet claiming it’s a gift from the Aga Khan.)

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

247

Fig. 19.1  Fields (Tillie) and West (Flower Belle) meet one another on the train. Opposite is Donald Meek (cardsharp, Amos Budget) who performs their fake marriage. My Little Chickadee (1940). Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

Flower: What a pretty sentiment Twillie: A lonesome heart that’s what I am. It is not good for a man to be alone. Flower: It’s no fun for a woman either. Twillie: It is possible we might be lonely together. Flower: It’s quite possible. Twillie:  I would be all things to you—father—mother—counsellor— bartender. Flower: You’re offerin’ quite a bundle honey. Twillie: My heart is a bargain today my little Titwillow. Will you take me, my dear?

Spotting the money in Twillie’s bag, Flower Belle says “I’ll take you— and how.” She arranges a fake matrimony on the train assisted by Amos

248  A. F. WERTHEIM

Budget (Donald Meek), a cardsharp whose demeanor and dress resembles a minister. After the phony marriage is performed, the couple depart the train and head for Greasewood City’s best hotel, where Flower Belle asks for two rooms and Twillie the bridal suite. “I’ll take the suite. Give him the room,” she declares. Unable to occupy the nuptial suite, Twillie stands before the door asking Flower Belle to open it. Thinking that she is suffering from wedding night jitters, he utters: “Egad! The child’s afraid of me—she’s all a twit.” As he peeps through the keyhole, Flower Belle tells him that he can’t come in, “I’m dressing.” Trying to pretend he has no nuptial pleasures in mind, he reminds her that “I’m as gentle as a forest bred lion.” “Get away from the keyhole,” demands Flower Belle. “Oh, don’t be old fashioned. Be a good boy and run along. Why don’t you look the town over?” Giving up, he finds his Indian friend Clarence downstairs and orders him to “go upstairs and park your stoical presence outside the tepee of Mrs. Twillie. Number eight.” “Big Chief gottum new squaw?” asks Clarence. “New is right. She hasn’t been unwrapped yet.” In her autobiography, Goodness Has Nothing to Do with It (1960), West claimed that she wrote this gag but it sounds like Fields’s typical witticism. Following PCA’s practices, Joseph Breen received the script in late September before shooting started. Breen learned from an unknown source that Universal had ordered the writers of My Little Chickadee to make the screenplay “plenty dirty” and to use subtle “smut gags” to “slip by the censors.”30 Combining West and Fields, two infamous targets of PCA’s strict censorship rules, set off alarm bells at the organization. He ordered the elimination of the comment—“I haven’t even unwrapped her yet.” Director Cline agreed to create an alternate line but Fields’s only made a slight change. In My Little Chickadee, Fields incessantly runs into frustrating and demeaning situations. Believing he is legally married to Flower Belle, he is frustrated by his inability to consummate his marriage. Hoping Flower Belle will change her mind, Twillie romances Mae with his lyrical parlances: “Come, my phlox, my flower. I have some very definite pea-shaped ideas I’d like to discuss with thee.” The unique dialogue that Fields voices during his sequences suggests that Bill used his own lines from his screenplay or ad-libbed. West later wrote: He “insisted on putting in some of his characteristic touches, which was no more than I would have done in his place—and have done in other times and places.”31

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

249

Later in the film, Twillie’s frustration peaks when she invites him into her boudoir. Expecting a night of bliss, he takes a bath while bragging about his feats when he “caught malaria in the old swimming hole. What a foul summer that was … the year the Jones boys were murdered … I can see her now.” Worried that Twillie might be seen naked, Breen insisted that there must not be any exposure of Fields in the bathtub. While Twillie is in the bathroom, Flower Belle puts a goat in their bed, instructing the animal to “keep your mouth closed and let him do all the talking…. Do this right and I’ll get you his straw hat!” She then leaves to rendezvous with her lover, the Masked Bandit.32 Attired in a fancy nightgown after his bath, Twillie climbs into bed wooing the lump under the covers with words of endearment. Touching the goat’s skin, he thinks Flower Belle is wearing a coat. “You’d better take your coat off, dear. You won’t feel the good of it when you go out. It smells like it hasn’t been taken to the cleaners recently.” Moving to the side of the bed, the goat bleats. “She’s calling for her mama … what sublime innocence.” Suddenly, the goat jumps out of the bed surprising a frightened Twillie to look at the animal in disbelief and to utter “Godfrey Daniel!” The scene of Twillie getting in bed with the goat must be eliminated “due to offensive dialogue,” Breen insisted. Cline retorted that there was no sex in this scene. Twillie is wearing one of Flower Belle’s gowns and is completely covered. Considered one of the most hilarious scenes in the film, Fields’s encounter with the goat remained in the film.33 Following Flower Belle’s suggestion, Twillie tells his Native American assistant, “I’ll proceed to the local gin mill and absorb a beaker of firewater.” The saloon’s environment revives Fields’s iconic persona as a con man and card shark. Entering the barroom, Twillie spots a gambler sitting alone at a table. “Would you like to engage in a little game of cut? The higher card wins?” Eager to play, the man places five $20 gold pieces on the table. Lacking funds, Twillie gives his personal I.O.U. to his opponent, with the excuse: “I’ve been traveling light—the country is fraught with marauders.” Displeased, the gambler glares at him, takes out his gun, places it on the table, and warns Twillie, “That I.O.U. better be good.” Cutting the cards, the gambler draws a King. “Don’t show it to me,” Twillie insists. “I take your word. Gentleman’s game you know.” Cutting the cards, he draws an eight but yells “Ace” and quickly puts it back in the deck. “I didn’t see it,” declares his adversary. “I didn’t think you wished to. I thought it was a gentleman’s game.” Twillie finds

250  A. F. WERTHEIM

an Ace in the deck and shows it to his foe. “I hope that satisfies your morbid curiosity”.34 Twillie takes his one-hundred dollar winnings to the large table where there are five big-time gamblers (Fig. 19.2). “Deal me in” he says as the dealer gives him one chip for his earnings. While Twillie shuffles the cards, he distracts his opponents by telling tall tales of his courage defeating the Native Americans single-handedly on the train. “It reminds me of the time I was in the wilds of Afghanistan. I lost my corkscrew and was compelled to live on nothing but food and water for several days.” The gamblers tell him to shut up and deal the cards. Before long, Twillie has amassed a large amount of chips. (The poker scene is illustrated in the famous photograph showing a sly Twillie holding his cards in his hands and near his face. See cover photo.) The players accuse him of cheating, and a fight breaks out causing Twillie to be manhandled.

Fig. 19.2  Twillie playing poker with five card-shark gamblers in the saloon at Greasewood City. My Little Chickadee. Author’s Collection

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

251

He is rescued when Flower Belle asks her lover, Jeff Badger, the saloon owner and Masked Bandit, to intercede. Badger not only saves Twillie but appoints him the town’s sheriff. Moviegoers next see Twillie in the sheriff’s office playing cards with Clarence, his Native American assistant. “Three squaws!” shouts Clarence. “Three chiefs” exclaims Twillie, who wins various baubles and beads on the table. Fearing for his life when his angered opponent picks up his bow and arrow, Twillie picks up a whisky bottle. “What are you up to, you red rascal?” Before he can answer, Twillie hits Clarence over the head with the bottle, knocking him out and declares: “The only thing they can arrest me for is splitting a bottle with an Indian.” When Clarence recovers Twillie kicks him out of his office with the rebuke, “Go back to the reservations and milk your elk!”35 (This scene, among others,  today could be taken as offensive to Native Americans.) Twillie’s next sucker is the yokel Zeb, Flower Belle’s cousin. He encourages the naïve Zeb to play a game of cards. “Have you any of the elusive spondulicks on you,” he asks Zeb. “You mean money?” Zeb wants to know, “Is this a game of chance?” Twillie replies: “Not the way I play it, no.” Rejected by Flower Belle, Twillie has a plan to dress like the Masked Bandit and enter her room. When the two kiss Flower Belle sees that his large nose protrudes through his mask. Noting Twillie’s disguise, she calls him a cheat. “Anything worth having is worth cheating for,” he retorts as he flees her room.36 An angry mob takes Twillie to be hanged. The lynching scene must be tactfully done, warned Breen—“no rope around Twillie’s neck, no shouts of ‘lynch him’! Avoid Twillie being yanked up by the rope or political censor boards will delete the scene entirely.” The filmmakers mostly avoided Breen’s declaration. With a noose around his neck, Twillie is asked if he has anything to say: “Yes! This will be a great lesson to me.” What is your last request, “I’d like to see Paris before I die.” The crowd jeer. His life at stake, Fields recalls his birthplace. “Philadelphia will do!” Mimicking his ambivalent feelings about his birthplace, Fields utters another of his most memorable lines (Fig. 19.3).37 Encouraged by Flower Belle, the real Masked Bandit (aka the saloon owner Jeff Badger) arrives in time to save Twillie. Flower Belle accompanies him, aims her gun at the rope around Twillie’s neck, and shoots it off. To prove he is the real culprit and to clear his name, the Masked Bandit gives his loot from his robberies to the town and rides away. A tour de force ending marks My Little Chickadee’s concluding scene. A note Bill wrote to West hints that Fields wrote the finale: “Eddie

252  A. F. WERTHEIM

[Cline] told me that you asked him if I had any suggestion for the finish. This is it. The finish leaves just the two of us at the end of the picture with no attempts at comedy or wisecracks from either of us. I think it will leave a nice, human feeling in the audience’s mind.” Moviegoers last see Twillie in the hotel lobby where he announces he is heading East for his next con-man ruse. “I’m going to sell stock in hair-oil wells.” He encounters Flower Belle where they part imitating each other’s popular catchphrases. “If you get up around the Grampian Hills [italics mine], you must come up and see me sometime!” states Twillie. “I’ll do that, my little chickadee” Flower Belle retorts. The film fades out with a shot of Mae West ascending the hotel’s staircase as “The End” appears across her swaying derrière.38 Two weeks before the film opened on February 9, 1940, Fields worried that he might be upstaged by West. A highly annoyed Fields wrote

Fig. 19.3  “Philadelphia will do!” Twillie about to be hanged near the conclusion of My Little Chickadee. Author’s Collection

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

253

during previews to Jack Gross, the film’s producer, that he feared that Mae might receive first billing on the screen. He insisted: “I would also like to have the cast read: MAE WEST Flower Belle Lee

as

W.C. FIELDS Cuthbert Twillie

“These trivia may seem picayunish but precedents are precedents and they sometimes become very aggravating and grow into mighty oaks.”39 The final cut followed Bill’s wishes. Fields and West also received credit for the original screenplay. Before exhibiting the film, a print needed to be sent to Breen for the PCA’s final approval. He had an additional complaint about Fields’s remark at the picture’s end: “I know what I’ll do. I’ll go to India and become a missionary. I hear there’s good money in it too.” Breen told Fields that the Production Code forbids any negative comments about “gentlemen of the cloth. It’s a mere trifle, in my judgment, and you don’t need it.” Fields agreed: “I know you are right [that the missionary line had to go] and I shall henceforth hold my peace. I am glad you liked the picture…. After a ham gets over conscious about a picture, he usually get[s] some kind of screwy perspective.” Breen suggested that they meet and chat about “the difficulties we have in this attempt, by way of the movies, ‘to be all things to all men.’” Bill felt the idea of a meeting would be constructive. “I am looking forward to seeing you in the near future to thank you personally for your forbearance.” In one letter, Breen wished Fields a “long life” and “may your shadow never grow less!”40 Their words suggest that the two had temporarily buried their animosity. The predicted disputes between the two explosive personalities during the shooting seldom occurred. Eddie Cline however remarked that he spent more time “referring” between the two than directing. A reporter visiting the set wrote that “not a spark flew. Instead of the anticipated fireworks, there were smiles and kind words and handshakes all around.” He saw Bill placing his lips behind Mae’s left ear causing “his ever-present stovepipe hat” to fall off. “Fields is resplendent in gray top-hat, dark striped coat and trousers, spas, yellow lapel flower and yellow gloves.” Rumors about each other having disputes are “nonsense,” said West.

254  A. F. WERTHEIM

“We’ve talked it over. We realize that our comedy styles are just different enough to work well together, and the more we build each other up the better our picture will be.”41 Limiting the sequences between West and Fields prevented confrontations. Mae’s scenes mainly concerned her romances with the Masked Bandit and the local newspaper editor (Dick Foran) while Bill’s occur primarily in the saloon. Only once when the shooting schedule was behind did the production manager complain that “the temperament of our two personalities were reclined to retard our progress a little bit.”42 Universal’s decision to pair Fields and West made My Little Chickadee a big box-office winner, garnering nearly $2 million. Reviews of the film were a mixed bag, exemplified by the Hollywood Reporter’s headline “Sure Fire B. O. Hit—Story Limps but Laughs Are Plenty.” Several reviewers disparaged the story due to its “inconsistent liveliness.” One lambasted the film industry for “doing nothing to save great comics” and that Fields was “being wasted on trivialities” “This satire of Westerns never really gets off the ground,” wrote Pauline Kael. Frank Nugent, writing in the New York Times, critiqued the performances of both leads. West’s humor “appears to be growing broader with the years,” he declared. As for Fields, he was “largely the innocent victim of someone else’s bad taste.”43 The most scurrilous review came from the pen of Walter Winchell in the New York Daily Mirror when he wrote: “W. C. Fields and Mae West ought to go to the woodshed for My Little Chickadee. Each is so busy hogging footage that the story gets stamped to death.” Fields had no tolerance for journalists who printed rumors and gossip. What bothered him was Winchell’s accusation about hogging. In a caustic letter, Fields wrote: “This is a deliberate, uncalled for, unjust defamation and a bit of malice, printed probably as a favor to one of your friends. Haven’t you all this time felt like the lowly rodent? … Don’t be a little schmuck all your life. Don’t be like the cowardly fish of the jellyfish family … which when it is frightened, runs and exudes a smelly, inky substance to cover up its trail.”44 Disappointed reviewers felt that the combination of Fields and West failed to produce the expected fireworks of laughs. “He has trouble playing with the forceful Miss West,” the film scholar Donald W. McCaffrey wrote. “Visually, his uneasiness can be detected. He seems frozen before her and only loosens up when he does a scene with minor players.” Dick Foran, who played the newspaper editor, watched Mae and Bill on the

19  COMBUSTIBLE CO-STARS 

255

set and felt that “each was wary of each other.” “For the first time she was working with a performer whose legend was the equal of her own.” During takes, there was “a great deal of jockeying for position by two consummate professionals.”45 Underneath their apparent friendliness on the set lay an enmity between two stars. When West saw the finished picture, her jealousy of Fields exploded causing her to go ballistic with a barrage of umbrage. After Fields’s death, she called Bill “sneaky,” adding “he knew a cutter, and they’d go into the cutting room ‘n’ take out my best lines…. Fields was a sharpie—a crooked one!”46 West had her moments, especially playing a school teacher and a lustful saloon entertainer, who utters suggestive one-liners about her seductiveness—“too bad I can’t give out samples,” “a man’s kiss is her signature,” and “I was in a tight spot, but I managed to wiggle out of it.” But her romantic entanglements with the Masked Bandit and the newspaper editor lacked pizazz. Although West has some good scenes reminiscent of her earlier performances, she “appears in at least half the footage, doing one of the poorer jobs of her career, the total work suffers.” Pauline Kael wrote. “West is hampered by the censors breathing down her décolletage; but even though she is less bawdy, and rather more grotesque than at her best, she is still overwhelming.”47 West’s performance in My Little Chickadee failed to advance her career, which continued downhill compared to her stardom in the early thirties. Among her last appearances were three mediocre films spaced years apart. More successful was her return to the stage during the 1940s in three Broadway shows, capped by a revival of her signature hit, Diamond Lil. By contrast, some critics felt Fields stole the picture by creating numerous laugh-getting sequences. Ashton Stevens, for example, lauded Bill’s performance: “In his more familiar non-lecherous scenes Mr. Fields is unmittingly the tin-horned sportsman that has made him a classic while he lives.” The reviewer for Time magazine agreed: “Cuthbert J. Twillie is firstrate Fields clowning, which is proof enough that one of the coolest heads in show business surmounts cinema West’s opulent curves.”48 Due to television, the film has been often replayed. “I think it’s a good picture,” admitted West in 1973. “Over the years My Little Chickadee has been shown over and over again,” Mae wrote. “Untold millions have seen it.”49 A major reason for the film’s continued popularity is that both Fields and West became venerated figures during the 1960s and 1970s.

256  A. F. WERTHEIM

The two shared a biting iconoclasm that mocked America’s suffocating morality, conformity, and censorship. A new generation saw Mae’s films on late night television and identified with her rebellion against sexual taboos. According to one biographer, “West seemed a champion of personal sexual freedom for a nation undergoing a sexual revolution that would change many attitudes and habits.” Both Mae and Bill shared a mutiny against the “moral arbiters of custom, taste, tradition” using comedy as a sword to rebuke the establishment. If West’s weapons were licentious one-liners, innuendos, and double entendres, Fields’s bludgeons were his sharp daggers aimed at sacrosanct institutions and beliefs that inhibited individuality. Currently, My Little Chickadee remains a cult classic film starring two scintillating legends.50

CHAPTER 20

Magnum Opus.2

Well before My Little Chickadee was released, Fields started writing his own story for his next film. Universal also sent him screenplays to consider, including a script called, “Alias the Deacon,” which was rejected by the comedian. “There is no belly laughs in it and I fail to see how I can inject any.” Bill wanted to do a different type of film and objected that he would be playing a card shark again. “It will be hard to top the card games we had in our present opus [My Little Chickadee] and I do not think it good policy to immediately follow with a somewhat similar premise.”1 He sent Matty Fox, a Universal vice president, a “fine family story, making myself a tippling Bunker Bean and give[s] a pretty authentic insight into the lives of juvenile aspirants and their ambitious parents.” If you like to see what I do with family stories you might run, “It’s a Gift” and “You’re Telling Me.”2 His next sentence is very revealing: “A good deal of this material I wrote for the 1924 Follies, sixteen years ago”—a subtle confession reflecting that he often recycled concepts and characterizations. Fields refers to his role in The Comic Supplement as Pa Jones—the henpecked husband excoriated by his family. Fields’s other feeble “tippling Bunker Beans” (Elmer Prettywillie, Harold Bissonette, Sam Bisbee, and Ambrose Wolfinger) are likewise assaulted by their domineering wives. These earlier types are descended from Casper Milquetoast, a character created by comic strip artist H.T. Webster. Through luck or © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_20

257

258  A. F. WERTHEIM

crook, they are transformed from ne’er do wells to family heroes. Fields crafted another novel comedic personality, Egbert Sousè—who ranks among the top of Fields’s milquetoast impersonations. Bill’s thinking about a new “family story” headed by Egbert Sousè became the springboard for The Bank Dick, widely hailed “as a masterpiece of its genre.”3 Fields had unexpectedly plunged again into another battle with Universal when they decided to assign a studio writer to rewrite Fields’s story. He received a disturbing letter from Edward Muhl, Universal’s assistant secretary, relating the studio’s displeasure with Bill’s script. Muhl stressed that the plot was “awkwardly put together. New characters appear, and new events happen which have no relationship to each other and which serve to confuse the audience.” Muhl suggested numerous changes regarding scenes, characterizations, and the ending, which “is weak—and should be bolstered with an exciting physical routine.”4 Bill angrily disagreed with his suggestions. The studio promised “I would be left alone to my own devices,” he wrote Eddie Cline (who Fields had selected to direct The Bank Dick). “I do not agree that [my] story is awkwardly put together.” The Universal writer “has done everything possible to assassinate the Fields character.” As for his role opening the film pitching snake oil. “Every author has me selling something in the beginning of a picture. I do not wish all my pictures to look alike. I would like at least one a bit different.” I write “to allow for by-play interpolations, and for extemporaneous dialogue.” “I write my scripts short and they develop on the set…. When they are over-written it makes the picture more costly, and when you begin deleting scenes entirely or cutting them, it ruins the story and the smoothness.” Fields threatened Universal: “If it is changed, you will oblige me by not putting my name on it.” But “if you will let me alone as you promised I’ll work like a canine (or beaver—optional) to give you a good Fields picture in a very short of time, reasonable, and tasty.”5 When Universal sent a seventy-five-page script (a combination of Fields’s submission and studio writers) to the Production Code Administration for preproduction acceptance, Fields found himself in another encounter with Breen, who had written the studio on July 2 a long letter stating his objections. Fields agreed to remove several expressions that Breen found offensive such as “hell,” “rakehell,” and “nuts to you,” including changing castor oil to “cod liver oil.” Of special interest was Breen’s objection to “The Black Pussy,” a bar Sousè frequents in the film. Fields rejected Breen’s complaint, reminding him that “Leon Errol,

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

259

the renowned comedian runs a café on Santa Monica Boulevard called “The Black Pussy.” It can be changed, but why?” Breen replied: “I know about Errol’s café, called “The Black Pussy,” but the expression is capable of an unacceptable interpretation. Because of that we suggested that you call it the “Pussy Cat Café”.” The name of the café, Sousè’s favorite watering hole, was not changed.6 Fields’s battle with Universal intensified when the studio assigned another writer, Charles Grayson, to beef up the screenplay but not to change the dialogue. When Bill received Grayson’s fifty-nine pages he was furious. “All the dialogue has been changed so that the character of Sousè is no longer Fields.” Grayson added an eleven page opening about the “catching of a sea bass which is pointless and a ridiculous slapstick ending.”7 After receiving another studio rewrite, Fields appealed to Nate Blumberg, Universal’s president. By going to the top, Fields hoped Blumberg’s reputation would create his own “miracle.” “I don’t know to whom to appeal,” Fields wrote. “No one with authority at the studio has got in touch with me or asked my opinion of the latest treatment.” Bill complained that his “humor and characterizations have been ruined… I assure you this no way to make a comedy picture. I am not going to make any further appeals. I am going to live up to my contract to the letter. But I assure you if I am forced to do this picture as is now written, it will not only be detrimental to me, but to Universal Studio.” Blumberg’s reply the next day surprised Bill by reassuring him that everyone involved with the picture would respect his requests. He wrote Blumberg a gracious note of thanks for his “kind letter… with your assurances and confidence. I know the studio will do everything to make the picture profitable for all concerned…. Your letter took a great load off my mind and I am indebted to you for it.”8 Fields told Eddie Cline why he was motivated to play the role of a bank dick. “I’ve always had a hankering to find out what a bank guard thinks and feels like. They always give me the fishy eye. They make me feel as if they thought I had come into the bank to steal the pens, blotters, and other loose-lying knick-knacks. Some day… I’m going to play a bank directive on the screen—and see if I can find out what goes on in a bank dick’s head.”9 By the time Fields reported for work in early September, he was still unsure about which script Cline was going to use. He received an ominous letter from Ed Muhl. “The screenplay was prepared by us in

260  A. F. WERTHEIM

accordance with our rights and because the screen play delivered by you to us was not satisfactory to us…. Under your contract with us we are entitled to produce the photoplay from the final screen play as now written [Grayson’s screenplay].” Lastly, came the studio’s ultimatum: “This is to advise you that we intend to exercise our rights in this regard and that we shall expect you to render your services in accordance with the contract existing between us.” (Provision #3 in Fields’s August 4, 1938, contract with Universal gave the studio the “right to elect changes/ rewrites/revisions to Fields’s screenplay.”) Fields expressed his venom toward the studio in a letter to his friend Gene Fowler: “I have called Universal all the names I know.”10 After all the hullabaloo Fields was credited on screen for his original story and screenplay by using a nom de plume: Mahatma Kane Jeeves (Jeeves, the name of English butlers and/or valets made famous by P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories and novels). “Kane” could also be a reference to Orson Welles’s movie Citizen Kane. Bill must have known about the famous film since it was shot at RKO around the same time as The Bank Dick, although released five months later. Bill showed up two hours late on the first day, leaving the cast waiting to shoot a scene, which occurs in a dining room at Souse’s house. When Egbert leaves to go to work, his daughter Myrtle kisses him on his forehead, causing Fields to apologize at the rehearsal: “I’m sorry about my foul-smelling breath.” “Why, Mr. Fields, on you it smells like Chanel Number Five,” Una Merkel replies knowing that his breath reeks of alcohol. Affected by her engaging remark intoned in a Southern accent, Bill told her “honey, you’re in.” At age thirty-seven in 1940 and already credited with over fifty silent and sound films, Merkel was considered a superb supporting actor for her “quirky characterizations” of “harebrained ingénues, wisecracking best friends, feisty pioneer women, or cantankerous matrons.” “W.C. Fields was one of the nicest men I ever worked for,” she said. “He was absolutely wonderful to me.”11 Before long Fields was delighted that Cline was using mostly his script and not Grayson’s. Bill had threatened to toss Grayson’s rewrite “in their faces.” Frustrated over the quagmire regarding which screenplay to follow, Cline told Fields “shoot your own script. They won’t know the difference.” “So we did” recalled Bill. Una Merkel remembered Bill’s way of dealing with the screenplay. “Heavens, if he thought a scene was too long, he’d take a couple of pages and tear then off, saying ‘That’s

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

261

enough, I’m not going to remember any more.’” Working with Fields, she said, was a joy. “You had to be pretty quick to keep up with him, but it was fun, it was never a strain.”12 There have been numerous dysfunctional families in Fields’s oeuvre from stage to screen, but the Sousè kin ranks among the top in the list. Bill must have had a role in casting since he has brought together a remarkable talented crew, who added considerably to the picture’s success. His wife Agatha (Cora Witherspoon), a habitual complainer, berates her worthless dipsomaniacal husband for smoking, drinking, working puzzles, and laziness. An excellent stage and film character performer, Witherspoon was noted for playing “class-conscious matrons, haranguing wives, acidulous spinsters, and aggressive busybodies.” “You are an especially fine artist,” Fields wrote to her in one of their correspondences. Even more caustic is Egbert’s mother-in-law, premier gossiper and deceiver, Mrs. Hermisillo Brunch, performed by Jessie Ralph (nurse Peggotty in David Copperfield), a veteran Broadway and Hollywood actor known for playing tyrannical matriarchs. Completing the Sousè clan is the youngest daughter, Elsie Mae Adele Brunch Sousè (named after Fields’s two sisters Elsie Mae and Adele), a typical Fieldsian wicked brat who throws objects at her father, impersonated by nine-year-old Puerto Rican Evelyn Del Rio, known as the Latin Shirley Temple.13 Taking the role of Myrtle’s boyfriend, the bank teller Og Oggilby, is “blank-faced, empty-headed” Grady Sutton, a steadfast member of Fields’s club of supporting actors. Fields fought Universal to hire Sutton for the part, but the studio wanted another performer. “No, I want Grady,” Bill insisted. “I like to work with him; I like the way he reacts to me.” When Universal refused the comedian told them: “All right then, get yourself another Fields.” “They had to hire me,” Sutton recalls, “but I didn’t work out there again for three years or so.”14 The wordsmith Fields gave other performers hilarious names, many indicating the characters’ personality and occupation. Sousè (pronounced Su-say), for instance, is a takeoff on the word soused, reflecting Egbert’s dipsomania. The prying bank examiner, played by prissy Franklin Pangborn, a wonderful prolific supporting actor with 237 credits, is named J. Pinkerton Snoopington (a snoop). The bartender (Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame) at the Black Pussy Café is called Joe Guelpe (gulp). Repulsive Rogan (Al Hill) and Loudmouth McNasty (George Moran again) are two bank robbers. What better name for a bank president than Mr. Skinner (Pierre Watkin). Deserving mention is

262  A. F. WERTHEIM

Jack Norton as the drunken movie director, A. Pismo Clam, a reference to the coastal mid-California town, Pismo Beach. Fields used the name of another quaint California town, Lompoc, for the locale of The Bank Dick. Located in central California, Lompoc (pronounced “Lom-poke” or by Fields “Lom-pock”) and its surrounding area is known for its production of flower seed. Although Fields might have visited the town, the film occurs not in central California but in the fictional town of Lompoc, Kansas. Nor was the movie shot in Lompoc but at Universal Studios. Most important, Fields has chosen Lompoc as a setting in order to poke fun once again at small-town provincialism. Ironically, it was founded in 1874 as a temperance colony, possibly why Fields selected it for mockery. One scene in The Bank Dick especially depicts Lompoc’s narrow-minded citizens when Egbert (Fields) takes Snoopington, the ill and inebriated bank examiner, back to his hotel. On the way, he describes Lompoc: “This town is five hundred feet above sea level… has a population of 4500… schools, churches, public library, three blocks of paved streets, four trains a day… not counting the milk train that goes through at four o’clock in the morning, three drug stores, one of them sells medicine.” Arriving at the hotel, the clerk complains that his place does not admit drunks. Ignoring the warning, Egbert carries the sick and intoxicated bank examiner upstairs. As soon as they disappear, a snobbish woman tells the hotel clerk: “I shall make it my business to see that the Lompoc Ladies Auxiliary will be informed.” The film is loaded with other small-town types from the condescending bank president who gives Egbert a palm touch instead of a handshake and Sousè’s motherin-law who embodies provincialism. After the movie was released, the Lompoc citizens were initially upset over the way Fields portrayed their town. But today they are proud of its association with Fields. Jasper’s Saloon in Lompoc, for instance, is “a veritable Fields shrine” with his memorabilia and artifacts.15 From the film’s beginning to its end, The Bank Dick overflows with hilarious sequences. Moviegoers first see the Sousè kin minus Egbert seated at their dining table. The setting is familiar territory for Fields, since the family ritual of dining together appears in several of his movies such as The Pharmacist. During Victorian times, the family dinner became enshrined in American homes, a joyous celebration of togetherness emphasizing strict rules of etiquette with the patriarch sitting at the table’s head, mother at the opposite end, and the siblings, ordered to be

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

263

silent, pious, and well-behaved, ensconced on side chairs. Parents used mealtimes to teach their children proper table manners, religion, and other subjects. The happy nuclear family furthermore became romanticized in mass culture from Norman Rockwell’s 1940s paintings to the 1950s TV show Father Knows Best. The 1950s instructional film, A Date with Your Family, accentuated the theme—“the table is no place for discontent.”16 Instead of idealizing the sacrosanct family dining table as a place of tranquility, Fields lampoons it as a place of domestic turmoil. Starting with his Fliverton sketches in the Ziegfeld Follies during the 1920s and concluding with The Bank Dick, Fields belonged to the vanguard of iconoclasts who smashed the ideal of the American happy family dining in domestic bliss. Sitting at their modest dining or kitchen table at breakfast are his nagging wife and mother-in-law who together utter a chorus of belittlement aimed at Egbert, who has not yet arrived. Leading the assault at Egbert is the sour mother-in-law, Mrs. Hermisillo Brunch: “What’s he up to now? Well, I bet you anything he’s smoking up in his room again.” She appeals to Egbert’s wife: “Now this time, Agatha, you’ve got to just tell him to stop.” Egbert’s mother-in-law resumes her diatribe: “Now, it’s his smoking gave me asthma. It he don’t quit, I’m going to the country. Imagine a man trying to take care of his family, by going to theatre bank nights, working puzzle contests, and suggesting slogans.” Joining her family is the older daughter Myrtle, who is upset about what her Sunday school teacher said: He “told me that he saw my father coming out of a saloon the other day and that Dad was smoking a pipe.” Mrs. Brunch continues: “Smoking and drinking, and reading those infernal detective stories. The house just smells of liquor and smoke. There he is again, down to the saloon to read that silly Detective magazine.”17 Egbert comes down the stairs smoking a cigarette, sees his family, and quickly swallows it (an old vaudeville stunt). Spotting his youngest daughter, Elsie Mae, he grabs his detective magazine from her, causing the mischievous youngster to kick her father in the shin. In response, Egbert smacks her on the head with his fist. As her father begins to leave, Elsie hurls a ketchup bottle at him, which beams him on his head. “Imagine a man who takes money out of a child’s piggy bank and puts in IOU’s,” utters Mrs. Brunch. Egbert picks up a potted plant to throw at Elsie. “Don’t you dare strike my child!” yells his wife. “Put it down! Put it down!”

264  A. F. WERTHEIM

Egbert heads to the Black Pussy Café—his home away from home. On the front porch, he runs into Myrtle and her boyfriend, Og Oggilby. Myrtle introduces Og to her father. “Og Oggilby,” says Egbert. “It sounds like a bubble in a bathtub.” Arriving at his favorite watering hole, he asks his friend, Joe, the bartender for a “depth bomb.” The first to join Egbert at the bar is beer-drinking Otis, a scrawny taciturn fellow, played by Bill Wolfe, who made nine appearances (some uncredited) as a character actor in Fields’s films. Egbert asks the bartender: “Was I in here last night and did I spend a twenty-dollar bill?” “Yeah,” agrees Joe. “Oh boy, what a load that is off my mind. I’d thought I lost it.” Sousè suddenly sees a stranger next to him, Mackley Q. Greene, manager of Tel-Avis Picture Productions, in Lompoc to shoot a one-reeler. Mackley is upset because the director A. Pismo Clam is so drunk he is unable to direct the picture. Recognizing an opportunity to replace Mackley, Egbert boasts about his film experience: “You’re yellin’ right down my alley. In the old Sennett days I used to direct Fatty Arbuckle, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the rest of ‘em… I just can’t get the celluloid out of my blood. I’ve had a script that I’ve had in mothballs for twenty years. I read it to Irving and Milton who run the General Cinema down here. They said to me, they said ‘Sousè, it’s better than Gone with the Wind.’” Convinced, Mackley offers Egbert a “gambler’s chance on a percentage of the profits basis.” Tipsy from his drinking and carrying four glasses of liquor, Egbert is driven to the movie set by the movie company’s manager (Fig. 20.1). Egbert’s arrival begins a masterful sequence that parodies Hollywood filmmaking. He meets the two leads dressed for an English drawing room scene: Francois (Reed Hadley), the tall snobbish leading man dressed in evening clothes and a silk top hat plus the tiny romantic heroine Miss Plupp (Heather Wilde). Egbert directs the film while sitting royally on a rocking chair placed on a palanquin carried by four men. From his perch, he uses a huge megaphone to direct the actors. Reed Hadley recalled that “each take was different. Here I was, having studied the script, expecting a specific cue from Fields. But he usually would say something quite different, and the first few times actors would be a little startled.”18 When Egbert rips the script apart and changes the plot to a circus and football picture the two leads are dumfounded. He tells Francois: “You kick goals, you make passes, and you make the longest run with the ball that was ever made on the fields.” Francois wonders how he can

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

265

Fig. 20.1  Egbert Sousé (Fields) at the Black Pussy Café ordering a drink from bartender (Shemp Howard). In the background is Mackey Q. Greene (Richard Purcell), the manager of Tel-Avis films, who offers Egbert a job to direct his movie. Author’s Collection

play football in his evening clothes. Egbert tells him to just change your hat. Noticing Francois becoming more uncomfortable with the script changes, Sousè tells him: “Don’t give it a second thought. I’ve changed everything.” Excited about directing a motion picture, Egbert tells the crew: “We’re making motion picture history here. I want quiet! Quiet from everybody!” Suddenly his chair topples backward, causing Egbert to tumble off the palanquin. Egbert’s actions lampoon Fields’s recent bizarre experience at Universal, including the tumult over the many changes in The Bank Dick’s script. Grandson Ronald Fields writes that “the irony here was thick. While Sousè changed the script as shooting was under way so too in life Fields was changing his lines during shooting. This clearly was another perfect example of Fields’s art imitating his life.”19

266  A. F. WERTHEIM

Soon Sousè’s family arrives ready to spoil Dad’s fun. “It’s him,” states Mrs. Brunch, Egbert’s mother-in-law. “For the love of Pete,” utters his wife Agatha. Brunch declares: “He makes me sick! It’s him… For the love of Pete… He makes me sick.” Elsie Mae asks Agatha, her mother: “Shall I bounce a rock off his head?” Thinking that hurting her husband Egbert is not a good idea, Agatha admonishes Elsie, “Respect your father, darling.” Changing her mind, Agatha asks, “What kind of a rock?” Elsie Mae retorts, “Pa is drunk again!” She demands to be in the picture. Trying to be kind, her father pats Elsie Mae’s head, saying, “I’ll put you in later on, dear.” While putting on his coat, his persistent daughter asks: “Whats the matter, Pop? Don’t ya love me?” When Egbert threatens to strike the child, her mother comes to her defense. “Don’t you dare strike that child!” “She’s not gonna tell me I don’t love her,” Egbert replies. (This exchange resembles the tête-à-tête with his daughter in The Pharmacist.) In retaliation, Elsie Mae hits her father over the head with the megaphone. “Godfrey Daniel! Mother of Pearl!” Egbert exclaims. “The child’s only playin’ with ya, you fool,” utters his wife. “I don’t understand her funning,” says an exasperated Egbert. Elsie Mae throws a ball that knocks Egbert’s hat off her father’s head. Her mother softly pats her daughter’s head as if praising her deed. Believing she has made her husband look like a fool, Agatha grins in triumph and leaves with her family. Spotting Joe, the bartender passing by, Egbert hastily leaves the set in pursuit of the bartender. Arriving at the café, he finds it closed with a sign. Meanwhile, two robbers have held up a teller at the Lompoc State Bank and escape with a bundle of cash. Noticing their auto missing, they run down the street. One crook wants to split the cash, which the other burglar is carrying and knocks him unconscious, leaving the thief holding the money on the ground behind a bench. Unaware of the incident, Egbert sits on the bench. Hearing the police siren, the thief tosses his gun at Egbert and runs away. The bench topples over trapping the other robber underneath. When the police arrive, they suspect Egbert is about to handcuff him. “That’s not one of the crooks, that’s Mr. Sousè,” states Og. “Mighty find job Mr. Sousè apprehending the bank robbers.” Egbert enters his home carrying a local newspaper with the front page headline:

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

267

BANK ROBBER CAPTURED BY EGBERT SOUSÈ Well Known Citizen is Hero of the Hour

Egbert is anxious to show his wife and mother-in-law the headline and tell them about his exploits, but they are uninterested. Mrs. Brunch throws the newspaper in the fire and continues to play Chinese checkers with Agatha. Deciding to go upstairs, a disgruntled Egbert crashes into a bookcase and a wall by the stairs. Mrs. Brunch puts a finger in her mouth and makes a noise, signaling Agatha to remind her husband not to smoke upstairs. “Don’t you smoke up in your room?” “Oh, no. I won’t dear.” On the porch, loveable daughter Myrtle and kindhearted Og celebrate Egbert’s achievement. “I never knew your father had so much intestinal fortitude,” he says. Og suggests that Egbert should visit the bank and meet Mr. Skinner, the president. Arriving at the bank, Egbert has a frustrating time finding Skinner’s office. To get directions, he asks a teller who continually advises him to “step aside” for a customer. Finally, Og directs him to Skinner’s office where he finds a priggish and haughty bank president. “We want to show you our appreciation of your gallantry and daring. I wish to personally give you a hearty handshake.” (A close-up shows that they just daintily touch hands.) “And present you, with the company’s compliments, one of our 1940 calendars… called ‘Spring in Lompoc.’” Upon seeing the cover that shows the backside of a nude woman looking at a lake, Egbert quips, “doesn’t look unlike the Mona Lisa.” Fields had slightly changed the original line in the script—“Looks like the Mona Lisa, only a little heavier”—to appease Breen who wanted the “underlined portion… to be entirely eliminated.” Breen also complained about the calendar’s cover: “The shot of the calendar picturing the nude figure of a girl… her back turned is likely to be deleted by political censor boards.” The calendar remained in the picture after Fields convinced Breen that many offices decorate their walls with such scenes.20 Skinner next awards Egbert a position in the bank as a special offer— “or to revert to the argot of the underworld—a bank dick.” The bank president tells Egbert that “the remuneration at first will be small but there are many chances for advancement. Who knows but within a short period of time you may be vice-president.” Informed that the bank opens at 10 o’clock, Egbert responds, “Well, that’s all right, if I’m not here on time just go ahead without me. I’ll catch up with ya.” Skinner adds: “Oh, and yes, we will deduct a certain amount from your salary

268  A. F. WERTHEIM

each week which will pay off the interest of the mortgage on your home. Otherwise it will necessitate our foreclosing. That would cause our heartfelt contrition.” Egbert, looking aghast: “You took the pretty words right out of my mouth.” This sequence done with tongue-in-cheek satire reveals Fields’s dislike of banks and bankers. Bill deposited money in numerous banks around the country, believing it was safer to put sums in numerous financial institutions rather than stash all his savings in one place. Later in his career, he began storing large amounts in a single bank, especially New York’s Harriman National Bank. Fields’s suspicion of banks was validated when he lost about $100,000 when the institution went into conservatorship in 1933. Egbert returns to the Black Pussy Café dressed in a bank dick’s uniform where he practices removing a toy pistol quickly from his coat. At the bar, he brags to Joe about his exploits and new bank position, downs a number of shots, dips his fingers in a water chaser, folds a napkin into a ball, and tosses it behind him. He orders some fresh water. “Never like to bath in the same water twice.” He does the kicking stunt again— “neat little trick, isn’t it?”. A well-dressed gentleman standing at the bar, who has overheard Egbert’s conversation with Joe, introduces himself. “My name is Waterbury and I’m in the Bond and Stock Business…. I have five thousand shares in the Beefsteak Mines in Leapfrog, Nevada, which I would like to turn over to your bank.” The con man continues a long spiel about the value of the Beefsteak stock. Egbert is suckered into agreeing that he could raise the money at his bank. While conversing with Og, an easy naïve pushover, he convinces him to buy some shares. “Don’t be a luddy duddy. Don’t be a moon-calf. Don’t be a jobber-nowl.” Og agrees to take money from the bank and pay it back when he gets his bonus. Moviegoers next see Egbert at the bank, encountering a young boy dressed in a cowboy suite practicing with his toy gun. Egbert sneaks up on him and grabs him roughly by the throat, angering his dignified mother: Mother: Oh. What do you mean? Egbert: Is that gun loaded? Mother: Certainly not. But I think you are! Boy: Mommy, doesn’t that man have a funny nose? Mother: You mustn’t make fun of that man, Clifford. How would you like to have a nose like that full of nickels? Egbert: I’ll throw him in the wastebasket the next time he comes in here.

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

269

The short sequence exposes a number of elements found in Fields’s humor. The most obvious is that the scene repeats the comedian’s bogus running gag—his antipathy toward mischievous young boys in his films. In his private life, Bill was actually fond of youngsters. But he always wanted a daughter due to his relationship with his estranged son Claude. Two characteristics of Fields’s appearance and behavior—his nose and drinking—are mentioned by the sassy mother. Here Fields is employing the long-standing comedy of self-depreciation—turning the joke on himself. By lampooning his own proboscis and persistent inebriation, Fields fuses his off-screen personage with his screen persona. A problem for Og and Egbert arises when J. Pinkerton Snoopington, the bank examiner, arrives intent on reviewing the books. The two worry that Snoopington will discover the missing money Og has taken to buy his Beefsteak stock. “I knew this would happen,” says Og angrily. “I was a perfect idiot ever to listen to you.” Og slams some books on a desk, which causes a quill to soar into the air and descend point first on Egbert’s head. Another in the long line of objects that assault Egbert and his other characters, which depict them as a beleaguered dupe. Trying to calm Og down, Egbert declares, “There’s nothing in this world that is perfect… Leave everything to me.” Egbert plans to befriend Snoopington so that he does not examine the bank’s books. The two walk down Lompoc’s streets heading for the Black Pussy Café. Egbert tells him about all the beautiful girls in Lompoc. “Perhaps you’ve noticed them?” “Ah, yes I have, but I’m a married man with a grown daughter eighteen years of age.” The two enter the café where Egbert intends to get Snoopington drunk. He gives Joe, the bartender, the signal: “Has Michael Finn been in this afternoon?” Noticing the bank examiner, Joe says, “No, but he will be” and dumps powder into Snoopington’s highball. Soon the bank examiner is so sick and weak, Egbert needs to return him to his hotel where he takes him upstairs to his room. After Snoopington recovers and returns to the bank, Egbert does all he can to prevent him from examining the books, including breaking his glasses but the examiner has another pair. Seeing Snoopington, Og faints, fearing the bank examiner will discover the money he took to buy his Beefsteak Mines shares. Snoopington is adamant to do his work. “Mr. Sousè, if duty called I would go into the tsetse fly country of Africa and brave sleeping sickness if there were books to be examined.” The fortunes of Sousè and Og change when Egbert reads the front page of a newspaper:

270  A. F. WERTHEIM BEEFSTEAK MINE PROVES BONANZA RICH STRIKE IS REPORTED

Egbert runs into Og’s office where he finds the swindler, who has also read the headline, trying to buy back his shares. Sousè socks the con man in his face, causing him to crash through a window. Next Egbert is held up by Repulsive Rogan, who did the first robbery. Rogan asks Og to fill up his bag with money. Using Egbert as a shield with a gun pointed behind his back, Rogan leaves the bank and finds a convertible parked outside. The robber asks Egbert to drive the car, which is pursued by the police. A series of mishaps occur: the car’s floorboard falls out, the windshield become detached, and Egbert removes the steering wheel when Rogan asks to drive. He gives the emergency brake to the crook as the rear wheel become loose. “The resale value of this car is going to be practically nil when we get through with this trip,” declares Egbert. When Rogan stands up in the convertible, a tree branch hits him in the head, knocking him unconscious into the back seat. Finally, the car stops near the edge of a lake. “You’ll have to take the boat from here on anyway,” says Egbert as the police arrive and arrest Rogan. Another auto appears carrying several passengers, including Og, the bank president, and the movie production manager, who had earlier hired Sousè to direct the film. Critics unanimously applauded the Keystone-Kop car chase due to director Edward Cline, who had earlier worked with Mack Sennett. “The wild, climatic chase, distinctly reminiscent of Sennett slapstick days is the most hilarious sequence of its kind the screen has offered in many a day, every foot of it uproarious.”21 Sousè’s escapade generates a triple bonanza. First, he profits from half the value of the Beefsteak Mine shares, which Og had promised him. Second, he receives an award for capturing Repulsive Rogan. Third, the film’s production manner announces that the studio head liked his story so much he gives Egbert a $10,000 check for the rights and permission to direct it. The get-rich climax repeats numerous endings in Fields’s movies. For instance, Bissonette gains an orange grove estate in It’s a Gift. In these films, Fields plays a henpecked husband whose sudden wealth earns him respect from his family. But the characters’ affluence derives not from hard work but by chance. In Fields’s hands, the Horatio Alger rags to rich story and the Protestant work ethic are satirically shattered. The Bank Dick underscores this theme at the film’s end. The nouveau rich Sousè family are now living in a large mansion where they are eating

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

271

breakfast on a luxurious dining table. (Another refrain from “There’s No Place like Home” is heard.) The final scene contrasts sharply with the opening sequence, which depicts the family eating breakfast on a messy table as Egbert is lambasted by his relatives. Now Egbert’s family treat him with considerable respect. At the table’s head is Egbert, dressed in tux and tails, finishing his coffee. Sousè’s wife asks the butler Judkins if her husband “has had his café Rum a la Papa.” “I’ve had a double noggin,” replies Egbert. “I’ve got to get down to the sal—uh, the office.” The family stand in line waiting to kiss papa good-bye. Elsie Mae: Good-bye Daddy dear! Gimme me a kiss. Egbert: I’ll give you two of them. Myrtle: Good-bye, Pater Nestor. Take care of yourself. Egbert: I shall dear. Agatha: Good-bye, my darling. Hurry home if you feel like it. I’ll be waiting up as usual. Next in line is the appalling mother-in-law Mrs. Brunch. Egbert sees her, does a double take, and places a quick kiss on her forehead. Egbert walks to the hallway, puts on an African safari helmet, but changes it when the butler suggests a top hat is more appropriate. He plays with his top hat and cane as he did as a vaudevillian. Back at the dining room, Mrs. Brunch says to Agatha, “What a changed man! You deserve a lot of credit, Agatha.” “It hasn’t been easy!” replies Egbert’s wife. Outside the house, Egbert walks down a path and kicks an object with his foot. Looking self-confident and proud, Sousè acts as if he has overcome all the burdens the world imposes. He suddenly hears Joe, the bartender, whistling and starts to run after him, both heading to the Black Pussy Cat Café. The ending is similar to other films (i.e., You’re Telling Me and It’s a Gift) in which the characters Fields impersonates feel uncomfortable in ostentatious affluent settings and prefer to drink alone or with friends. Despite newly acquired wealth (often by luck and circumstance), Sousè, Bissonette, Bisbee, and others keep their previous values and way of life. The ending reflects Fields’s private life. Bill preferred hanging out with his drinking buddies rather than the Hollywood crowd. The film, however, took a toll on Bill’s health. He lacked energy during the shooting and his time on the set decreased. Fields ended his day with orange juice and rum, the latter becoming increasingly a favorite, along with martinis during the evening. On October 20, two days before

272  A. F. WERTHEIM

filming ended, he wrote a note to Carlotta Monti: “I am so tired I could cash in right now.”22 Bill went to Soboda Hot Springs to recover until the end of October. Fields threw a tantrum when he saw the edited version of the picture at a preview. He demonstrated his disappointment in several pages of notes he sent to Universal urging restoring scenes that had been cut. Fields sent a copy to Eddie Cline, hoping he would forward them up the chain of command. Attached was a one-paragraph explanation: “I hope something can be done to make the picture run more smoothly and make it look more like a dollar-sixty-five than a nickelodeon. You can fool some of the people some of the time, etc.” He worried that some of the cuts killed his jokes, including “two very important and humorous scenes with the bank president” and two scenes with Og. “We have a great comedy if these faults are remedied,” Fields wrote.23 He also drafted a handwritten letter to Universal’s Matty Fox. “How anyone could make such a flagrant mistake in directing the cutting of a picture is beyond human reasoning….The family scene where Egbert comes home and is jumped upon for getting Og into trouble has been cut entirely….The picture gets laughs that are all forced over. There is no continuity and the story that they all insisted upon and raved about is, in its present form, unintelligible and will receive a great number of raps from the critics justly so.”24 When the film was released on November 29, it was obvious Universal had honored some of his suggestions yet ignored most of his complaints. During his film career, Fields had developed an exceptional aptitude regarding the impact of comedy in a motion picture. Although a few reviewers found the plot haphazard, most film critics gave Fields exceptional kudos. Motion Picture Daily: “W.C. Fields turns in 74 minutes, some of the liveliest, ‘laughingest’ entertainment in his specialized manner seen on the screen in years.” Variety: “This is the best of the recent Fields pictures. It will be the most widely relished…. The performance flows from him naturally. It’s full of sly and witty pantomime as well as characteristic dialogue drolleries.” New York Times: “The picture belongs to him [Fields], and his name—or nom de plume—is stamped all over it…. With such a part to play around with, old Bill has the time of his life—growling, feinting, being official and forever preserving his fly-born dignity.” New York Herald Tribune: “It’s rambling show, part cockeyed fable, part incidental comedy and part just plain W.C. Fields. It’s by all odds the funniest show in town.” New Republic: “He is the harried man of the family and emperor of the world, his

20  MAGNUM OPUS.2 

273

address and resource are infinite except when approaching a flight of stairs. He is fastidious to the high point of using his chaser for a finger bowl; he is dignity with a red nose, and courtly…. He is W.C. Fields, which is a considerable sort of thing to be, and purely a joy to watch.”25 Despite the first-rate reviews, The Bank Dick was not a box-office success. Much of the problem was due to poor distribution and exhibition. In Los Angeles and New York, it was part of a double bill. In other major cities where it was the sole feature, business was mediocre. In Philadelphia, Fields’s hometown, the film was shown at the Earle Theatre where it failed to attract a large audience. The movie opened two weeks before Christmas, a period noted for slack attendance. With the Xmas holiday coming, moviegoers preferred going to a more cheerful picture, one that promoted family togetherness, rather than attend a dark comedy depicting a small-town dysfunctional family headed by a henpecked husband. On Christmas day, 1940, the author William Saroyan, penned a piece in Variety, which turned out to be a poignant prediction about The Bank Dick: “The Modern Museum in New York might just as well take it right out of the first-run picture houses and show it to the serious-minded people who study motion picture art without waiting 20 years to go by first. It’s just as funny now as it will be 20 years from now, and there’s no need to wait. The world may change, but not this comedy. Time magazine will go on picking The Man of the Year every year, but this guy who will make you laugh just to remember him will be W.C. Fields any year.”26 Saroyan’s prediction rang true during the anti-establishment years in the 1960s. The conformity that ruled America during the 1950s was challenged by a rebellious new generation. As the film historian Leonard Maltin wrote, Fields’s “nonconformist attitudes have made his films more popular today than they were when they first came out.” A review of The Bank Dick in 1971 praised Fields for “his unswervingly astringent reaction to life’s pretenses and nuisances.” In 1992, The Bank Dick was selected for preservation by the US National Film Registry at the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically relevant.” That Fields at age sixty could write and perform at his best in a second magnum opus leaps out as a remarkable feat.27

CHAPTER 21

The Great Man

In the middle of writing his next movie after The Bank Dick, Fields became embroiled in a heartbreaking incident, which occurred on March 15, 1941, the Ides of March. The episode originated at the residence of the legendary mogul Cecil B. DeMille, who resided across the street from Fields’s Los Feliz home. On that fateful day, DeMille’s two-and-one-half-year-old grandson, Christopher, and his nurse were at the producer’s residence. Absent were Christopher’s parents, the actors Katherine DeMille, and Anthony Quinn. Unbeknownst to the nurse, the blond-haired boy walked across the street to Fields’s house where he began playing with a sailboat floating near the edge of a pond on the front lawn. The wind suddenly blew the sailboat toward the center causing Christopher to lose his grasp. Trying to grab it again, he fell into the water and unable to swim drowned. Aware that Christopher was missing, the nurse called the police, who were unable to find the boy after an hour’s search. DeMille’s head gardener soon discovered Christopher’s white shirt floating on the pond. A rescue team from the fire department was called, but they failed to revive the boy. Quinn, who had been shooting a picture, arrived just as the boy was pronounced dead by a physician. “When they came to get me I thought it a cruel hoax,” the actor remembered. Falling on his knees sobbing, he yelled “Oh, My God! My God!” Brokenhearted, DeMille reached under a blue blanket covering his grandson and with tears in his eyes lifted Christopher’s head in his hands. His daughter, © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_21

275

276  A. F. WERTHEIM

Kathleen, who had been away preparing for a screen test, appeared too late to witness the calamity. Trying to shut the incident out of his mind as if it never happened, Quinn was so devastated that he could not attend the funeral. Kathleen never recovered from the tragedy, which drove her into a search of answers from religion. DeMille reminisced: “He left us when the world was still big and wonderful and unexplored, when his world was untouched by anything but innocence and love.”1 Fields was away when the drowning occurred, but once he saw the commotion at home, he knew something terrible had happened. Although he and DeMille were not particularly friendly neighbors, he wrote a condolence note to the director: “I cannot find words to express my sympathy for the tragedy which happened sat[urday].” Fields felt responsible since the pond was his property. Bill had earlier placed a model sailboat on the water and, like Christopher, he enjoyed watching the wind make it sail. Fields descended into a downward spiral for days. “It hurt him immensely,” recollected Will Fowler. He remained at home more than usual, reluctant to expose his melancholy side to the public, which contradicted with his hard-edged unsentimental screen image. Unconfirmed stories surfaced that Fields burned his sailboats and ordered the pond sealed.2 A month later, Fields dined with Ray Dooley, now retired and largely forgotten for her flawless performances playing spoiled brats opposite Fields in his Follies sketches. She was accompanied by her multi-talented husband, Eddie Dowling, actor, songwriter, and producer. They dined at Romanoff’s, a swank restaurant favored by the Hollywood crowd. The establishment was operated by the colorful Prince Michael Romanoff (aka Hershel or Harry Gerguson), a Lithuanian who claimed to be the nephew of Tsar Nicholas II. With his Old-World charm enhanced by a trimmed mustache, spats, walking stick, and ersatz Oxford accent, Romanoff had enough chutzpah to convince naïve patrons that he descended from Russian royalty. But most celebrities felt that he was an imposter. Still haunted by Christopher’s death, Fields began drinking more heavily than usual hoping to excise this new tragedy. Instead of mixing rum with pineapple juice, he had switched to drinking liquor more deadly to his constitution, straight gin, and martinis. When Dooley inquired why he indulged in so much alcohol, Fields answered that he was responsible for the child’s drowning. She tried to convince him that he was blameless. “I want out of this cesspool,” Fields declared angrily, enraged that the tragedy was consuming him. He suddenly rose from

21  THE GREAT MAN 

277

the table, screamed, and started insulting people. After he quieted down, Dooley suggested they all leave. Afterward, Dooley told her husband: “I don’t think I ever want to see W. C. again. That isn’t the W. C. I knew. Whatever has happened to that wonderful, wonderful man?”3 Once his depression improved, Fields was able to begin work on his next screenplay. The first piece he submitted was rejected by the studio because it fell “short of being a complete story outline” required by his contract.4 On February 17, he sent a more detailed story to Universal, which was titled “The Great Man.” After months of more writing, it became one of the longest scenarios that he ever created running 18 pages in W. C. Fields by Himself. Quite possibly, he had started working on the story much earlier and used it as a template for the final product. The writing reveals that Fields’s knowledge of the intricacies involved in creating a film scenario had evolved during his career. Fields was credited with creating the original story under the pseudonym Otis Criblecoblis. Bill plays “The Great Man” in the film and he hoped to use the moniker as the title. According to the comedian, the name stemmed from an altercation with a house guest, who yelled “so you think you’re a great man!” His housekeeper overheard the remark and said “you bet he’s a great man.” “So after that,” said Fields, “when I wanted anything done I’d use the house phone and say ‘this is the great man speaking.’”5 The title was eventually changed by the studio to Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), a signature line he immortalized in Poppy when he tells his daughter: “If we should ever separate my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice: Never give a sucker an even break.” Bill felt the title “won’t fit on a marque, so they’ll cut it down to ‘W. C. Fields … Sucker.’”6 Playing “The Great Man’s” niece is fifteen-year-old Gloria Jean, a pretty red head, who found working with Uncle Bill “a great experience.” Like Withers, she was among the numerous teenage youngsters who appeared on the screen during the golden age of child stars. She recalled that “on the set, Fields was quiet, distant. There was something kind of pitiful about the man. I felt sorry for him.” She asked him why he never ate. “Honey, there’s better things to do.” Gloria’s chaperon-schoolteacher insisted that a folding screen be erected between the youngster and Fields so that she would not see him drinking. “He did drink heavily,” she recalled. “There was a man in a white coat who kept bringing him highballs.” She never forgot Fields’s drinking on the set. “They had cue cards and he couldn’t read those, so that meant he was

278  A. F. WERTHEIM

pretty drunk. They’d shut down early if he was in bad shape. But about two in the afternoon he said ‘I’m done. I’m finished,’ and they’d lead him out. He was pretty sharp before then.”7 Jean’s jittery caretaker once lost her temper when she spotted Fields with a bottle of brown liquid. “One drink and this set is closed,” she warned. “Relax my dear,” retorted Fields, “it is only Listerine.” Another time he exploded at Gloria’s caretaker: “Get her out of my sight. I don’t care what you do. I don’t want to look at that woman.”8 Fields received a stern warning from Universal about his inability to finish a day’s work due to his drinking. “Today we were forced to dismiss you for the day by reason of your condition and have consequently again been delayed in the production of the aforementioned photoplay, and by reason of your inability to perform your services for us we have been hampered and have suffered unnecessary cost, expense and damage. … We take this means of advising you that we shall expect you to be and remain in proper physical condition throughout the balance of production.”9 Drinking was not the only problem Fields faced. Since he had written Never Give a Sucker an Even Break’s original story and had worked on the screenplay, Fields was incensed about a multi-page letter written by Breen. He called the script unacceptable due to “vulgar and suggestive scenes and dialogue” and sixty scenes “with jocular references to drinking and liquor … all of which will have to be deleted or changed, since this violates the present policy of the Association.” Under pressure from the religious group The Legion of Decency, the production code had become increasingly scrupulous about offensive film content. “Liquor and drinking must be treated with restraint,” stated the PCA code.10 Many of Breen’s comments would be considered extremely prudish by current standards. • Scene 2: The word “stinker” will be deleted by some political censor board. • Scene 6: Here begins the numerous scenes where Fields is shown looking at girls’ legs or breasts and reacting thereto, all of which are unacceptable. • Scene 21: The business of Fields scratching the match on the seat of the man’s pants will have to be handled carefully, if it is to be approved. • Scenes 350–410 are all laid in a cocktail bar, which we cannot approve. These scenes should be moved to some other locale, which would automatically eliminate the drinking.

21  THE GREAT MAN 

279

• Scene 29: If Pangborn plays his role in any way suggestive of a “pansy,” we cannot [permit] any scenes in which this flavor is present. • Scene 195: At all times Oulietta Delight must be costumed adequately, so that there is no unacceptable exposure of her person. Any suggestion at any time that she is preparing to take a nude sun bath, or is in the nude, will not be approved in the final picture. • Scenes 322 and 324: Care must be exercised as to the kissing sequences. • Scenes 411: We cannot approve scenes of comedy in connection to marriage ceremonies. It is permissible to have some comedy before a marriage ceremony begins, but once begun the ceremony must be played straight. About half of Breen’s recommendations were accepted while the rest were ignored after Fields battled the PCA.11 A strong defender of freedom of expression, Fields had his revenge against the censors. “Those ‘guys’ … won’t let me do anything. They find double meaning in commas and semicolons in my scripts.” While drinking an ice cream float at a soda fountain in the film, Fields blows the froth off the top, looks directly at the camera and utters: “This scene was supposed to be in a saloon but the censor cut it out. It’ll play just as well.” When the Christian Science Monitor banned the film due to excessive references to drinking, Fields wrote back: “When I play in a picture in which I take a few nips to get a laugh (I have never played a drunk in my life), I hope it might bring to mind the anecdote of Jesus turning water into wine.”12 The Great Man undergoes a serious of hilarious incidents that puncture his pomposity. The convoluted story focuses on a movie that Fields has written and tries to sell to the Esoteric Studios. On the way to the studio for a story conference, he encounters two little brats, Butch and Buddy, who gaze at a billboard advertising The Bank Dick, and criticize the movie causing Fields to threaten the rascals. “You’re about to fall heir to a kitten’s stocking. … A sock on the puss.” Next he eyes a pretty girl escorted by a man. “How are you, Tootie-pie? Everything under control?” Hearing the remark, the man knocks Fields down. At a restaurant, a rude plump waitress throws a stained menu at him and pours ice water over his clothes. “No charge for the cold shower, I hope (Fig. 21.1).” “You’re always squawking about something,” the waitress tells him. “If it ain’t the steak, it’s something else.” “I didn’t

280  A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 21.1  The Great Man (Fields) talking to Tiny, the waitress, in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Author’s Collection

squawk about the steak, dear,” he replies. “I merely said I didn’t see that old horse that used to be tethered outside.” As he leaves, Fields tries pilfering a nice panama fedora on the hat rack instead of taking his favorite topless straw boater, but the waitress catches him. Before leaving, he strikes a match on a customer’s pants, lights an unwrapped cigar, and the cellophane catches fire. “Very fortunate it didn’t burn my hat,” he remarks as he leaves.13 Fields’s story conference with the producer, played impeccably by Franklin Pangborn, does not go well. He dislikes the script. To prove it might be good, the film begins to illustrate scenes in the proposed picture, in effect creating a movie within a movie. The bizarre sequences give the impression that Fields is mocking Hollywood filmmaking and is creating the worst film ever made—perhaps on purpose.

21  THE GREAT MAN 

281

Fields received a letter from Universal four days after Breen’s complaints detailing “proposed changes we intend to make in said screen play.”14 The studio felt the screenplay was too long and needed shortening by 30–40 pages. They demanded eliminating certain scenes, including the “motion picture within the story.” This was the film’s core and would have destroyed Fields’s aim to lampoon filmmaking. It was therefore left in the picture. The studio was also worried about the lack of continuity in the film. Fields’s cared less about a formula that focused on a linear plot. What was important to him was placing the comedy scenes in the best place. If it caused the film to be haphazard, so be it. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break therefore possesses many laugh-getting sequences that pop up randomly throughout the film. The movie takes the audience to a faraway fictitious world. Gloria Jean, his niece, and Uncle Bill, as she calls him, travel by airplane to Mexico intent to sell nutmegs to a Russian colony. After being squeezed all night in an upper berth, the stewardess wakes him up in the morning. “Are you air sick?” she inquires. “No, dear, somebody put too many olives in my martini last night.” During the flight, Gloria Jean asks Uncle Bill why he never married, a question which allows The Great Man to deliver his classic statement about matrimony—an utterancec undoubtedly indebted to his perennial  legal wife, Hattie: “I was in love with a beautiful blond once, dear. She drove me to drink. That’s the one thing I’m indebted to her for.” Trying to retrieve a flask that has fallen out of the airplane, The Great Man jumps out of the airliner. He descends to a surreal mountaintop village where he entertains Ouliotta, a luscious virginal blond who has never seen a man in a kissing game called Squidgilum. Her witch-­looking mother, Mrs. Hemoglobin, (impeccably played by the prominent comic character, actress Margaret Dumont) interrupts the fun. Ouliotta asks her mother if The Great Man drinks. “He didn’t get that nose from playing ping-pong.” (Here Fields continues to use his proboscis for a self-deprecating running gag.) One look at Mrs. Hemoglobin causes The Great Man to hastily retreat via the village’s elevator, a basket which plops him back to Mexico where he learns that Mrs. Hemoglobin is wealthy. A short side trip occurs when The Great Man and Gloria visit a Russian village, a sequence that gives her an opportunity to sing a native folk song. Hoping to marry the rich lady, he and Gloria return to the fairy-tale village hoping to arrive before a rival suitor (the veteran comedian actor

282  A. F. WERTHEIM

Leon Errol, a colleague from the Follies). While sitting on a couch next to Mrs. Hemoglobin, who has been knitting, The Great Man romances her with words of endearment until he sits on a needle and yanks it from his derriere (repeating a gag from The Old Fashioned Way). After Fields throws Errol off the mountain, the wedding ceremony commences despite Gloria, who does not think Uncle Bill should marry for money. As Bill walks down the aisle, he sees the looks of his potential spouse and decides Gloria is right. The two quickly find a basket and plummet two thousand feet down the mountain. “Don’t start worrying until we get down to 1, 999,” he assures Gloria. “It’s the last foot that’s dangerous.”14 Back to reality at Pangborn’s office, the producer tells Fields his script is dreadful. He had earlier been warned that it is “an insult to man’s intelligence. … Inconceivable! Incomprehensible! … As for the continuity it’s terrible!” Pangborn leaves his office in a rave. “And when I get back, you’d better not be here.” Realizing he has no future in Hollywood, Uncle Bill accompanied by Gloria leave the studio. While parked outside a department store where Gloria is buying some outfits, an obese middle-aged woman rushes outside with baby clothes for her expected grandchild. Needing an immediate ride to the maternity hospital, Fields offers to help her thinking she is the expecting mother. He zooms through the streets haphazardly damaging other autos, crashes into the back of a fire truck, causing its ladder to hook into the car’s roof. With his mutilated car attached to the fire engine and swaying in the air, the wreck is released in front of the maternity hospital where the lady is ushered into the building. The Great Man gets out of his smashed car as Gloria Jean arrives to console him. As Gloria looks tenderly at Fields, she says, “My Uncle Bill! But I still love him.” A few days after the shooting ended, Fields invited Gloria and youngsters Butch (Billy Lenhart) and Buddy (Kenneth Brown), the film’s two rascals, to his Los Feliz home. He showed them how to play pool and gave a juggling exhibition. “I had a wonderful time there,” Gloria stated. Years later, after completing more than thirty films in three decades, Gloria Jean recalled “that talk about him not liking children just didn’t seem to be true. He was very nice to me.” “You’re the daughter I never had,” he told her and then gave her a big hug. The hairdresser on the set said, “That’s amazing. I think he meant that. And he’s supposed to hate kids.”15 Another performer who illustrates Bill’s penchant to favor daughters was Jane Withers. Bill met the six-year-old youngster in a “cattle call”

21  THE GREAT MAN 

283

arranged to find a child for a small bit in It’s a Gift playing hopscotch in front of Bissonette’s store. “Little girl you’ve got a lot of talent,” Fields told her when she won the part. “I think if you have the right opportunity, you’ll go far in this industry.” Bill’s prognosis was correct. During the last half of the 1930s, the dark-haired freckled Withers became a leading child star known for playing rambunctious tomboys. Her successful title role in Ginger (1935) prompted Fields to send her a huge bouquet of flowers. The card read: “Dear little friend, I’m so glad you got your own starring movie. Knock ‘em dead, you’re going to be our little biggest star in America. Your friend and fan, W.C.” Withers felt that the public’s image of Fields as a cantankerous comedian who disliked children was bogus. At age 81, Withers spoke at the 2007 Academy’s tribute to Fields about her indebtedness to the comedian for giving her so much inspiration and confidence. “It just met so much to me that he kept up” with my career, she told the audience. “Boy every time they say something about him hating kids, I just want to get up and tell them what a wonderful gentleman he was and how kind and thoughtful and gracious he was.”16 The reviews of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break ranged from kind to harsh. In his book on The Art of W. C. Fields, William Everson wrote: “The final chase, running for almost a full reel, was such a marvel of its kind, and such a welcome reminder of the then almost forgotten art of sight-gag comedy, that many ineptitudes were forgotten in gales of audience laughter.”17 Despite the film’s lack of cohesion and wandering plot, the film delivers enough hilarious components to generate laughs, especially when The Great Man descends the mountaintop and returns to reality. James Agee, the prominent film critic and author, called Never Give a Sucker an Even Break “70 min of photographed vaudeville … a maelstrom of slapstick, song, blackout, episodes, old gags, new gags, confusion. … Comedian Fields is one of the funniest men on earth … a beautiful timid exhibit of mock pomposity, puzzled ineffectualness, subtle understatement, and true-blue nonchalance.” Otis Ferguson agreed: “He is still the gay dog with the old tricks—the business with the feet, the stick, the plug hat, the reflective but sonorous aside, the topper, nasal and triumphant.” The film’s opening in New York caused the Times critic to write: “We are not quite sure that this latest opus is even a movie—no such harum-scarum collection of song, slapstick and thumbnail sketches has defied dramatic law in recent history. … Yes, some parts

284  A. F. WERTHEIM

of the film you will find incomprehensibly silly. Probably you will also laugh your head off.”18 The bad reviews were so abrasive that they doomed Fields’s future. “This is a Fieldsian silly-dilly that often is more silly than dilly,” wrote the Daily Variety critic. The Hollywood Reporter critique verged on callousness: “It begins to look as if the parade has passed W. C. Fields by, and if Friday night’s preview reaction was any indication, the actor will be just the last toot on the calliope unless he gets a script before he makes another film appearance. … The general audience took most of it in unresponsive silence.” Offended by the review as a “personal thrust,” Fields wrote the publisher that “the audience was not responsive is a fib. Secondly, the screenplay was not a rehash of old business. I have been doing these many years. In fact, there isn’t a semblance of any gags or business I have done.”19 Most important, the studio heads had lost confidence in Fields after his persistent drinking on the set. The rebuke about inebriation bothered Fields the most. When the pious Christian Science Monitor chastised the film as “tedious and distasteful,” smothered with an “atmosphere of befuddled alcoholism,” Bill shot back: “Wouldn’t it be terrible if I quoted some reliable statistics which proved that more people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol.”20 The scene near the film’s end when Esoteric Pictures fires The Great Man coincidentally forecasts an incident about to impact his cinematic career. Beginning with his first film at Universal, the studio had encountered numerous problems with Fields: many script rewrites, uncompromising independence, lack of cooperation, fighting with censors, plus irritability on the set, and his perpetual drinking, which held up shooting. Universal’s Edward Muhl had sent Fields a harsh warning letter during the shooting: You have on a number of occasions during the production of our photoplay … been unable to perform your required services for us. … Today we were forced to dismiss you for the day by reason of your condition and have consequently again been delayed in the production of the aforementioned photoplay, and by reason of your inability to properly perform your services for us we have been hampered and have suffered unnecessary cost, expense and damage … We take this means of advising you that we shall expect you to be and remain in proper physical condition throughout the balance of production. Accordingly we feel that we must now notify you that for any failure on your part to comply with your obligations to

21  THE GREAT MAN 

285

us, either in respect above referred to or otherwise, we shall hold you to a strict accountability.21

His #1 supporter at Universal, Eddie Cline, who had directed his last three feature including Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, started castigating him about his unruly behavior on the set. “Fields hasn’t been able to get off the hard stuff,” Cline said in a newspaper interview on April 9, 1945. “That’s why he doesn’t appear anymore.” Fields wrote a rebuttal defending his record. Listing all the directors he had worked for from Griffith to Leo McCarey, he stated “I have always finished my pictures. I have never been late or missed a performance either on screen or radio in some forty odd years. It is true that I occasionally take a little Rum and Coca Cola or a Martini medicinally but I am very proud of my record.” He threatened to send his response to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. When his friends suggested it “would be undignified,” he decided not to publish the letter. He instead wrote Cline: “Eddie—I am not rich enough to stand this kind of publicity. It is untrue, libelous and most uncalled for. I was of the opinion that we were friends.”22 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break was released on October 10, 1941, about two months before Pearl Harbor. The entire year had been full of apprehension about the nation joining the allies in World War II. The zany slapstick old-time two-person comedy of straight man and foil (a throwback to burlesque and vaudeville) in Abbott and Costello’s Buck Privates (1941) met the public’s need for entertaining escapist humor. Compared to Fields, they were fresh faces representing a new generation of comedians and were now Universal’s favorites. Bill “was cranky and old,” Muhl thought. “After you’ve paired him with Mae West, what more can you do with him?”23 The anarchistic madcap tone of his final feature parodying moviemaking was too hyperbolic and surrealistic for the public fearing an imminent war. His artful iconoclasm satirizing America’s sacrosanct values failed to fit in with the surging patriotism that now swept country. Once the war was over and a new era generated a climate of hopefulness Never Give a Sucker an Even Break fared better. In 1948, an anonymous critic nominated the film as Fields’s funniest movie. The writer added that it was the “sharpest parody of Hollywood ever made.” Time has a way of rewarding a forgotten tour de force. A classic of its kind, the film played much better for later generations and is currently considered a top Fields laugh-maker.

286  A. F. WERTHEIM

Fields had a premonition that Never Give a Sucker an Even Break might be his final feature at Universal in a starring role. “Show business has many caprices and I expected any month to be my last,” he wrote. “I have been in show business forty-one years now and yet do not consider it a stable pursuit.”24 He was on a perilous path to extinction.

PART VII

Last Hurrahs

CHAPTER 22

Swan Songs

Bill tried every means to get another feature film role. Studios were unwilling to give him a leading part in a feature due to the notoriety about his drinking on the set and ill health. Bouts of pneumonia occurred frequently during his last years. Bill spread stories that he was going on the wagon. Articles in Los Angeles newspapers carried headlines: “W.C. FIELDS RENOUNCES DEMON RUM” and “W.C. FIELDS ON WAGON FOR GOOD.” But he refused to drink water as a substitute. “My best friend died of drinking water too much; his was a case of internal drowning.”1 Pride kept Fields going as well as the insatiable desire to sustain his fame. The latter became an elusive goal once he was cast out of Hollywood’s cutthroat world into doing cameo roles. As Fields prophesized, Universal failed to renew his contract. From 1942 to 1944, he appeared in four cameo roles doing character parts—the last performances of his film career. To do them, he reverted to the themes and impersonations he had created while treading the boards. “The powers that be out here have an idea that vaudeville transplanted to the screen will be a success,” he wrote. “I am doing some of my old ‘Follies’ and ‘Vanities’ sketches in these pictures.”2 His first cameo role was in Tales of Manhattan (1942), a 20th Century-Fox all-star extravaganza, which featured the studio’s luminaries such as Rita Hayworth and Henry Fonda. In a series of episodes, the film traces the tale of a cursed tailcoat and its effect on its owners, starting © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_22

289

290 

A. F. WERTHEIM

with the affluent and ending with the poor. Given his health and status in the film industry, Fields jumped at the offer to do a fifteen-minute episode for $50,000. The shooting did not go well. Playing the character Postlewhistle, a fake professor who lectures on the evils of alcoholism, Fields had his usual battles with the well-respected French director Julien Duvivier. Best known for his dramatic films, the director failed to understand Fields’s humor. During one sequence, Duvivier told Fields to laugh after one of his lines. Fields told him he never laughed in a movie but would fake a cynical smile. Another director, Mal St. Clair, was hired to do Fields’s sequences, and Buster Keaton was brought in as a mediator. Before his lecture, Postlewhistle buys a tattered shabby coat from a crooked salesman (the comedian Phil Silvers), who tells the professor that it was owned by a millionaire and should bring him wealth. The salesman puts a thick wallet stuffed with fake money in the vest pocket. “The store had a trick mirror that transformed the tawdry tailcoat into a new costume,” Silvers stated. The professor purchases the item, believing that he now has an expensive coat plus a batch of money. Later, he discovers that the loot is fake.3 During the day-and-a-half shoot, the producers implored Fields to stop drinking. “Gentlemen that is only lemonade.” Fields asked Silvers to taste the beverage. “I took a careful sip—pure gin,” recalled Silvers. “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.”4 Postlewhistle gives a lecture on the evils of alcohol at Mrs. Langahankie’s mansion to her high-society friends. He is a throwback to Professor McGargle, a fake hawker who pitches bogus medicine. Pretending to be a temperance crusader, the professor hypes the wonders of coconut juice as opposed to sinful liquor. To prove his point, the juice is distributed to the guests who are unaware that the refreshment has been spiked by Mr. Langahankie, who dislikes the boring lectures his wife arranges. The professor begins his embellished oration by holding a pointer at a picture of a man’s anatomy, describing the effects of liquor on each organ. “This is the esophagus… the first part of the anatomy to feel the shock of the concoction of Lucifer—Beelzebub!” Pointing to the liver, the professor declares “here we have the epigastric region which is next to

22  SWAN SONGS 

291

feel the ravages of the Demon Rum. And here we find the liver—very good with bacon—this majestic organ falls easy prey to the elixir of Saturnalia. (Pointing to intestines) Here is the Burma Road. I remember the journey well. A storm blew up and our little party stopped at a wayside inn… a little girl called Ming Toy waited on us…. She was a vision of loveliness… She had more curves than the road itself… I continued my journey on a crude cart… (Chart lifts to show Fields flanked by Asian beauties) Uh oh… This brings our journey to a very happy conclusion— my assistant will now pass the buck—uh, plate… I am allergic to the sound of silver… I thank you.” The room has become a bacchanal with the drunken guests staggering around in a stupor. To quench his thirst from talking, the professor orders a shot of liquor at the host’s secret bar hidden behind a revolving wall. Mr. Langahankie only pours a little alcohol. “Not horizontally! Vertically!” the professor declares as the host obligingly fills his glass. After being shown at two sneak previews, the producers decided the film was too long and cut Fields’s sequence. Although Bill’s episode was considered very hilarious, the producers felt it did not fit with the other five dramatic stories, which emphasized sentiment and kindness. A rumor circulated that the other stars complained that Fields stole the picture. What did irritate Bill was the remark by Jimmy Fiddler, a notorious Hollywood gossip reporter, on his radio program that the comedian was suing 20th Century-Fox for $50,000 for yanking his episode from Tales of Manhattan. Fields despised Fiddler’s “kindergarten drooling” more than other gossip columnists. Bill bought a full-page ad in Daily Variety, blasting a “Catarrhal Tenor” (Fiddler) for uttering “malicious, untruthful, mythical gossip. He should have his ears boxed for glutting up the airwaves with loose, unsubstantiated gossip.”5 Accompanying Bill’s ad were several newspaper blurbs praising his episode in the film. According to one critic, Fields “stole the show at the sneak preview and the agents of the other stars are raising cain.”6 The cut was only restored after Bill’s death. His appearance was discovered in the Fox vaults in the mid-1990s and reinstated in the film. With its wonderful oratory, Bill’s cameo appearance in Tales of Manhattan is much like his earlier roles as a huckster selling fake medicine and his tonguein-cheek spoofs on the temperance movement. On September 22, 1943, Fields wrote his friend Edwin Glover, who had built one of Bill’s early pool tables while a vaudevillian: “I still have the billiard table and am practicing as there is an offer in the offing to

292 

A. F. WERTHEIM

use it again in a picture at Universal in a few months. I do not know whether you recall it or not but you were the old mongler [monger?] who had so much to do with the ten balls going into the pockets simultaneously.” Bill told Glover he was also rehearsing his juggling. “I am practicing the cigar tricks again hoping to do them in my forthcoming picture.” In another letter, Fields wrote his old Philadelphian pal Harry Antrim that he was going to revive his beloved juggling and pool routines begun over forty years ago when his dexterity was at its prime. But his hands were now shaky and his eyesight was poor.7 The picture was Follow the Boys, one of the many flag-waving wartime movies produced by studios to entertain the troops. The film featured an array of entertainers who paraded across the screen performing brief comedy routines, song-and-dance numbers, and orchestral arrangements. Follow the Boys featured singers ranging from the melodious Dinah Shore to the “hot mama” Sophie Tucker—music as diverse as the all-black Delta Rhythm Boys, a pioneering rhythm and blues group, to the classical pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and Orson Welles as a magician who pretends to saw his beautiful assistant, Marlene Dietrich, in half. Bill’s five-minute cameo appearance for a reported $25,000 took only one-and-one-half days. For Fields, the film provided a means to show his support for the war effort, keep his name before the public, and hopefully halt his plummeting fame. Follow the Boys was directed by the veteran Eddie Sutherland, who in total presided over four of Fields’s films. After initially battling, the two had eventually developed “an armed neutrality” out of mutual respect for one another. “I would infinitely rather work with somebody who has talent, who is difficult to get along with, than with some dope who may be a dream,” Sutherland admitted. In Hollywood, they became good friends and drinking buddies who played pool, golf, and tennis together. Before shooting Follow the Boys, Sutherland recalled that “Fields had this terrible skin condition” on his face. Despite thick makeup, “pink filters to ‘neutralize’ the color, and other remedies to disguise his blemishes, his skin defects were still visible on close-ups.”8 In the stills, Fields’s face looks haggard, weathered, and puffy and his bulbous proboscis appears engorged. Like his drinking, Fields’s bulging and inflamed red nose had evolved into a comedic trademark, the butt of surefire rejoinders by foils such as Charlie McCarthy. His son Claude said his father had undergone surgery in mid-life to remove cartilage from his nose and that the operation had damaged his proboscis. Claude believed that his father was initially

22  SWAN SONGS 

293

embarrassed about its appearance. But as his nose ballooned further he capitalized on its appearance and it became the target of countless jokes. From photographs, it appears that Bill’s large nose was a family characteristic and was evident on his mother’s facial features. Although alcoholism contributed to its color and protuberance, a more likely cause was also rosacea, a chronic disfiguring dermatologic disorder that triggers swelling and blotchiness on one’s nose due to pustules, dilated blood vessels, and fat glands. Sutherland encouraged Fields to perform his pool sketch on his custom-made rigged table. As the scene opens a soldier rises from the front row of a camp’s packed recreation hall to introduce “a man of spirit, a man who claims to be a bottle baby…. Mr. W.C. Fields.” The comedian enters through a door wearing a crumpled suit, white gloves to protect his hands, and his proverbial straw hat, singing “give me my books and my bottle.” As in his vaudeville years, he plays a blundering pool player who makes unintended gaffes. Fields twirls his cane around until it bangs his head causing his straw hat to fall off (an old sight gag). The soldiers snicker at his foolishness. He saunters nonchalantly over to the cue rack and selects a warped cue. “Must have been near the fireplace,” he quips as he picks out a better stick. Before taking a shot, he mistakenly eats a piece of chalk, spits it out in disgust, and puts a cigar in his mouth. Next, he whacks the cue ball so hard that it ricochets off the rear cushion, bounces off the top of his cue, and goes into his coat pocket. Another shot causes the ball to rebound and crash into his head. “Who threw that?” Fields asked the soldiers.9 Dazed, he removes his hat causing the audience to hoot and howl when they see the ball perched on his head. “Here’s what you call a massé shot, taken from an old French word,” he announces. Positioning the cue’s tip vertically over the ball’s end, Fields misses his target and the stick rips through the table, a surefire venerable stage stunt that draws copious cheers. “They don’t build billiard tables like they use to do in grandfather’s day,” he tells them. A soldier throws a ball made of paper that crumbles when Bill puts a piece in his mouth. “Must be one of those secret weapons,” he quips. As his customary finale, he makes a shot that clears all the balls but one that stops in front of a pocket. “Come on, make up your mind,” he shouts at the ball, which slowly goes into the pocket. As the soldiers clap wildly and whistle, Fields throws his stick on the table and strolls off the stage. “THE GREAT MAN IS BACK” was the headline in the New York Times about his performance.10

294 

A. F. WERTHEIM

A Fields aficionado, James Agee called the film “muscle-bound” and “overloaded by a surfeit of acts,” but he lauded the comedian for his strong performance. “W.C. Fields, looking worn-and-torn but noble as Stone Mountain, macerates a boozy song around his cigar butt and puts on his achingly funny pool exhibition with warped cues.”11 Agee’s words, “looking worn-and-torn but noble as Stone Mountain” caught the essence of Fields’s performance at age 64: an entertainer, tired and ill, yet appearing gallant and majestic on the stage. In a warmhearted letter written after filming Follow the Boys, Fields thanked Sutherland for his help. “It was very ‘eddie’fying’ [Sutherland’s first name was Edward] to know that the scene went over so smoothly, but without your kindly and acute understanding and direction the scene could never have been finished in one day and a half. I enjoyed every moment I worked with you….You have reinstated me in the flicker racket. An old-fashioned hug and deepest appreciation, from you friend, Bill Fields.”12 Despite being sixty-four and in waning health, Fields’s pool sketch dating back to his vaudeville years reveals that his artful dexterity and sense of timing have not deserted him nor have his pantomimic mannerisms. His memorable appearance in Follow the Boys can be considered as a last hurrah of an aging trouper giving his best as a showman. Less successful was Bill’s next cameo role in Song of the Open Road (1944), a United Artist musical intended to introduce fourteen-year-old singer Jane Powell. The plot revolves around her adventures as a crop picker with the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that hired unemployed young people to work on the development of natural resources in rural areas. Because Jane bungles her work, she is ostracized by other pickers. A gale threatens to destroy a large acreage of oranges unless enough pickers help. Jane recruits Hollywood celebrities, who entertain on the open road in order to save the oranges. Fields was annoyed about appearing in a film that was mainly a debut for Jane Powell, whose performance received mediocre reviews. In his first two cameo roles, he shared the billing with well-known celebrities. Song of the Open Road, he felt, represented an effort to “make the little girls stars, they ruin the picture, as the little girls haven’t had the experience to carry the load.”13 Among the performers are Bergen and McCarthy, who do their usual routine of insult jokes and one-liners. Critics felt Bill’s repartee with Charlie was not as good as on their radio programs. The blame, Fields

22  SWAN SONGS 

295

felt, was due to his part being partially cut. “Bergen and myself were sucked into the thing believing that the cutter or editor would leave our contributions intact. We were ‘hoe-axed’ but I assure you it shall never happen again.”14 The director recalls Fields drinking on the set and disappearing after lunch. At one point, the crew locked Fields in his dressing room until he was needed. After the picture opened and received generally unfavorable reviews, Bill wrote his sister Dell aka Adel: “Whilst the critics have panned the Hell out of the last two pictures I have been in, they have been kind to me.” After completing three cameo roles, Fields was not happy about playing bit parts. “The producers have cut me down in these pictures to practically nil,” he told Dell. “But when they are willing to pay me twenty-five grand for a day and a half or at the most five days, I go after it like a trout for a worm and then in turn dear Uncle in Washington takes about 90% of it.” The high income tax rates disturbed Bill so much that he devoted an entire chapter entitled “How to Beat the Federal Income Tax” in his book Fields for President (1940).15 Fields’s final cameo role was in Sensations of 1945, independently produced by Andrew L. Stone, the film’s director. Bill’s fingers were now so stiff with arthritis that he was unable to juggle or do his pool sketch. Fields recalled that he had never made a film version of “The Caledonia Express” a sketch from the Vanities of 1928 about a train ride in Scotland. A few weeks before the shooting, he wrote the producer: “While the Scotch Express may not have impressed the natives of Cucamonga, Azusa etc. I feel it will get over in the larger cities, as it did in the Earl Carroll show for two years, one year in New York, and the other in the sticks.”16 Stone agreed that a cameo role about the “fantastically crowded conditions of the Pullman trains” would make a good subject. “Most everyone is familiar with these conditions which exist on trains, and I am sure they would find the idea fresh and interesting.”17 Stone gave him considerable freedom to ad-lib and felt that the scene would be the picture’s highlight. The film featured mostly musical and dance numbers tied to a flimsy plot about a conflict between two rival publicity agents who fall in love. After recently completing three ensemble pictures, Fields disliked the hodgepodge format with “a cast that looks like four or five pages torn from a Billboard Annual.” The film also starred the sultry singer Sophie Tucker, hoofer Eleanor Powell (doing a dance inside a pinball machine),

296 

A. F. WERTHEIM

circus acts, and two popular orchestras. “These movies are just high class vaudeville put on the screen,” he wrote his sister. “But the salary was too much to resist.”18 Fields had a difficult time recalling his lines after one hour on the set. Bill’s eyesight was so poor that he had trouble reading his cue cards and needed a large blackboard. The blackboard did not seem to help. Sometimes it took Fields up to twenty takes to speak two sentences. He continued to drink on the set from tiny bottles hidden in his clothes. When caught, he claimed it was cough medicine. At a preview a shocked Stone felt Fields’s sequence was a disaster. He told Bill’s lawyer Charley Beyer that his client’s scene needed to be cut. He changed his mind when Stone saw a funny acrobat act in a nightclub and decided to add them to Fields’s sketch. His plan was to have Bill play the stooge to the acrobats. Stone wrote Fields: “We do hope that you… will be kind enough to cooperate with us in this matter as we are all striving for the same thing—to make the picture a success.” But Fields felt he was not well enough to do a physical comedy skit, which is better “done by a younger man.” “This is not the sort of stuff I can do.” Fields had no intention to desert the film and ended his letter on an upbeat note. “I am willing to cooperate Andy in anyway within my power.”19 Fields’s sketch occurs in a Scottish railroad station in which an obnoxious Yankee (Fields) occupies a compartment reserved for Lord Roberts. Bill plays Breeze, an uncouth “ugly American” who lacks the manners of British gentlemen. The action begins when Breeze dressed in a huge fur coat and straw hat meets a lovely lady outside Lord Robert’s compartment. The woman was Louise Currie, an attractive blond-hair performer recruited from B-circuit westerns, two-reelers, and adventure serials. Currie tells him that the compartment is reserved: “You’re not in the Yankee land now and this sort of thing is not tolerated here.” Breeze proceeds to rip the reserved sign up. Along comes a Scotsman (Bill Wolfe) who sees that Fields’s portmanteau is leaking. “My pimento is leaking,” says Fields. “What’s he talking about?” “You’re luggage,” replies Currie.20 The two enter the compartment where inadvertently she sits on Fields’s straw hat. “Did I hurt it?” “No, how could you hurt a straw hat by sitting on it. I’ll have to have it re-blocked.” Feeling the compartment is stuffy, Currie opens a window. “Oh, the air is so intoxicating” she says. Fields walks to the window: “Intoxicating? Nothing intoxicating out there.” Breeze spots two drunks making a racket outside, and he and his lady friend leave hoping to chase them away. The acrobats do numerous

22  SWAN SONGS 

297

stunts knocking each other around as Fields ad-libs: “Look out. Ah! Ah! Ah! Fell right on his face. Didn’t screw his legs on right this morning I guess. There he goes—look out—look out! The dying swan…. Aw, don’t do that you’ll hurt him. What are you doing that for? Oh that’s terrible—I must try that on my wife. Oh—you broke his throat. Now he’s got butterflies in the throat. I’ve had them in the stomach but never in the throat. What’s he going to do now—oh, no—no!” The acrobats begin to slap each other; one slaps Fields. “Ouch! Godfrey Daniel! Mother of Pearl!” Breeze slaps an acrobat who falls down, does a somersault, and lands flat on his back. “I guess I don’t know my own strength,” says Breeze. “Oh dear—oh dear… aren’t drunks repulsive. Come my little Popinjay”—the last words Fields speaks in his film career. The New York Times critic labeled the film “aimless” and Fields’s performance not “very funny.”21 The camera continually focuses on the acrobats’ stunts to the degree that the audience loses sight of Fields. The end result is that the knockabout performers steal the last part of the picture. Sensations of 1945 is a woeful swan song to Fields’s cinematic career. Why did he do cameo roles in the first place? It was less about money and more about vanity. At age 64, Bill fell victim to stardom’s major consequence—the inability to know when to quit—to understand when one is nearing the end of a career. But capitulating was never in his disposition. Fields possessed the drive of a trouper to keep going no matter what the consequences. Plus he was haunted by an insatiable need to keep his name before the public. He clung to the hope that somehow despite his age and illness he could have a comeback. After all, that miracle had occurred numerous times in his career because he was a determined fighter. But now he was too weak and ill. “All of a sudden I’m a tired old man,” he apparently said on his 64th birthday in 1944.22 Louise Brooks, who idolized Fields, had a difficult time believing the stories about Bill’s deterioration in Hollywood. These accounts were later proliferated, she believed, by studio publicists and movie magazine writers “aimed only at fulfilling the public’s wish to share a fairy-tale existence with its movie idols.” “It wasn’t fame that distorted Fields,” Brooks wrote. “It was sickness and the clutching fear of being discarded to die on the Hollywood rubbish heap.”23 But Bernard Sobel, Ziegfeld’s press agent, had a different viewpoint. “He made down-to-earth observations that had the ring of philosophy. His appraisals of character were thorough. He knew what is

298 

A. F. WERTHEIM

called life.” Sobel could not believe “that Hollywood had made him an autocrat whose odd behavior was matched only by his drinking prowess. Somehow, I can’t believe that Fields let fame distort him.”24 Radio was another medium Fields could return to during the early 1940s. Although the stage and screen were at the core of Fields’s oeuvre, he felt radio was vital to his livelihood and a “grand” entertainment form. “I like it,” he declared. “No one, except a person who was shot [shut] up as I was, can understand what a great boon radio is. I like to think that maybe whatever I do on the air is helping to cheer up some poor guy who can’t get out of bed, or is in a wheel chair.”25 On the airwaves, his deteriorating appearance was not visible and listeners could tune into hear his resonant voice that remained mostly intact. Fields made single guest appearances on several programs: Dick Powell’s Tuesday Night Party, CBS’s The Gateway to Hollywood, The Frank Sinatra Show, and Command Performance, broadcast over the Armed Forces Radio Network for soldiers fighting in World War II. These one-time appearances helped to keep his name before the public during bouts of ill health when studios consequently refused to sign him for a feature film. Fields also rejoined the Bergen show. He wrote an executive at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency: “The only reason I want to continue I’m still stage struck and it will take another bout of delirium tremens to knock it all out of me.”26 His golf script, broadcast on The Charlie McCarthy Show, resuscitated the insult joke formula between Charlie and Fields. Thinking Fields is drunk, Charlie calls Bill “a walking ad for black coffee.” And “Mr. Fields, is that your nose or a new kind of flame thrower.” Bill retorted: “I was cleaning out the woodshed…. Reminded me of you?” As Fields is about to tee off, he is interrupted by Charlie who insists that his stance is wrong. “Quiet, you termite’s flophouse,” yells Fields. At age sixty-four “Fields could write some good jokes but he would forget them,” recalled Bergen. “His memory was bad. He’d start reading a joke and he wouldn’t know what the payoff was until he got to it.” Bill’s final appearance with Bergen and McCarthy was aired nine months before he died and broadcast from the Pasadena Playhouse near Las Encinas Sanitarium where a frail Fields, deathly ill from acute cirrhosis of the liver, was residing. During the rehearsal he wore glasses perched on the bottom of his nose and had a problem reading his lines. Insult jokes about Charlie’s wooden frame and Fields’s nose and drinking were

22  SWAN SONGS 

299

broadcast in rapid-fire succession. Charlie’s nonstop talking annoys Bill. “Why don’t you close your nut hole, you talking totem pole?” “Why you two-legged martini!” retorts Charlie. “Never been so insulted since the day I was born,” states Bill. “You were not born,” asserts Charlie. “You were squeezed out of a bar rag.”27 Fields gave a remarkable performance, as if his showman instincts had temporarily obliterated his illness and pain, as well as all his haunting memories. Aided by a live audience, his timing was perfect, pausing at the right moment just before uttering the punch line. Although his voice had lost some gusto due to age and illness, he still had enough vigor to deliver his lines, causing the audience to laugh loudly throughout his performance. The ventriloquist felt Bill “was the greatest guest performer he ever had on his show.” Fields performed guest spots with Bergen and McCarthy intermittently from 1938 to 1946, a total of twenty-one appearances. “Fields could not only write comedy but could deliver in a unique style what was written for him. He could also do pantomime. He was really the last of the triple-threat comedians.”28 After twenty years on radio, Bergen made his last appearance in 1956. His television show never matched his amazing popularity on radio. During the late 1960s, Bergen, dressed in white tie and tails, and Charlie were relegated to performing at fairs, conventions, benefits, and Las Vegas showrooms mostly relying on his radio material. “I think my father felt old,” wrote his daughter Candice Bergen. He made his last stand with Charlie at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in front of a packed room, including his family. His act was “flawless,” his daughter wrote, marked by “steady laughter” and “interruptions of applause.” “The two of them flying now, nothing could stop them; the audience was enchanted and asking for more.” Before leaving the stage, the ventriloquist told the audience: “In vaudeville, every act has to have an opening and a closing, and I think for me the closing has come and it’s time to pack up my little friends and say goodbye.” In September 1978, Bergen retired and Charlie was donated to the Smithsonian Institution, ending a sixty-year partnership. A few weeks later the renowned ventriloquist died at age 75 from a heart attack.29

CHAPTER 23

Doomsday at Bundy Drive

Louise Brooks felt that Bill was “a solitary person. Years of traveling alone around the world with his juggling act taught him the value of solitude and the release it gave his mind.” As a vaudevillian in 1910, he told a reporter “that he is one of the loneliest of men.” When Fields performed in the Ziegfeld Follies, a magazine writer felt he was “the loneliest man I ever saw” who “has never forgotten the years on end when he trouped up and down this country.” Will Fowler, a close friend who knew Fields during the last ten years of his life, wrote: “Of all Fields’ diseases, his most transient malady was loneliness. Only close friends, not medical practitioners, were aware of this.” “We’re all lonely enough as it is,” he Fields told Fowler. “By God, I was born lonely.”1 Solitude undoubtedly seized Fields, given his habit of abandoning friendships when he felt betrayed, his on-and-off again love life, estranged wife and son, perpetual wanderlust, and nomadic career as an entertainer. As an itinerant vaudevillian, Bill often sat by himself in a restaurant reading a book. In Hollywood, he took long drives “along abandoned roads in any one of the three cars that were his self-protection against… a dismal world.”2 He avoided the superficiality of Hollywood society and its parties, preferring a handful of long-standing buddies. As mentioned earlier, Bill’s personality comprised numerous antithetical contradictions, which makes it difficult to apply a single overarching label to his behavior. If Bill was a solitary soul, he also needed to connect with like-minded colleagues to assuage his aloneness. Over the years, © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_23

301

302 

A. F. WERTHEIM

he joined diverse organizations: actors’ clubs (Lambs and Masquers), performers’ unions (White Rats and Equity), fraternal organizations (Masons and Kiwanis), and sport clubs (Hollywood Athletic Club and Lakeside Golf Club). He made several close friends in the Follies, chiefly Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor. While in the play Poppy, he joined the literary crowd at producer Phillip Goodman’s residence, meeting luminaries such as H.L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis. Fields’s yearning to bond with a circle of comrades started in his youth when he resided with the Orlando boys in Philadelphia. Its clubhouse became his second home. Here, he took part in the members’ pranks and gained support for his juggling ambitions. In 1938, he received a letter from Thomas Hunt, an old friend from the Orlando club. “I have never forgotten the old days at the Orland[o] Social Club.” Fields replied in a letter: “When you elected me janitor without dues…. These were the happy days…. You are the most vivid in my memory.” Fields’s most heartfelt feeling of loneliness was expressed in a 1944 letter to Hunt, who had written him about his own solitude. Bill replied: “I realize it is tough to be alone. I have been alone and unattached so many times that I believe I understand your position thoroughly. Imagine you being 66 years of age and me a child of about 63 [64]. The Old Reaper will get us both soon.” That Bill kept in touch with a friend he had known for about forty-five years illustrates Fields’s magnanimous side, a quality which conflicts with the perception that he was mean-spirited.3 As a frail comedian on a downward spiral during his later years, he joined a version of the Orlando group—the Bundy Drive Boys. Most members were older and like Fields had already reached the apex of their careers. They wanted to live life to the fullest as they awaited their final exit. Although the members sometimes acted as if they were kids out for a fling, they were freedom-loving devil-may-care cynical individuals who shared passions for booze, carousing, women, partying, art, the written word, storytelling, swearing, laughter, cynicism, and decadence. Errol Flynn, who called the group “the Olympiads,” thought the members were “essentially philosophic” with a “range of personal experience.” We each had, “something unique and special. One or two might even be abysmal mentally, or bawdy; but outstanding in some particular way.”4 They were tagged the Bundy Drive Boys because they mainly met at the home and art studio of the flamboyant painter John Decker at 419 North Bundy Drive in Brentwood. Before entering Decker’s run-down English

23  DOOMSDAY AT BUNDY DRIVE 

303

Tudor cottage, a visitor faced an oak door embellished with the artist’s coat of arms featuring two unicorns above the motto “Useless. Insignificant. Poetic.”5 As a stowaway on a transatlantic liner, he immigrated to the USA in 1921 and worked for the New York Evening World as a cartoonist until 1928 when he went to Hollywood to pursue an art career. A well-respected talented artist, his versatility was expressed in drawings, luminous still life paintings, street scenes, and portraits of clowns shown in solo exhibitions and displayed at worldwide museums. A renowned forger, Decker copied famous painting, sold them to naïve customers, including museums. He used the style of the old masters to make often unflattering caricatures of Hollywood celebrities. “The sincere caricaturist can have few friends,” he wrote. “Only those who are unafraid of truth, who prize reality, can understand him… Mere physical exaggeration is nothing, it is necessary that each line should portray the hidden character of the ‘victim.’”6 One of his “victims” was Fields. Decker created a portrait of Bill looking like a scowling Queen Victoria in black mourning attire. The artist was inspired by a photograph of Fields impersonating a surly Queen Victoria with the top of his head supporting a candelabra. “Sabotage! Decker has kicked history in the groin,” avowed Fields when he saw the finished painting.7 The caricature hung in Dave Chasen’s famous Hollywood eatery until the restaurant folded. The charismatic Decker, defined as capricious, witty, and roguish, was the magnet that drew members to his studio. Decker and Fields were two comrades in arms. Bill possessed a “good-natured and healthy hate,” said the artist.8 Many of Fields’s pals who had similar lifestyles could be found at Decker’s studio. Among them was Gene Fowler, one of his closest friends. A prolific writer, the ribald Fowler started as a reporter in Denver and New York and ended up in Hollywood where he wrote screenplays, four novels, and numerous biographies. When Fields died, Fowler was unable to write Bill’s biography because he was working on another book. He presented the material that Bill gave him, including his own half-finished biography of Fields, to Robert Louis Taylor, who published the first account of the comedian’s life, W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes in 1949. Fowler should have authored the biography since he knew Fields much better than Taylor whose book is colorful but full of errors. Taylor stubbornly refused to send the material back to Will Fowler, who was collecting his father’s writings for the family’s archive at the University of Colorado.9

304 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Both Fowlers, father and son, called Fields, “Uncle Claude.” Bill felt it was a “detested sobriquet.” At the time, “Uncle” was a moniker of endearment youngsters used when addressing their father’s best friends. “Uncle Claude,” Gene Fowler wrote, “was the most ornery loveable man I have ever known. He hid none of his faults from the world” including “his good deeds, which were more numerous than might be expected.” Dave Chasen once asked Fowler: “I have a hunch that the old boy really puts on a lot of his crabbiness just to hide a soft spot in his character. What do you think?” “Bill is a lonely man,” Fowler replied…. “The only difference between him and the rest of us in that respect is that we sing out against Fate as a group, a kind of glee club, while Fields is a soloist and a mighty one at that.”10 Around age thirteen, Will Fowler met Fields. “I was the only child W.C. Fields was endeared to because Pop allowed me to sip martinis while in the comedian’s company.” More than likely, Will was a surrogate for Fields’s estranged son, who remained a distant and disappointing sibling. To befriend Fields was a special experience for young Fowler. To be alone with Uncle Claude was like being the only person hearing a famous composer practice a legendary piece of music. “When I was with Fields, I was aware something unique was happening something great that would never happen again….We had become close enough friends that Uncle Claude did not feel it necessary to ‘be on’ perpetually joke-making and performing tricks, as per his public image.” A prolific author like his father, Fowler wrote a perceptive account of Uncle Claude in his book The Second Handshake (1980). Stating, “to believe that W.C. Fields was merely a funny man is to hold the opinion that Huckleberry Finn is a book for children.”11 Fowler also witnessed the hot-tempered side of Fields. One afternoon, the two sat together silently in the yard of Fields’s sprawling house bordering bucolic Toluca Lake in North Hollywood. The two drank Bill’s favorite Bristol Cream sherry as they stared at the water “lapping the grass’s edge.” One afternoon, Uncle Claude’s “arch enemy—a large young male” swan appeared, which caused Fields’s teeth to grind “and his nostrils flaring.” Bill hated this particular gigantic white swan, who continually deposited his excrement on his lawn. His desire to get rid of the intruder resembled Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick. “I wonder how much he’s got saved up this time. He does this to me on purpose.” Ready to spring into action, Fields gripped his putter as he watched the swan waddling up the lawn to find his favorite spot. “I’ll lop his head off

23  DOOMSDAY AT BUNDY DRIVE 

305

with a hook shot!” he declared. As the swan began to relieve himself, Fields dashed toward the fowl brandishing his club yelling “either shit green or get off the lawn.” The petrified bird quickly dashed back to the safety of the water.12 The young Fowler became well acquainted with the Bundy Drive Boys when he became the coterie’s chauffeur. The group met, “not to brag about their achievements but to find sanctuary at Decker’s home,” wrote Will. Besides Fields, the older comrades in their twilight years included the actors John Barrymore, Roland Young, Thomas Mitchell, the playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht, and the Renaissance man Sadakichi Hartmann. Others were successful actors in mid-career, Anthony Quinn, Errol Flynn, and John Carradine. Decker’s home was dark and dreary. “The parlor was knee–deep in paint rags and overrun with dismal-looking cats and chickens,” recalled Hecht. “The furniture was half unstuffed.”13 The members indulged in irreverent inebriation, riotous parties, impromptu staging of cut-down Shakespeare plays, including Macbeth, and competitive games of chess. The last living witness to their escapades was Decker’s stepdaughter, Mary Lou Warren, whose mother was the painter’s third wife. Since Warren grew up in the house from age five to fifteen, her memories typify a young girl’s perspective. “They were very mischievous and always laughing and joking, but mostly I just thought they were old.” All-night parties ended when some fell asleep on chairs or a couch until morning (Fig. 23.1).14 There were also many nights on the town. Chasen’s, the famous eatery where the Bundy gang met, was operated by Fields’s friend Dave Chasen, an ex-vaudevillian, who had once teamed with the multitalented Joe Cook as a bumbling stooge. Stars promenaded under a green and white canopy to the reception area where the maître de escorted them to their favorite table in the exclusive front room (the hoi polloi were exiled to the back rooms). Among Chasen’s specialties were chili, hobo steak, and corn beef and hash followed by the snowball, a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with shredded coconut and chocolate syrup. The group also haunted several nightclubs on the Sunset Strip, including Earl Carroll’s new place of entertainment. John Decker, Gene Fowler, John Barrymore, and Anthony Quinn often went to Carroll’s huge 2500-seat club. “It was famous for having the most beautiful women in the world,” wrote Quinn. Fields agreed when he wrote Carroll, his impresario from the Vanities of 1928, that he had “the

306 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 23.1  The Bundy Drive Boys (1942). Left to right: Fields, Gene Fowler, John Barrymore, John Carradine, Jack La Rue, and John Decker. Bison Archives/HollywoodHistoricPhotos.com

best show in town…. The vaudeville was original and hilarious and the girls in their diaphanous gowns and those without them are sparkling and sublime.”15 Unlike the others, Quinn was a young actor, who began his screen career in 1937, and had not yet become a star. “I found comfort in the cynicism of Barrymore and his group,” wrote Quinn. “I sat for hours listening to them berate and flagellate the word love. And yet I never met a group of men so desperately wanting to believe in it.” Barrymore often invited Quinn to his house where he met the elder Fowler, Fields, and Decker. On one occasion, they decided to recite their favorite literary passages. “Decker quoted Baudelaire, W.C. Fields pantomimed, Roland Young recited Shakespeare, and Barrymore, T.S. Eliot.” It was “one of the most beautiful moments I ever experienced in my life,” recalled Quinn.16

23  DOOMSDAY AT BUNDY DRIVE 

307

The most far-out outlandish bon vivant among the Bundy Boys was Sadakichi Hartmann, a modernist way ahead of his time. The son of an affluent German trader and a Japanese mother, Hartmann had already achieved a remarkable list of diverse credits in the arts when he arrived at Decker’s doorstep. With his exotic Eurasian face, bushy hair, and disheveled appearance, Hartmann was described as “tall, gaunt, [and] wraithlike” and resembled a “graceful scarecrow.” Yearning to be a poet, Sadakichi published four books of verse between 1904 and 1915, which revealed the influence of the French Symbolists and Japanese haiku. He became a respected art critic writing books on Japanese and American painting and articles on avant-garde photography. In pre-World War I Greenwich Village during its renaissance in the arts, he was crowned “King of the Bohemians” by promoter Guido Bruno, publisher of a little magazine of poetry.17 When he became persona non grata in New York due to his outlandish capers, he fled to Hollywood to begin another life. The southern California laid-back style proved to be disastrous for his creativity, causing his productivity to plummet. At Decker’s abode, he was recognized as an esteemed elderly guest. In his early seventies, he was the oldest person in the group. Will Fowler called him “a weirdly fashioned person of brilliant mind and knavish impulses.” As a fellow freethinker and dilettante, Hartmann’s eccentric behavior and outlandish statements were tolerated at Decker’s studio. “Your father Maurice was a sublime actor,” Hartmann told John Barrymore. “I cannot say the same for his stupid younger brother. Hah!” Hartmann also gave dance demonstrations, described as a slow sashay of several East Asian gestures. “The walking straw moved his hands and legs with rhythmic exactitude, grotesquely, but in arresting patterns of mobility” thought Will Fowler.18 Fields seemed to be the only Bundy colleague who disliked Hartmann. As soon as he saw him at Decker’s abode, Bill would rush home. Fields called him unflattering names: “Itchy-Britches, Hoochie-Koochie, ItchyScratchy, or Catch-a-Crotchie.” Bill felt Hartmann was a parasite living off others. In addition, he had no respect for his literary and art endeavors. “He had been a peeping tom,” Fields believed, “a cap-and-bell interloper at all the art shrines.” Although stinging name calling and insults were a favorite word game among the group, Fields’s language was uniquely harsh. Hartmann had clearly reached rock-bottom during this time, poor, an alcoholic, a leech, and in failing health due to severe asthma attacks. Bill could never understand why the Fowlers helped him out financially.

308 

A. F. WERTHEIM

“You are contributing to juvenile delinquency,” he told Gene Fowler, “This here Itchy-Scratchy of yours is even mooching on the government, on my taxes, and living free on an Indian reservation.”19 Fields never said why he disliked Hartmann so intensely. Bill tolerated rebels, but he also possessed a puritanical streak evidenced by his dislike of drunks and dirty jokes in front of women. The “King of the Bohemians” was possibly too avant-garde for Fields who felt he was a phony court jester well past his prime. Fields failed to realize that as a poet, dramatist, and critic Hartmann stood out as a significant modernist in the arts. At age seventy-seven in 1944, Hartmann made his final trip to visit his sister in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he shortly died, largely forgotten for his unconventional accomplishments in the arts. By contrast, Fields developed a close friendship with John Barrymore, the most famous actor among the group. Their lives share an eerie similarity. Although they grew up in entirely different environments, both were children of the late Victorian age. As the youngest son of the famous stage stars Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew, John was raised in a distinguished theatrical family, which included his siblings Lionel and Ethel. He gained fame as a celebrated dramatic actor with his superlative performances in Macbeth (1920) and Hamlet (1922). After a successful silent film career of romantic dramas and swashbuckling adventures, Barrymore’s talent flourished in the Talkies due to his melodious voice, dramatic oratory, and flamboyance. He made a series of box-office and critical successes during the early 1930s but later in the decade his career began to fall apart due to alcoholism, failed marriages, and romantic scandals. Worst of all he accepted parts playing has-been aging actors, uncanny parodies of his broken life. His reputation had plummeted due to his misconduct on film sets, drinking, crazy antics, and foul language in public. His dissipation tragically parallels Fields’s decline during the early 1940s. Barrymore initially discovered Fields on the stage of the Ziegfeld Follies. He had fallen in love with vaudeville headliner singer Nora Bayes, despite having never met her. “She’s the romantic ideal of W.C. Fields,” his sister Ethel informed him. “And who is he?” replied Jack. “Mr. Fields happens to be a star comedian employed by Florenz Ziegfeld.” In a spoof lampooning the Barrymore family in the 1921 Follies, Fields had impersonated the dramatic actor. Curious to see Bill, the Barrymores attended a Follies performance. “What do you think?” asked Ethel after the show. “He’s one of the greatest artists of all time. I’m not in love with Miss Bayes now. Hell! I’m in love with W.C. Fields!”20 (Fig. 23.2).

23  DOOMSDAY AT BUNDY DRIVE 

309

Fig. 23.2  Portrait photograph of Fields and John Barrymore for Carlotta Monti. Author’s Collection

Another story concerns Gene Fowler and Barrymore who showed up at Fields’s abode after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to see the stash of liquor he had just bought. Thinking it would be a “quick war,” he had purchased “forty cases of gin, three of vermouth, and eighty of

310 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Dutch beer.” “Uncle Claude, why only forty cases?” Barrymore asked. “Because I think it’s going to be a short war.” Soon after this event, the three decided to go to the nearest recruiting office to enlist as home front military defenders. Looking at the aging rakish trio, the recruiting officer asserted: “Who sent you? The enemy?”21 Fields frequently saw Barrymore when he was residing at Decker’s abode. The legendary thespian had hit bottom. John was going through a divorce from his fourth wife, and his heavily mortgaged 55-room depleted mansion in the Hollywood Hills looked like an abandoned baronial English mansion. A bankrupt and frail Barrymore found refuge at the painter’s studio. Ben Hecht threw a last birthday party for him in which Barrymore suddenly became revitalized as if he was his old self again, amusing the guests with stories during dinner. Despite his failing health, the Bundy Boys respected him for all his achievements as a great actor and human being. “He was the greatest actor of my time,” wrote Hecht. “He had a genius for converting himself into different personalities that was only a step short of magic.” “He took criticism, true or false, on the chin and never complained once,” said Fields. “He was the only ham I ever knew that never had a swell head.”22 Both Barrymore and Fields shared a passion for imbibing. John had been drinking liquor since his teens, a habit that intensified as he grew despondent about his marriages and indulged in riotous escapades. Bill and John became poison to movie moguls because of their drinking between takes. Cirrhosis of the liver due to chronic alcoholism precipitated both their deaths. “This once exalted Shakespearean who earned immortality by giving 101 consecutive performances of ‘Hamlet’ was a forgotten man in his own time,” wrote Will Fowler. Fields once blamed Hollywood moguls for an actor’s fast track to oblivion. “Humans have all the qualities of a dog… except loyalty.”23 To stay afloat from bankruptcy, Barrymore performed on radio. Starting in October 1940, he became a successful regular guest on the Sunday night Sealtest Hour, starring the “Vagabond Lover” crooner Rudy Vallee. He recited Shakespeare and did comedy skits, which included jokes about his drinking, marital issues, and his declining career. Like Bill, John sometimes forgot his lines and his appearances were never dependable. Vallee once introduced Barrymore as “the greatest actor of our day… the Crown Prince of the Royal Family of the Theater.” That evening, “The Great Profile,” as he was called due to the exquisite contours of his face, gave a “magnificent” performance.24

23  DOOMSDAY AT BUNDY DRIVE 

311

One evening, Barrymore collapsed in the NBC hallway on his way to the Vallee rehearsal. He was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition. Close to death, Fields sent a telegram insisting he live. “You cannot do this to me,” Bill pleaded. After eleven days in the hospital, Barrymore died at age sixty on May 29, 1942.25 Fields, Decker, and the Fowlers traveled together in Bill’s 16-cylinder Cadillac to Barrymore’s funeral. As one of the pallbearers, Bill carried John’s weighty silver-plated copper casket. Fields was not thrilled about his assignment nor about confronting a morbid scene. “The time to carry a friend is when he’s alive.”26 His sour mood exploded when a boy asked for his autograph. “Back to the reformatory, you little nose-picker,” he growled. A crowd estimated between one and two thousand Barrymore fans, anxious to take photographs and obtain autographs, watched Hollywood celebrities enter the 75-seat chapel at the Catholic Calvary Cemetery in Whittier, east of LA. Among the attendees were movie magnates Louis B. Mayer and Cecil B. DeMille, directors George Cukor and Raoul Walsh, and dozens of celebrities including Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Spencer Tracy, and Frederick March. Greta Garbo, who played opposite Barrymore in the Grand Hotel, gained the most attention. Other Bundy Boys at the simple prayer service included Anthony Quinn, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell, Roland Young, Ben Hecht, and Errol Flynn. After the proceedings, Fields needed to leave as fast as he could. The passengers climbed into Bill’s Cadillac, which had a bar facing the rear seat. After a few miles, the car stopped on the side of the road where Bill unlocked the bar and filled his friends’ glasses. A motorcycle policeman suddenly appeared and asked the passengers what they were doing. “We are sitting at the crossroads between art and nature,” Fields replied, “trying to figure out where delirium tremens leaves off and Hollywood begins.” As the car took off, Bill yelled to the officer, “sorry, there’s not enough, or I’d invite you to join us. Come to think of it, though, I never bribe a peace enforcement officer. Auf Wiederschen.”27 A few minutes later, Will Fowler noticed that the mood in the car grew somber as everyone thought about what they had experienced—the funeral of a dear friend. Fowler spotted a look on Fields’s face that “no one had seen before. Uncharacteristically, a tear rested on his red cheek, and he muttered: ‘The ranks are thinning.’”28 When death took away the core members of the Bundy Drive Boys, Barrymore in 1942, Hartmann in 1943, Fields in 1946, and Decker

312 

A. F. WERTHEIM

in 1947, the group lost its zest. As the ringleader, Decker’s passing especially precipitated the group’s demise. The coterie’s disappearance left an empty space in the souls of the survivors. The younger actors were forced to discover new cliques exemplified by “The Roisterers,” founded by Errol Flynn. Gene Fowler believed that the older members who had died had performed the last act of a tragedy. They were triumphant defiant heroes well past their prime who found solace and inspiration with like-minded artists. After devoting a rigorous lifetime to their calling and enduring fights against their oppressors, they tried to quash their demons only to achieve death by endlessly imbibing from the same poisonous liquor-filled well. Will Fowler penned the epitaph for the Bundy Drive Boys: “They were not hypocrites, they never changed character; and at bottom they were men, every one of them, to the end. And as I looked on—or rather, participated—it became quite clear to me, if not to the men themselves, that they were severally enacting the final scenes of a tragedy—no matter the comic masks they wore. Each in his own fashion had lived too much in conflict with his God-given talents, as well as against the world of thou-shalt-not; and so they now must walk in the long shadow, but never for outsiders to see them except in their caps and bells. They were their own executioners.”29

CHAPTER 24

Scenes Before the Final Exit

After deciding not to renew his lease on his DeMille Drive house during fall 1945, Fields moved to Las Encinas Sanitarium in Pasadena. He was not a stranger to the staff since he had resided at the sanitarium numerous times. His bungalow comprised a bedroom, alcove, bathroom, and an enclosed patio, accommodations that emphasized simplicity rather than glamor. The Pasadena sanitarium had become his favorite place to recover from delirium tremens and to go on the wagon. But this time his stay would be different. Shortly after their marriage in 1900, he and Hattie had rented a horse and buggy with a fringe on top and travelled to bucolic Pasadena, then a retirement community, and popular health resort. The mesmerizing smell of fruit trees ripening in the balmy April air caused Bill then to ponder his future as a big-time vaudeville juggler. At this time, he was on the playbill at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles. Remembering the arduous path that had led to this point in his career, he told his bride “that he would like to get out of the business he was in and settle down there in Pasadena.” He thought of operating a theater or opening a grocery store. “From then on we had it in our mind to settle down there,” Hattie remembered.1 It never happened. Addicted to wanderlust and bitten by the show business bug, Bill’s blueprint for a life of domesticity turned into a pipe dream. The conflict between Hattie’s goal to lead a domestic life and Bill’s thirst for fame in show business caused their separation, currently in its fortieth year. © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_24

313

314 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Bill might avoid drinking for a few months, but after a time he resumed his habit. As his drinking mushroomed exponentially, his visits to the sanitarium proliferated. As Bill admits in this revealing 1941 interview, renouncing liquor became an arduous challenge: I have a hangover from forty-two years of drinking about $125,000 worth of whisky. I turned to rum and pineapple juice that made me fat. Then I switched to martini cocktails in water tumblers…. Two years ago [1939] I tried to go on the wagon; almost died of pneumonia. I hardly quit liquor before I got the D.T.’s. I’d see little men with whiskers and high hats sitting on bulls. Once they charged me. They almost got me one afternoon. Experimented with water. Unthinkable! Then there was “that whitefish fluid which I believe is known as milk. I understand that babies drink it. Well babies cannot talk. I can talk. And I will not drink the stuff. Cows! Good for shoe leather…. It is a dismal world. A mighty dismal world.2

During the 1930s Fields’s offscreen drinking became increasingly part of his cinematic persona, especially during his sound movie career. In his Talkies, he flaunted his daily intake on screen—gin, martinis, whiskey, rum, sherry, beer, and many other brands. “Hollywood made him an autocrat whose odd behavior was matched only by his drinking prowess,” wrote Bernard Sobel, press agent for the Follies. His comedic screen characters and his addiction to liquor became intertwined. Fields knowingly capitalized on his drinking by letting the press run stories about his passion for the “Devil’s Brew.” His prodigious alcohol consumption without becoming drunk made good copy. Fields’s conflicts with studio heads became fodder for his comedy and publicity. Louise Brooks recognized Bill’s dilemma: “If he must play a nasty old drunk and be publicized as a nasty old drunk in order to work on the Edgar Bergen radio show, then so be it.” In the end, the physical damages booze did to his body wrecked his career and health.3 Fields also flaunted his imbibing in his writing exemplified by his lengthy article postulating that alcohol had replaced dogs as man’s best friend. “It is only fitting that alcohol should have a few pats on the back…. My campaign on behalf of alcohol, I hope, has helped in some measure to erase many popular misconceptions about the relative merits of whisky and dogs…. The wise and intelligent are coming belatedly to realize that alcohol, and not the dog, is man’s best friend. Rover is taking a beating—and he should….The advantages of whiskey over dogs are legion. Whiskey does not need to be periodically wormed, it does not

24  SCENES BEFORE THE FINAL EXIT 

315

need to be fed, it never requires a special kennel, it has no toe nails to be clipped or coat to be stripped. Whiskey sits quietly in its special nook until you want it. True, whisky has a nasty habit of running out, but then so does the dog.”4 The article did double duty by combining Fields’s imbibing with his bogus dislike of dogs. As discussed earlier, many of Fields’s films include references to his drinking. • In You’re Telling Me! (1934), Bisbee is so inebriated he needs to insert a key through a funnel in order to unlock the door to his house. • In The Man on the Flying Trapeze, Ambrose Wolfinger pretends to brush his teeth while drinking. • In You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, Whipsnade jokes “some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.” • In The Bank Dick, Egbert Sousé asks Joe, the bartender, “Was I in here last night, and did I spend a twenty dollar bill?” “Yeah,” replies Joe. “What a load that is off my mind. I thought I’d lost it.” • In My Little Chickadee, Cuthbert Twillie drinks Mae West’s perfume containing alcohol. Suffering from a hangover, Twillie laments “I feel as though a midget with muddy feet had been walking over my tongue all night.” • In It’s a Gift, a promoter, who wants to buy Harold Bissonette’s property, exclaims, “You’re drunk.” Harold retorts: “Yeah, and your crazy. I’ll be sober tomorrow, and you’ll be crazy the rest of your life.” Fields’s screen wives especially belittle his imbibing. In You’re Telling Me!, Mrs. Bisbee disparages her husband: “Suppose she was entertaining a nice young man in her home, and you came in looking like that, with your shoes off, suspenders down, and your breath smelling of cheap liquor?” “Cheap! Four dollars a gallon,” her husband (Fields) retorts. So too did Bill’s estranged wife. He defended his drinking prowess in a letter to Hattie: “I note the derogatory rumors concerning my use of alcoholic stimulant and lavish living. It is the penalty of greatness…. I  would have sworn, when these rumors reached you, that you would have retaliated as did Lincoln when informed by some noisy parker that Grant was continually in his cups: Find out the brand of whisky he drinks and send a barrel to each of my Generals.”5

316 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fields’s last hurrah before his death was a unique performance in a new genre. Bill bowed out of show business with a 78-rpm commercial multi-track recording of his two classic radio talks—“The Day I Drank a Glass of Water” and “The Temperance Lecture.” These two routines were written by Bill Morrow, one of radio’s best comedy writers, who composed Fields’s temperance lecture for Tales of Manhattan.7 Morrow urged Fields to record the “The Day I Drank a Glass of Water” accompanied by Les Paul, a pioneer electric guitarist. Before the session, Morrow told Paul that Fields was failing and that time was running out. Despite being terribly ill with chronic cirrhosis, heart problems, and arthritis, Bill travelled during July 1946 from Las Encinas to Paul’s house where he was experimenting with groundbreaking multi-track recording in his studio housed in his garage. As he walked toward Paul’s studio, Fields’s gait appeared rickety and he needed a cane to support himself. While sitting on a swing, he was among the first to hear Paul’s use of multi-track recording. “You know what the music you’re making sounds like an octopus,” he told Paul. “Like a guy with a million hands. I’ve never heard anything like it.”8 (In 1957, Paul named his first AMPEX 8-Track recorder the OCTOPUS.) Sitting on a chair in front of a table, Bill asked if he could have some “Listerine” (Bill’s code for liquor) to fortify himself. Realizing that alcohol would wreck his performance, Morrow told Fields that his flask needed to be refrigerated. Like his final film, Fields had trouble reading the script that was typed on cards. As soon as forty larger cards were made, Fields spoke his lines perfectly during the three-hour session. Fields’s storytelling belongs to a long-standing tradition, starting with mid-nineteenth-century comic orators who blazed trails across America delivering humorous public talks. As popular entertainers, itinerant lecturers generated laughter through the clever way they talked. Artemus Ward, for instance, used “the old device of misspellings to indicate the slow stops and breathings and innumerable oddities of native speech.”9 Other well-known humorists known for their entertaining talks were Josh Billings, James Whitcomb Riley, and Bill Nye. Some appeared on The Chautauqua Circuit, a chain of education and entertainment centers noted for its orations. Mark Twain is recognized as America’s most prominent comic orator and storyteller who was unafraid to mock sacred cows in his talks. “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions

24  SCENES BEFORE THE FINAL EXIT 

317

of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.” A Twain afficionado, Fields devoured the author’s works to the degree that his own lampooning oratory and humorous yarns mirror the famous author. Fields makes a slight pause just before delivering a laugh-provoking punch line. He follows Twain’s dictum: “The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any bequeath kind of story… a dainty thing and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous, for it must be exactly the right length… or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble.”10 “The Day I Drank a Glass of Water” is a tongue-in-cheek tale that illustrates Fields’s dread of the refreshment and his skills as a raconteur. During his career, Fields often joked about H20, the antithesis of liquor, as an arch enemy that could poison him. “The Day I Drank a Glass of Water” transforms Bill’s bête noir into a humorous tall tale as follows: (Sound: Les Paul strums guitar) “It’s nice of you to grant me this interview,” says Miss Ophelia Snapdrop, a reporter for the Lompoc Bugle. “Think nothing of it, my beauty. I’m always glad to speak to the public print.” “I think I have about all I need. There’s just one more question, Mr. Fields.” “What is it my beauty?’ “Is it true you once drank a glass of water?” “Egad! What an accusation! I haven’t had a drop of water on my tongue since the gold rush days. I was up in Nome, Alaska and I made the mistake of picking my teeth with an icicle. The icicle melted and I nearly strangled to death. Those were the days. I hope they never come again.” “I crossed the tundra with my trusty dog team which I ate later. They were very good with whipped cream. At long last I arrived at the igloo of an Eskimo friend of mine who distilled a delectable beverage from whale blubber.” “That’s all very interesting but when did you drink the glass of water?” “Oh, you’re back to that again. Yes. I was driving across the Mojave Desert in search of the Lonesome Charlie Gold Mine, and by chance I happened to come upon the Happy Buzzard Gas Station and Taproom. I entered the taproom and said to the barkeep ‘a double slug of Red Eye, please,’ and he replied: ‘Sorry, no liquor, pardner.’ What of the sign that swings outside proclaiming The Happy Buzzard. How can a buzzard be happy without a nip?” Barkeep: Well, this is Election Day pardner and the bar is closed. It’s the law. Fields: Who made this law? Barkeep: The people voted for it. Fields: That’s carrying democracy too far. Barkeep: Well, if you’re so thirsty, how about a nice glass of water?

318 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fields: Are you insane? Barkeep: Say, ain’t you W. C. Fields? Fields: No autographs please. Barkeep: I guess I am insane, asking you to drink a glass of water. Why I’ll bet a hundred dollars you wouldn’t do that. Fields: Of course, I wouldn’t. Did you say one hundred dollars? A century note? Barkeep: Yep. Fields: Get your money up. Barkeep: Okay, here’s my money and here’s your glass of water. Fields: Hideous looking stuff. Don’t you put an olive and cherry in it? Barkeep: Nope. Just plain water. Fields: All right. I’ll drink it. May the state of Kentucky forgive me. Fields: Here goes! Over the lip! Barkeep: I must be seeing things! W.C. Fields is reaching for a glass of water! He’s lifting it from the bar! He’s starting to drink. No, no, he’s putting it back on the bar! There it goes to his lips and there goes my hundred! Woops! He’s lifting it to his lips again! He grits his teeth! By crackly, he’s drinking that water! Fields: Ah! (coughs several times in pain) Barkeep: Mr. Fields! Mr. Fields! Oh! What’s wrong? Fields: Get a doctor, you idiot! (sickly) I’ve been—poisoned! (emphatically)

Fields’s second talk, “The Temperance Lecture,” burlesques fanatical zealots who believed in teetotalism. Fields’s attack against the temperance crusade stemmed from his libertarianism and atheism. The movement, he believed, repressed individual freedom and was led by evangelical fanatics, who vowed damnation for the inebriated and promised redemption for teetotalers. Fields’s jokes and routines against Prohibition were already an integral part of his repertoire on stage and in films. His mockery of the anti-liquor crusade in “The Temperance Lecture” is a masterpiece of comic oratory, spiked with tongue-in-cheek humor in the tall-tale tradition. As background music, Les Paul strums his guitar softly during the lecture. Ladies and gentlemen, down with rum! Ever since the beginning of time, there has been a drink problem. Quite a problem! Even a greater problem now; it’s so scarce. Throughout the Middle Ages, the use of liquor was universal! And drunkenness was so common, that it was unnoticed. They called it the Middle Ages because no one was able to walk home, unless they were between two other fellows. I was usually the middle guy. But through

24  SCENES BEFORE THE FINAL EXIT 

319

the years enlightenment came and with it the controlling of spiritus fermenti. And controlling spiritus fermenti is tougher than tying a hair ribbon on a bolt of lightning. That’s a good simile. The first instance of federal authority in the country was when George Washington put down the Whisky Rebellion in Penn—syl—van—i—a. I imagine that George put down a little vile stuff too. (laughs) There’s a fellow that really lived. What a guy! What a man! Now before, I go any further, please do not labor under the misconception, that I have always been a teetotaler. In my younger days, I was prone to take a nip. I chortle now at that former weakness in my otherwise strong character. But how well I remember my first encounter with the devil’s brew. It happened at seven to stumble across a case of bourbon and went right on stumbling for several days thereafter. (pause) Of course, now I touch nothing stronger than buttermilk. Ninety proof buttermilk. I look on my days of revelry with scorn and reproach. And shudder when I recall going to the corner saloon tugging at my daddy’s coattails, and saying “father, dear father come home with me now—and bring a jug with you.” However, I came from a very illustrious family. My great grandfather was a friend of Benjamin Franklin. In fact, my great grandfather would have discovered electricity but he was too poor to buy a kite. He had to go out and hire one. I have a picture of him at home standing in front of the town tavern. He was as high as a kite. Much higher! Wonderful man, grandfather. They called him the atomic bum. Bum bum B-U-M bum. How many of you are giggling and scoffing and saying that I’ve given up strong drink, only because the stuff is so hard to get nowadays. But you are in error. My basement is loaded. As I am … As I was. Friends, my heart bleeds when I think that right at this moment throughout our fair land thousands of misguided souls are hitting the bottle. Yes, they are consuming rivers of highballs, lakes of cocktails, and oceans of distilled damnation. I think I’ll slip on my bathing suit. Yes, liquid death and distilled damnation that’s what they are swilling and guzzling…. Remember the joys of alcohol are fleeting and the toll is terrible. Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon awakening. It was the only exercise I got. The man who over indulges lives in a dream. He becomes conceited. He thinks the whole world revolves around him. And it usually does. So friends, my advice to you is to

320 

A. F. WERTHEIM

abstain. Break all the bottles in your possession. Now don’t say you can’t swear off drinking. It’s easy. I’ve done it a thousand times…. In closing, I would like to offer my favorite recipe to take the place of intoxicants. It’s [a] real thirst quencher. It’s called the raspberry freeze known in England as the Rah-s-berry freeze. Take one cup of pineapple juice; two cups of Rah-s-berry juice; Rah-s-berry juice mind you if you’re in Europe; one cup of black tea; three cups of water; and two egg whites. Freeze until half stiff. Well, when you’re half stiff everything is all right. I thank you (guitar music).11 With his last spoken words, “I thank you,” the curtain descended on Fields’s forty-eight years in show business. Bill’s talks illuminate his talent as a tall-tale raconteur whose manner of speaking was enhanced by his inimitable voice—rhapsodic speech, rhythmic phraseology, florid language, and flowery rhetoric. The three-disk 78-rpm album on the Variety Records label containing the above talks was released in January 1947 one month after his death. He would have been sixty-seven on the twenty-ninth of that month. The failing trouper’s last hurrah bequeathed to future generations two masterpieces of comic oratory. Fields’s performance as a recording artist added another genre to his multi-faceted career. Between 1898 and 1946, he appeared in practically every entertainment form: club shows; burlesque; minstrel shows, Bowery museum performances; vaudeville; British music halls; pantomime shows; Broadway revues and plays; silent pictures; sound movies; radio; and recordings. At the sanitarium, the doctors had decided that his cirrhosis had reached an untreatable advanced stage. They consequently planned no formal treatment program. Frail and mostly bedridden, Bill’s arthritis had consumed his entire body making it difficult to walk. All types of booze were available during his stay. His abode’s interior looked like a dump yard of prescription vials, unfinished meals, and liquor bottles. Because Magna Michael, his long-time secretary, helpmate, and later his estate’s executor, was trustworthy she became a confidant, an ally Fields could freely talk to about his life. She testified at Fields’s probate trial that Bill told her to bring him some liquor. Before going to the sanitarium, he had stored his large alcohol supply in the cellar of a friend’s house. “Sometimes I would bring him as much as a case of gin, half a case of vermouth, and a case of beer every week.” The task left Michael in a quandary. “The sanitarium didn’t want us to bring liquor. We tried to cooperate with them but at the same time we tried to please Mr. Fields.”12

24  SCENES BEFORE THE FINAL EXIT 

321

A list of his imbibing five months before he died reveals that he drank whisky every three hours during the day and in the middle of the night. Bottles of vermouth and gin were on his bedside table to make his favorite martinis. Instructions were left to use two jiggers of gin to one jigger of vermouth. Although his liquor consumption lessened during the autumn months as he grew sicker, attempts to completely wean him off liquor proved futile. For a time the nurses followed a routine. After breakfast, which included orange juice mixed with sherry and his habitual martini, he sometimes bathed aided by the nurses. Afterward he either sat on the side of his bed supported by a back rest or on an armchair where a nurse washed his face and sometimes shaved him. If the weather was nice, he ate lunch outside on a bridge table and stayed there until four o’clock. During his six o’clock dinner, a nurse cut his meat and afterward read the paper to him. Before retiring for the night, the nurses undressed him, put on his blue bathrobe and sweat shirt and placed an extra blanket on his bed. If needed, Fields was given injections and pills for his back pain and nervousness. The schedule was regularly changed according to his health but eventually discarded. Without a plan to follow during his last few months everything that was done for Bill became haphazard. Fields’s remaining months resembled a three-ring circus with a parade of sanitarium doctors, private physicians, nurses, relatives, and friends arriving and leaving. His bungalow became a battleground of conflicting personalities. Arguments arose between Fields’s nurses under instructions from the sanitarium’s doctors and two of Bill’s regular visitors, Magna Michael and Carlotta Monti. Ms. Campion, a private nurse, who Claude probably hired, quit because she “could not go on with those two girls and have them spoil everything.” The nurse asserted that the two took control when she was there. “You could feel it in the air. You were not wanted around, and that is why I walked off the case.” One time an argument started between Mrs. Ammons, superintendent of nurses, and Michael over Fields’s eating. When Magna refused to wake Bill up to eat, Ammons said that the doctor had ordered her to awaken Fields. “I guess the nurse knows what she is doing,” said Magda, who slammed the door in Ammons’ face when she left.13 The polar opposite of Magda was Carlotta Monti, a fiery outspoken Latina who, as discussed earlier, assumed umpteen roles, sweetheart, cook, secretary, and nurse. The angry altercations between Bill and

322 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Carlotta continued unabated. As his nursemaid, she watched over his treatments and gave him his prescriptions but did little to stop Fields’s drinking. Carlotta sometimes cooked Mexican dishes but took the food home when Bill lacked an appetite. She knew Fields liked the sound of rain on his roof at home, so she took a hose and sprayed it on top of his bungalow to calm his nerves. When The Chinaman found out that Fields had reduced her benefit in his will, she said “he is better to me alive than dead.” She offered to pay a generous bonus to one of the sanitarium’s physicians “if you get him well.”34 There were times when Bill felt that she was doing more harm than good and several times he ordered her to leave. One letter she wrote Woody was sent from a hospital where she was recovering from pneumonia. It was the most endearing communiqué she ever wrote: Dearest beloved Woody. Would that these pages could speak and make you understand that you shouldn’t get angry with me…. These pages are permeated with love for you and I hope that when you touch this paper you will feel & understand….Because of this deep affection I have for you & sense of responsibility that I feel for you I have been suffering from a misapprehension. I have always felt that you are my family and I yours and as you know I can only give of myself and that you know I give freely. I realize and appreciate so very much and am so grateful to you for what you have done for me. All my love, Carlotta.35

The letter failed to sway Fields. He reduced her allowance from $50 to $40 a week. He instructed the grocery store where Carlotta obtained food to revoke her credit. When Fields diminished her salary to $25 weekly, she wrote a letter demanding a raise, singling out a nurse who was receiving $100 a week. Whenever Carlotta visited Bill he got upset. Their squabbles reached an apex in June 1946 when she called Fields “a stingy bastard” for not raising her salary. “I hereby tender you one month’s notice at your present salary,” Bill shot back. “After that you are on your own.” He warned her not to return to the sanitarium. “It is very nerve-wracking to have someone snooping around, going through your pockets and stealing money, reading your private mail, going through cancelled checks, etc. What you hope to gain is an enigma to me. This should be a great lesson to you but you never seem to learn by experience.”36 When she telephoned, Fields refused to talk to her.

24  SCENES BEFORE THE FINAL EXIT 

323

Another incident occurred that ended the relationship. “When the Drs. & I thought I was dying I asked you to stick around,” he wrote. “You told me that you couldn’t as you had an 8:30 appt. You have made another staunch enemy. I never wish to see or hear from you again as long as I live. You always will be a miserable mooch and mendicant & an ingrate. ‘You only get out of life what you put into it.’”37 Carlotta’s final correspondence, a short note postmarked four days before his death, was curt and cold. “Dear Little Woody. My outside men tell me you are same as ever. And I am always the same as ever. Truly yours, Carlotta.”38 Although Carlotta wrote that she was by Fields’s bedside when he died, she was not present. More than likely, she was in Santa Barbara with a boyfriend. Bill faced death stoically as if it was his final performance in his last act on earth. “I’ll go out without knuckling under—they won’t find me cringing for religion,” Fields told Gene Fowler.39 According to Bill, individuals, like his son Claude, who succumbed to faith in God were weaklings. Legend has it that one or several of Bill’s friends claimed that they caught Fields reading the Bible. Fields habitually retorted “just looking for loopholes.” An inveterate atheist, Fields’s loathing of religion was not a fake characteristic like his abhorrence of dogs and children. One day a friend asked Bill “why he never gave a sucker—or anyone else for that matter—an even break. Why must you always insist on taking advantage and exacting the last thin dime? Why don’t you let up once in a while?” Bill replied, “I will explain my philosophy to you. Most people have a feeling they are coming back to this life some way, somehow. But me—I know I’m going through here only once.”40

CHAPTER 25

The Man in the Bright Nightgown Cometh

Fields often commented to friends that there was no afterlife after death. “When you die it’s all over?” became Fields’s final mantra.1 But Bill was a person with inconsistent beliefs. At other times, he implied that it was not “all over”—that maybe there was a presence beyond death. Despite his disbelief in God and irreverent statements against religion, Fields did occasionally speak about a transcendental belief in an ethereal existence beyond reality. Fearing it might undermine his public persona as a cantankerous misanthrope, Bill kept his spirituality hidden much like his fear of displaying sentimentality. During his later years he felt that a benevolent utopia might exist in a distant otherworld, a cosmos where bliss instead of misery reigned. The milieu, he believed, was situated in Scotland’s Grampian Hills. Occupying a large area of the Scottish Highlands in northeast Scotland, the Grampians are a mix of hills and mountains with several peaks that rise more than three thousand feet. Until contemporary times, the Grampians were an isolated rarely frequented region, a wild landscape that emitted a mysterious, eerie air. The enigmatic Grampian Hills became a setting in John Home’s eighteenth-century tragedy Douglas. Known as the Scottish Shakespeare, Home’s play was a huge hit in London and was performed several times in the USA up to 1853. Despite its disappearance from the theater in the late nineteenth century, one speech survived and was used continually in school and public recitations, speech lessons, and texts on elocution. © The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2_25

325

326 

A. F. WERTHEIM

In Home’s play, Norval, a shepherd, reveals his identity as a brave hero and recounts his courageous successes on the battlefield, slaying barbarians who had stolen flocks and herds. As a king’s warrior, Norval defends his country and saves the life of a noble. Although Fields probably never read these sources, he did learn about the Grampian Hills from his friend John Barrymore. In his biography of John Barrymore, Good Night, Sweet Prince, Gene Fowler recalls that the actor regular spoke about “looking for the Grampian Hills,” and that his words were “a most poignant reference to his innermost yearnings.” Fowler wrote that whenever John spoke of the hills, “a far-away spell would possess him, as if he was beholding some enchanted highland within distance, and hearing fabulous pipes being played beyond the horizon. His voice would take on mysterious inferences. Then the mood would pass.”2 Fowler also remembered a letter Barrymore sent to his son Will during July 1936, excitingly describing a house in Bel Air that he had found “where you and I, and those cognoscente of whom we approve can cavort… Soon I trust we will be all be tending our flocks together on the Grampian Hills—where the cows really do come home.” Fowler asked Lionel Barrymore what his brother meant by the Grampian Hills. “The Grampian Hills meant to him a final retreat, where all would be wonderful and right.”3 Lionel recollected that it was from his father, the actor Maurice Barrymore that he first heard about the Grampian Hills. “Papa used to stride up and down the room in his zebra undershirt, his eyes bright, his long forefinger leveled at some fabulous world unseen my mere mortals, and recite the poem about ‘Norval on the Grampian Hills’ who longed to follow to the fields some warlike lord.” Fields might have heard the popular Norval stanza recited on stages by actors during his numerous music hall tours to England and Scotland.4 My brother John “never knew what the Grampian Hills actually were,” said Lionel. “But he knew what they meant…. Our father’s grand inflections made them appear to us what Utopia must have seemed to Sir Thomas More; what the Promised Land, Arcadia, the Elysian Fields… meant to the groping, dreaming men of the ages. It was a place where caravans rested, where time itself stood still.”5 Fields mentioned the Grampian Hills several times later in life. In a conversation with Edgar Bergen before going on location to film You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, he told the ventriloquist that “if we get separated, let us meet at the Grampian Hills.” Bergen did not know

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

327

what Fields meant until years later while traveling in Great Britain, “I chanced to scan a map of Scotland, and there between the Lowland and the Highlands, were the Grampian Hills.” A reference to the Grampian Hills appears at the film’s end when circus owner Larson E. Whipsnade (Fields) insults the stuffy affluent Bel-Goodes at a party, sees the sheriff, and decides to flee. “On to the Grampian Hills, children,” he tells his son Phineas and daughter Vicky. The three escape in a Roman chariot pursued by the sheriff. “Where are those Grampian Hills, Dad?” his daughter inquires. “I wonder, I wonder,” responds Whipsnade. Having faced numerous effronteries as a charlatan by the town’s snobs, Whipsnade heads for the Grampian Hills where he hopes to find a more hospitable locale.6 A similar ending appears in My Little Chickadee. Cuthbert J. Twillie (Fields) is humiliated by his experiences: a fake marriage to Flower Belle Lee (Mae West), almost killed by his opponents for cheating at poker, and as a bungling sheriff is mistaken for the Masked Bandit by a mob anxious to hang him. Cuthbert is saved by Flower Belle, who convinces her lover, the Masked Bandit, to inform the lynching crowd that he is the culprit. Cuthbert is freed and decides to leave the town, his bravado punctured. He meets Flower Belle in the hotel’s lobby where she inquires where he is going. He tenders her a chivalrous adieu: “If you get up around the Grampian Hills, come up and see me sometime.”7 The Grampian Hills for Fields was a faraway Utopia where there exists harmony away from the squabbles, deceit, and discord that he had confronted all his life. Bill did not believe in God and heaven. “Nature is my religion,” he told Magda Michael. He did have faith, however, that the Grampian Hills was a distant Nirvana, beyond his existence, only to be discovered after his death.8 The bucolic Grampian Hills symbolized Fields’s spirituality and possibly gave him the fortitude he needed to confront death. Fields felt that The Man in the Bright Nightgown would carry him away when his last breath expired to a place beyond the real world, perhaps to the Grampian Hills. Compared to the Grim Reaper, a foreboding figure carrying a scythe who personified death, Fields visualized The Man in the Bright Nightgown as a benevolent being. Fields talked about The Man in the Bright Nightgown before his death. Given their friendship, Fields possibly heard John Barrymore talk about the mysterious Man. As the scion of the famous Drew-Barrymore theatrical family, he was the youngest son of Maurice Barrymore and

328 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Georgiana Drew. He lived with his dying grandmother, Louisa Lane Drew, during the summer of 1897. Barrymore called his beloved grandmother, Mum Mum, who was a famous thespian, longtime manager of Philadelphia’s Arch Theater and the family matriarch. The Man in the Bright Nightgown became attached to the fearful bogeyman at the top of the lengthy stairs leading to a dark place where the young Barrymore reached his bedroom. To overcome her grandson’s fears, Mum Mum told John to repeat “I have a wonderful power” as he treads the stairs. He saw his grandmother die during his stay. “He never felt safe after that,” his older brother Lionel remarked. “He was in revolt against the whole insecure pattern of life and that the insecurity sprang from the collapse of his frame of reference when Mum Mum died when he was fifteen.”9 Barrymore may have also heard about the Bright Nightgown from a relative or actor quoting a line from an obscure poem or play referring to a form of dress. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century in England, the affluent wore exquisite colorful silk nightgowns as indoor garments, “worn about the houses when the jacket, sword, and wig… were removed.”10 As he grew older, The Man in the Bright Gown stuck in Barrymore’s vivid imagination where the appellation morphed from bogeyman into a personification of death. The Man in the Bright Nightgown is mentioned in the TV play Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer. In the opening scene, an aged alcoholic John Barrymore, unable to recall his lines and needing a backstage prompter, is attempting a revival of Richard III, his first theatrical success in 1920. “It was a long time ago, but it was the first time they took me seriously,” the legendary actor says. “So I’ve got to get the old bastard up on his feet again. I need to be taken seriously before the man in the bright nightgown gets me.”11 Old friends visited Fields during his final months. The only performer from the Ziegfeld Follies was Eddie Cantor since others had died. Although Cantor and Fields lived very different lives in Hollywood, they occasionally met for lunch. Cantor, the humanitarian teetotaler, was a family man devoted to his wife, Ida, and five daughters while Fields lived the life of a freedom-loving bachelor. The two often talked about the old days with Ziegfeld. Eddie never forgot the time Bill taught him about the great works of literature. At these encounters, Eddie noticed what the ravages of liquor had done to Bill. His compulsive drinking, he thought, had become “a necessity.” He blamed Fields’s obsessive

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

329

imbibing on the insecurity that had always plagued him—the fear that at any moment he would be thrown into the trash heap of forgotten entertainers. “He was essentially a shy man, a man lacking in confidence,” Cantor believed. “Gin gave him not only confidence but bravado.” Eddie noticed that his personality had become more paranoid, “suspicious of people and wary.” But Bill was still “thoughtful and loyal” to his old friends. “He never forgot my birthday, or [my wife] Ida’s, and my anniversary.”12 Cantor visited Fields at Las Encinas before he died. Too sick to talk loudly, Bill whispered, “I wonder how far I might have gone if I had laid off the booze?” That was the last time he saw his Follies colleague. After his death, Cantor wrote: “The world lost a great funny man who, for fifty years, had kept people laughing.”13 When Gene and Will Fowler visited Bill’s bungalow, they saw him drink ginger ale. But after gazing at Will Fowler’s highball, Fields consumed several triple martinis. Feeling mellow, Bill began tapping the table “in concert with the pitter-patter of the raindrops beating on the roof.” While listening to the sweet sound of rain above him, he began to feel drowsy. As his eyes began to close, he muttered, “If it’s true everybody loves a winner, we ought to be crazy about Death.” Once he fell asleep, the Fowlers quietly left. That was the final time they saw Bill alive.14 The only patient at Las Encinas that Bill befriended was the author Jim Tully. Fields and Tully had crossed paths in Hollywood where Jim wrote articles about film celebrities and successful hard-boiled novels about the underclass. Fields befriended the novelist in Hollywood, especially when they were neighbors in Toluca Lake. As a magazine writer, Tully wrote numerous articles about Fields. Unlike his hard-hitting serious pieces, his profiles about Fields in fan magazines were lighter. The author identified with Fields’s wanderlust, vagabond youth, and accepted the exaggerated tales of “the boy tramp, who lived in a cave.” “Bill had the misfortune of being the eldest child in a poverty–stricken family,” Tully wrote. “He has touched every phase of life—from a penniless vagrant on a park bench to the most famous juggler on earth.” Tully grasped the roots of Fields’s comedy: “Since time immemorial such people as Bill Fields… by some peculiar alchemy of the senses… absorb suffering in youth and turn it later to sad and ironical humor.”15 Tully arrived at Las Encinas near Christmas having experienced numerous strokes that caused his loss of mobility and hearing. When Tully

330 

A. F. WERTHEIM

learned that Fields was a neighbor, his nurse put him on a wheelchair to visit Bill. Magda Michael recalled the meeting: “It was a pathetic sight to view these two formerly virile, strong, vivacious men sitting there in their respective wheelchairs while Tully’s nurse and I carried on the conversation in their stead, recounting events and experiences they had shared in the past, and which we both knew about, while the two of them sat silently nodding their heads in acquiescence. I truly believe this was one of the saddest afternoons I have ever lived through.”16 Compared to his friends, the visits of Bill’s wife and son were awkward. According to her diary, Harriet and Claude dropped in occasionally to see him during his final year. She describes the meetings as cordial, writing several short sentences using such terms as “nice talk,” “pleasant evening,” and “interesting conversation.” One visit seemed better than others: “We had lively interesting talks! He was sharp… We left at 9 p.m. I told [the] nurse to ‘put him to bed.’ I promised to come in ten days with pictures.” They made suggestions to the staff and Claude particularly complained about the nurses.17 As Fields’s final exit approached, Bill still felt an antipathy toward his wife for all the harm she had done. To her dying day, Hattie never forgot the many times she scrounged to receive her weekly allowance and her husband’s refusal to send more funds when needed. Their feelings toward each other had hardened over the years to the extent that a reconciliation became impossible. Handing his will for Gene Fowler to read, Bill said. “I’m worried about Hattie and W. Claude Fields. They’ll give me trouble. I think if I leave twenty G’s between them, that’ll be all right. I think Hattie raised young Fields to become an attorney just so they might take me one day.” As a precaution he added a provision disinheriting anyone who would attempt to break the will.18 His relationship with Claude was a different story. A letter written to his son in 1940 signified the wide chasm that still separated them. Claude repeated accusations that his father had heard earlier, what Fields called “adolescents insults and quarrelsome canards” from a “36 year old man talking.” A successful attorney in Los Angeles, Claude resided with his mother in Beverly Hills. “Did you first read the letter to your mother and get her approval?” he asked. “Do you and your mother ever think of anything but of what an awful person I am and how little I have provided for you?”19 Their relationship improved when Claude married Anne Ruth Stevens (Ruthie) on August 4, 1942, in Providence, RI, where she was

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

331

a secretary at a junior high school. The two had met when both were vacationing in New Jersey. Bill did not attend the wedding but sent orchids to Hattie and the bride and a $1500 check to the married couple for a car. Bill adored Claude’s wife. “I never met such a sweet little girl in all my life.”20 Ruthie was caring, compassionate, and a devoted wife. She helped melt the ice between her husband and Bill. When she found Claude spending a large amount of time at his mother’s abode, a rift developed between Ruthie and Hattie. Ruthie resented Hattie’s control over her husband to the extent that she avoided her mother-in-law as much as possible. When Bill heard that Ruthie was pregnant, he wrote Claude, “I am looking forward to the arrival of the Nipper.” Thirteen months later Bill told his brother Walter, “In case I haven’t told you I am a grandfather. Claude got away from Hattie long enough to marry a very fine young woman about a year ago. I think it was the first sex life experience for them both. It’s a boy.” Born on September 4, 1943, the boy was named after his grandfather, William Claude Fields III. Delighted by his new namesake, Fields sent the baby a silver comb and brush.21 The new grandfather excitedly drove the baby and Ruthie from the hospital to their home. A navy reserve lieutenant during the war, Claude was unable to attend the birth. An adorable photograph was snapped showing Ruthie holding the infant as Bill kisses his grandson on the cheek. During Fields’s final months at Las Encinas, Claude and Ruthie sometimes took the family, which now included a second son, Everett, to visit Bill. With two grandsons and a daughter-in-law, the estrangement between Bill and his son diminished (Fig. 25.1). As Fields lay in his bed in his bungalow at Las Encinas, Christmas was approaching, a holiday Bill loathed with a passion. “Holidays… point up a thing called loneliness,” he told the Fowlers. Fields lacked a  loving immediate family to celebrate Christmas. “It’s not good to be… all alone on a Christmas Day, and to see and hear a lot of happy strangers welcoming the two-faced merriment-monger Santa Claus, who passes you by.” Will Fowler recalled a visit to Las Encinas during which Bill heard a Noel chorale emitted from his radio. “Turn it off! Cease!” Bill yelled. “I’ll smash the damned radio and its illegitimate fugue!” Fields continued his anti-Xmas rant: “At least they don’t serve the tainted day here with snow. Sleigh bells give me double nausea.”22 Fields traced his Scrooge-like feelings during Christmas to the time he caught his father stealing his savings to buy his mother a clothes

332 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 25.1  The icebreaker, ca. September 1943. Fields kissing his new grandson named after him. To the right is the mother, Bill’s daughter-in-law, Ruthie (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com)

boiler for the holiday. “Beginning then, I have remembered nobody on Christmas, and I want nobody to remember me, either.” His remarks were poppycock. Bill gave numerous Xmas gifts to people whose names appear on long lists he prepared. Presents ranged from perfume, handbags, and golf clubs to liquor and flowers, including jokes on friends. The Fowlers once received a large leather-bound book entitled Places Where I Am Not Wanted, edited by Fields. Inside was the Los Angeles phone directory. He also sent Christmas cards. Eighteen days before his death, Claude and his wife received a colorful card drawn by Fields. The card depicts Bill dressed as Santa Claus with a flaming red cap and nose. Smoke from a cigar spells out the message “Merry Xmas.” On Xmas morning or perhaps earlier, Bill had slipped into a coma. Only Magda Michael, who had been by Bill’s bedside all night, and a nurse were in Fields’s room. Before his death, she asked him what he

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

333

would like to do “if he were not ill,” perhaps a European tour, rent a yacht, or a cruise. “No dear, I just want to sit here, have my little drink and talk to you. That’s all I want.”23 Magda believed Bill had “lost the will to live.” Not only had Fields lost his fighting spirit to battle his ailments but he knew the time had come to capitulate. At 12:03 p.m., Bill was whisked away by The Man in the Bright Nightgown. Vanished with him were all the demons that had pursued him all his life. Vanished was all the pain he had endured from his maladies. Vanished was his brilliance as a comedian to generate laughter in person to audiences on the stage, screen, and radio. What endured was Fields’s peerless comedy that could be transmitted via means to generations to come. Bill Grady and Dave Chasen had driven to Las Encinas to visit Bill on that cool and rainy Xmas day unaware that their good friend had died. To amuse their pal, they were dressed in comedy outfits; Chasen adorned as a fireman and Grady as a tramp. They brought some delicacies, a roast turkey and bottles of whiskey. As they were about to enter Fields’s bungalow, a nurse told them that Bill had died ten minutes earlier. They saw two men carrying Bill’s body in a long basket. “Dave and I sat on the grass and blubbered like children,” wrote Grady. “A great man had died, but he had left a permanent imprint on a changing world.”24 Given his mixed feelings about the holiday, it is ironic that Fields died on Christmas day. An urban legend recounts that Bill’s last act was that he placed a forefinger to his lips, winked at the nurse, and then closed his eyes. Some obituaries mentioned that he tried to tell a joke just before he passed away. Bill’s final exit makes a good story but it has never been proven and given his feeble and frail condition possibly never happened. According to Fields’s death certificate, cirrhosis of the liver (duration five years) from chronic alcoholism caused his passing. The anecdote, however, spread like wildfire around the sanitarium and in newspapers. When Jim Tully learned of Fields’s death, he dictated a letter to Mencken, a mutual friend, “W. C. Fields has passed on. His last gesture was a finger over his lips and a wink at his nurse. That will not be for public print.”25 Tully probably knew that the finger-wink story was pure conjecture. The day after Christmas, close friends met at Chasen’s restaurant to remember Bill. The group, who sat under Decker’s portrait of Fields as Queen Victoria, consisted of the Fowlers, Bill Grady, the directors Eddie Sutherland and Gregory La Cava, the sportswriter Grantland Rice, and Ben Hecht. Instead of a meeting marked by sadness, they decided to

334 

A. F. WERTHEIM

laugh at Fields’s zillion escapades—merriment Bill would have loved. Their hilarity was so loud that an elderly lady in a nearby booth complained that they were being disrespectful to the dead. Will Fowler told her that Chasen’s was their home away from home: “We here reserve our expressions of sorrow in the privacy of our own homes.”26 Gene Fowler left the table to telephone the Hollywood Reporter a fullpage tribute to Fields signed by his friends at the restaurant: The most prejudiced and honest and beloved figure of our so-called “colony” went away on a day that he pretended to abhor—Christmas. We loved him, and—peculiarly enough—he loved us. To the most authentic humorist since Mark Twain, to the greatest heart that has beaten since the middle ages—W. C. Fields, our friend. Requiescat in Pace27

Obituaries printed on the West Coast mostly made front-page news but in the East they appeared in the back pages. The newspaper obits were relatively short—averaging two to three columns in length. Fields’s obituaries reflected the fact that his film career had sunk since his last 1941 feature. His last movie cameo roles were terse performances lost among filmdom’s ruthless method of discarding aging stars to oblivion. The brief parts along with his radio broadcasts did little to enhance his reputation during the five years before his death. Bill’s saving grace was that it was not the length of his obituaries that counted but the opinions the writers related. The best appeared in mass magazines rather than newspapers, which printed stale boilerplate material. Life devoted two large pages plus the iconic photograph that showed Fields wearing his emblematic top hat in My Little Chickadee. He is looking slyly at his poker cards while facing his opponents who suspect him of cheating [See frontispiece]. “He achieved real contemporary greatness in creating a character that became part of American folklore,” wrote Life magazine’s author… “His bulbous nose was a red badge of revolt against petty respectability…. His top hat, like the human spirit, sometimes rolled in the gutter, but Fields always clapped it on again with a triumphant flourish.”28 Another perceptive remembrance, called “Gentle Grifter,” appeared anomalously in Time magazine. The first paragraph succinctly summed up a career that “had lasted half a century”: Neither age, pain, nor liquor had dulled the intent and raffish gleam in his eye. His distrust of property men, doctors, and small children was

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

335

undiminished. His voracious love of life and laughs had not failed, and he still eyed the world with the spurious heartiness of man with an ace up his sleeve. But his body was flabby and old, and his fiery, bulbous nose had become a shocking badge of suffering. Last week after [nearly] 67 years, death finally hoodwinked W. C. Fields, the noblest [author’s italic] confidence man of them all.

The word “noblest” suggests that James Agee, the magazine’s film critic, probably wrote the obituary. A fan of Fields’s oeuvre, Agee had described his performance in Follow the Boys as “noble as Stone Mountain.”29 Without knowing Fields had passed away, Bob Hope told a running joke on his Christmas Day radio program about Bill’s drinking. Hope was embarrassed when he later learned about Fields’s death. “I feel terrible about that. He was one of the world’s great comedians. The world is certainly going to lose a lot of laughs.”30 The reaction of Hattie to the news was subdued. Above the date Wednesday, December 25, 1946, in her diary, Hattie wrote “Such a sad Christmas.” After attending a 9:15 a.m. Mass, she returned home, ate breakfast, and heard the phone ring. It was the hospital calling. “Mr. F failed in night,” she wrote. A lawyer from Forest Lawn called Claude telling him that his father’s body was at the cemetery and that they had received orders to cremate his remains. Bill left wishes that he did not want to be buried beneath the earth’s surface and he also rejected a funeral. Claude rushed out of his house intending to console his mother. Arriving at his mother’s abode, they “went at full speed in a terrific rain storm, we reached the hospital just too late.”31 They packed Bill’s papers, personal affects, and miscellaneous items and left them locked up at the sanitarium. Exhausted, they headed home, stopping for a turkey Xmas dinner. “It never stopped raining,” Hattie wrote. Loving the sound of rain, Bill seemed to order the weather especially for his departure. Except for her brief statement “such a sad Christmas,” there was not another word about her husband’s passing. More important for mother and son was their mission to take charge of Bill’s affairs. The following day they returned to the sanitarium and packed Bill’s belongings in a trunk. They discovered liquor in a storeroom. “Astonishing!!!” Hattie penned in her diary. Her husband’s death provided an opportunity to continue her possessiveness of Claude. Stories arose that Claude did not return home for three days, sleeping at his mother’s place. Hattie’s diary includes

336 

A. F. WERTHEIM

statements such as “God bless my dear Claude is so worried over me,” “I am lonesome for my boy,” and “Happy to be with my boy.” They ate dinner, went to movies, and he continued to stay at his mother’s house. Claude was caught between his responsibilities as a husband and father and his mother’s possessiveness. Unable to reconcile his duties, Claude alienated his wife Ruthie, increasing her dislike of her mother-in-law. Ruthie fortunately possessed the caring and compassion to understand her husband’s dilemma. They remained married, rearing five children. Three days after Bill’s death mother and son went to Forest Lawn to select a casket and crypt, as well as to plan a private service. (Disliking morticians, Fields wanted an inexpensive casket.) A formal “Funeral Announcement by the Family of W. C. Fields” was printed: “We did not wish that he be cremated as this is not favored by the Catholic Church, which believes in the resurrection of the body. While we favored internment in the ground, he was always opposed to being buried in the earth, and we are sure that he would be comfortable with what we have done. An intimate friend will say a word of farewell at the brief service to which we require that only the most intimate friends come.”32 Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, near downtown Los Angeles, might heretically be called the Disneyland of American Cemeteries with its approximately 1500 statues, highlighted by numerous Michelangelo replicas; reproductions of famous paintings; a recreation of The Last Supper in stained glass; chapels modeled after well-known European churches; and burial areas with evocative names. Believing in a blissful life after death, its founder, Dr. Hubert Eaton, opposed depressing cemeteries with their vertical grave markers, ugly monuments, and death symbols. The humungous 300-acre hillside park could be labeled ostentatious, surreal, and escapist symbolizing what Jessica Mitford called The American Way of Death, a charade masking the stark reality of mortality. Fields would never have wanted this fantasyland to be his resting place. The funeral announcement triggered one of the most factional and discordant burial services for a celebrity. Gene Fowler met with Claude to warn him that Bill’s friends would attend the service even if private. Their meeting caused Claude to agree that the funeral service would not be private. Relatives and friends were divided into different camps, a grouping that remained through the multi-year court battles over Bill’s will. Harriet and Claude teamed up against the will’s executor Magda

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

337

Michael and Carlotta Monti. With the arrival of brother Walter and sister Adele from the East, a third faction supporting Bill’s interests developed. As executor, Magda Michael’s legal duties were to carry out Fields’s wishes. By staging a service, Hattie and Claude defied Bill’s requests. After all the quarreling, the so-called non-sectarian funeral morphed into a secular memorial without a minister officiating. On a sunny winter day at 11:30 a.m. on January 2, approximately fifty people filed into Forest Lawn’s Church of the Recessional in Glendale. The heavy casket was carried inside by stone-faced cemetery employees. The honorary pallbearers denoted a who’s who in Bill’s life: Among the movie directors and producers were William LeBaron, Leo McCarey, Eddie Sutherland, Eddie Cline, and Gregory La Cava. The Bundy Boys were represented by John Decker and Gene Fowler and the boxing ring by heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and referee Abe Roth. Then came Earl Carroll, the only showman, Bill Grady, Bill’s ex-manager, and restaurateur Dave Chasen. Attired in black, Carlotta Monti sat in the front row as conspicuous as possible where she could see her extravagant floral arrangement on an easel by the metal casket. The only remembrance connected to Fields’s years with the Ziegfeld Follies were flowers sent by Gene Buck, Flo’s right-hand man, who had engaged Bill for the revue. The service was so short and quick it seemed to be over before it started, possibly a record-breaking brief ceremony for a celebrity. It opened with an eight-minute organ recital featuring a Bach religious cantata. Edgar Bergen, the sole speaker, gave a poignant four-minute eulogy honoring the comedian. Since the radio star never left a written record of his address, the ventriloquist might have adlibbed his remarks or used brief notes. Below is Will Fowler’s version of Bergen’s eulogy, which mostly resembles newspaper accounts: He requested his friends not to weep in mourning for him. Of the five hundred religions in the world he had his own, and he hoped that his friends would understand his requests. It seems wrong not to pray for a man who gave such happiness to the world. But this was the way he wanted it. Bill knew life, and knew that laughter was the way to live it. We knew that happiness depended on disposition, not position. We simply say farewell.

Bergen’s comments published in Variety are a bit different. According to the show biz paper, the ventriloquist called Fields “one of America’s best loved men” and spoke about his great talent. The obituary concluded:

338 

A. F. WERTHEIM

“Let his faults be buried with him and let us remember instead the great happiness he gave the world.”33 With only one eulogist Bill’s friends thought that much was left unsaid about his achievements. They left feeling that the family wanted the occasion to be over as quickly as possible. The service flashed by so fast that the entire event seemed shallow and eerie. Eddie Sutherland believed “that the funeral was a mockery of everything Mr. Fields had been… but nevertheless everybody thought it was for the best. Mr. Fields was an iconoclast, agnostic, he didn’t believe in God.”34 Fields’s pals shed their sorrows in different ways. Sutherland remembered going to a saloon with La Cava to “assuage our grief.” Others went to Jack Dempsey’s house and “drank to the memory of a man who would always be a star.” The raucous gathering was the final exit Bill would have wanted.35 After the funeral, a private internment was held at the Sanctuary of Ascension in the immense Great Mausoleum where Bill’s casket was placed in a crypt. An architectural highlight of Forest Lawn, its star-studded interior comprises numerous niches, alcoves, and other interment locales where hundreds of Hollywood celebrities are buried. Four members of Bill’s immediate family, Hattie, Claude, Adele, and Walter stood watching a religious ceremony conducted by Reverend Ross Schaffer. Ignoring Bill’s wishes not to have a spiritual service, Hattie and Claude proceeded to follow the dictates of their own faiths. In a letter to his son, Bill warned that a sham funeral might occur since his beliefs differed fundamentally from his and Hattie’s Catholicism. “You set yourselves up as paragons of piety. You are both all set for a place upstairs. One would think you could be more charitable toward one who is headed for the everlasting furnace.”36 Carlotta Monti was not permitted to attend the family service, consequently she and her relatives waited outside until the family left. They entered the sanctuary where Carlotta found her floral arrangement shaped as a heart placed next to Bill’s unmarked crypt. Their ritual was conducted by the spiritualist Reverend Mae Taylor, a Hollywood mystic, who headed an unconventional sect popular in the movie colony and taught Carlotta how to communicate with the dead. After Taylor finished Carlotta took three roses from her arrangement and left, stating that “I’m going to keep on communicating with Woodie.”37 Carlotta became obsessed with Woody’s memory during her remaining years. The Chinaman claimed that she received messages from Bill at her church. She appeared often at Bill’s drawn out probate hearings,

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

339

both as a witness, claimant, and as the proceeding’s glamor queen, posing for numerous newspaper photos. After much debate, she was awarded $50 per week until the payments totaled $25,000 and Fields’s prized 16-cylinder 1938 burgundy Cadillac. As the years past, Monti resented her fate. “Here I am 22 years later living in a dive, working in a [Technicolor] factory, but for 14 years I was a millionaire,” she told an interviewer in 1968. Snubbed by Fields’s family when she was not invited to the Academy’s celebration of Bill’s 100th birthday, she arranged her own event at a Hollywood restaurant with other fans. “I heard the family didn’t want me and I don’t go where I am not wanted. They’ve always said snide things about me, using words like concubine.” She spent her declining years at the Motion Picture and Television Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, where she died at age 86, on December 8, 1993.38 After Bill’s internment ended, an elderly man, described as “stopped and unshaved” with hollow eyes and “cheeks sunken,” was spotted by an attendant near the Great Mausoleum. Wearing a raggedy overcoat with a newspaper sticking out of a pocket, soiled sweater, and “wilted collar and cuffs,” the man appeared downtrodden. “Where is Mr. Fields’ crypt?” he asked. “I knew him for 35 years, in vaudeville first, Duffy and Sweeney.” The attendant was unable to help him. “The little stooped man’s eyes narrowed and seemed to flood with reminiscences. Well, I guess it was all right that I just came here anyway,” he told the attendant. Leaving the grounds, “he shuffled away” dejectedly. The visitor was fifty-three-year-old Freddie Sweeney, who knew Bill from his vaudeville years and in Hollywood where he was a bit actor. Duffy and Sweeney, two Irishmen, performed an extremely popular nut act, a roughhouse turn accenting slapstick, kicking, and shoving. They entertained on the big-time vaudeville circuits where urban audiences found them hilarious for “their eye work, facial expressions, and pantomimic byplay.” When Duffy increased his drinking, stumbled, and raged on stage, the act plummeted in popularity and became poisonous to bookers. Duffy, a chronic alcoholic, was found dead in Times Square in 1939. His partner died in 1954 at age 60 from pneumonia. Sweeney, a kind man, never forgot Bill. He was the only old-timer who showed up at the cemetery.39 Nearly two years after Fields’s death, the Superior Court on November 19, 1948, ordered his remains cremated. Bill’s wishes were finally honored on June 3, 1949. Sealed in a bronze urn, his ashes

340 

A. F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 25.2  The gold-plated plaque on Field’s crypt. Columbarium of Nativity, The Great Mausoleum, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. Glendale, CA (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com)

25  THE MAN IN THE BRIGHT NIGHTGOWN COMETH 

341

were placed in niche 20895, Columbarium of Nativity, The Great Mausoleum, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. “I don’t think [W.C.] would have liked it in there,” said his grandson Ronald. “He didn’t like gloomy places. It can be scary there, for God’s sake.”40 A gold-plated plaque on the crypt’s front simply reads: W. C. Fields 1880–1946 (Fig. 25.2).

Epilogue: Becoming

a

Cultural Icon

“If I knew the day and hour the Man in the Bright Nightgown was coming to get me, I’d put all my dough into bills of large denominations, stand beside it on a balcony, and summon my dear relatives to watch me as I tore it into little pieces and strewed like confetti to the winds,” stated Fields. Although Bill’s balcony scene never happened, his premonition about his relatives fighting over his money occurred with a vengeance.1 Reporters had a field day of juicy stories: the verbal fisticuffs over money between Hattie and Claude (who Bill called “a pair of vultures” after his money) vs. brother Walter and sister Adele (defending Bill’s will and wishes); and the appearance of the love child, William Rexford Fields Morris, claiming his right to an inheritance as the son of Fields and Bessie Poole. Umpteen newspaper photographs appeared of the ravenhaired Latin beauty Carlotta Monti, who sought her share of the pot, while uttering inflammatory remarks on the witness stand about Hattie’s vindictiveness and generally upstaging the proceedings.2 The hearings resembled a marathon five-ring circus played on the stage of the Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles. Proceedings began on December 30, 1946, and ended on April 20, 1954—a total of eight years, three months and twenty-two days. (After final payments were distributed, the estate was formally closed on January 16, 1963, slightly more than sixteen years after Bill’s passing!) © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2

343

344  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

The most controversial issue in Bill’s will, dated April 28, 1943, was his desire after the deaths of his brother Walter, sister Adele, and Monti to create a “W. C. Fields College for orphan white [author’s italics]boys and girls, where no religion of any sort is to be preached. Harmony is the purpose of this thought.” Fields had initially created the college for all races until he read that the Pullman Porters Union had voted to exclude Caucasians from their organization, causing him to impulsively strike the word “colored” from his will. Fields’s discriminatory bequest for an all-white college was judged illegal: “Mr. Fields in his lifetime could have discriminated against other races, but he cannot in death call upon the State to undertake the administration of his affairs,” said Judge William Mckay. It is an entity “which overrides the constitutionality of equality of rights common to all races.”3 Fields’s prejudicial bequest left a stain on his reputation, especially among those who were unaware of Bill’s deeds on behalf of African Americans. Bill’s feelings toward blacks were another of those paradoxical contradictions that inhabited his dual personality. As previously discussed, Bill grew up during the Jim Crow era in Philadelphia, a city known for its racism and where he initially inherited its prejudicial views. He began to shed them as a vaudevillian when he encountered talented black entertainers and witnessed the horrible discrimination against black Africans after the Boer War in South Africa. Fields befriended his Follies colleague Bert Williams, loaned money to his African-American housekeeper, Adele Clines and her husband Frank, so that they could purchase a home, and left Adele $2500 in his will. On the positive side, Bill wrote a letter to William Randolph Hearst, owner of the Los Angeles Examiner, defending the rights of African Americans. The correspondence praised their enlistment during war and criticized the low number of blacks who have “high positions in our government.” Turning to the evil of slavery, he wrote: “They were brought here under duress but have accepted the vile treatment we have meted out to them uncomplainingly and are loyal and dependable.” Fields noted the terrible housing discrimination occurring in Los Angeles. “The housing proposition with these unfortunate loyal people is deplorable, and the rents in the colored districts are very much higher than in the white or foreign districts of homes of similar construction and age.” His letter concluded with a call for change: “I opine it is time that these loyal, neglected folks were given a little encouragement and be treated with at least… respect.”4

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  345

A revengeful Hattie saw the trial as an opportunity to get even with her deceased husband. Acting emotional at times, photographs show her crying during the proceedings. Willed $10,000, she had legal rights to sue under California’s community property laws. The presiding judge agreed that she was entitled to half the value of her husband’s $771,428 estate starting in 1927. Hattie also won reimbursements for one-half of the money her husband had given to women companions. She vindictively pursued every penny, including the numerous nationwide savings accounts where Bill had stashed money. Hattie won $128,000 from her half interest in twenty-one bank saving accounts that Fields had established outside California. Acting as if she also had a vendetta against Bill’s brother and sister, Hattie battled successfully for one-half of the proceeds of an insurance policy Fields had bought naming Walter and Adele as the beneficiaries. She also won a share of money Bill had left his bother and sister in envelopes to be opened after his death. Walter and Adele’s lawyer, Judge Preston, denounced Hattie: “In all my life I have never seen such avarice, such whetting of appetite, as this widow displays.”5 Hattie‘s largesse was whittled down to $330,000 after attorney fees, taxes, and other expenses. At age seventy-five, her inheritance remained a sizable windfall to live comfortably for the rest of her life. Claude stood by her side during the probate proceedings offering her support and legal advice. Hattie saw Claude’s wife Ruthie as a rival for her affections toward her son. Fields’s widow attempted to dominate her five grandchildren just as she had ruled Claude. She oversaw their development, schoolwork, and scolded their behavior. The children reluctantly accompanied her on excursions. Fields’s only granddaughter, Harriet, recalled that Hattie was “very difficult.”6 Ruthie resented the many times her husband spent with his mother. Claude’s wife never accompanied her five children on Sunday to visit Hattie at her home in Beverly Hills. Hattie warned the children never to mention their grandfather and she kept all of Fields’s papers and memorabilia under lock and key. Claude supported his mother’s barricade of his father’s material. “He never told any of his children that they were related to the great comedian W. C. Fields,” said the first-born grandchild W. C. Fields III. After learning about his grandfather at age 12, he went to the library to discover more information. Once Fields’s reputation began to burgeon, Hattie realized that she was suddenly the wife of a famous celebrity.

346  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

Instead of keeping her marriage secret, she now flaunted her status as the wife of a famous comedian. “She was proud of being Mrs. W. C. Fields,” her granddaughter Harriet recalls. “She played it to the hilt. I think that was her identity” until she died on November 8, 1963, at age 85.7 Hattie’s death set Claude free from the duty-bound chains that had bound him to his mother for fifty-nine years. He was now liberated to give more time to his wife and children. “My father and I were never close until I grew up,” Claude confessed to an interviewer in June 1966. “I have five children ranging in age from 22 to 16 and I hope I’m giving them all the love, the care, and closeness that I never had.” Claude was now able to resurrect his father’s reputation without any recriminations from his mother. Secretly a fan of his father, he had earlier enjoyed seeing his films. In 1938, he wrote a very warm letter to his father thanking him for the records of the Poppy radio show that he had brought to his house. Claude calls them a “revelation.” “They will augment the many other mementoes of your passed success that I have saved. I am looking forward to our next meeting. There are some 16 mm. scenes that I want you to review. Why not come for dinner?” Claude’s interest in Bill’s films became an icebreaker between father and son.8 Claude eventually became the chief spokesperson who revived his father’s oeuvre. The involvement of Fields’s son ranks as the most unexpected occurrence in the comedian’s resurgence. During a late afternoon on February 18, 1966, Claude sat nervously in the eighth-floor lounge at the Gallery of Modern Art waiting to be interviewed by Vincent Canby, film critic for the New York Times. Looking like a well-dressed “well-to-do lawyer” in his early sixties, he was sipping his habitual tea, honoring the pledge he made to his mother never to drink liquor. Canby described Claude as “grayish” bearing “a striking resemblance to the late screen and stage comedian.”9 Claude visited New York to assist Raymond Rohauer, film curator and program director at the Gallery of Modern Art, responsible for a oneweek tribute to Fields that included a daily 90-minute presentation of movies from Her Majesty Love to Sensations of 1945. Audiences flocked to the sold-out screenings. Claude made nostalgic recollections at several showings “marked by a strong and surprising sober strain of filial piety.” Although Fields’s reputation had already started to escalate by 1966, the Gallery’s tribute formalized the comedian’s revival by being held at a world-class museum. The concluding two sentences of Fields’s biography, written by Claude, in the museum’s program mentioned why a

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  347

reassessment of Bill’s career was occurring: “It is a great tribute to Fields’ penetration and irascible conceptions of human idiosyncrasies that his films are as popular today as when they were first presented. Time has not eroded any of the great talent expressed in outrageously funny scenes.”10 In early June Claude was in Boston to do newspaper interviews and participate in a television special that included his father’s film clips. While talking with Claude, a Boston television editor spotted Claude’s resemblance to his father: He has “the same genial look. The warm heartiness. The magnetic voice… but there the resemblance ended…. He has none of the raffishness of the iconoclastic man with the bulbous red noise…. And you could never imagine him chirping ‘Ah, my little chickadee.’” Claude talked about his father. “He was irascible but that was part of his charm—the essence of his humor…. He was a very nervous man. He had a split personality.” Turning to his relationship with his father, he admitted, “We were never close until I grew up.” The reporter concluded: “It is ironic that this man… should be caught up in the great W. C. renaissance that is taking place all over the country. It is now the ‘in’ thing among the college crowd and the sophisticated young marrieds to watch W. C. films.”11 Like a phoenix rising from the ashes with renewed vigor, Bill was discovered all of a sudden by a new generation. Claude was often asked why young people during the 1960s had become Fields aficionados. He gave Rohauer an insightful answer: My father exemplifies a rebellious type of humor. He was also uniquely independent, adventurous, aggressive, and I believe these qualities are seen in today’s young people. He also attempted to scoff at formality and tradition. Many people today see in my father’s comedy a certain kinship. They recognize the ironic twist of his humor. The college groups, more than any other, delight in his type of humor. The unexpected, the originality of it, the penetration and the delineation of human frailties and frustrations. “College groups have perceived in him a subtle rebellion against formality.”

During a CBS television interview on March 23, 1967, Claude stated: “My father’s deep insight to human frustrations” has spearheaded a Fieldsian cult. Claude touted his father’s films on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and PBS’s Curtain Call (1966), in which he impersonated his father in a dramatization of Fields’s life. A paragraph published in Claude’s obituary

348  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

when he died on February 16, 1971, at age 66, mentioned his involvement in his father’s renaissance: “His amazing resemblance to his famous father and his anecdotes of early days with the comedian made Fields a popular television attraction.”12 Mass magazines simultaneously began running stories about Fields’s sudden notoriety. Newsweek published an article in 1967 entitled “The Great Debunker.” “Today’s young people, alienated from an impersonal, bureaucratic world they never made, rally to the standard of the rotund, nay-saying Fields who threw bricks at the establishment, only to have those bricks invariably ricochet and crown him.”13 Bill’s resurgence sparked film festivals and the commercial release of his films. Universal issued new 35 mm prints of Bill’s four films with the studio and Paramount distributed Fields’s features in 16 mm. The theater owner Max Laemmle presented the “W. C. Fields Film Festival,” a program “to run five weeks at [the] rate of two features each week.” George Cukor believed that “he left the public something they adored. Especially young people. He seems to be their banner waiver. They queue up for blocks to hand over three dollars to see two of his one-hour pictures.” A news article aptly titled “Godfey Daniel! W. C. Dukenfield Has Returned,” mentioned that a three-week festival at the Fairfax Theater in Los Angeles “was grossing better than some of the current hard-ticketed blockbusters.” “Trend-spotters take notice,” declared film critic Judith Crist. “Fields festivals are busting out all over, in museums, revival houses, and campus auditoriums, and Fields films on television guarantee a good audience.”14 The Fields revival, which lasted through the 1970s, generated impersonations, memorabilia, and radio programs. The earliest broadcast was NBC‘s the Magnificent Rogue—The Adventures of W. C. Fields, which aired on February 28, 1956. Narrated by Fred Allen, the all-star tribute is important due to the rare recollections of performers and filmmakers who worked with Fields. His recordings sold well in stores, including broadcasts of his feuds with Charlie McCarthy and his tall tale orations. Impersonations generated a nationwide craze ranging from imitators in coffeehouses to professional actors. The Fields vogue likewise produced a multitude of mementos for sale displaying the comedian’s countenance: dolls, bookends, red-nose battery testers, porcelain figurines, cigar bands, toby mugs, card games, and umpteen liquor related items from corks to canisters. Joining the Fields craze was the publication of numerous books. The year 1971 yielded a bonanza for Fields’s fans: Fields for President was

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  349

reprinted and Carlotta Monti’s memoir was published. The publication of W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography (1973), edited by his grandson Ronald J. Fields, generated a gold mine of primary sources from the comedian’s letters to scripts—precious material that had been buried for years in Hattie’s basement. This landmark volume stands out among all the works inspired by the Fields’s revival.15 Accompanying the fad were numerous still photographs of Fields in his movies. The best seller by far was the photograph of Bill as Cuthbert J. Twillie, the ultimate confidence man and card shark, playing poker in My Little Chickadee. Cuthbert joins a poker game where he tries to deceive four rough-looking opponents. He deals from a stacked deck and discovers that he has five aces in his hand. At that precise moment, the photograph shows Twillie concealing his cards in front of him with his white-gloved hands. He is wearing a white carnation in the lapel of his pinstriped coat and his trademark stovetop hat is encircled with black cloth. The pupils of his narrow elliptical eyes are cross-eyed as he attempts to sneak a look at his opponents’ hand. Twillie’s puffed-up cheeks, taut lips, and conspicuous bulbous nose reflect the comedian’s suspicion of a threatening world. “All the pomposity of the poker ritual, all the fraudulent cogency to disguise the cheat, all of the ‘con’ and all the mistrust of a mistrustful world lie in the frown, the jowl, the shifty eye,” perceived Judith Crist16 (see frontispiece). The iconic photograph symbolizes the reasons Fields was suddenly lionized by the 1960s counterculture crusaders against the establishment. “Dealers in pop-poster blow-ups of movie-star photos report that ‘the younger crowd’ hitherto sold on Brando and Bogey and Belmondo, are starting to switch to W. C. Fields, long an established favorite with ‘the intellectual Madison Avenue types,’” announced Crist. The photograph was pasted on walls in college dormitory rooms, offices, homes, and at bohemian locales such as coffee houses in Greenwich Village and Haight-Asbury. The owner of a personality poster company declared: “The older people remember him with nostalgia, but young people are discovering him, too; they think he’s great. They dig his irreverence.”17 “W. C. Fields won the hearts of American schoolboys during the sixties,” wrote the sultry bob-haired Jazz Age luminary Louise Brooks, who caught Fields’s eye playing Elmer Prettywillie’s assistant in It’s the Old Army Game (1926). Now an elderly recluse in Rochester, NY, her films were also being rediscovered partly due to writing reminiscences of her experiences in Hollywood. Her recollections of Fields first appeared in

350  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

Sight and Sound (Spring 1971) and later in her book Lulu in Hollywood (1982). The college crowd visited Brooks anxious to prod “a forlorn old actress” with questions for their term papers. She discovered that they “knew only my name and had never seen any of my films.” She also found that the “schoolboys” had seen few of Bill’s films; many could not even recall the titles. “The Fields they idolized was the man they read about and superimposed on the Fields they saw (or didn’t see) on the screen.”18 Magda Michael recalled in 1974 that Fields had a rebellious streak. Fields’s reaction to “You can’t do that” was “Oh, yes I can,” she said. “I never thought about him going on forever, but in revival he is as strong as he was in his heyday. I don’t believe that in his wildest imagination he would have believed he would be this popular so many years after his death.”19 The disenchanted warriors of the 1960s were rebelling against some of the same sacred cows Fields had lambasted. “A sacred cow was only a hunk of meat to be barbequed,” observed Monti about Bill “Among his pet hates were doctors, lawyers, children, dogs, henpecked fathers, pedantic women, script writers, studio property men, churchgoers, bluenoses, bankers, and the Internal Revenue Service…. Single-handedly he wanted to fight the entire social system.” An avid individualist, Bill ripped apart middle-class morality, the sanctity of marriage, and cutthroat business enterprises where charlatans survived and suckers perished. Fields’s open defense of alcohol as man’s best friend appealed to the long-haired unconventionally dressed hippies who sought to get high on drugs. “Woody antedated today’s protestors by many years,” believed Monti. “Woody was constantly at war against what the younger generation now terms the Establishment.”20 Although Bill’s magnetism drew followers of the counterculture, Fields had less appeal among members of the New Left, who wanted to change America’s political system, which they viewed as corrupt, inequitable, and autocratic. Except for Bill’s’ involvement in actors’ unions, opposition to Prohibition, and support for the underdog, he rarely engaged in political struggles. Bill was essentially a libertarian, an avid believer in freedom from moral, social, and cultural shackles. His tonguein-cheek book announcing his candidacy for the nation’s highest office, Fields for President (1940), comprising articles on caring for babies, marriage, the income tax, and etiquette were mainly satire rather than serious political discourse. Fields battled against the stringent mores that suffocated freedom from Hollywood censors to temperance crusaders. He was

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  351

consequently viewed by the generation of the sixties as a cultural-social iconoclast rather than a political rebel.21 Before the 1960s a handful of farsighted aficionados hailed Fields for expressing the human condition—the frustrating struggles of underdogs against a threatening world. Fields’s vaudeville act was once spotted by J. B Priestley, the British novelist and playwright, who watched him perform in a music hall and saw him petrified by a wobbly cigar box “as if some evil influences were at work…. He moved, warily in spite of a hastily assumed air of nonchalant confidence, through a world in which even the inanimate objects were hostile, rebellious, menacing, never to be trusted.” Witnessing Fields play the mountebank McGargle in Poppy (1924), Gilbert Seldes, a foremost cultural historian, wrote that Fields represented the “cosmic tragedy of a man against whom all inanimate nature is in league.” Watching Fields juggling in the play Ballyhoo (1931), the critic Heywood Broun noticed Bill’s ability to make tragic the crashing of a dozen balanced pyramided cigar boxes on stage. “He has the talent to take laughter to a higher plane where it reverberates with questions about Everyman’s predicament. Mr. Fields at play among the planets suggests to me an Einsteinian quality.”22 Once Fields became a leading comedian in the early sound era newspaper and magazine film critics noticed how Bill’s exceptional vocal intonations enhanced the frustrations his screen characters experienced as they battled against a hostile cosmos. As cinema’s prominence grew, newspaper and magazines hired their own film critics, a trend that increased sales and subscriptions once the reviewer gained a following. Fields’s champions included Andre Sennewald, the New York Times critic. Although previously mentioned, Sennewald’s sentence in his article “W. C. Fields, Buffoon” bears repeating: “Not to be aware of the tragic overtones in the work of this middle-aged, whisky-nosed, fumbling and wistfully incompetent gentlemen is to be ignorant of the same tragic overtones in the comedy of Don Quixote de la Mancha.” Reviewing Never Give a Sucker an Even Break in 1941, the New Republic’s Otis Ferguson also recognized a heroic quality in Fields’s characterizations. “If there was ever a great clown in this time of changeover from beer and music hall to the universal distribution of radio and films, I would say it was in the person and the character and the undying if corny gusto of Bill Fields, who moved mountains until they fell on him, and then brushed himself off and looked around for more.”23

352  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

James Agee, film critic for The Nation and Time magazines, became one of Fields’s most significant cheerleaders. In a masterful article in Life magazine in 1949, entitled “Comedy’s Greatest Era,” Agee was the first respected film critic after World War Two to recognize Fields’s importance in film comedy. “The talkies brought one great comedian,” Agee wrote, “the late majestically lethargic W. C. Fields, who could not possibly have worked as well in silents… he was the toughest and most warmly human of all screen comedians. It’s a Gift and The Bank Dick, fiendishly and incisive white-collar comedies, rank high among the best comedies (and best movies) ever made.”24 Agee was possibly the first critic to notice the brilliance of the two films, which never won recognition during Fields’s life, Both were later named to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress along with the silent So’s Your Old Man. Agee’s championship of Fields laid the foundation for his resurgence during the 1960s and beyond. Two significant books published during the 1960s that fully covered Fields’s silent and screen work were Donald Deschner’s The Films of W. C. Fields (1966) and William K. Everson’s The Art of W. C. Fields (1967). Deschner’s volume is introduced by film historian Arthur Knight who writes: “Audiences everywhere recognized that Fields’s aggressions were their aggressions, too…. The cards were always stacked against them, too. They loved the unlovable Fields emphatically because they understood that in his funny, twisted, implacable way, he was eternally fighting the same enemies they were.” Everson’s volume ends on the same note. After hailing Fields as the “funniest natural comedian of them all,” he justifies his opinion by stating: “Fields made us see” that “there is always something funny—often hilariously so—in the most depressing drudgeries and most saddening tragedies of life…. In laughing at him, we were laughing at life.” By exploring Fields’s complete screen oeuvre both volumes enhanced the comedian’s reputation.25 Other cheerleaders on Fields’s bandwagon were insightful film critics who boosted the comedian’s reputation. Judith Crist, a renowned newspaper and television film reviewer, was at the forefront of the movement. Crist called Fields the “Anti-Establishment Man” in 1967, a time when the nation was coming apart with anti-war and civil rights protests. The expression “establishment” summed up in a singular word the institutions the counterculture attacked. Crist saw Fields as an iconoclast who through comedy upended the “establishment” of his time. “That Fields found so much to laugh, that he could convert (or sublimate) his

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  353

bitterness into a laugh-producing stock in trade is remarkable,” wrote Crist. “There were no assassins in Fields’ world—only frauds and fools of the Establishment—and it took a genius, in the guise of a fraudulent fool, to declare war on behalf of the anti-Establishmentarians.”26 Crist was also among the first to recognize Fields’s astonishing accomplishments during the first half of the twentieth century. She wrote: “He bestrode a half-century of American entertainment like a Colossus, from the music hall and vaudeville stages of the Nineties to turn-of-thecentury tour circuits to the Broadway stage of the ‘teens and Twenties, to Hollywood of the Thirties and Forties, to radio.”27 Joining the vogue were two well-known New Yorker film critics, Penelope Gilliatt and Pauline Kael. Gilliatt became best known for her perceptive reviews on comedy, exemplified by her 1969 New Yorker article, “To W. C. Fields, Dyspeptic Mumbler, Who Invented His Own Way Out.” On Fields’s retorts: “In his great films he is always the reactor. He plays the muttering straight to Life, the counterblow to a punch in the stomach.” On Fields’s sweet talk: “No one can use endearments more dangerously than Fields. In It’s a Gift the storekeeper Bissonette shouts ‘please sit down, honey’ to the blind man, Mr. Murkle, who is about to destroy a stack of light bulbs.” On Fields’s targets: “His open and implacable hostility is beamed at the fortunate, the armor-plated, and the prissy.” On his revival: “It isn’t surprising that new generations have loved him, and that a record of his clips from his sound tracks is on the hit parade. I would say he was one of the four or five funniest men we have lately in the world.”28 Pauline Kael wrote poignant reviews during her twenty-two years at The New Yorker, including several that lauded Fields. She called Million Dollar Legs, a far-out satire on the Olympics, “one of the silliest and funniest pictures ever made.” Although she found My Little Chickadee “a classic among bad movies,” she praised Fields’s performance as a “scowling, snarling misanthrope” who cheats at cards, sleeps with a goat, and kisses Mae West’s hand exclaiming—“What symmetrical digits!” The Fatal Glass of Beer, she wrote, is “the wildest of W. C. Fields’ 2-reelers and the best” with “a great punch line—‘It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast.’”29 Kael’s opinion of Fields contained a major caveat. Not everyone fell in love with Bill’s screen personae—“he was shifty, weaseling, mean-spirited, put upon.” For women, “he is an acquired taste—like sourmash bourbon. But then you can’t go on sipping daiquiris forever.”30

354  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

That males more than women enjoy Fields’s acerbic humor is an insightful observation others have mentioned. Kael’s assumption might be accurate, given that so many overbearing women in Fields’s films suppress male milquetoasts and at other times the men become sly rogues or at worst misogynists. In his 1966 article “The Dark Geography of W. C. Fields,” the novelist William Markfield agreed with Kael that “men took to him [Fields] as they might take to a beloved, disreputable drinking companion.” To substantiate his opinion, he quoted theater critic Kenneth Tynan’s observation that Fields was “pre-eminently a man’s comedian.” Citing his “own private poll,” Markfield concluded that “women regard him as physically repugnant, a dirty old man, faintly sinister and, with justice, a mortal enemy to their kind.” Besides delving into Fields’s negative traits, Markfield commended Fields for developing characters from “the dark geography of his mind.” His ability enabled him to become “the screen’s supreme poet of petty harassment,” who informs us about a long list of threats from “carping mothers-in laws” to “assorted cranks, kooks and fanatics who have worn him down, bested him in every engagement.” Fields, he wrote, was “superbly endowed… He could do a dazzling recitation of comedy’s basic physical vocabulary—pratfall, pantomime, mugging, double-take, deadpan” as he fought “against inanimate things.” He is “one of the greatest comic artist to cross the light of the screen.” As for his current revival, Fields’s “admission to camp ground was long coming.” (The expression “camp” refers to the “blatantly outrageous” aesthetics of the counterculture, a catch-all word to express a “third stream of taste” between good and bad taste.) “Suddenly, surprisingly, his film festivals are doing at least as well as ‘Casablanca’ or ‘King Kong’; cinema societies plead for prints.”31 Fields had much in common with the wave of counterculture standup comedians, who started to appear during the 1950s in urban comedy clubs, small nightclub “chichi” rooms, coffeehouses, and bottom-rung run-down locales called “toilets.” Their experience mirrored the way neophyte comedians usually started. During the late 1890s Fields began his career entertaining in a Philadelphia beer saloon and at fraternal lodges, union halls, and church socials. During the fifties, the new comics revolted against a time dominated by the organization man, consumerism, censorship, and conformity. The period’s silent generation, named because of their quiet acceptance of a conventional lifestyle, gave the upcoming comics considerable fodder to launch a full-scale attack on

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  355

mainstream values. The targets of their rage against the sanctified and hallowed traditions that ruled America were akin to Fields’s objects of ridicule. Their outspoken irreverent comments caused a backlash by ­ opponents who labeled their humor “sick.” In 1959, a Time magazine critic wrote “what the sicknics dispense is partly social criticism liberally laced with cyanide… and partly a persona and highly disturbingly hostility toward the world.”32 Mort Sahl stood out among the new comedians during the fifties. Because he was different and rebellious, Sahl spent years attempting to break into the club circuit until 1953 when he became a big hit at San Francisco’s hungry i nightclub, then an eighty-three seat cellar destined for fame. His biting social and political humor broke with the formal structured style practiced by traditional humorists such as Milton Berle and Bob Hope. His caustic comments satirizing the decade’s political and social establishment appealed to the liberal college crowd. These fans were beginning to awake from their long slumber of quiet naiveté to question their parents’ lifestyle of materialism, suburban domesticity, and conservatism. Sahl’s wardrobe even defied the customary coat and tie. He arrived on stage wearing a cashmere sweater over his shirt, with a newspaper in his pocket, and often sat on a stool. As an outspoken iconoclast, he poked fun at some of the same institutions that had irked Fields. On doctors and the American Medical Association: “The AMA opposes chiropractors and witch doctors, and any cure that’s quick or inexpensive.” On religion: “I don’t see why some Catholics are for capital punishments. Look at the very big mistake they made once.”33 More irreverent counterculture comedians engaging in knife-like social commentary emerged during the late 1950s and 1960s. They differed widely in style when placed on a spectrum that ran from self-deprecating parody to self-destructing ferocity. At one end stands Woody Allen who got his start as a standup comic in Greenwich Village clubs during the 1960s. Allen’s nerd-looking nebbish appearance (skinny, glasses, red hair, timid, etc.) gave him comic fodder to play the ultimate schlemiel, the alienated urban Jew victimized by life. He spewed a barrage of one-liners, a funny “mayhem of madcap juxtapositions,” in a conversational monologue that defined him as an unfortunate bumbler. “When playing softball, I’d steal second base then feeling guilty, I returned to first. I spent $1000 to have my nose fixed. Now, my brain doesn’t work. Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on the weekend. I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I plan to bring a

356  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

change of underwear.” Both Allen and Fields impersonated bunglers who exuded frustration. The two used humor to shield themselves from a treacherous impinging universe. The roots of their comedy were highly autobiographical starting with troubled childhoods, rebellious adolescence, and insecurity as neophyte performers. Instead of focusing on politics and war, they mocked the ironies and absurdities of living—from birth to death and in between their maddening relationships to women, sex, marriage, and the shibboleths of society. If Allen’s iconoclasm was subtle and understated, Fields’s was more blatant and hyperbolic. In their own ways, however, they were comrades in arms. Allen later lauded Fields as one of six “genuine comic geniuses,” along with Chaplin, Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers. At the spectrum’s other end stood far-out standup comic Lenny Bruce, who used off-the-wall profanity, ethnic expressions, satire, and improvisation to battle the establishment. “He is a true iconoclast. Others josh, snipe, and rib; only Bruce demolishes,” wrote Kenneth Tynan in his introduction to the brash comedian’s classic book. Some of his bulls-eye targets such as religion, morality, hypocrisy, freedom of speech, and the judicial system can be found in Fields’s bag of hates. If Bill freely touted his consumption of alcohol, Bruce openly flaunted narcotics. Their habit-forming remedies, needed to exorcize their demons, plunged Fields and Bruce on a road to self-destruction. In 1966, Bruce succumbed at age 40 when he stuck the decisive needle into his body while sitting on a toilet. As a counterculture hero and the era’s most forthright comedian, Bruce “became an honored martyr in the anti-Establishment pantheon.”34 Because Fields was seen as a pathfinder of the anti-establishment movement that rocked America, he was depicted with other heroes of the counterculture on the 1967 album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band recording. An important milestone in the evolution of progressive rock music, the best-selling album contains popular Beatle songs such as “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The psychedelic cover glows with a spectrum of bright colors. In the center is a large drum skin with the album’s name and above in the first row are the mustache-bearing Beatles dressed in satirical military uniforms. To their left are Madame Tussauds’ wax sculptures depicting the earlier mop-top Beatles dressed in suits (Fig. Epilogue. 1). Designed by artist Peter Blake, the album cover depicts the Beatles as members of Sgt. Pepper’s band who had just concluded a concert in a park. Paul McCartney “thought it would be interesting for us to pretend…

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  357

that we were members of this band rather than The Beatles, in order to give us a fresh slant.” For the cover, Blake thought of creating a collage of numerous admirers behind the band and asked the Beatles to make lists of people they wanted. “We then got all the photographs together and had life-size cut-outs made onto hardboard,” recalled Blake.35

Fig. Epilogue. 1  Fields is depicted on the 1967 album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Fields is in the top row six from left wearing a yellow hat. On his left side is Karlheinz Stockhausen (composer) and on his right side Carl Jung (psychiatrist). Third figure on the top row (left side) is Mae West followed by Lenny Bruce. At the row’s end to the right is Bob Dylan. Author’s Collection

358  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

Fifty-seven photographs form a collage of faces representing the sixties cultural revolution, ranging from writers to scientists and entertainers to sportsmen. Fields is seen in the top row wearing his signature straw hat between the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and the German avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Next to Stockhausen is Lenny Bruce whose face touches Bill’s chickadee, Mae West. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are two other comedians in the grouping. Other figures include musician Bob Dylan, film stars Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, the artist Aubrey Beardsley, the boxer Sonny Liston, the writers Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, Stephen Crane, George Bernard Shaw, and Karl Marx, among others. Gurus from the Self-Realization Fellowships exemplify the Beatles’ interest in Indian religious philosophy. Bill’s inclusion with this illustrious group signifies his importance during the 1960s as a cultural iconoclast. The critic David Denby called Fields “the ultimate hipster—the clear spiritual predecessor of such figures as Bob Dylan, who talked in hostile, snarling riddles; Abbie Hoffman, the Dada master; and Norman Mailer in his cups, muttering dark obscurities to the media.”36 Recognized as an individualist unafraid to slam ingrained beliefs, shibboleths, censorship, and other societal constraints, the counterculture rebels saw Fields as a freedom fighter, a liberator who through comedy satirized society’s suppressions. His sudden resurgence also spread to Europe, especially among the Surrealist painters, who celebrated the film comedian’s anarchism and absurdism, as exemplified by Max Ernst’s red, blue, and green painting Project for a Monument to W. C. Fields (1957). The culmination of Fields’s phoenix-like rise from obscurity to idolization arrived on January 29, 1980, the 100th anniversary of his birth, at a celebration held in honor at the Academy of Arts and Science. The program included reminiscences by fellow entertainers and two 40-minute film segments. The evening’s highlight was the presence of the U.S. postmaster general who officially issued a commemorative fifteen-cent stamp depicting Fields. The stamp was the fourth in the Performing Arts Series that began in 1978. The stamp shows two portraits of Bill. The largest pictures depict Fields in his showman’s garb, adorned in a “brown frock coat, striped shirt and separate stiff white collar and dotted brown bow tie” and brown “familiar top hat.” The smaller portrait depicts Fields in similar attire juggling green and yellow balls. Bold black

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  359

letters at the top spell out his name and the smaller black letters at the bottom read “PerformingArtsUSA15c”37 (Fig. Epilogue. 2). The Fields resurgence dwindled during the conservative 1980s when the counterculture movement gradually declined. The former 1960s twenty somethings became the 1980s fortysomethings, which one writer called “The Graying of Aquarius.” Part of the movement’s decline came when the mainstream media coopted its most vocal leaders by commercializing the Beatles, the Beats, and Hippies. “I have the feeling that W. C. Fields is no longer a great figure for people who love movies,” wrote Denby in 1989. “Fields’s movies are only sporadically available in video stores (where many young clerks look blank when you mention his name). It’s a Gift (1934), his middle–period peak, has been forgotten—which is a shame, since it’s one of the greatest movie comedies ever made.”38 Despite the movement’s eventual decline, Fields’s resurgence spawned a continual interest in his work. Availability of his movies on video and DVD enable older fans to again appreciate his humor and younger generations to discover a hilarious comedian. After Universal Studios named its longest street W. C. Fields Drive in 2012, the studio released eighteen digitized versions of his films in 2015. Several specials on Fields appeared on television, including Ronald Fields’s groundbreaking W. C. Fields Straight Up, a PBS Emmy Award documentary (1986), comprising valuable interviews with people who knew the comedian. During the twenty-first century, Fields movie festivals have occurred around the world and in the US, including New York’s Film Forum in 2011. Two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located on Hollywood Boulevard honor Fields’s work in film and radio. Fields has been viewed as a comedian’s comedian by leading figures of silent screen comedy. Buster Keaton declared: “W. C. Fields is one of the greatest creative comedians on the American stage. He is unique, original and side-splitting.” Harold Lloyd remarked: “W. C. Fields was one of the greatest comedians of any era.”39 Besides Woody Allen, mentioned above, other current comedians see Fields as a groundbreaking comic and an inspiration for their work. John Cleese of Monty Python fame has recognized Fields’s significance: “I discovered W. C. Fields long ago after I was familiar with Chaplin, Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy and immediately like him the best…. Fields had the courage to play the disreputable character and the brilliance to make riskier and more profound jokes.” Asked by James Upton on Inside Actors Studio, “Who makes you laugh?” Conan O’Brien replied: “W. C. Fields I think is maybe the funniest man that ever lived.”40

360  Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

Epilogue: Becoming a Cultural Icon

  361

◀ Fig. Epilogue. 2  Fields honored on the Performing Arts and Artists Series Stamp, issued in 1980 on the occasion of his 100th birthday

Reassessment of Fields’s oeuvre has secured his place among the top pantheon of great film comedians. He echoed on the screen the most frustrating and painful experiences of the human condition. Comedy brought Bill relief from the demons who had haunted him during his lifetime. Humor also presented an opportunity for Fields to inspire humankind: “If I can make them laugh and through that laughter make this old world seem just a little brighter, then I am satisfied.” As the future evolves, W. C. Fields—“the harried man of the family” and “the noblest confidence man of them all”—promises to give the gift of laughter to generations to come.41

Notes

Prologue 1. N  YHT, December 23, 1930; NYG, January 22, 1931; The Nation, January 7, 1931. 2. WCFBH, 76. 3. The Peregrinations & Pettifoggery of W. C. Fields, exhibition document, June 22, 2010. 4. Will Fowler, “The Ghost of Christmas’ Past,” LAT, December 24, 1996, 6. 5.  Quotations stem from the DVD W. C. Fields Extravagance, disc #1, Comedy Talkie Shorts, The Golf Specialist, Passport Video, 2006. 6. Allan Wood, “On Stage with W. C. Fields,” Witzend, no. 9, 1973. 7. Ed Sullivan, “That Loveable Liar: An Appreciation of W. C. Fields and His Gift for Picturesque Exaggeration,” Silver Screen (September 1935), 14. 8. “Just a Loveable Old So-and-So,” Film Weekly, December 7, 1934. 9. W. Buchanan-Taylor, Shake the Bottle (London: Heath Cranton, 1942), 216; Detroit News, November 16, 1915, clipping, W. C. Fields file, NYPAL; Deposition of Ed Wynn, August 16, 1951, box 38, WCFP. 10. Gilbert Seldes, “Fred Stone and W. C. Fields,” Vanity Fair, April 1924, scrapbook #10, WCFP. 11. Cullen Gallagher, “The Gift of Gag: Speaking Fields,” lateen.com. April 30, 1911. 12. Sight and Sound, February 1951, clipping MOMAFST. 13. Claudio R. Salvucci, The Philadelphia Dialect Dictionary (Bucks County, PA: Evolution Publishing, 1996). 14. Gallagher, “The Gift of Gag,” April 30, 1911. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2

363

364  Notes 15.  Carlotta Monti with Cy Rice, W. C. Fields and Me (Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), Introduction. 16. Raymond Rohauer, interview with W. Claude Fields, Jr., February 21, 1967, MOMA. 17. Sullivan, “That Loveable Liar,” 15. 18. NYT, April 26, 1959. 19. MPW, July 5, 1930. 20. Sullivan, “That Loveable Liar,” 15. 21. Taylor, W. C. Fields, 211. 22. Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, 80. 23. Taylor, W. C. Fields, 211.

Chapter 1 1. Taylor, W. C. Fields, 213. 2. Mississippi Press Book, March 26, 1935, LOC-MPD; Ida Zeitlin, “Fields in Clover,” Screenland (August 1935), 73. 3.  Richard B. Jewell, The Golden Age of Cinema, Hollywood 1929–1945 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 261. 4. Fields, “Over a Barrel,” Esquire (October 1934), 139. 5. Ibid. 6. Zeitlin, “Fields in Clover,” 73. 7. Gehring, W. C. Fields, 41; Curtis, W. C. Fields, 237. 8. Her Majesty Love, independent DVD, author’s collection. 9. Louvish, Man on the Flying Trapeze, 329. 10. Warren G. Harris, The Other Marilyn, a Biography of Marilyn Miller (New York: Arbor House, 1985), 186. 11. Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields, 63, 67; Hollywood Reporter, October 31, 1931, 3. 12. Hollywood Herald, Variety, Her Majesty Love, production file, AMPAS; Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 68. 13. Harris, The Other Marilyn, 191. 14. Fields, “Over a Barrel,” 139; WCFBH, March 22, 1932, 139–40. 15. Fields, “Over a Barrel,” 139. 16. Interview with Joseph Mankiewicz, Ronald J. Fields, Straight Up; Clipping, scrapbook 10, WCFP. 17.  Paramount Script Collection, Release Dialogue Script, June 30, 1932, AMPAS. 18. McCaffrey, Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema, 275. 19. May 27, 1932, WCFBH, 268. 20. WCFALOF, 84.

Notes

  365

21. NYA, July 9, 1932; NYHT, July 7, 1932; Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 481; NYEJ, August 19, 193. 22. “Joseph L. Mankiewicz Interviews,” ed. Brian Dauth (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 29, 173. 23. Fields, “Over a Barrel,” 139. 24. If I Had A Million, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, episode of “Emily, Rollo, and the Road Hogs,” final script, September 8, 1932, AMPAS. 25. If I Had A Million, final script, September 8, 1932, pp.9–10, AMPAS. 26. Baltimore Post, October 9, 1930, Scrapbook #12, WCFP. 27. Joseph L. Mankiewicz Interviews, 39. 28. Cinema Texas program notes, August 31, 1981, copy MOMAFSC; Bergman, We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 41; Brock, Hollywood Filmograph, December 10, 1933; Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 355. 29. “The Reminiscences of Bert Wheeler,” September 25, 1958, p. 12, Oral History Collection, Columbia University. 30. Joe Mankiewicz interview, “W. C. Straight Up—unedited interviews,” videocassettes # r9, #r10, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University Library.

Chapter 2 1. Magnificent Rogue, The Adventures of W. C. Fields, NBC, Biography in Sound, February 28, 1956. 2.  Ibid; Mack Sennett with Cameron Shipp, King of Comedy (1954; San Francisco, CA: Mercury House). 3. King of Comedy, 19. 4. Ibid, 267. 5. The Dentist Dialogue Script, Max Sennett Collection, folder 134, AMPAS; The Dentist, Six W.C. Fields Short Films DVD, Criterion Collection, 2000. 6. Zits, September 22, 1922, scrapbook #13, WCFP; Andy Newman, “Before ‘Chickadee’ Fame, Fields Had Canary Trouble,” NYT, City Room Blog, Local History, September 9, 2012, accessed September 18, 2013; transcript, The People of the City of New York on Complaint of Officer Harry Moran vs. William C. Fields, September 14, 1928, NYT, September 9, 2012. 7. MPH, June 24, 1933. 8.  WCF as told to Jim Tully, “Watching His Step,” Boston Sun, clipping, WCFP; letter to Mack Sennett, WCFBH, December 18, 1932, 269–70. 9. Harold Bloom, “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” The Movies that Changed My Life, ed., David L. Rosenberg (New York: Viking Penguin, 1991). 10. Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields, 88–89.

366  Notes 11. W. C. Fields, Extravaganza, DVD, disc 1, comedy talkie shorts, The Fatal Glass of Beer, Passport Video, 2005; The Fatal Glass of Beer, transcription, http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/WCFatal,Beer. 12. MPH, July 8, 1933. 13. Bloom, “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” 56. 14. The Art of W. C. Fields, 85. 15. WCF to Sutton, October 24, 1940, box 25, WCFP; Leonard Maltin, ed., The Real Stars: Profiles and Interviews of Hollywood’s Unsung Feature Players (New York: Curtis Books, 2015), 259–60, 264. 16. Sennett, King of Comedy, 276. 17. The Barber Shop script, LOC-MPD; The Barber Shop, Six W. C. Fields’ Short Films, DVD, Criterion Collection, 2000. 18. Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 76, 79. 19. “Mack Sennett and the Lost Art of Comedy,” NYT, February 15, 1948.

Chapter 3 1. Sennett, King of Comedy, 267. 2. Emily Carmen, Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 20. 3. International House Paramount Press Book, June 5, 1933, MPD-LOC. 4. Constance Rosenblum, Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 9. 5. Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (New York; Simon and Schuster, 1964), 298. 6. Variety, May 30, 1933. 7. “If English Fails, Fields Invents His Own Words,” Paramount Press Book, Poppy, June 29, 1936, p. 26, LOC; Sutherland interview, February 1959, CFOHCU, 151; WCFALOF, 115. 8. Arrival Scene, Reel 4, pp. 2–6. 9.  Wingate to Botsford, May 8, 1933, MPAA Production Code Files, International House file, AMPAS. 10. A. M. Botsford to Dr. James Wingate, May 10, 1933, MPAA Production Code Files, International House file, AMPAS. 11. Wingate to James B.M. Fisher, June 23, 1933, MPAA Production Code Files, International House file, AMPAS. 12. Dudley Early, “The Gentlemen Speaks His Mind,” Family Circle (April 8, 1938), 12. 13. Carl E. Milliken to Joseph Breen, June 22, 1933, MPAA Production Code Files, International House file, AMPAS; Breen to John Hammel, October 8, 1935, MPAA Production Code Files, International House file, AMPAS. 14. Richard J. Anobile, ed., Godfrey Daniels! (New York: Avon Books, 1975), 6.

Notes

  367

15. NYDM, June 1, 1933; MPH, May 20, 1933; HR, May 8, 1933; NYT, May 27, 1933.

Chapter 4 1. Maude Cheatham, “Juggler of Laughs,” Silver Screen, April 1935, 31, 62. 2. HR, May 25, 1933. 3.  Contract Option Agreement between Paramount Publix Corporation and W.C. Fields, May 25, 1933, box 12, file, legal-contracts Paramount Contracts, ranging 1932–35, WCFP. 4. Ibid. 5. Richard J. Anobile, ed., A Flask of Fields: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Films of W. C. Fields (New York: Darien House, 1972), 23, 28–29; Three Films of W. C. Fields (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), 86. 6. Three Films of W. C. Fields, 99. 7. Ibid, 93. 8. NYT, November 13, 1933. 9. Time, November 23, 1933; NYT, November 13, 1933. 10. September 30, 1933, box 12, WCFP. 11. NYT Sunday Book Review, June 8, 2015; NYT, February 26, 2010. 12. NYT, October 1, 1933. 13. Frank Westmore and Muriel Davidson, The Westmores of Hollywood (New York: Lippincott, 1976), 21–22. 14. Ibid, 101. 15. NYT, December 23, 1933; Literary Digest, June 6, 1934; The Art of W. C. Fields, 106. 16. Excerpt of W.C. Fields’s Scene in Alice in Wonderland Script, reel 5, p. 11. Paramount Pictures Collection, AMPAS. 17. NYT, December 23, 1933; Variety, December 26, 1933; CDT, December 23, 1933. 18.  “Magnificent Rogue: The Adventures of W. C. Fields,” Biography and Sound, narrated by Fred Allen, NBC radio, February 28, 1956. 19. Wes D. Gehring, Leo McCarey: From Marx to McCarthy (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 104; Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It, Conversations with Legendary Film Directors (New York: Knopf, 1997), 407–08. 20.  Paramount Pictures Script Collection, Six of a Kind, Release Dialogue Script, January 7, 1934, AMPAS. 21. McCarey interview, Magnificent Rogue, the Adventures of W. C. Fields; Bogdanovich, 384. 22. NYW, January 27, 1924, scrapbook #10, WCFP. 23. Grady, The Irish Peacock, 31–32.

368  Notes 24. Tammany Young, “World’s Champion Gate Casher,” Paramount Biography File, p. 5, AMPAS. 25. Alva Johnston, “Who Knows What is Funny?,” SEP, August 6, 1938, 10. 26. Marian Spitzer, The Palace (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 63. 27. Melbourne Table Talk, May 28, 1914, scrapbook #29, WCFP. 28. “Fields’ Fish Tale,” Kansas City Journal, March 27, 1903, scrapbook #27, WCFP. 29.  Paramount Pictures Script Collection, Six of a Kind, Release Dialogue Script, January 27, 1934, AMPAS. 30. “Tribute to a Grand Film Clown,” Film Weekly (London), July 6, 1934, scrapbook #OS-49, WCFP; NYHT, March 10, 1934, clipping, scrapbook #30, WCFP; Deschner, Films of W. C. Fields, 90. 31. Deschner, 91.

Chapter 5 1.  “Magnificent Rogue, “The Adventures of W. C. Fields,” NBC radio, Biography and Sound with Fred Allen, Feb. 28, 1956; Zeitlin, “Fields in Clover.”2. 2. David Denby, “The Artists,” New Yorker, February 27, 2012, 74, 76. 3. Ibid. 4. Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns (1980; New York: De Capo Paperback, 1990), 295. 5. Quotations derive from the Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection, You’re Telling Me, Release Dialogue Script, March 28, 1934, AMPAS; W. C. Fields Comedy Collection, vol. 2, You’re Telling Me, DVD, Universal Studios, 2007. 6. W. C. Fields, “Anything for a Laugh,” in Donald Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields (New York: Citadel Press, 1966), 31–32; from American Magazine (September 1934), 129–30. 7. LAT, June 16, 1935. 8. Argus, “On the Current Screen,” The Literary Digest, April 21, 1934, 39. 9. The Funny Parts: A History of Film Comedy Routines and Gags (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 42. 10. LAT, April 7, 1934. 11. J. P. McEvoy, “Go on Make Me Laugh,” SEP, Dec. 24, 1932, 46. 12. April 16, 1934. 13. Daily News, April 7, 1934; Literary Digest, April 21, 1934; HR, New York Reviews, AMPAS; LAT, April 7, 1934, April 15, 1934.

Notes

  369

Chapter 6 1. WCFBH, 270; “Playing the Sticks” is published in WCFBH, 270–92. 2. Wendy L. Marshall, William Beaudine: From Silents to Television (Langham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 164. 3.  William Beaudine, “Just a Loveable Old So-and-So,” Film Weekly, December 7, 1934, box 9, 1930–39, clippings, WCFP. 4. Ibid; Marshall, William Beaudine, 166. 5.  Robert Wilson, ed., The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1971), 89. 6. Beaudine, “Just a Loveable Old So-and So,” 3. 7. Breen to Botsford, March 20, 1934, The Old Fashioned Way file, MPAA Production Code Administration Records, AMPAS. 8.  Breen to Botsford, April 23, 1934, The Old Fashioned Way file, MPAA Production Code Administration Records, WCFP. 9. HR, June 29, 1934. 10. Manchester Evening News, February 22, 1935, scrapbook #18, WCFP; Beaudine, “Just a Loveable Old So-and-So.” 11. Arthur Frank Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 67, 69. 12. Dialogue taken from The Old Fashioned Way, Release Dialogue Script, July 5, 1934, Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection; The Old Fashioned Way, W. C. Fields Comedy Collection, DVD, Universal Studios, 2007. 13. Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 97; LAT, July 7, 194–97; The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, 88–89.

Chapter 7 1. Charles Stumpf, ZaSu Pitts: The Life and Career (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 65. 2. Beaudine, “Just a Loveable Old So-and So.” 3. Stumpf, Zasu Pitts, 65. 4. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch file, Paramount Pictures Scripts, AMPAS; DVD, Universal Vault Series, May 27, 2014. 5. The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, 88; Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 101; Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields, 113. 6. Fields to Tully, November 26, 1934, WCFP. 7. LAT, December 4, 1934, 13. 8. Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields, 113.

370  Notes

Chapter 8 1.  Jack Grant, “That Nose of W. C. Fields, Movie Classic, February 1935, scrapbook #6, WCFP. 2. LST, December 30, 1934, scrapbook #16, WCFP. 3. NYT, July 22, 1934, sec. 9, 3. 4. Variety, April 29, 1936. 5. NYT, January 5, 1935. 6. Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 255. 7. WCFALOF, 161; WCFBH, 163–64; PPR, ca. 1934, WCFP. 8. Prelutsky, “Woody and the Chinaman,” 12. 9. PPR, ca. 1934, WCFP. 10. Magnificent Rogue: The Adventures of W. C. Fields, NBC, Biography in Sound, February 28, 1956; LAHE, February 2, 1965, Fields biographical file, AMPAS. 11. Letter to “friend Bill,” February 4, 1943, WCFBH, 474. 12. Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (1985; repr. New York: Oxford University Press Paperback, 1986), 163. 13.  “The Jack Oakie Celebration of Comedy in Film, Spotlighting W. C. Fields,” AMPAS, May 11, 2007. 14. Maude Cheatham, “Juggler of Laughs,” Silver Screen (April 1935), 30. 15. Robert Wilson, ed., The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, 89; repr. “The Great McGonigle,” New Republic, August 21, 1935. 16. Wes D. Gehring, W.C. Fields: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CN: 1984), 99. 17. Donald W. McCaffrey, The Golden Age of Sound Comedy: Comic Films and Comedians of the Thirties (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1973), 165, 172. 18. Letter to Burkhalter, November 21, 1934, box 12, WCFP; WCF, “Now, I’m a Gentleman Farmer,” HR, December 31, 1934; repr. HR, February 13, 1990; PPB, It’s a Gift, December 3, 1934, LOC. 19. WCF, “Now, I’m a Gentleman Farmer.” HR, December 31, 1934; repr. HR, February 13, 1990. 20. Anne Edwards, “W.C. Fields, the Cantankerous Comedian at his Country Estate in Encino,” Architectural Digest (April 1994), 152 21. HR, December 31, 1934; repr. HR, February 13, 1990. 22. NYT, December 16, 1934. 23. The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson,” “The Great McGonigle,” August 21, 1935, 86; Quoted in Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 105; NYHT, January 5, 1935; Variety, November 8, 1934. 24. NYT, January 5, 1935. 25. NYT, January 13, 1935, section 9, 5.

Notes

  371

Chapter 9 1. Kinematograph Weekly (London), February 14, 1935; Monti, W. C. Fields & Me, 41, 43; Ashton Stevens, Chicago American, February 21, 1935. 2. Taylor, W. C. Fields, 278; LAE, February, 1935. 3. Jack Grant, “That Nose of W. C. Fields,” Movie Classic (February 1935), 60; Monti, 41, 43. 4.  Letter to George Stevenson, March 11, 1935, genealogy file, box 111, WCFP. 5.  Arthur Frank Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1914), 197. 6. Wertheim, 37. 7. Scrapbook #18, WCFP; New Zealand Herald, February 2, 1935, scrapbook #18, WCFP; Gavin Lambert, On Cukor (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 86. 8. Lambert, 86; Sunday Mercury clipping, scrapbook #18, WCFP; “The Reminiscences of George Cukor,” Hollywood Film Industry Project, CFOHCU, 55–56. 9. MGM David Copperfield contracts, box 12, WCFP. 10. Gavin Lambert, On Cukor, 82 Freddie Bartholomew Complete Biography of the 1930s MGM Child Star, Immortal Ephemera, http://www.immortalephemera.com, accessed August 27, 2015. 11. Patrick McGilligan, George Cukor: A Double Life, A Biography of the Gentleman Director (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 102; John Gillett and David Robinson, “Conversation with George Cukor,” ed, Robert Emmet Long (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 8. 12. Ibid. 13. Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It (New York: Knopf, 1997), 456–57. 14. NYT, January 19, 1935; LAT, February 9, 1935, 5. 15. Emanuel Levy, George Cukor, Master of Elegance, Hollywood’s Legendary Director and His Stars, (New York: William Morrow, 1994), 85. 16. Cukor, CFOHCU, 54–55; NYT, January 19, 1935. 17. Maude Cheatham, “Juggler of Laughs,” Silver Screen, April 1935, 62.

Chapter 10 1. Hornblow oral history, Project Arts Project, 1959, 37, CFOHCU. 2. Ibid, 37–38. 3. Bing Crosby, Call Me Lucky, as told to Pete Martin (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 125.

372  Notes 4. Call Me Lucky, 155; Taylor, W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949), 236. 5. Albert Eddie Sutherland, Popular Arts Project, 1959, 113, CFOHCU. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid, 113–14. 8. Fields to Sutherland, box 14, Mississippi Correspondence Folder, February 5, 1935, WCFP; Hornblow oral history, 38, CFOHCU. 9. Mississippi, DVD, Universal Vault Series, 2013; Release Dialogue Script, March 8, 1935, Reel One, Mississippi File, Paramount Pictures Script Collection, AMPAS. 10. Karl Johnson, The Magician and the Cardsharp: The Search for America’s Greatest Sleight-of-Hand Artist (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), 29. 11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheConfidence-Man, accessed October 15, 2016. 12. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York: The Heritage Press, 1944), 224. 13.  Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection, Mississippi File, Release Dialogue Script, March 8, 1935, reel 4, pp. 6–10, AMPAS; Mississippi, DVD, Universal Vault Series, 2013. 14. Mississippi, DVD, Universal Vault Series, 2013; Release Dialogue Script, March 8, 1935, Reel 3, Mississippi File, Paramount Pictures Script Collection, AMPAS. 15.  Breen to Hammell, MPAA Production Code Administration Records, Mississippi file, October 25, 1934, November 8, 1934, February 12, 1935, AMPAS. 16. May 5, 1935, WCFBH, 293. 17. LAT, June 16, 1935, A9. 18. Taylor, 237. 19. LAT, March 29, 1935, 13; Deschner,116. 20.  Fields to Hornblow, February 5, 1935, Mississippi Correspondence File, box 14, WCFP. 21. NYT, April 18, 1935; MPH, March 30, 1935; Variety, March 27, 1935. 22.  Fields to Sutherland, February 5, 1935, Mississippi Correspondence File, box 14, WCFP.

Chapter 11 1. Fields to Sennett, December 18, 1932, WCFBH, 269. 2. Anthony Balducci, The Funny Parts: A History of Film Comedy Routines and Gags (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 5. 3. Variety, June 26, 1935, August 7, 1935.

Notes

  373

4. NYT, July 14, 1934; Fields, “Anything for a Laugh,” American Magazine, September 1934, 129–30. 5. NYT, October 17, 1935; September 30, 1935, WCFBH, 294. 6. Matthew Dessem, The Gag Man: Clyde Bruckman and the Birth of Film Comedy (Raleigh, NC: Critical Press, 2015), 161–62. 7. The Man on the Flying Trapeze Press Book, LOC-MPD. 8. Variety, August 7, 1935. 9. LAT, August 23, 1935. 10. LAT, June 16, 1935, A9. 11. Ibid. 12. Paramount Pictures Scripts, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, Release Dialogue Script, July 9, 1935, AMPAS; The Man on the Flying Trapeze, DVD, W. C. Fields Comedy Collection, vol. 2, Universal Studios, 2007. 13. Ibid. 14. “Vet Scene Stealer Still At It,” LAT, August 21, 1971; Leonard Maltin, ed., The Real Stars: Profiles and Interviews of Hollywood’s Unsung Featured Players (ebook edition, 2015), 260. 15. Film Fan Monthly, October 1969, 19; LAT, August 21, 1971. 16. “W. C. Fields: A Centennial Tribute,” January 29, 1980, 16, AMPAS. 17. Anthony Slide, “Mary Brian,” Silent Players (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 46; Oral history Interview with Mary Brian, Museum of the Moving Image, 11, 13; Ibid. 18. The Oreland Supper Club refers to the Orlando Club, a boys club that Fields joined as a youth in Philadelphia. 19. Carlotta Monti with Cy Rice, W. C. Fields and Me (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), 64–65. 20. Paramount Press Book, Man on the Flying Trapeze, LOC-MPD. 21. Monti, 66. 22. NYHT review in the Hollywood Reporter, August 6, 1935; Deschner, 120; New Republic, August 21, 1935, 48. 23. NYT, August 3, 1935; WCF to Elise Cavanna, January 12, 1935, box 1, WCFP. 24. Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields, 134. 25. Curtis, W. C. Fields, 333.

Chapter 12 1. Letter to Harry Antrim, October 21, 1943, box 1, correspondence “A” personal, WCFP. 2.  Letter Fields to Elise Cavanna, June 20, 1935, box 1, correspondence, WCFP. 3. WCFBH, 154.

374  Notes 4. Soboda Hot Springs Travel Brochure, 1930s, EBAY, assessed February 1, 2017. 5. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 142. 6. WCFBH, December 10, 1935, 154–55. 7. To Harry Martin, Memphis Tennessee Commercial Appeal, January 15, 1936, box 9, 1930–39 clippings, WCFP. 8. Charles Darnton, “Mr. Fields Wins by a NOSE!,” Screen Book Magazine, November 1937, 34. 9. Richard Watts, Jr., “Sight and Sound: A Bow to Fields,” NYHT, March 15, 1936. 10. NYWT, May 2, 1936, box 24, scrapbook #19, WCFP. 11. Interview, Eddie Sutherland, CFOHCU, 109. 12. Ibid, 109–10; Everson, 150. 13. “If English Fails, Fields Invents His Own Words,” Paramount Press Book, Poppy, June 29, 1936, p. 26, LOC. 14. Poppy, release dialogue script, June 10, 1936, Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection, AMPAS. 15. NYT, June 14, 1936. 16. Poppy, release dialogue script, June 10, 1936, Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection, AMPAS. 17. Ibid. 18. Frank Nugent, “Windfalls in an Off Week,” NYT, June 21, 1936. 19. Poppy, release dialogue script, June 10, 1936, Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection, AMPAS. 20. Poppy, DVD, vol. 2, W. C. Fields Comedy Collection (Universal Studios, 2007). 21. Interview, Eddie Sutherland, CFOHCU, 107, 110. 22. Poppy, release dialogue script, June 10, 1936, Paramount Pictures Scripts Collection, AMPAS. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Transcription, Magnificent Rogue: The Adventures of W. C. Fields, NBC Radio, Biography of Sound narrated by Fred Allen, February 28, 1956. 26. LAT, June 28, 1936, July 8, 1936. 27. Everson, 149; Deschner, 126; NYT, June 18, 1936. 28. NYT, June 18, 1936. 29. Deschner, 127.

Chapter 13 1. Carlotta Monti, with Cy Rice, W. C. Fields and Me (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 3.

Notes

  375

2. Ibid, 3, 10; Transcription, Carlotta Monti, W. C. Fields and Me interview. 3. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 12. 4. “Woody and the Chinaman,” clipping, LAT, May 26, 1968, 9, Fields file, AMPAS; Monti, 194. 5. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 13. 6. Transcription of Carlotta Monti’s interview regarding her book; LAEHE, September 16, 1949, A–3; LAT, September 16, 1949. 7. Letter to William LeBaron, February 3, 1940, box 3, L-personal, WCFP. 8. Transcription, Monti’s interview; Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 194. 9. Letter to Mrs. Buck and her handwritten reply, box 1, correspondences, “B” personal #1, September 27, 1937, WCFP. 10. To Maud, October 4, 1945, WCFP. 11. Prelutsky, “Woody and the Chinaman,” 12; Transcription, Monti’s interview. 12. Memo from Gilbert Morgan to W. C. Fields, Jr., January 27, 1950, box 11, WCFP. 13. Sydney (Australia) Sun, April 12, 1914, scrapbook #29, WCFP. 14. Ida Zeitlin, “Fields without Hedges,” Screenland (January 1938), 33. 15. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 45; Ibid, 117; LAE, May 13, 1949. 16. Monti, 117; LAE, May 13, 1949; Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940).

Chapter 14 1. Clipping in letter from Georgie Hargitt to Harriet Fields, June 18, 1936, Harriet Fields correspondence, box 11, WCFP. 2. Shake the Bottle, 218; http://www.mindspring.com, accessed November 2, 2017. 3. Robert M. Gettemy, “Funnyman Fields: the Man Behind the Myth,” LAT, August 25, 1974, 1, 6–7. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. LAT, August 13, 1952, box 11, probate file, WCFP. 7. LAT, June 14, 1936, 1. 8. The Bystander, July 22, 1936, in Curtis, W. C. Fields, 344. 9. Unidentified clippings, June 18, 1936, MCNY. 10. Ibid, 38. 11. Kirtley Baskette, “Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall,” unidentified clipping, September 1937, 74, scrapbook #9, WCFP. 12. WCFALOF, 187; Nord Riley, “W. C. Fields, His Funniest Interview Ever! (1944),” WCF file, NYPAL. 13. WCF, Jr., to WCF, unsent draft letter, undated, ca. February 1936, box 3, correspondence, WCFP.

376  Notes 14. Ibid. 15. “Mrs. Fields Tells Court of Happy Days as Bride,” LAT, August 2, 1951, part 1, 12. 16. To Adel, September 26, 1941, box 4, correspondence, WCFP. 17. Clipping, August 1934, scrapbook #30, WCFP. 18. Liberty, November 7, 1936, 61 19.  WCF to Hattie, telegram, February 6, 1936, box 2a, correspondence, WCFP. 20. Telegram to WCF, February 7, 1936, box 10, WCFP. 21.  Telegram from WCF, Jr to WCF, box 3, correspondence, February 10, 1936. 22. WCF to WCF, Jr., February 15, 1935, box 3, correspondence, WCFP. 23. WCF, Jr. to WCF, ca. 1931–32, box 11, correspondence, WCFP. 24. Ibid. 25. WCF to WCF, Jr., February 15, 1935, box 3, correspondence, WCFP. 26.  Telegram to Oursler, August 26, 1937, box 3, Liberty Magazine, correspondence, WCFP. 27. Oursler to WCF, August 28, 1937, box 3, Liberty, correspondence, WCFP; Liberty, October 9, 1937, 62. 28. Liberty, September 24, 1938, 58. 29. WCFP, unidentified clipping, April 14, 1937. 30. W. C. Fields, “Valleyhoo,” clipping, ca. 1935, box 9, WCFP.

Chapter 15 1. Ibid. 2. Ibid, 203. 3. Letter to Benny, May 6, 1941, box 1, correspondence B, WCFP; Kirtley Baskette, “Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Wall,” Radio Mirror, September 1937, 74, scrapbook #9, WCFP. 4. Billboard, January 19, 1924, scrapbook #10, WCFP. 5.  Martin J. Porter, “Gay Old Rascal Makes Good,” clipping, scrapbook OS–49. 6.  John B. Merriman, “Back to the Wars,” Screen & Radio Weekly, 3, ca. 1937–38, scrapbook #9, WCFP; letter to Jack Benny, April 24, 1941, WCFBH, 239. 7. Ida Zeitlin, “Fields without Hedges,” Screenland (January 1938). 71. 8. WCFBH, 203; http://www.radioechoes.com/adolph-zukors-silver-jubilee# VPzGACvF-ul. 9. WCFBH, 303. 10. Edgar Bergen, How to Become a Ventriloquist (1938; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2000), 12.

Notes

  377

11. Joe Laurie, Jr., Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace (New York: Henry Holt, 1953), 113; Valentine Vox, I Can See Your Lips Moving: The History and Art of Ventriloquism (North Hollywood, CA: Plato Publishing, 1993), 7. 12. Vox, I Can See Your Lips Moving, 87. 13. Candice Bergen, Knock Wood (New York: Linden Press/Simon and Schuster, 1984), 22. 14. Ibid, 68. 15. Ibid, 28–30. 16. Frank Cullen with Florence Hackman and Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 93. 17. Ibid, 94. 18. WCFBH, 203; Bergen interview with Larry Solway, http://www.search. TB.ask.com/search/video, accessed March 21, 2014. 19. “W. C. Fields Spot,” Chase & Sanborn Program, May 9, 1937, box 6, 1, EBC-USC. 20. “Fields Starts Well on Radio,” May 1937, scrapbook #9 WCFP. 21. New York American, May 11, 1937, scrapbook #9, WCFP; Benny wire, May 14, 1937, scrapbook #9, WCFP. 22. Bergen interview with Larry Solway; “Magnificent Rogue: The Adventures of W. C. Fields,” Biography and Sound with Fred Allen, NBC. 23. “W. C. Fields Out for Gold,” clipping, Fields file, NYPAL; unidentified article, ca. 1937, scrapbook #9, WCFP. 24. The Charlie McCarthy Show, February 29, 1944, box 25, file #5; WCFP. 25. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 153; “The Man I Hate and Vice Versa as Told to Dorothy Spensley,” Radio Mirror, December 1937, 18–19, 67–70; Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford, 1979), 362. 26. J. Reid, “Nobody’s Dummy.” Motion Picture, October 1937, 37, 84–86. 27. Dudley Early, “The Gentleman Speaks His Mind,” Family Circle, April 8, 1938, 11; Radio Comedy, 362. 28. Taylor, W. C. Fields, 309; Early, “The Gentleman Speaks His Mind”; Bergen interview, Candid Session, October 24, 1960. 29. NYT, November 7, 1937; letters to John Reber, June 15, 1937, July 7, 1937, September 4, 1937, box 18, correspondence, WCFP.

Chapter 16 1. NYT, March 27, 1938. 2.  Donald W. McCaffrey, The Golden Age of Sound Comedy: Comic Films and Comedians of the Thirties (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1973), 172; John

378  Notes Dunning, Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925–1976 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976), 341. 3. Bob Hope with Bob Thomas, The Road to Hollywood: My Forty-Year Love Affair with the Movies (New York, Doubleday, 1977), 21–22; June 4, 1942, WCFBH, 241. 4. David Chierichetti, Hollywood Director: The Career of Mitchell Leisen (New York: Curtis Books, 1973), 9. 5. Ibid, 120–22. 6. January 13, 1938, WCFBH, 301; Ibid, 122. 7. Dialogue taken from The Big Broadcast of 1938, “Bob Hope, the Tribute Collection,” Universal DVD, 2002; Idwal Jones, “Of the Elysian Fields,” unidentified newspaper clipping, Fields file, The Big Broadcast, HTC. 8.  Alma Whitaker, “Triumphant Comeback Staged by Funnyman,” LAT, February 20, C1. 9. Chierichetti, 120–22. 10. LAT, October 17, 1937, C4. 11. Chierichetti, 120; LAT, October 7, 1937, A12. 12. John Douglas Eames, The Paramount Story: The Complete History of Paramount and Its Films (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 139; LeBaron, The Big Broadcast Correspondence File, box 14, December 12, 1937, WCFP. 13. January 19, 1938, WCFBH, 301. 14. December 21, 1937 in Derek Elley, ed., Variety Movie Guide 2000 (New York: Perigee Book, 2000), 73; Senior Scholastic in Donald Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields (New York: Citadel Press, 1966), 133; Time, February 28, 1938, 64. 15. NYT, March 10, 1938. 16. W. C. Fields (New York: Pyramid Publications, 1974), 87.

Chapter 17 1. LAT, May 4, 1938, A19. 2. April 22, 1936, WCFBH, 303–4. 3. Bernard F. Dick, Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 248, note 13; Neal Gabler, An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 427. 4. Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 121. 5. Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, History of the American Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 54. 6. Eames, The Paramount Story, 139. 7. NYT, May 10, 1938.

Notes

  379

8. Curtis, 369; May 27, 1938, WCFBH, 304. 9. The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, ed. Donald Hayne (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959), 346. 10. Ibid, 347. 11. “W. C. Fields Knew McGargle When He Was a Boy, ” New York Sun, April 3, 1924, scrapbook #10, WCFP. 12. David T. Rocks, W. C. Fields—An Annotated Guide (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993), 17; Letter to Danny Danker, March 8, 1938, WCFP. 13. Fred Allen, A Treadmill to Oblivion (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954). 14. July 13, 1943, WCFBH, 249. 15. Letter from Dick Carroll, July 27, 1937, box 3, WCFP; Ed Sullivan, “That Loveable Liar,” Silver Screen, September 1935, 14. 16.  WCF to Hill, November 14, 1938; Hill to WCF, November 17, 1938, box 3, WCFP. 17. William Cahn, Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce), 154–7.

Chapter 18 1. Richard Koszarski, Universal Pictures 65 Years (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1977), 7. 2. Ethan Mordden, The Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of Movies (Knopf: New York, 1988), 324–25; Koszarski, 7. 3. Koszarski, 19. 4. Legal-contracts, Universal folder, box 12, August 4, 1938, WCFP. 5. Letter to Lester Cowan, August 2, 1938, box 16, Honest Man correspondence file, WCFP; Ibid. 6. Letter to Cowan, September 29, 1939, box 14, My Little Chickadee correspondences, WCFP. 7.  Manager, “Universal Pictures Weekly Status Production Notes,” Special Collections, Doheny Library, USC. 8. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, script file, box 16, WCFP; WCFBH, 307. 9. “W. C. Fields: A Centennial Tribute” script, January 29, 1980, AMPAS, 18. 10. Ibid. 11. MPAA Production Code Administration Records, Honest Man file, letter to Pivar, November 21, 1938, December 8, 1938, AMPAS. 12. Deschner, 139. 13. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man Fields comments, file, box 16, WCFP. 14. James Bacon, Hollywood is a Four Letter Town (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1976), 4; WCFALOF, 203.

380  Notes 15.  Weekly Status Production notes, week ending January 13th; Edward F. Cline biography, International Movie Data Base; You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, Fields comments, file, box 16, WCFP. 16. Bacon, 5; Everett Freeman, “Close Encounters with W. C. Fields,” SEP, December 1987, 38–39. 17. WCFBH, 322. 18. Frank Nugent, NYT, February 20, 1939; Everson, 163. 19. http://www.sideshowworld.com, accessed March 28, 2017. 20.  See, for example, Fields’s letter to William Randolph Hearst “on behalf of our colored people... They were brought here under duress but have accepted the vile treatment we have meted out to them uncomplainingly and are loyal and dependable.” WCFBH, 190. 21. WCFBH, 321–22. 22. Cowan’s letter, February 9, 1939, box 16, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man correspondence file, WCFP. 23. Work’s letter to Fields, February 21, 1939, box 16, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man correspondence file, WCFP. 24.  Letter to Maud Fenwick, February 17, 1939, correspondence, box 1, WCFP. 25. Ibid. 26. Clipping, February 17, [1939], W. C. Fields file, HTC. 27. Letter to Maud Fenwick, February 17, 1939. 28. LAT, March 23, 1988, 99. 29. LAT, June 16, 1935, A9. 30. Burt Prelutsky,“Woody and the Chinaman,” clipping, Fields file, AMPAS. 31. Freeman, “Close Encounters with W. C. Fields,” 39. 32. Variety, February 15, 1939; NYT, February 20, 1939; Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields, 171.

Chapter 19 1. NYT, March 16, 1940, 8; Deschner, 145. 2. West, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, 206; Curtis, 413. 3. Ward, Mae West, 44. 4. April 3, 1939, WCFBH, 324. 5. Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930– 39 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 193. 6. Curtis, 396; Mae West, Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It: The Autobiography of Mae West (1959; reprint, London: Virago Press, 1996), 204. 7. Emily Wortis Leider, Becoming Mae West (1997; New York: Da Capo Press Edition, 2000), 58; “Paramount Pictures,” Fortune (March 1937), 92.

Notes

  381

8. NYT, May 19, 1935; letter to Lew Garvey, 1936, in Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (New York: Oxford, 2001), 198. 9.  “Matters for Review, box 788, folder 24732, W. C. Fields Universal Collection, USC Cinematic Arts Special Collections; George Ells and Stanley Musgrove. Mae West (New York: Morrow, 1982), 194. 10. The Autobiography of Mae West (1959; reprint, London: Virago Press, 1996), 204; Curtis. 396. 11. Leider, Becoming Mae West, 58; “Paramount Pictures,” Fortune (March 1937), 92. 12. Simon Louvish, Mae West: It Ain’t No Sin (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 336. 13. Arthur Frank Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 364. 14. Ells and Musgrove, Mae West, 185–86; Wertheim, 365–66. 15. Carol M. Ward, Mae West: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1989), 33. 16. Ibid; Maurice Leonard, Mae West: Empress of Sex (New York: Carol Publishing, 1992). 17. West, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, 206. 18. WCFBH, 325–28. 19. Fields’s Response to Grover Jones Treatment Script, July 31, 1939, box 14, My Little Chickadee script material folder, WCFP. 20. July 26, 1939, WCFBH, 341. 21. September 1, 1939, WCFBH, 357. 22. August 21, 1939, box 14, My Little Chickadee Correspondences, WCFP. 23. August 29, 1939, August 30, 1939, WCFBH, 342, 354–55. 24. September 1, 1939, box 14, My Little Chickadee Correspondences, WCFP. 25. September 1, 1939, WCFBH, 356–57; September 5, 1939, WCFBH, 359. 26. September 11, 1939, WCFBH, 359–60. 27. “Two Soloists Try a Duet,” NYT, W. C. Fields clipping file, HTC. 28. WCFBH, 362–63; West, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, 207. 29. September 28, 1939, WCFBH, 363. 30.  Universal Collection, USC, box  789, folder 24999, M. F. Murphy, Production Manager Report, Weekly Status Pictures in Production, Week Ending Friday, December 29, 1939. 31. Watts, Mae West, 238; Harry Evans, “Hollywood Diary,” Family Circle, March 22, 1940. 32. October 10, 1939, correspondence, M miscellaneous, WCFP. 33. Watts, Mae West, 236–37. 34. West, Goodness Had Nothing To Do With It, 202. 35. Everson, 183–84.

382  Notes 36.  Letters Joseph Breen to Universal’s Maurice Pivar, My Little Chickadee file, October 23 and 31; Eddie Cline to Joseph Breen, November 2, 1939, MPPA Production Code Administration Records, AMPAS. 37. My Little Chickadee, box 14, script pages file, WCFP. 38. WCFALOF, 213. 39. Ibid, 214. 40.  Letters Joseph Breen to Universal’s Maurice Pivar, My Little Chickadee file, October 23 and 31; Eddie Cline to Joseph Breen, November 2, 1939, MPPA Production Code Administration Records, AMPAS; WCFALOF, 215. 41. December 11, 1939, WCFBH, 366. For an explanation of the Grampian Hills see chapter 22. 42. January 22, 1940, WCFBH, 368. 43.  January 22, 1940, January 24, 1940, WCFBH, 368–69; letter Breen to Fields, box 14, My Little Chickadee Correspondences, January 23, 1940. 44. WCFALOF, 211; Vern Haugland, “Mae West and W. C. Fields Hit It Off,” Picture Play, November 13, 1939, box 10, Fields ephemera, AMPAS. 45. “Weekly Status Pictures in Production,” week ending Friday, December 29, 1939, M. F. Murphy, Universal Collection, box 789, folder 24999, USC. 46. HR, February 7, 1940, 3; NYT, March 9, 1940, A7, March 16, 1940; William Boehnel, “Movies Doing Nothing to Save Great Comics,” unknown source, March 23, 1940, MCNY; Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, (Henry Holt: New York, 1982), 509. 47. March 21, 1940, WCFBH, 372. 48. McCaffrey, The Golden Age of Screen Comedy: Comic Films and Comedians of the Thirties (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1973), 172; Ells and Musgrove, Mae West, 194–95. 49. Ells and Musgrove, Mae West, 194–95. 50. Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies, 509.

Chapter 20 1. To Matty Fox, January 6, 1940, WCFBH, 373. 2. To Matty Fox, January 8, 1940, WCFBH, 374. 3. Ibid; to Matty Fox, January 6, 1940, WCFBH, 373; McCaffrey, The Golden Age of Sound Comedy, 171. 4. July 17, 1940, box 13, Correspondence File, WCFP; WCFBH, 376. 5. July 24, 1940, WCFBH, 380–82; Matty Fox, January 8, 1940, WCFBH, 374. 6. Breen to Maurice Pivar, July 2, 1940, The Bank Dick, MPAA Production Code Files, AMPAS; Fields to Breen, July 12, 1940, WCFBH, 376–78. 7. Breen to Fields, July 19, 1940, box 13, Correspondence File, WCFP.

Notes

  383

8. To Ed Muhl, August 5, 1940, WCFBH, 383. 9. WCFBH, 384–85. 10. Bank Dick Press Book, MPD-LOC. 11. Muhl to Fields, September 11, 1940, box 13, Bank Dick Correspondences, WCFP; box 12, Legal Contracts-Universal folder, August 4, 1938, WCFP; Curtis, 421. 12. WCFBH, 220; Larry Sean Kinder, Una Merkel: The Actress with Sassy Wit and Southern Charm (Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media, 2016), back cover; Leonard Maltin, ed., The Real Stars: Profiles and Interviews of Hollywood’s Unsung Featured Players (Curtis Books, 2015), 187; Bank Dick Press Book. MPD-LOC. 13. Maltin, The Real Stars, 200. 14. http://www.imbd.com/name/nm0936755, accessed June 15, 2017, WCFBH, 41. 15. Maltin, The Real Stars, 256, 259–60. 16. LAT, March 31, 2003. 17.  Mackenzie Griffin. “No Place for Discontent: A History of the Family Dinner in America,” February 16, 2016, http://www.npr.org, accessed June 17, 2017. 18.  Quotes from the movie are taken verbatim from The Bank Dick, DVD. Criterion, 2004. 19. WCFALOF, 228. 20. Ibid. 21. Joseph Breen to Maurice Pivar, September 4, 1940, November 6, 1940, MPAA Production Code Files, The Bank Dick file, AMPAS. 22. Variety, November 8, 1940. 23. Curtis 423. 24. WCFBH, 386. 25. The letter was never sent. Bank Dick correspondence, box 13, November 8, 1940, WCFP; Fields’s notes are printed in WCFBH, 387–89. 26. MPD, December 2, 1940; Variety November 29, 1940; NYT, December 13, 1940; NYHT, December 13, 1940, 26; New Republic, December 30, 1940. 27. Variety, December 25, 1940. 34. 28. Maltin, The Great Movie Comedians, 150; LAT, August 18, 1971.

Chapter 21 1.  Anthony Quinn with D. Paisner, One Man Tango (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 152; “Grandchild of De Mille Dies in Pool,” LAT, March 16, 1941, 1; Cecil B. De Mille, The Autobiography of Cecil B. De Mille, ed. Donald Hayne (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959), 371.

384  Notes 2. Note in pencil to Cecil B. DeMille, DeMille file, box 1, n.d., WCFP; Fowler interview, Straight Up, reel 4. 3. Reminiscences of Edward Duryea Darling, oral history, Columbia University Center for Oral History, October 13, 1963. 4. Letter from Edward Muhl to Fields, January 21, 1941, WCFP. 5. NYSN, July 22, 1941, scrapbook #3, WCFP. 6. WCFALOF, 231. 7. Films in Review (1973), 5; LAT, Valley Edition, September 30, 1985, 8; Scott MacGillivray and Jan MacGillivray, Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven (New York: IUniverse, 2005), 63. 8. Interview with Gloria Jean, W. C. Fields Straight Up—Unedited Interviews, reel 2, UCLA Film and Television Archive; MacGillivray, Gloria Jean, 63. 9. Letter from Edward Muhl, Assistant Secretary, Universal Pictures, July 31, 1941, box 15, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break Correspondences, WCFP. 10. Gerald Gardner, The Censorship Papers (New York: Dodd, Meade, 1987), 133; Letter Breen to Universal’s Maurice Pivar, April 17, 1941, box 15, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break Correspondences, WCFP. 11. Breen to Pivar, April 17, 1941, WCFP. 12. WCFBH, 414. 13. Three Films of W. C. Fields (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), 12–14, 17–20. 14. Edward Muhl to Fields, April 23, 1941, box 15, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break Correspondences, WCFP. 15.  Interview with Gloria Jean, Straight Up; “Box Comeback: A Return to Gloria Jean,” LAHE, June 13, 1981, Gloria Jean biographical file, AMPAS; MacGillivray, Gloria Jean, 65. 16. “W. C. Fields: A Centennial Tribute,” January 29, 1980, 16, AMPAS. 17. William Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 217. 18. Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 158; New Republic, November 10, 1941; NYT, October 27, 1941. 19. Daily Variety, October 6, 1941; October 7, 1941. 20. WCFBH, 413–14. 21. Muhl to Fields, July 31, 1941, box 15, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break Correspondences, WCFP. 22.  Letter to Cline and draft communique to film weeklies, May 15, 1945, box 1, WCFP. 23. Curtis, 449. 24. WCFBH, 187.

Notes

  385

Chapter 22 1. Citizen-News, November 13, 1941. 2. T. P. Frederick Dryer, February 1944, WCFBH, 441. 3. Phil Silvers with Robert Saffron, This Laugh Is On Me: The Phil Silvers Story (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 116. 4.  Ibid; The outtake is on the DVD, Hidden Hollywood 11, Image Entertainment, 2002. 5. WCFBH, 372, 423. 6. “A Rebuttal to a Terradiddle,” draft of Variety ad, box 15; Chicago Times, May 10, 1942, Fields’s clipping file, AMPAS. 7. WCFBH, 425; letter to Harry Antrim, October 21, 1943, box 1, correspondence “A” personal, WCFP. 8. Albert Eddie Sutherland interview, Popular Arts Project, CFOHCU (1959), 105, 143–44, 179. 9. NYHT, January 24, 1944. 10. NYT, April 2, 1944. 11. Time, April 24, 1944, in James Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism (New York: Library of America, 2005), 395. 12. Letter to A. Eddie Sutherland, December 6, 1943, WCFBH, 431. 13. WCFBH, 441. 14. To George Newcomb, July 17, 1944, Song of the Road correspondence file, WCFP. 15. July 10, 1944, WCFBH, 441–42; WCFALOF, 251. 16. Letter to Andrew Stone, April 14, 1944, box 15, Sensations of 1945 folder, WCFP. 17. Stone to Fields, April 13, 1944, box 15, Sensations of 1945, correspondence and script material folder, WCFP. 18. NYT, July 7, 1944; WCFALOF, 251. 19. To Fields, April 13, 1944; to Stone, April 14, 1944, box 15, Sensations of 1945 folder, WCFP. 20. Quotations taken from Sensations of 1945, dialogue and cutting May 6, 1944, USC Special Collections; Nostalgia Family Video, 2005. 21. NYT, July 7, 1944. 22. Taylor, W. C. Fields, 334. 23. Lulu in Hollywood, 74. 24. Bernard Sobel, Broadway Heartbeat: Memoirs of a Press Agent (Newark, NJ: Hermitage House, 1953) 140, 142. 25. Merriman, “Back to the Wars,” 3.

386  Notes 6. Letter to Danny Danker, July 13, 1943, WCFBH, 248–49. 2 27. Wertheim, Radio Comedy, 3; transcription from The Charlie McCarthy Show. 28. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 148. 29. Bergen, Knock Wood, 311–12.

Chapter 23 1. Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood. 74; Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 11, 1910, WCF file, NYPL; Harold Cary, “The Loneliest Man in the Movies,” Collier’s, November 28, 1925, 26; Will Fowler, The Second Handshake, 106. 2. Ralph Parker, “The Secret Marriage of Hollywood’s Bachelor,” Screen Play, August 1934, scrapbook #39, WCFP. 3. WCFBH, 450; letter to Thomas Hunt, July, 26, 1944, WCFP. 4. John Kobler, Damned in Paradise: The Life of John Barrymore (New York: Athenaeum, 1977), 312. 5. Gregory Wiliam Mank with Charles Heard & Bill Nelson, Hollywood’s Hellfire Club: The Misadventures of John Barrymore, W. C. Fields, Errol Flynn and “The Bundy Drive Boys” (Los Angeles: Feral House Original Paperback, 2007), 9. 6.  Mary C. Henderson, Broadway Ballyhoo: The American Theater Seen in Posters, Photographs, Magazines, Caricatures, and Programs (New York: Abrams, 1989), 141. 7. Curtis, W. C. Fields, 459. 8. Stephen C. Jordan, Hollywood’s Original Rat Pack: The Bards of Bundy Drive (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 17. 9. Will Fowler, The Second Handshake, (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1980), 96; Gene Fowler, Minutes of the Last Meeting (New York: Viking Press, 1954), 105–06. 10. Minutes of the Last Meeting, 105. 11. Will Fowler, “The Second Handshake Really Gets to You,” LAT, January 7, 1968, 137; Will Fowler, “W. C. Fields: He Always Called his Own Shots,” 21, unpublished draft for The Second Handshake, chapter 6, Will Fowler Collection, box 7, file 12, California State University, Northridge; Fowler, The Second Handshake, 117. 12. Fowler, “W. C. Fields: He Always Called his Own Shots,” 22; see also Will Fowler interview, “W. C. Straight Up—unedited interviews,” videocassette #r4, UCLA Film and Television Archive, University Library. 13. Will Fowler, The Young Man from Denver, (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1962), 262; Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century (1954; New York: Donald I. Fine, 1985), 434. 14.  Richard Rushfield, “Rogue’s Gallery: John Decker, in the Shadows of Hollywood’s Golden Age,” V-Life. March 2005.

Notes

  387

15. Anthony Quinn, The Original Sin: A Self-Portrait (Boston: Little Brown, 1972), 285; letter to Carroll. WCFBH, February 18, 1942, 469. 16. Quinn, The Original Sin, 285, 288. 17. “Fowler Introduces Another Pal,” LAT, April 4, 1954, D6; William Bryk, “King of the Bohemians,” http://www.nysun.com/article/8227, accessed, September 26, 2015. 18. Brooks Atkinson, “The Disorderly Cronies,” NYT, April 4, 1954; Fowler, The Young Man from Denver, 263; Fowler, The Second Handshake, 189. 19. Fowler, The Second Handshake, 188; Fowler, Minutes of the Last Meeting, 104. 20. Gene Fowler, Good Night, Sweet Prince (New York: Viking Press, 1944), 137–38. 21. WCFALOF, 238; Will Fowler, The Young Man from Denver (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 236. 22. Hecht, A Child of the Century, 431; Curtis, W. C. Fields, 458. 23. Will Fowler, “The Great Profile’s Final Act,” LAT, May 23, 1982, L28. 24. Ibid. 25. Jordan, Hollywood’s Original Rat Pack, 171–72; Fowler, “The Great Profile’s Final Act.” 26. Fowler, “The Great Profile’s Final Act.” 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Fowler, Minutes of the Last Meeting, 103–4.

Chapter 24 1.  Arthur Frank Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 90. 2. “On the Wagon,” Oakland Tribune, November 26, 1941, scrapbook #3, WCFP. 3. Sobel, Broadway Heartbeat, 142; Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, 74. 4. WCFBH, 144–52; see also Fields, “Alcohol and Me,” Pic (October 13, 1942): 24–32. 5. May 5, 1932, WCFBH, 143. 6. WCFBH, 196. 7. Fields to Arthur Unger, editor of Variety, February 2, 1942, WCFBH, 421. 8. LA Weekly, August 14, 2009. 9. Constance Rourke, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (1931 repr., New York: Anchor Books, 1953), 176.

388  Notes 10. The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1900); How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 11. MP3CD; http://www.otcrat.com/wc-fields-p-1967, accessed November 27, 2013; WCFBH, 214–17. 12. LAT, August 13, 1952, box 11, probate file, WCFP. 13.  “Telephone conversation between Claude and nurse, Mrs. Campion,” January 23, 1947, box 13, Legal Materials, WCFP. 14. Letter to Grace George, n.d., box 25, WCFP. 15. Carlotta Monti, with Cy Rice, W. C. Fields and Me (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 3, 10; Transcription, Carlotta Monti, W. C. Fields and Me interview. 16. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 12. 17. “Woody and the Chinaman,” clipping, LAT, May 26, 1968, 9, Fields file, AMPAS. 18. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 13. 19. Ibid, 16. 20. LAEHE, September 16, 1949, A-3; LAT, September 16, 1949. 21. Letter to William LeBaron, February 3, 1940, box 3, L-personal, WCFP. 22. Transcription, Monti’s interview; Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 194. 23. Letter to Mrs. Buck and her handwritten reply, box 1, correspondences, “B” personal #1, September 27, 1937, WCFP. 24. To Maud, October 4, 1945, WCFP. 25.  Prelutsky, “Woody and the Chinaman,” 12; Transcription, Monti’s interview. 26. Memo from Gilbert Morgan to W. C. Fields, Jr., January 27, 1950, box 11, WCFP. 27. Sydney (Australia) Sun, April 12, 1914, scrapbook #29, WCFP. 28. Ida Zeitlin, “Fields without Hedges,” Screenland (January 1938), 33. 29. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 45. 30. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 117; LAE, May 13, 1949. 31. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940). 32. Judith Allen biographical file, AMPAS. 33. Adler to WCF, December 6, 1943, box 1, correspondence, WCFP. 34. “Telephone conversation between Claude and Mrs. Campion.” 35. Letter to Fields, postmarked January 3, 1946, box 3, M-personal, WCFP. 36. WCFBH, 496. 37. Unsigned typed note, box 3, M-personal, WCFP. 38. Box 3, M-personal, WCFP. 39. H. Allen Smith, The Life and Legend of Gene Fowler (New York: Morrow, 1977), 265.

Notes

  389

40. McEvoy, “W. C. Fields’ Best Friend,” LAT, July 26, 1942, H17.

Chapter 25 1. LAT, August 25, 1974. 2. Fowler, Good Night, Sweet Prince, 442. 3. Ibid, 443–44. 4.  Moody E. Prior, “In Search of the Grampian Hills with W. C. Fields,” American Scholar, 48 (Winter 1978-79), 101–105. 5. Fowler, Good Night, Sweet Prince, 444. 6. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 169; You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, Fields Comedy Collection, Universal DVD, 2004. 7. My Little Chickadee, Fields Comedy Collection, Universal DVD, 2004. 8. LAT, August 25, 1974; Fields, “Alcohol and Me.” 9. Douglas Lanier, “The Idea of a John Barrymore,” Colby Quarterly, vol. 37, 2001, 49; John Kobler, Damned in Paradise: The Life of John Barrymore (New York: Atheneum, 1977), 49–50. 10. Margaret H. Swain, “Nightgown into Dressing Gown: A Study of Mens’ Nightgowns, Eighteenth Century,” Costume 7 (June1972), 10. 11. Barrymore, PBS Great Performances, DVD, accessed October 14, 2015. 12. Cantor, Take My Life, 148. 13. Ibid, 32; Cantor, As I Remember Them, 32. 14. Fowler, The Second Handshake, 113. 15. Tully, “He Stole Three Apples; They Made Him Rich,” America, August 17, 1935; Tully, “Clowns Never Laugh,” This Week, September 6, 1936; Tully, “The Clown Who Juggled Apples,” Photoplay, January 1934, 108. 16. Paul J. Bauer and Mark Dawidziak, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2011), 295. 17. Harriet Fields’s diary, WCFP. 18. Fowler, The Second Handshake, 123. 19. Letter to Claude, ca. June 1940, WCFP. 20. WCFBH, September 17, 1942, 483. 21.  To Claude, August 26, 1943, WCFBH, 482; letter to Walter Fields, September 23, 1943, box 3, WCFP. 22. Will Fowler, The Second Handshake, 111–12. 23. LAT, August 25, 1974. 24. Grady, The Irish Peacock, 41. 25. Bauer and Dawidziak, Jim Tully, 295. 26. Fowler, The Second Handshake, 114. 27. Gehring, W. C. Fields, 91. 28. Life, January 6, 1947, 63.

390  Notes 29. Time, January 6, 1947, 54; James Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism (New York: Library Classics of the United States, 2005), 395. 30. LAT, December 26, 1946. 31. Harriet Fields’s diary, box 11, WCFP. 32. Box 11, funeral announcement, publicity, estate, probate file, WCFP. 33. Fowler, The Second Handshake, 116; Variety, January 3, 1947. 34. Albert Eddie Sutherland interview, CFOHCU, 117–18. 35. Ibid; Grady, The Irish Peacock, 41. 36. To Claude, ca. 1940, WCFP. 37. Fowler, The Second Handshake, 117. 38.  Prelutsky, “Woody and the Chinaman,” 12; Lee Grant. “W.C.’s Old Admirers Have a Fields Day,” LAT, January 31, 1980, Part V, 1, 6; LAT, January 31, 1983, F1. 39. Joe Laurie, Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace (New York: Henry Holt, 1953), 267; Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: Dover Publications, 1940), 259. 40. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599, accessed September 2, 2010.

Epilogue 1. Hollywood Citizen-News, May 16, 1949. 2.  Undated letter to my executor, Magda Michael, ca. 1945, p. 5, “In the Matter of the Estate of W. C. Fields,” Superior Court of the State of California in and for the County of Los Angeles; LAT, December 15, 1949. 3. WCFBH, November 14, 1940, 190. See also the front page of the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African-American newspaper, on December 12, 1940. 4.  LAE, May 12, 1949. 5. Interview with Harriet Fields, November 4, 2007, Washington, DC. 6. “The Descendants,” Pleasure Hunt Magazine, May–June, n.d., box 10, W. C. Fields ephemera, WCFP; Curtis, W. C. Fields, 490. 7. Boston Traveler, June 3, 1966, B29; WCFBH, 449. 8. NYT, February 19 & 23, 1966. 9. Ibid; Gallery of Modern Art Program, A Tribute to W. C. Fields, 1966. 10. Boston Traveler, June 3, 1966, B29. 11. Modern Art Program, A Tribute to W. C. Fields, 1966; “W. C. Fields Rediscovered,” Camera 3 CBS television program, March 23, 1967, DVD, Creative Arts Television, 2007; LAHE, February 17, 1971. 12. Newsweek, April 3, 1967, 88. 13. Variety, July 21, 1971; LAT, January 21, 1968, 12; Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 45. 14. David Denby, “Diary of a Mean Man,” Premiere (September 1989), 32.

Notes

  391

15.  Judith Crist, “The Anti-Establishment Man,” February 26, 1967, The Private Eye, the Cowboy, and the Very Naked Girl: Movies from Cleo to Clyde (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967–68), 226. 16. Ibid, 25; LAT, calendar section, December 11, 1966, 7. 17. Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, 72. 18. LAT, August 25, 1974, 6–7. 19. Monti, W. C. Fields and Me, 45–46. 20. WCFBH, 182, 189. 21. J. B. Priestley, “W. C. Fields,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1947, 43; “Fred Stone and W. C. Fields,” Vanity Fair, April 1924; “W. C. Fields and the Cosmos,” The Nation, January 7, 1931, in Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 187. 22. NYT, January 13, 1935, section 9, 5; New Republic, November 10, 1941, The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, ed., Robert Wilson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1971), 396. 23. “Comedy’s Greatest Era,” Life, September 3, 1949; rpt. in James Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism (New York: Library of America, 2005), 30. 24. Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields, 18; Everson, The Art of W.C. Fields, 232. 25.  Judith Crist, “The Anti-Establishment Man,” February 26, 1967, The Private Eye, the Cowboy, and the Very Naked Girl, 227–228. 26. Judith Crist, introduction, A Flask of Fields: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Films of W. C. Fields, ed. Richard J. Anobile (New York: Darien House, 1972), 14. 27. New Yorker, June 21, 1969, 86, 88–90. 28. 5001 Nights at the Movies (New York: Abrahams-Owl Book, Henry Holt, 1991), 481, 509. 29. Gehring, W. C. Fields: A Bio Bibliography, 163. 30. NYT, March 2, 1965; William Markfield, “The Dark Geography of W. C. Fields,” NYT Magazine, April 24, 1966, 32–33, 110–112, 114–120. 31. “Nightclubs, the Sicknits,” Time, July 13, 1959, 42. 32. Joe Franklin’s Encyclopedia of Comedians (Secaucus. NJ: Citadel 1979), 287. 33. Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (New York: Back Stage Books, 2004), 535; Joseph Dorinson and Joseph Boskin, “Racial and Ethnic Humor,” Humor in America: A Research Guide to Genres and Topics, ed. Lawrence E. Mintz (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 170–71; NYT, January 30, 2000. 34. Bruce, Notes to Parlophone remastered CD, EMI records, 2009, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, (Chicago, IL: Fireside, 1992), xii; William l. O’Neill, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s, 235. 35. Notes to Parlophone digital remastered CD, EMI records, 2009. 36. David Denby, “Diary of a Mean Man,” Premiere (September 1989), 32.

392  Notes 37. NYT, January 13, 1980, section 2, 36. 38. Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press Paperback, 1996), 423; David Denby, “Diary of a Mean Man,” 32. 39. Poppy advertisements, box 9, clippings 1920–29, WCFP; William Cahn, Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce), 154. 40.  “Timelessness of W. C. Fields’s Art and Humor,” http://www.wcfields. com, accessed November 8, 2015. 41. Ibid; Otis Ferguson, “The Old-Fashioned Way,” New Republic, December 30, 1940, in The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson, 326; James Agee, Time, January 6, 1947, 54.

Index

A Abbott, Bud, 223 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, xxv ad-libbing. See improvisation advertising, WCF in, 101, 188, 212 Agate, James, 175 Agee, James, 283, 294, 335, 352 alcohol, use of (by others), 99, 137, 147, 164, 166–167, 240–241, 310 alcohol, use of (by WCF). See Fields, W. C.: alcohol use Alcott, Louisa May, 116 Alice in Wonderland (1931) (film), 59 Alice in Wonderland (1933) (WCF film), 53, 56, 57–62, 60 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll), 57, 59 Alice Through the Looking Glass (Carroll), 57, 59 Allen, Fred, 192, 214, 348 Allen, Gracie, 62, 64, 211 Allen, Judith, 76, 78 Allen, Woody, 355–356, 359 “Amazing Peregrinations and Pettifoggery of One William Claude Dukenfield, The…” (museum exhibit), xxv Ameche, Don, 240 American Dental Association, 26 Ames, Adrienne, 72 Anderson, Eddie, 228 Animal Crackers (1930) (film), 52 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 A. F. Wertheim, W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47065-2

393

394  Index Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), 116 Antrim, Harry, 149, 292 Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty,” 20 Art of W. C. Fields, The (Everson), 283, 352 B “Baby Austin, The” (stage sketch), 14 Baby LeRoy. See LeRoy, Baby (Ronald Overacker) Baby Snooks, 187 Baby Snooks Show (radio program), 187 Balaban, Barney, 210, 211 Balducci, Anthony, 72, 135–136 Ballyhoo (1930) (Broadway musical), xxix, xxxii–xxxiii, 351 Bank Dick, The (1940) (film), xxvi, xxxi, 106–107, 257–273, 268, 279, 315 box office profits, 273 cast, 33, 261–262 family dinner sequence, 262–263 PCA censorship and, 258–259, 267 reviews, 272–273, 352 script writing contention, 257–261, 265 Barber Shop, The (1933) (WCF film), 36–39. See also Sennett, Mack Barlow, Walter Jarvis, 176 Barnes, T. Roy, 98 Barrymore (TV play), 328 Barrymore, Ethel, 308 Barrymore, John, 305, 306, 307, 308–311 death and burial of, 310, 311 friendship with WCF, 308–310, 309, 311, 326–328 Grampian Hills and, 326–328 See also Bundy Drive Boys Barrymore, Lionel, 308, 326 Barrymore, Maurice, 308, 327–328 Bartholomew, Freddie, 117, 118–119, 120. See also David Copperfield (1935) (film) Bayes, Nora, 308 Beatles, The, 356–358, 357 Beaudine, William, xxxvii, 76, 80, 83, 86 Bennett, Joan, 124, 132 Benny, Jack, 192, 199, 211, 214 WCF listens to radio program, 186, 187, 193 Beranger, Clara, 178–179

Index

  395

Bergen, Candice, 190, 191, 299 Bergen, Edgar, 188, 190–197, 196, 214–215 in Charlie McCarthy Show, 298–299 in Chase & Sanborn Hour, 188, 191–197, 214, 240 eulogy at WCF funeral, 337–338 Grampian Hills and, 326–327 popularity decline and death of, 299 receives honorary Oscar, 226 in Song of the Open Road, 294–295 in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 224, 226–227, 230, 232, 234 See also McCarthy, Charlie (Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy) Bergman, Andrew, 16 Berle, Milton, 355 Berlin, Irving, 9 Berry, Wallace, 56 Beyer, Charles, 150, 296 Big Broadcast films, 199, 200, 201 Big Broadcast of 1938, The (1938) (WCF film), 124, 199–207 cast, 200, 204–205 Hope sings “Thanks for the Memory,” 200 radio popularity and, 200 reviews, 205, 230 WCF role in, 200, 201–204, 205–206 Billings, Josh, 316 Biograph (silent film studio), 20 Bissonette, Harold (inspiration for character), 92 Blackburn, Linelle, 164. See also Fields, WCF: affairs Blanche, William “Shorty” (WCF’s stooge on stage, films and personal assistant), 64–65 Bletcher, Billy, 25 Bloom, Harold, 31 favorable WCF reviews, 28 Blue, Ben, WCF confrontation, 200 Blumberg, Nate, 223, 225, 228, 242, 259 Bogle, Charles (WCF nom de plume), 91, 137, 138 Boland, Mary, 62, 64 Botsford, A.M., 48 Boyer, Charles, 63–64 Breen, Joseph, 24 opinion of WCF films as PCA head Bank Dick, 258–259, 267

396  Index International House, 49 Mississippi, 131 My Little Chickadee, 248, 249, 251, 253 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 278–279, 281 Old Fashioned Way, 80–81 You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 226 See also Production Code Administration (PCA) Brennan, Walter, 142 Brian, Mary, 131, 141–142 Brice, Fanny (née Fannie Borach, performer with WCF in Follies), 132, 187, 193 Brice, Monte, xxxvi Broadway, A La (1911) (stage show), 238 Broadway Headliners (sound shorts), xxxiv Broadway theaters, xxix Brock, Louis, xxxiv, 5, 16 Brooks, Louise, 39–40, 132, 297, 301, 314, 349–350. See also Sutherland, Eddie Broun, Heywood (critic), 351 Bruce, Lenny, 356, 357, 358 Bruckman, Clyde, 136, 137, 147 Bruno, Guido, 307 Buchanan-Taylor, W. “Bucky,” xxxvii, 172 Buck, Gene, 337 Bundy Drive Boys, 302, 305–308, 306 Barrymore’s funeral, 311 Carradine, John, 305, 306, 311 Chasen, Dave, 303, 304, 305, 333–334, 337 deaths among, 311–312, 337 Flynn, Errol, 305, 311, 312 Hartmann, Sadakichi, 305, 307–308, 311 Hecht, Ben, 305, 310, 311, 333–334 La Rue, Jack, 306 Mitchell, Thomas, 305, 311 Quinn, Anthony, 275–276, 305, 306, 311 WCF funeral, 337 Young, Tammany, 305, 311 See also Barrymore, John; Decker, John; Fields, W. C.; Fowler, Gene; Fowler, Will Bupp, Tommy, 92, 103 Burkhalter, Bob, 57, 107 Burns, Bob, 211 Burns, George, 62, 64, 211, 233

Index

  397

C “Caledonia Express, The” (1922) (sketch reused in Sensations of 1945), xxxii, 295 Cantor, Eddie (né Israel Itzkowitz), 137, 187, 193, 302, 328–329 Capra, Frank, 40, 41, 138 card shark humor, xxxii, xli, 54–55, 126, 128–130, 249–251, 257, 349. See also comedic themes, use and repetition Carr, Lorena, 33–36 Carradine, John, 305, 306, 311 Carroll, Earl, 305, 337. See also Earl Carroll’s Vanities (1928), sketches recycled Carroll, Lewis (Charles Dodgson), 57–58, 59–60 Alice in Wonderland (WCF film), 53, 56, 57–62, 60 Carter, Louise, 71 Cavanna, Elise (actress in WCF’s films), 131, 148, 150 in Barber Shop, 37 in Dentist, The, 23–25, 24 in Pharmacist, The, 33–36 censorship Pre-Code Era (1930-1934), 23–24, 47–50, 51, 80, 81 See also Production Code Administration (PCA) Chandler, George, 30 Chaplin, Charlie, xxxi, xxxiii, 46, 115, 136, 356 in Great Dictator, 36 Sennett and, 20, 21 Charlie McCarthy (Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy). See McCarthy, Charlie Charlie McCarthy Show, The (radio program), 298–299 Chasen, Dave, 303, 304, 305, 333–334, 337 Chase & Sanborn Hour, The (Bergen-McCarthy radio program), 188, 191–197, 214–215, 240 Chevalier, Maurice, 56 Chicago Daily Tribune, 62 children DeMille’s grandson drowns, 275–276 WCF gives alcohol to, 85–86, 100 WCF grandchildren, 92, 331, 332, 345, 349, 359 WCF kindness toward, 86, 100, 282 WCF reputation for disliking, 56, 80, 99–100, 233, 269, 282 See also Fields, William Claude, Jr. (son) children characters, mischievous, 79–80, 269 Baby LeRoy, 55–56, 58, 79–80, 95, 99–100, 132, 194 in Bank Dick, 261, 263, 265

398  Index Charlie McCarthy compared to, 194 in Dentist, The, 21 in It’s a Gift, 92, 94, 99 in Man on the Flying Trapeze, 132, 140 in Old Fashioned Way, xli, 79–80 in Pharmacist, The, 33 in Tillie and Gus, 56 Christian Science Monitor, 279, 284 Christie, Al and Charlie, 4 Citron, Jesse, 172, 175 Cleese, John, 359 Cline, Edward “Eddie,” 228–229, 337 Bank Dick, 258, 259, 260, 270, 272 Million Dollar Legs, 11, 229 My Little Chickadee, 241, 248, 249, 251–252, 253 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 284 Clines, Adele and Frank, 345 Cocoanuts, The (1929) (film), 52 Cohen, Emmanuel, 63 Cohen, Manny, 123 Collier, Willie, 232 comedic themes, use and repetition, 135–136, 147, 281 alcohol-related, 194–195, 205, 316, 317–320, 335 card playing, xxxii, xli, 54–55, 126, 128–130, 249–251, 257, 349 get-rich climax, 106–107, 270 goats, 127, 249 golf routines, xxvi, xxxii–xxxvii, xl, 22, 25, 73, 202–203, 298 hat antics, 157, 203, 265, 293 public taste, 53, 223 pun names, xli, 114, 261–262 sleep interrupted, 77, 97–100, 145 trains, 145, 295 See also children characters, mischievous; Fields, W. C.: comedic style; Fields, W. C.: comic characterizations; juggling routines, original and recycled; nose-related humor; pool routines, original and recycled Comic Supplement, The (1925) (revue), 32, 69, 91, 97–99, 109, 257. See also Fields, W. C.: comic characterizations Command Performance (radio program), 298 Confidence-Man, The (Melville), 128–129 Conklin, Chester, xxx, 10, 20 contracts, 6, 52–53, 90, 240

Index

  399

MGM declines to bring on WCF, 217 WCF with Paramount, 63, 125, 150, 207 compared to Universal, 224 duration, 52 end of, xxxi, xxxii, 150, 211–212 health concerns, 171–172 initial securing, 19–20, 45–46 MGM borrows WCF for David Copperfield, 117–118 Paramount’s financial difficulties, 17, 52, 209 provisions, 45, 51–52, 123 radio and, 187–188 WCF with Universal, 222, 223–225, 231–232, 234–235, 259–260, 289 See also Paramount Pictures Cook, Alton, 193 Cook, Joe, 305 Cowan, Lester, 223–224, 232 Crabbe, Buster, 72 Crist, Judith, 348, 349, 352–353 Crosby, Bing, 17, 124, 130, 132, 133, 192, 206, 211 Cukor, George, 116–120, 311, 348 D Daily Variety, 160, 284 Date with Your Family, A (instructional film), 263 David Copperfield (1935) (film), 53, 60, 113, 115–121, 119, 131, 133 reviews, 120–121, 124 “Day I Drank a Glass of Water, The” (1945) (radio performance and recording), 67, 316, 317 Decker, John, 302–303, 305, 306, 307, 310, 311–312, 337 Barrymore, John and, 311 See also Bundy Drive Boys DeMille, Cecil B., 212, 214, 275–276, 311 DeMille, Christopher, drowning of, 275–276 Dempsey, Jack, 337, 338 Dempster, Carol, 153 Denby, David, 69, 70, 358–359 Dennis the Menace (comic strip), 79 Dentist, The (1932) (film), xxxii, 21–26, 24 Deschner, Donald, 352 Diamond Lil (1928) (play), 241, 243, 255. See also West, Mae Dickens, Charles, 60, 113, 115. See also David Copperfield (1935) (film)

400  Index Dieterle, William, 6, 8–9 Dietrich, Marlene, 210, 222, 238 Dooley, Ray, 132, 276–277 Doucet, Catharine, 158 Douglas (Home), 325–326 Dreiser, Theodore, 142 Dresser, Paul, 142 Dressler, Marie, 20, 56 Drew, Georgiana, 308, 328. See also Barrymore, John Drew, Louisa Lane, 328 “Drug Store” (sketch), 32–33 Drunkard, The (1844) (play), 81–82, 83 Duckenfield, John (WCF’s paternal grandfather), 114 Duck Soup (1933) (film), 12, 53 Duffy and Sweeney, 339 Duggan, Jan, 78 Dukenfield, Adele “Dell” (WCF’s sister), xxxviii–xxxix, 178, 295, 337, 338, 343 Dukenfield, James Lydon “Jim” (WCF’s father), 114 Dukenfield, Kate (née Felton) (WCF’s mother), xxxviii–xxxix Dumont, Margaret, 281 Dunne, Irene, 63–64 Durbin, Deanna, 222–223 Duvivier, Julien, 290 Dylan, Bob, 357, 358 E Earl Carroll’s Vanities (1928), sketches recycled, xxvi, xxxii, 289 Barber Shop, 36, 39 Dentist, The, 21, 23, 25 Fatal Glass of Beer, 26 Sensations of 1945, 295 Eddie Cantor Show, The (radio program), 187 Edward VII, King of England, 115 “Episode at the Dentist’s” (sketch), xxxii Erdnase, S. W., 128 Ernst, Max, 358 Errol, Leon, 282 Everson, William K., 30, 32, 60, 88, 160, 234, 283, 352 Everything Happens at Once (Man on the Flying Trapeze), 137. See also Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) (film) Expert at the Card Table, The: The Classic Treatise on Card Manipulation (Erdnase), 128

Index

  401

F “Family Ford, The” (Follies sketch), xli, 14, 101 Fatal Glass of Beer, The (1933) (film), xxxii, 26–36, 29, 53, 127, 135 reviews, 31, 353 female filmmakers, 222 Fendick, Maud (WCF’s first amour after wife), 141, 164, 232, 233 Ferber, Edna, 116 Ferguson, Otis, 83, 84, 88, 108, 146, 283, 351 Fiddler, Jimmy, 291 Fields, Claude (son). See Fields, William Claude, Jr. Fields, Everett (grandson), 331 Fields, Harriet (granddaughter), 345 Fields, Harriet Veronica “Hattie” (née Hughes) (WCF’s wife), xxx, 10, 131, 138, 163–164, 169, 313 death of, 346 relationship with daughter-in-law, 331, 336, 345 relationship with son, 93, 179, 331, 335–336, 346 shrewish spouse characterization based on, 93, 139 status as WCF wife, 345–346 WCF death and, 335–336, 338 WCF health and, 177–179, 330 WCF will and, 336–337, 343 Fields, Ronald J. (grandson), 92, 349, 359 Fields, Walter (WCF’s brother), 158, 177, 337, 338, 343 Fields, W. C. affairs, 163–169 Blackburn, Linelle, 164 Fendick, Maud, 141, 164, 232, 233 Poole, Bessie, 131, 164 (See also Monti, Carlotta (WCF’s last amour)) alcohol use, 151, 276–277, 309–310, 313, 314–315 career and, 64, 123–124, 278, 284, 289–290, 314 comedy and, 194–195, 205, 315, 316, 317–318, 318–320, 335 films and, 315 censorship, 80–81, 226–227 drinking on set, 76, 124, 228, 240–241, 277–278, 295, 296 Fatal Glass of Beer, 27–28, 226–227 International House, 47 It’s a Gift, 104, 106 Man on the Flying Trapeze, 139, 142, 144 Mississippi, 130–131 Old Fashioned Way, 76, 82–83 Tales of Manhattan, 289–291

402  Index health and, 151, 172, 174–178, 207, 289, 296, 314 blood vessels in nose burst, 58 end of life care and, 320–321, 322 libido, 165–166 liver damage, 310, 320, 333 (See also Fields, W. C.: health) career, xxv–xxvi advertising appearances, 101, 188, 212 alcohol and, 64, 123–124, 278, 284, 289–290, 314 film performances (See Fields, W. C.: film performances) literary influences, 114, 115 multiple genres represented, 320 musical scores written, 26–28 radio performances (See Fields. W. C.: radio performances) as recording artist, xxvi, 316, 317–320 salary (See Fields, W. C.: salary) script writing (See Fields, W. C.: script writing) stage performances (See Fields, W. C.: stage performances) censorship and, 48–49, 51, 81, 131, 197, 226–227, 278–279, 280 characteristics of bad temper, 166, 201 claustrophobia, 58–59 contradictions in, 276, 301–302, 345 child hater/kind to children, 86, 99–100, 233, 269, 283 dog hater/dog lover, 104, 105, 233–234, 314–315 race views, 231, 344 dislike of authority, 211 dislike of banks, 267 dislike of Christmas, 331–332, 333 dislike of film studios, 89–90 dislike of swans on golf course, 16–17, 124, 142, 304–305 English ancestry, 114 facial expressions, 158–159 insecurity, 133, 149, 167, 207, 329 insomnia, 36, 125, 137, 144–145, 147, 175 interest in literature, 113–114, 316–317 lateness, 137 loneliness, 149, 301 love of automobiles, 14–15, 100–102, 146, 173, 270, 339 loyalty to costars, 65, 141, 329 misogyny, 131 as nature lover, 108, 174

Index

  403

physical appearance, 86, 117, 118, 178 (See also nose-related humor) practical joker, 174 religious beliefs, 323, 325, 327–328, 338 socializing, 301–302 tall tales by, 115–116, 126–127, 216 voice, xxxvii–xxxix, 59–60, 71, 86, 136, 154, 158–159, 194 wanderlust, 115, 178 comedic style, 26, 201, 353–354 improvisation, 8, 11, 47, 63, 76, 86, 118, 125, 197, 244–245 pantomime, 12, 67–68, 71, 73 physical comedy, 71, 227 prop use, xli, 70 satire, 32 in silent films vs. Talkies, 69–70 timing in, xl, 67 wordplay, xxxviii–xxxix (See also comedic themes, use and repetition) comic characterizations, xxxvii, xli–xlii, 12–13, 113, 206, 229–230 braggart, 86, 126, 127 card shark, 54, 126, 128, 129–131, 249–251 con man, xxxiv, 12, 126, 154, 249, 252 domestic family, xxv, 31–32, 37, 138, 139–140, 143–144, 147, 262–263 frustrated Everyman, 70, 100, 106, 157 henpecked husband, xxvi, 12, 88, 91–92, 93, 138, 139–140, 257–258 pun names, xli–xlii, 114, 261–262 (See also children characters, mischievous) costars Allen, Gracie, 62, 64, 211 Barnes, T. Roy, 98 Boland, Mary, 62, 64 Brian, Mary, 131, 141–142 Burns, George, 62, 64, 211, 233 Carr, Lorena, 33, 34 Cavanna, Elise, 23–25, 24, 33–36, 37, 131, 148, 150 children Bartholomew, Freddie, 118–119 Bupp, Tommy, 92, 103 Jean, Gloria, 131, 277–278, 281 Kane, Babe, 33, 34 LeRoy, Baby, 55–56, 79–80, 95, 99–100, 132, 194 Rouverol, Jean, 92, 103, 131 Withers, Jane, 282

404  Index Dooley, Ray, 276–277 Howard, Kathleen, 72, 92, 93, 98, 103, 131–132, 138–140 Hudson, Rochelle, 156 Joyce, Peggy Hopkins, 46–49 Miller, Marilyn, 6, 9 Oakie, Jack, 10, 11, 17 Pangborn, Franklin, 47, 261, 280, 282 Pitts, Zasu, 85, 86, 89 Prévost, Marie, 21 Ruggles, Charlie, 62, 64 Sinclair, Johnny (WCF stuntman), 27, 153 Skipworth, Alison, 13, 15, 54–57, 62, 63, 131, 154 Sutton, Grady, 33, 140–141, 231, 261 Turpin, Ben, 21 West, Mae, 237–256, 327 Young, Tammany, 64, 65–66, 73, 76, 142, 171 (See also Bergen, Edgar) death, 311, 323, 333 beliefs about afterlife, 325–327 cremation, 339–341 end of life care, 313, 320–321, 322, 328–333 funeral, 335, 336–338 internment in crypt at Forest Lawn, 336, 337, 338, 339 plaque marker, 340 obituary, 334, 337–338 will, 177, 322, 330, 336–337, 343–346 directors Beaudine, William, xxxvii, 76, 80, 83 McCarey, Leo, 62–64, 63, 245, 337 (See also Cline, Edward “Eddie”; Sennett, Mack; Sutherland, Eddie) fame, 175, 232–233, 284, 303 posthumous rise to cultural icon, 207, 346–354 Agee, James and, 352 books published, 348–349 cheerleaders of, 351–354 counterculture following, 350–351, 356–357, 359 film releases, 348 Michael, Magda and, 350 photographs, 349 postage stamp commemoration, 358–360 print publicity, 348 Sennwald, Andre and, 351

Index

  405

Sgt. Pepper’s album cover, 356–358, 357 son’s involvement with, 346–348 voice, 351 family relationships brother Walter, 158, 177, 337, 338, 343 daughter-in-law Ruthie, 330–331, 332, 336, 345 father Jim, 114 grandchildren, 92, 331, 332, 345, 349, 359 mother Kate, xxxviii–xxxix sister Adele, xxxviii–xxxix, 178, 295, 337, 338, 343 son Claude, 164, 343 (See also Fields, Harriet Veronica “Hattie” (née Hughes) (WCF’s wife) Fields, William Claude, Jr. (son)) film performances Alice in Wonderland, 53, 56, 57–62, 60 Barber Shop, 36–39 Big Broadcast of 1938, 124, 199–207, 230 David Copperfield, 53, 60, 113, 115–121, 119, 124, 131, 133 Dentist, The, xxxii, 21–26, 24 Fatal Glass of Beer, xxxii, 26–36, 29, 53, 127, 135, 353 Follow the Boys, 292–294, 335 Fools for Luck, 17 Golf Specialist, xxvi, xxxiv–xxxvi Her Majesty Love, 6–9, 8, 12–13, 227 His Lordship’s Dilemma, xxxi, 221 If I Had a Million, 13–16, 15, 17, 54, 154 International House, 45, 46–50, 51, 154 It’s a Gift (See It’s a Gift (1934) (film)) lost films, xxxi Man on the Flying Trapeze, 53, 72, 93, 132, 135–147, 166, 171, 206, 315 Million Dollar Legs, 10–13, 53, 229, 353 Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 53, 85–90, 89 My Little Chickadee (See My Little Chickadee (1940) (film)) Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 128, 166, 277–285, 351 Old Fashioned Way (See Old Fashioned Way, The (1934) (film)) Pharmacist, The, 33–36, 109, 140 Pool Sharks, xxxi, 221 Poppy, xxxvii, xli, 76, 113, 136, 151–160, 156, 175, 206 Running Wild, 17, 141 Sensations of 1945, xxxii, 295–297 Six of a Kind, 53, 62–68, 66, 171

406  Index Song of the Open Road, 294–295 So’s Your Old Man, xxxi–xxxii, 69, 71–74, 106, 227, 352 Tales of Manhattan, 289–291, 316 Tillie and Gus, 53–57 Two Flaming Youths, 10, 17, 27, 75, 76, 141, 149, 153, 224 You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (See You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1934) (film)) You’re Telling Me (See You’re Telling Me (1934) (film)) (See also Fields, W. C.: salary; silent films, remade as Talkies) friendships Barrymore, John, 308–310, 309, 311, 326–328 Brice, Fanny, 132, 187, 193 Brooks, Louise, 132, 297, 349–350 Bundy Drive Boys, 302, 305–308, 306, 311–312, 337 Cantor, Eddie, 137, 187, 302, 328–329 Decker, John, 303, 305, 306 DeMille, Cecil B., 275–276 Fowler, Gene and, 304 Fowler, Will and, 304–305 Hardy, Sam, 136–137, 148, 150 Hartmann, Sadakichi dislike of, 307–308 Hecht, Ben, 305, 310, 311, 333–334 Hope, Bob, 200–201, 207, 211 Rogers, Will, 15, 150, 171, 302 Sutherland, Eddie, 47, 125, 132, 133, 151, 153, 158, 159 Sutton, Grady, 33, 140–141 Tully, Jim, 329–330, 333 (See also Bergen, Edgar; Fowler, Gene; Fowler, Will) health, 147–148, 149–153, 158, 171–179, 195 during Bank Dick, 271–272 blood vessels in nose burst, 58 coma, 332–333 end of life care, 313, 320–321, 322, 328–333 eyesight, 296 hospitalization, 174–175 improves after sanitarium stay, 181–182 Las Encinas Sanitarium stays, 176, 179–181, 185, 187, 298, 313, 314, 320–322, 329–333 liver damage, 310, 320, 333 memory loss, 298 during Poppy (film), 151, 152–153, 171, 175 (See also Fields, W. C.: alcohol use)

Index

  407

life events birth and youth, 108 end of life care, 313, 320–321, 322, 328–333 Las Encinas Sanitarium stays, 176, 179–181, 185, 187, 298, 313, 314, 320–322, 329–333 loses life savings, 5 moves to Encino ranch, 107–108 moves to Hollywood, 3 travels of, 114–115 (See also Fields, W. C.: death; Fields, W. C.: health) professional conflict Blumberg, Nate, 225 Leisen, Mitchell, 201–202 Marshall, George, 228 McCarey, Leo, 63–64 Muhl, Edward, 258, 259–260, 284–285 Work, Cliff, 225, 229, 231–232, 243 (See also Breen, Joseph) professional rivalries Charlie McCarthy, 192–197, 214–215, 230, 292, 298–299, 348 Crosby, Bing, 124–125, 132 Hope, Bob, 207 West, Mae, 240, 244–245, 252–254, 255 professional support Beyer, Charles, 150, 296 Blumberg, Nate, 259 LeBaron, William, 45, 69–70, 135, 151 Mankiewicz, Herman and Joseph, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 59 Michael, Magda, 172–174, 320, 321, 327, 330, 333 Shorty (William Blanche), 64–65 Sutherland, Eddie, 47, 125, 132, 133, 151, 153, 158, 159 (See also Sennett, Mack) radio, attitude toward, 185–186 radio performances, xxvi, 67, 196 Chase & Sanborn Hour, 188, 191–197, 214–215, 240 Poppy, 212–214 reviews, 193–194 rivalry with Charlie McCarthy, 192–197, 205, 214–215, 298–299 salary, 188 script writing, 196–197 Your Hit Parade, 215–216 Zukor show, 156, 187–188

408  Index salary for film performances, xxx–xxxi, 6, 10, 13, 17, 19–20 David Copperfield, 217 International House, 45 Man on the Flying Trapeze, 147 with MGM, 217 Mississippi and, 123 My Little Chickadee, 239 with Paramount, 45–46, 51–52, 150 with Universal, 223 for radio performance, 188 for script writing, 209–210 script writing Bank Dick, The, 257–261 Big Broadcast of 1938, 202 censorship and, 48–49, 51, 81, 131, 197, 226–227, 278–279, 280 It’s a Gift, 91–92 Man on the Flying Trapeze, 136–137 musical scores, 26–28 My Little Chickadee, 241, 242–243, 244, 245 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 277, 280, 281 nom de plumes in, 91–92, 137, 260, 277 Old Fashioned Way, 75, 92 salary, 209–210 for Universal, 223 You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 224, 226 stage performances, xxvi, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxvi–xxxvii, xli Ballyhoo, xxix, xxxii–xxxiii Poppy (1923-1924), xxvi, xxxvii–xxxviii stage career ends, xxix–xxx voice in, xxxvii Ziegfeld Follies, xxv–xxvi, xxxi–xxxii, 12, 46, 64, 91, 128, 221, 263 Barrymore family spoof in, 308 croquet sketch, 157–158 Hardy, Sam and, 136 (See also Earl Carroll’s Vanities (1928), sketches recycled; stage routines, ­recycled in films) Fields, William Claude, III (grandson), 331, 332, 345 Fields, William Claude, Jr. (son), xl, 292–293, 330 characters based on, 132, 140 death of mother, 346 marriage to Ruthie, 330–331, 332, 336, 345 relationship with mother Hattie, 93, 179, 331, 335–336, 346

Index

WCF death and, 335–336, 336–337, 338 WCF estrangement, 132, 138, 141, 164, 177, 232 WCF renaissance, involvement in, 346–348 WCF will and, 336–337, 343 Fields for President (Fields), 295, 348–349, 350 Fields Papers, xxv–xxvi Fields’s Comedy Company, 33 film festivals (WCF), 348, 359 film performances. See Fields, W. C.: film performances film reviews Alice in Wonderland, 62 Bank Dick, The, 272–273, 352 Barber Shop, The, 39 Big Broadcast of 1938, 205, 230 David Copperfield, 120–121, 124 Dentist, The, 26 Fatal Glass of Beer, 31, 353 Follow the Boys, 293–294 Her Majesty Love, 9–10 International House, 47, 50 It’s a Gift, 93, 95, 108–109, 147, 352, 359 Man on the Flying Trapeze, 136, 138, 146–147 Million Dollar Legs, 12, 13, 353 Mississippi, 132–133 Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, 88 My Little Chickadee, 254, 255, 353 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 282–283, 285, 351 Old Fashioned Way, The, 83, 84 Pharmacist, The, 35–36 Poppy, 153, 159–160, 175 Sensations of 1945, 297 Six of a Kind, 68 Tillie and Gus, 56 You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 230, 234 You’re Telling Me, 74, 75 films, WCF’s attitude toward, xxx–xxxi Films of W. C. Fields, The (Deschner), 352 film studios, 4–5 broadcasting networks and, 199 Columbia, 222 Fox, 210, 222 MGM, xxxiii, 116, 117–118, 217, 222

  409

410  Index Pre-Code Era and, 47–48 RKO, xxxiii–xxxiv, xl, 45, 116, 222, 260 storage issues, xxxi United Artists, 222 Warner Bros. -First National, 9 See also Paramount Pictures; Universal Studios Flagstad, Kirsten, 201–202 Flynn, Errol, 305, 311, 312 Follow the Boys (1943) (film), 292–294, 335 Fools for Luck (1928) (silent film), 17 Foran, Dick, 254–255 Ford, John, 222, 223 Forest Lawn Memorial Park, 336, 337 Fowler, Gene, 260, 303–304, 305–306, 306, 312, 323, 332 Barrymore, John and, 309–310, 311 Good Night, Sweet Prince, 397 Hartmann, Sadakichi and, 307–308 last visits with WCF, 329, 330 WCF death and funeral, 333–334, 336, 337 See also Bundy Drive Boys Fowler, Will, 40, 276, 301, 303–305, 310, 322 Barrymore, John and, 311, 326 Bundy Drive Boys epitaph, 312 Hartmann, Sadakichi and, 307 last visits with WCF, 329, 331 WCF death and funeral, 333–334, 337 See also Bundy Drive Boys Fox, Matty, 257, 272 Fox films, 210, 222 Freeman, Everett, 229, 234 Freeman, Y. Frank, 210, 211 G Gallery of Modern Art, tribute to WCF at, 346–347 Gateway to Hollywood, The (radio program), 298 George V, King of England, 115 Gilliatt, Penelope, 353 Glover, Edwin, 291–292 Goddard, Paulette, 211 Gold Rush, The (1925) (film), 136 golf, WCF plays, 16–17, 18, 92, 124

Index

golf routines, original and recycled Big Broadcast of 1938, 202–203 Charlie McCarthy Show, 298 Dentist, The, 22, 25 Golf Specialist, xxvi, xxxiv–xxxvii, xl You’re Telling Me, 73 Golf Specialist, The (1930) (film), xxvi, xxxiv–xxxvii, xl Goodman, Phillip, 302 Grady, Bill, 333–334, 337 Grampian Hills, Scotland, 325–327 See also Fields, W. C.: death Great Depression, 4, 16, 31, 86, 101 gender roles during, 94, 106, 147 Great Dictator, The (1940) (film), 36 Griffith, David Wark, 20, 21, 153 Gross, Jack, 253 H Hall, Mordaunt, 56, 59 Hamilton, Margaret, 245 Hammerstein, Arthur, xxxii Ham Tree, The (1905) (play), 12 “Happy Days Are Here [Again]” (1929) (song), xxxiv Hardy, Sam, 136–137, 148 death of, 150, 171, 177 Harriman Bank, 5 Hart, Lorenz, 124 Hartmann, Sadakichi, 305, 307–308 death of, 308, 311 Hays, Will H., 47, 131 Hays Code, 47–49 See also Production Code Administration (PCA) Hearst, William Randolph, 344 Hecht, Ben, 305, 310, 311, 333–334 Her Majesty Love (1931) (film), 6–9, 8, 12–13, 227 Hill, George W., Jr., 216 Hirschfeld, Al, xxxiii His Lordship’s Dilemma (1915) (film), xxxi, 221 Hodkinson, W. W., 210 Hollywood, California, 3–4 Hollywood Plaza Hotel, 3

  411

412  Index Hollywood Reporter, The, 8–9, 50, 51, 83, 254, 334 Home, John, 325–326 Hoover, Herbert, 12 Hope, Bob, 192, 193, 200–201, 205, 206–207, 211, 335 death of, 207 Hornblow, Arthur, 123–124, 132 Howard, Kathleen, 92, 98, 103, 131–132 It’s a Gift, 72, 138 Man on the Flying Trapeze, 72, 93, 138–140 You’re Telling Me, 72, 93, 131, 138 Howard, Shemp, 261, 265 Hudson, Rochelle, 153, 156 hungry i nightclub, 355 Hunt, Thomas, 302 I If I Had a Million (1932) (film), 13–16, 15, 17, 54, 154 improvisation, 8, 37, 47, 126, 142 with Charlie McCarthy, 194, 197, 214–215 Cline on, 11, 229 coworkers dislike, 11, 57, 63, 229 liberties given for, xxxvi, 11, 76, 86, 118, 296 WCF-West rivalry in My Little Chickadee, 244–245 Ince, Thomas, 21 International House (1933) (film), 46–50, 154 International Movie Data Base (IMDB), 26 “Is His Nose Red: Inside Facts about the Great Fields-McCarthy Vendetta” (Smith), 180–181 It’s a Gift (1934) (film), xxvi, xxxi, xxxviii, 91–110, 104, 283 alcohol use in, 315 comic characterization in, xli–xlii, 53, 91–92, 109–110, 138, 270 Howard, Kathleen in, 72, 138 It’s the Old Army Game remade as, 91–92, 100, 136, 145 “Joy Ride” scene, 100–102 LeRoy, Baby in, 56, 95, 99–100 picnic scene, 102–103 reviews, 93, 95, 108–109, 147, 352, 359 sleeping porch scene, xxvi, 97–100, 98, 145 trailer camp scene, 101–102 It’s the Old Army Game (1926) (film), xxvi, 32–33, 47, 109, 349 remade as It’s a Gift, 91–92, 100, 136, 145

Index

J Jean, Gloria, 131, 277–278, 281 joke stealing, 135–136 Jones, Grover, 241, 242, 243 Joyce, Peggy Hopkins, 46–50, 154 “Joy Ride, The” (stage sketch), 14, 100–102 juggling routines, original and recycled, xxvi, 114–115, 292, 358, 360 Ballyhoo, xxxii, 351 David Copperfield, 118 Her Majesty Love, 7–8 Old Fashioned Way, xli, 83 See also comedic themes, use and repetition Jung, Carl, 357, 358 J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, 188, 196, 215, 298–299 K Kael, Pauline, 12, 16, 254, 255, 353–354 Kane, Babe, 21, 33–36 Karloff, Boris, 223 Katzenjammer Kids (comic strip), 79 Kaufman, Al, 13 Kaufman, George S., 116 Keaton, Buster, xxxi, xxxiii, 56, 135, 136, 147, 290, 356, 359 Kerr, Walter, 71 Ketchum, Hank, 79 Keystone Pictures Studio, 20–21 “Kid Strips” (comics), 79 Kimball, Moses, 81 Knight, Arthur, 352 Komarovsky, Mirra, 96 L La Cava, Gregory, 5, 171, 333–334, 337 Laemmle, Carl, 221, 222 Lamour, Dorothy, 200, 201, 211 Lanchester, Elsa, 117 La Rue, Jack, 306 Las Encinas Sanitarium stays, 176, 179–181, 185, 187, 298 end of life care, 313, 329–333 See also Fields, W. C.: health

  413

414  Index Lasky, Jesse, 13, 238 Laughing Gas (1914) (film), 21 Laughton, Charles, 117, 120 Laurel, Stan, 135, 358 Laurie, Joe, 189 LeBaron, William, xxxiii, 5, 70, 159, 202, 210 Monti, Carlotta and, 166 role in WCF career advancement, 45, 69–70, 135, 151 at WCF funeral, 337 West and, 238 Legion of Decency (Roman Catholic Church), 50–51, 80. See also Production Code Administration (PCA) Leisen, Mitchell, 201–202, 203, 211 LeRoy, Baby (Ronald Overacker), 132, 194 Alice in Wonderland, 58 It’s a Gift, 56, 95, 99–100 Old Fashioned Way, 56, 79–80 Tillie and Gus, 55–56 See also children characters, mischievous Lewis, Sinclair, 302 Liberty magazine, WCF marriage revealed in, 178, 179–181 Library of Congress, National Film Registry, 110, 273, 352 Liddell, Alice, 57 Life magazine, 334, 352 Life on the Mississippi (Twain), 126, 129 Lloyd, Harold, xxx, xxxi, xxxiii, 136, 216, 359 Bruckman, Clyde and, 135, 147 Lombard, Carole, 210 Los Angeles Times, 73, 84, 120, 138, 209 Lubitsch, Ernst, 123, 210, 211 Lulu in Hollywood (Brooks), 350 Lux Radio Theatre, 212 M Mack, Charley, 5 Mack, Dick, 196 MacMurray, Fred, 211 Magnificent Rogue—The Adventures of W. C. Fields (radio program), 348 makeup artists, 58–59 Maltin, Leonard, 273 Mamoulian, Rouben, 211

Index

Manchester Evening News, 83 Mankiewicz, Herman J., 10, 11 Mankiewicz, Joseph, 10, 12, 16, 17, 59 Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) (film), 53, 132, 135–147, 171, 206 alcohol and, 139, 142, 144, 315 as autobiographical, 138 Hardy, Sam and, 136–137 Howard, Kathleen in, 72, 93, 138–140 Monti, Carlotta in, 144–145, 166 reviews, 136, 138, 146–147 script by WCF and Hardy, 136–137 Man Ray, 12 March, Frederick, 210, 311 Markfield, William, 354 Marsh, Joan, 71 Marshall, George, 224, 228 Martin, Francis, 57 Marx Brothers, xxx, 12, 52–53, 59, 356 Cocoanuts, The, 52 Mayer, Irene, 116 Mayer, Louis B., 116, 117, 311 McCaffrey, Donald W., 200, 254 McCaffrey, Jinks, 67 McCarey, Leo, 62–64, 63, 245, 337 McCarthy, Charlie (Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy), 190–197, 196, 232 in Bergen home, 191 in Charlie McCarthy Show, 298–299 in Chase & Sanborn Hour, 188, 191–197, 214–215, 240 in Song of the Open Road, 294–295 vaudeville success, 190–191 WCF rivalry, 192–197, 205, 214–215, 230, 298–299, 348 in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 226–227, 230 See also Bergen, Edgar McCartney, Paul, 356–357 McEvoy, Joseph P., 69 Mckay, William, 345 McLeod, Norman, 59, 100, 142 Meek, Donald, 247, 248 Melville, Herman, 128–129 Mencken, H. L., 302, 333 Merkel, Una, 260–261 Metropolitan Studios, 59

  415

416  Index MGM, xxxiii, 116 declines contract for WCF, 217 Paramount loan-out of WCF for David Copperfield, 117–118 See also film studios Michael, Magda “Mickey Mouse,” 113, 172–174, 321, 327, 330, 350 with WCF on deathbed, 332–333 as WCF will executor, 173, 320, 336–337 Milland, Ray, 211 Miller, Marilyn, 6, 9 Million Dollar Legs (1932) (film), 10–13, 53, 229, 353 Mississippi (1935) (film), xli, 53, 117–118, 123–133 Crosby-WCF rivalry, 124–125, 132, 133 cuts to, 132–133 PCA censorship and, 131 poker sequence, 128, 129–131 reviews, 132–133 Mitchell, Thomas, 305, 311 Mitford, Jessica, 336 Monte Carlo Girls (burlesque show), 84 Monti, Carlotta (WCF’s last amour), 99, 114, 151, 164–167, 168–169, 237 death of, 339 in Man on the Flying Trapeze, 144–145, 166 volatile relationship with WCF, 166, 321–322 on WCF characteristics, xl, 234, 350 WCF end of life relationship, 272, 321–322 at WCF funeral, 337, 338–339 W. C. Fields and Me, 144–145, 349 Moore, Constance, 226 Moran, George, 245, 261 Morris, William Rexford Fields (son of WCF and Bessie Poole), 164, 343 Morrow, Bill, 316 Motion Picture Daily, 272 Motion Picture Herald, 31, 133 Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), 80, 81, 131 Motion Picture Production Code, 47–49. See also Production Code Administration (PCA) Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934) (film), 53, 85–90, 89 Muhl, Edward, 258, 259–260, 284–285 My Little Chickadee (1940) (film), 238–256, 250, 252, 327, 334 alcohol use in, 315 bird terms in, 16 box office profits, 254

Index

Cline directs, 241, 248, 249, 251–252, 253 iconic photograph, 349 PCA censorship and, 248, 249, 251, 253 poker sequence, xli, 128, 349 production of, 241, 244–245 reviews, 254, 255, 353 script contention, 241–244, 245, 253 West, Mae and, 127, 238–256, 247, 327 N Natural Born Gambler, A (1916) (film), 128 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) (film), 128, 166, 277–285 cuts to, 280 PCA censorship and, 278–279, 280 reviews, 282–283, 285, 351 New Republic, 84, 108, 146, 272–273, 351 Newsweek, 348 New York American, 12 New York Daily Mirror, 254 New Yorker, 12, 353 New York Herald Tribune, 68, 272 New York Mirror, 74 New York Post, 74 New York Times, The (reviews) Alice in Wonderland, 62 Bank Dick, 272 David Copperfield, 120 Her Majesty Love, 9 Mississippi, 133 My Little Chickadee, 254 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 283 Nugent, Frank (critic), 160, 205, 227, 230, 234, 254 Old Fashioned Way, 84 Sensations of 1945, 297 Tillie and Gus, 56 WCF posthumous reputation and, 351 You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 234 See also film reviews; Sennwald, Andre Night at the Opera, A (1935) (film), 53 Normand, Mabel, 20 Norworth, Jack, 212

  417

418  Index nose-related humor in Bank Dick, The, 268–269 Charlie McCarthy and, 192, 194, 195, 205, 230, 292, 298–299 in It’s a Gift, 99 in Old Fashioned Way, 79 See also comedic themes, use and repetition Nugent, Frank, 160, 205, 227, 230, 234, 254. See also Sennwald, Andre Nye, Bill, 316 O Oakie, Jack, 10, 11, 17 O’Brien, Conan, 359 “Off to the Country” (1921) (Follies sketch), 14 Old Fashioned Way, The (1934) (film), xxxvii, 75–84, 78, 82, 91, 154 comic characterization in, xli–xlii, 53, 113, 230 juggling in, xl, 83 LeRoy, Baby in, 56, 79–80 PCA censorship and, 80–81 “Playing the Sticks” and, 91–92 Poppy (play) and, xli, 75, 76 reviews, 83, 84 sleeping on a train, 145 Two Flaming Youths and, 75, 76 WCF star billing in, 75, 89 Oliver Twist (Dickens), 114 “On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away” (1898) (song), 142 oratory, 316–320 Oscars Bergen, Edgar receives honorary, 226 David Copperfield nominated, 120 Sennett, Mack receives honorary, 40, 41 Oursler, Fulton, 180–181 Outcault, Richard, 79 P Page, Lionel, 204 Pangborn, Franklin, 47, 261, 280, 281 pantomime, 12, 67–68, 69, 71, 73 Paramount Pictures, xxx

Index

Astoria studio, xxxiii employment turnover, 210–211, 222, 238 financial difficulties, 4, 17, 52, 85, 209 financial success, 211 LeBaron, William at, 45, 210 Marx Brothers and, 52–53 PCA and, 47–49 proposed films left unmade, 150 radio stars at, 199–200 sexuality in films, 23–25, 81 WCF dislikes bureaucracy, 89–90 See also contracts; film studios Paramount-Publix, 19 Parker, Ralph, 178 Parsons, Louella, 239 Paul, Les, 316, 317, 318 PCA. See Production Code Administration (PCA) Peck’s Bad Boy (1921) (film), 79 Pharmacist, The (WCF’s sound short) (1933) (film), 33–36, 109, 140 Pickwick Papers (Dickens), 114, 150 Pitts, Zasu, 85, 86, 89 “Playing the Sticks” (Fields sketch), 75, 91–92 Plummer, Christopher, 328 Poole, Elizabeth (Bessie) Chatterton (WCF’s amour), 131, 164 pool routines, original and recycled, xxvi, 128, 291–292 Big Broadcast of 1938, xli, 204 Follow the Boys, 292–294 Old Fashioned Way, 294 Pool Sharks, xxxi Six of a Kind, xli, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67–68 Pool Sharks (1915) (film), xxxi, 221 Poppy (1923-24) (play), xxvi, 113, 151, 351 comic characterizations in, xxxvii, xli–xlii, 12, 113 Old Fashioned Way and, xli–xlii, 75, 76 WCF voice and, xxxvii Poppy (1936) (film), xxxvii, 76, 151–160, 156, 206 box office profits, 159 comic characterizations, 113, 157 reviews, 153, 159–160, 175 Sally of the Sawdust and, 136, 151, 153 stage sketches recycled in, xxxv, xxxvi, 157–158 WCF health during, 151, 152–153, 171, 175

  419

420  Index Poppy (radio dramatization), 212–214 Potter, Richard, 189 Potters, The (1927) (film), xxxi Powell, Dick, 298 Powell, Eleanor, 295–296 Powell, Jane, 294 Pre-Code Era (1930-1934), 23–24, 47–50, 51, 80, 81. See also Production Code Administration (PCA) Prévost, Marie, 21 Priestley, J. B, 351 Prince, Arthur, 189 Production Code Administration (PCA), 24–25 Bank Dick and, 258–259, 266–267 Every Day’s a Holiday, 239–240 International House, 49 Mississippi, 131 My Little Chickadee, 248, 249, 251, 253 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 278–279, 280 Old Fashioned Way, 80–81 Pre-Code Era (1930-1934), 23–24, 47–50, 51, 80, 81 You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, 226 Professor Beware (1938) (film), 216 Prohibition, 28 Project for a Monument to W. C. Fields (Ernst), 358 Pullman Porters Union, 345 “Pullman Sleeper, The” (1921) (film sketch), 77 Q Quinn, Anthony, 275–276, 305, 306, 311 R race, WCF ambiguous feelings about, 231, 344 radio, xxv–xxvi, 185–188, 191–197, 298–299 Barrymore, John on, 310–311 Benny, Jack on, 186, 187, 193 Charlie McCarthy Show, 298–299 Chase & Sanborn Hour, 188, 191–197, 214–215, 240 “Day I Drank a Glass of Water,” 67, 316, 317 J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and, 188, 196, 215, 298–299 Magnificent Rogue—The Adventures of W. C. Fields, 348

Index

  421

“Temperance Lecture,” 67, 316 Your Hit Parade, 215 Zukor program, 188 See also Bergen, Edgar; Big Broadcast films; Fields, W. C.: radio performances Radio Review, 191 Ralph, Jessie, 261 Rathbone, Basil, 223 Raye, Martha, 200 Reber, John, 197 Reed, Ted, 201 reusing silent films. See silent films, remade as Talkies Rice, Grantland, 333–334 Riley, James Whitcomb, 316 Rio, Evelyn Del, 261 River of Romance (1929) (film), 123 RKO, xxxiv, xl, 45, 116, 260. See also film studios Roach, Hal, 33 Roberti, Lyda, 11 Rodgers, Richard, 124 Rogers, Will, 15, 56, 75, 187, 302 death of, 150, 171 Rohauer, Raymond, 346, 347 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, xxxv, 16 Ross, Lanny, 124 Ross, Shirley, 200 Rosten, Leo, 233 Roth, Abe, 337 Rough House, The (1917) (film), 136 Rouverol, Jean, 92, 103, 131 Rubens, Alma, 172 Ruggles, Charlie, 62, 64 Running Wild (1927) (film), 17, 141 “Ruthless Zukor” (Hodkinson), 210. See also Zukor, Adolph S Sahl, Mort, 355 St. Clair, Mal, 290 Saint Exupéry, Antoine de, 116 Sally of the Sawdust (1925) (film), 76, 151, 153 remade as Poppy, 136, 151, 153

422  Index Saroyan, William, 137–138, 273 Schulberg, B.P., 10, 13 “screwball” comedies, 53 Second Handshake, The (Fowler), 304 Seldes, Gilbert, xxxvii, 12, 351 Sellers, Peter, 356 Sellon, Charles, 94 Selznick, David O., 116–117, 120. See also David Copperfield (1935) (film) Sennett, Mack, xxvi, xl, 19–41 Barber’s Daughter, 36 Barber Shop, 36–39 career difficulties, 39–40 Cline, Eddie and, 11, 270 comedic formula, 11, 20–21, 26, 39, 270 death of, 40 Dentist, The, 21–26 early life and career, 20–21 Fatal Glass of Beer, 26–36 forms Keystone Pictures Studio, 20–21 forms Triangle Film Corporation, 21 Pharmacist, The, 33–36 receives honorary Oscar, 40–41 WCF salary demands, 19–20 Sennwald, Andre (film critic and WCF fan), 136, 160, 238, 351 on David Copperfield, 120–121 on International House, 50 on It’s a Gift, 93, 95, 109 on Man on the Flying Trapeze, 146–147 on Mississippi, 133 Sensations of 1945 (1945) (film), xxxii, 295–297 sexuality/eroticism, 48–49, 258–259 in Dentist, The, 23–25 West, Mae and, 239–240 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Beatles), 356–358, 357 Shearer, Norma, 311 She Done Him Wrong (1933) (film), 238, 243 Shirley, Anne, 212 Show Boat (1927-29) (musical), 126 Sight and Sound magazine, 350 silent films, xxx storage and preservation, xxxi

Index

  423

silent films, remade as Talkies, 69–70 It’s the Old Army Game/It’s a Gift, 91, 100, 109, 136 Sally of the Sawdust/Poppy, 136, 151, 154 So’s Your Old Man/You’re Telling Me, 71, 73, 74 Two Flaming Youths/Old Fashioned Way, 75, 76 Silvers, Phil, 290 Sinclair, Johnny, 37, 153 Six of a Kind (1934) (film), 53, 62–68, 66, 171 Skeleton, Red, 233 Skipworth, Alison, 13, 15, 54–57, 58, 131 in If I Had a Million, 154 in Six of a Kind, 62, 63 “Sleeping Porch, The” (Comic Supplement sketch), xxvi in It’s a Gift, 97–100, 98, 145 See also It’s the Old Army Game (1926) (film) sleep routines, 77, 97–100, 145 Smith, Frederick James, 180, 181 Smith, Kate, 200 Sobel, Bernard, 297–298, 314 Sondheim, Stephen, 36 Song of the Open Road (1944) (film), 294–295 So’s Your Old Man (1926) (film), xxxi–xxxii, 69, 71–74, 106, 227, 352. See also You’re Telling Me (1934) (film) sound films. See silent films; Talkies Speedy (1928) (film), xxx “Sport Model, The” (1922) (Follies sketch), 14 stage routines, recycled in films, xxxii–xxxiii, xxxiv, xli, 14, 135–136, 295 Big Broadcast of 1938, 203 comic characterizations, 12 David Copperfield, 118 Earl Carroll’s Vanities, xxvi, 36, 39, 289 Dentist, The, 21, 23, 25 Fatal Glass of Beer, 26 Sensations of 1945, 295 Golf Specialist, xxxv–xxxvi It’s a Gift, 91–92, 93, 97–100, 109–110 Pharmacist, The, 33–34 Poppy, xli, xlii, 157–158 Six of a Kind, 65, 67–68 So’s Your Old Man, 71, 73 See also comedic themes, use and repetition

424  Index stage routines, recycled in radio, 216 Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (film), 56 Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) (film), 56, 57 Sterling, Ford, 20 Sternberg, Josef Von, 211 Stevens, Anne Ruth “Ruthie” (wife of Claude Fields), 330–331, 332, 336, 345 Stevens, Ashton, 255 Stewart, James, 238 Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 357, 358 “Stolen Bonds” (Vanities sketch), xxxii, 26. See also Fatal Glass of Beer, The (1933) (film) Stone, Andrew L., 295, 296 Stroheim, Erich von, 222 Sturges, Preston, 211 Sullivan, Ed, xxxvi, 216 Sutherland, Eddie, 47, 125, 132, 133, 151, 153, 294 Poppy and, 154, 158, 159 WCF death and funeral, 333–334, 337, 338 Sutton, Grady, 33, 140–141, 231, 261 Sweeney, Freddie, 339 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) (musical), 36 T Tale of Two Cities, A (Dickens), 116 Tales of Manhattan (1942) (film), 289–291, 316 Talkies, xxix, xli, 69–70 Golf Specialist as WCF first, xxxv–xxxvi, 5 See also silent films, remade as Talkies tall tales, WCF tells, 115–116, 126–127, 216 Tarkington, Booth, 123 Taurog, Norman, 86 Taylor, Robert Lewis, 125, 303 “Temperance Lecture, The” (1945) (radio performance and recording), 67, 316 temperance movements, 81–82. See also Fields, W. C.: alcohol “10,000 People Killed” (“The Radio Bug”), 24 Tenniel, John, 59, 62 “Terrific Traffic” (Scandals sketch), 14 “Thanks for the Memory” (song), 200. See also Big Broadcast of 1938, The (1938) (WCF film) Tillie and Gus (1933) (film), 53–57 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1928) (silent film), 4

Index

  425

Time magazine, 146, 205, 334–335 Tonight Show, 348 Torch Singer (1933) (film), 56 “To W. C. Fields, Dyspeptic Mumbler, Who Invented His Own Way Out” ­(article by Gilliatt), 353 Triangle Film Corporation, 21 Tucker, Sophie, 295 Tuesday Night Party (radio program), 298 Tugboat Annie (1933) (film), 56 Tully, Jim, 329–330, 333 Turpin, Ben, 11, 20, 21 Twain, Mark, 66, 126–127, 129, 316–317 Two Flaming Youths (1927) (film), 10, 17, 27, 141, 224 bicycle accident during shooting, 149, 153 Old Fashioned Way and, 75, 76 Tynan, Kenneth, xxxviii, 354, 356 U United Artists, 222 Universal Studios, 217, 221–235, 237 financial difficulties, 222–223 opening of, 221 reprimands WCF for alcohol use, 278 WCF contract, 222, 223–225, 231–232, 234–235, 259–260, 289 West, Mae and, 238–239 See also Bank Dick, The (1940) (film); contracts; film studios; My Little Chickadee (1940) (film); Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) (film); You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1934) (film) Upton, James, 359 V Vallee, Rudy, 191, 310–311 vaudeville, 67, 114–115, 128, 193, 238 Bergen on, 190–191 vaudeville routines recycled in films. See comedic themes, use and repetition; stage routines, recycled in films ventriloquism, 188–197 Bergen, Edgar’s start, 190–192 WCF-Bergen radio performances, 192–197 See also McCarthy, Charlie (Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy) Vox, Valentine, 189

426  Index W Walpole, Hugh, 118 Walsh, Raoul, 311 Wanger, Walter, 124 Ward, Artemus, 316 Warner Bros.-First National Studio, 9 Warren, Mary Lou, 305 Watkin, Pierre, 261 Watson, Harry, 37 Watts, Richard, 12, 68, 108, 152 W. C. Fields and Me (Monti), 144–145, 349 W. C. Fields at the Ziegfeld Follies: Becoming a Character Comedian (Wertheim), xxvi W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography (Fields, Ronald), 349 W. C. Fields Drive, 359 W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian (Wertheim), xxvi W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (Taylor), 303 W. C. Fields Straight Up (television documentary), 359 Weber, Lois, 222 Welles, Orson, 260 West, Mae, 81, 128, 210, 222, 223, 237–256 in Diamond Lil, 241, 243, 255 improvisation by, 244–245 in My Little Chickadee, 238–256, 247, 327 My Little Chickadee script, 241, 242–244, 253 reviews of, 238 on Sgt. Pepper’s album cover, 357, 358 WCF and, 237–238 writing of, 243–244 Westmore, Ern, 58 Westmore, Frank, 58–59 Westmore, George, 58 Westmore, Wally, 58 “What a Night” (1921) (stage sketch), 34 What Demoralized the Barbershop (1894) (film), 36 Wheeler, Bert, 17 Wilder, Billy, 211 Williams, Bert, 128, 345

Index

  427

Williams, Bransby, 115 Winchell, Walter, 254 Wingate, James, 48, 49 Withers, Jane, 282 Witherspoon, Cora, 261 Wizard of Oz, The (1939) (film), 217 Wolfe, Bill, 296 Wood, Allan, xxxv Woodruff, Frank, 214 Woolcott, Alexander, 64 Work, Cliff, 223, 225, 229, 231–232, 242–243. See also Universal Studios World War II, 285, 298 Wynn, Ed, xxxvii, 187, 193 Y Yanni, Nicholas, 206 Yellow Kid, The (comic strip) You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1934) (film), xxxviii, xlii, 76, 216, 224–231, 239 alcohol use in, 315 Bergen, Edgar in, 224, 226–227, 230, 232, 234 box office profits, 234 cuts to, 228, 229 Grampian Hills and, 326–327 PCA censorship and, 226 premier of, 241 production costs, 227 reviews, 230, 234 script writing, 224–225 Young, Roland, 305, 311 Young, Tammany, 64, 65–66, 73, 76, 142, 171 You’re Telling Me (1934) (film), 53, 69, 73, 92, 106, 315 Howard, Kathleen in, 72, 93, 131, 138 poker sequence, 128 reviews, 74, 75 So’s Your Old Man and, xxxi–xxxii, 69, 71–74, 106, 227, 352 WCF star billing in, 52, 89 Your Hit Parade (radio program), 215

428  Index Z Ziegfeld, Florenz, Jr., 64, 91 Ziegfeld Follies, 46, 64, 71, 128 Barrymore family spoof, 308 comic characterizations developed in, xli–xlii, 12, 14, 157, 257, 263, 276 croquet sketch, xli, 157–158 golf sketch, xxvi, xxxiv, xxxvi, xli, 64 “Sleeping Porch” sketch, xxvi, 91 voice in, xxxvii WCF returns to, in 1915, xxxii, 221 Ziegfeld Follies on the Air, The (radio program), 187 Zukor, Adolph, 13, 187–188, 209–210. See also Paramount Pictures; radio