W. C. Fields: A Biography - Hardcover

Curtis, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375402179 ISBN 13: 9780375402173

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

Before he ever made a movie or spoke a word onstage, W. C. Fields was one of the greatest pantomimists and comedians in the world. His career spanned the whole of the twentieth century—in burlesque, vaudeville, the legitimate stage, silent pictures, talkies, radio, books, and recordings. Only death prevented him from working in television.

He shared the vaudeville stage with Sarah Bernhardt and Houdini; he made a command performance before Edward VII; he was compared to Chaplin and Keaton and became one of the great comedians in radio. He wrote, directed, and performed (Mae West and Fields were among the first writer/actor/directors) in some of the most enduring and brilliant comedies of all time, including It’s a Gift, My Little Chickadee, and The Bank Dick. He appeared in fifty pictures and wrote fifteen of them. His understanding of the need to lie and swindle, and his ability to make the most innocent phrase sound lewd, made him a star.

Now James Curtis tells the story of Fields’ life and work. Drawing on Fields’ papers and manuscripts, he shows us the passion and intellect that fueled Fields’ talent and the background that gave such bite and edge to his comedy. Curtis shows us, in illuminating detail, just how Fields’ extraordinary art evolved on the stage in the early part of the twentieth century and how he not only incorporated it into his films, but how it came to define his persona decades later.

He writes of Fields’ hardscrabble Philadelphia childhood; of his father, a drunken breaker of horses who beat his son; of Fields’ clever hands that were quick to master stealing and juggling (he took up the latter—it allowed him to sleep late); of his years in burlesque and minstrelsy; of his seventeen years in vaudeville, hopping trains early on, living a life half in the theater, half on the lam, making his way into the big time, never satisfied with his “act,” always working on something newer and more striking. Curtis writes of Fields’ starring years with the Ziegfeld Follies, finding his voice and his character amid one of the greatest assemblages of comic talent on a single stage (Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, among others); appearing in every Ziegfeld show from 1915 through 1921; of his marriage to a fellow performer, the birth of their son, and their travels together on the Circuit, until Mrs. Fields decided she’d had enough and left—the theater and her marriage. Fields never again loved so deeply.

We see Fields’ extraordinary work in the movies, both silent pictures in New York (first directed by D. W. Griffith in the starring role in Sally of the Sawdust, which Fields created on Broadway in Poppy) and in the talkies from 1927 to 1945.

Curtis’ biography narrates the life and the art of the actor James Agee called “the toughest and most warmly human of all screen comedians.”

About this title

About the Author

James Curtis is the author of James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters and Between Flops, an acclaimed biography of writer-director Preston Sturges. He lives with his wife in Brea, California.

From the Back Cover

"I can say without fear of contradiction that James Curtis has written the definitive biography of my grandfather. Thanks to an incredible depth of research and insight, we can now meet the real W. C. Fields."
--Ron Fields, grandson of W.C. Fields

From the Inside Flap

er made a movie or spoke a word onstage, W. C. Fields was one of the greatest pantomimists and comedians in the world. His career spanned the whole of the twentieth century in burlesque, vaudeville, the legitimate stage, silent pictures, talkies, radio, books, and recordings. Only death prevented him from working in television.

He shared the vaudeville stage with Sarah Bernhardt and Houdini; he made a command performance before Edward VII; he was compared to Chaplin and Keaton and became one of the great comedians in radio. He wrote, directed, and performed (Mae West and Fields were among the first writer/actor/directors) in some of the most enduring and brilliant comedies of all time, including It's a Gift, My Little Chickadee, and The Bank Dick. He appeared in fifty pictures and wrote fifteen of them. His understanding of the need to lie and swindle, and his ability to make the most innocent phrase sound lewd, made him a star.

Now James Curtis tells the story

Reviews

Hattie Hughes, ex-wife and lifelong adversary of W.C. Fields (1880-1946), claimed "my husband was a coward. He liked to bully people." In Curtis's admirable biography, the comedian corroborates this assessment by calling himself "the most belligerent guy on the screen." Curtis, a biographer of James Whale and Preston Sturges, takes on another creative, deeply flawed protagonist, enabling readers to identify with Fields's drive, his unstable relationships and the anger that fueled so much of his humor. The "eccentric juggler," Fields slowly built a niche in vaudeville through such technical accomplishments as mastering six balls in one position. Showbiz struggle is never romanticized, and readers can sense and taste the unpleasantness of sleeping on trains, baggage delays and bad food, along with facing Florenz Ziegfeld, who hired comics and hated them all. Curtis dramatizes Fields's love life in dark detail, from his money-hungry wife, Hattie, to a succession of mistresses, prompting a friend to comment, "Bill changed women every seven years, as some people get rid of the itch." Though acclaimed as the definitive Wilkins Micawber in George Cukor's 1935 David Copperfield, much of the Micawber footage was cut, eliciting rage from Fields. Also fascinating is Fields's rejection of the wizard role in The Wizard of Oz. His screen partnership with Mae West, deftly documented, tells how two hefty egos coexisted until West accused Fields of demanding an undeserved credit on her script for My Little Chickadee. Curtis's sharp intelligence and a pungent modern edge in his writing make Fields relevant to contemporary readers unfamiliar with his classic work.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fields had a big nose, he hated Philadelphia, he bludgeoned swans with a 5-iron, he was almost the wizard in "The Wizard of Oz," he drank himself to death. Everyone knows some tidbit about the beloved screen comedian, but Curtis fluently traces the entire arc of Fields's messy, overstuffed life. The details are irresistible: Fields had a knack for the grand gesture (sending an empty limousine to the set as a protest) and the stiletto wisecrack (he called Mae West "a plumber's idea of Cleopatra"). Curtis is inevitably hampered by the difficulty of explaining what can only be experienced: the effect of Fields's comedy onscreen. Nonetheless, he does an excellent job detailing the meticulous craftsmanship and relentless hard work through which Fields, who began his career as a mute juggler in vaudeville, became a comedian renowned for his verbal dexterity.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Veteran madcap John Cleese blurbs this as "the definitive book about America's most profound comedian." Now Cleese knows comedians, but "profound"? Fields? Well, Curtis at least ministers to increased interest in Fields by lauding his screenwriting accomplishments (It's a Gift, My Little Chickadee, etc.), pantomime, and juggling--the latter two skills learned early and used later to augment many celebrated routines. Curtis had access to Fields' papers and many pertinent unpublished manuscripts, and he interviewed surviving Fields coworkers. What he assembled is an illuminating full-dress portrait of an American icon that offers fresh insights into Fields' offstage life. The onstage stuff is here, too, of course: the name change from Claude Dukenfield, service in many editions of The Ziegfeld Follies, and reaching the pinnacle of movie stardom. For detail presented accessibly and entertainingly, this book is worthwhile. For its many archival photos, especially one of Fields juggling balls while balancing an impressive arrangement of cigar boxes with his mouth, and its engrossing appendixes (stage, film, and radio chronologies, plus copious notes), it's priceless. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE

Foolish Juggling Notion

Comedy, Bill Fields would say, is truth-a bit of artful reality, expressed in action or words, carefully exaggerated and brought to a surprise finish. Fields didn't think the mechanics of a gag counted for half as much as the soul behind it. You might coax a laugh from a willing audience over most anything, but a gag wouldn't be memorable without the delight of human recognition.

The comedy Fields propounded reached its apogee with a modest sixty-seven-minute film called It's a Gift. In it, he plays an everyman-hardworking, beset by life's frustrations, caring and respectful of a family that no longer appreciates him. He dreams his dreams in private. He is not brilliant, lovable, or even admirable, but his dignity never leaves him, and, in the end, he triumphs as much through luck as perseverance. When it was released, in November 1934, It's a Gift was a minor event, bound for a quick playoff in what Variety referred to as "the nabes." But the critics took notice, and a groundswell of enthusiasm for the fifty-four-year-old Fields and his work, which had been building for eighteen months, suddenly erupted. Andre Sennwald, writing in the New York Times, referred to Fields' growing legion of fans as "idolaters," and, although not necessarily one himself, he concluded his notice by sweeping away all doubt that one of the great comedies of the sound era had arrived. "The fact is that Mr. Fields has come back to us again, and It's a Gift automatically becomes the best screen comedy on Broadway."

As Fields pointed out, the appeal of his character was rooted in the characteristics audiences saw in themselves. "You've heard the old legend that it's the little put-upon guy who gets the laughs, but I'm the most belligerent guy on the screen. I'm going to kill everybody. But, at the same time, I'm afraid of everybody-just a great big frightened bully. There's a lot of that in human nature. When people laugh at me, they're laughing at themselves. Or, at least, the next fellow."

Like Mark Twain, Fields believed humor sprang naturally from tragedy, and that it was normal and therefore acceptable to behave badly when things went wrong. One of the key sequences in It's a Gift shows an elderly blind man laying waste to Fields' general store with his cane. Afterward, Fields sends him out into a busy street, where he is almost run down in traffic. "I never saw anything funny that wasn't terrible," Fields said. "If it causes pain, it's funny; if it doesn't, it isn't."

"I was the first comic in world history, so they told me, to pick fights with children. I booted Baby LeRoy. The No-men-they're even worse than the Yes-men-shook their heads and said it would never go; people wouldn't stand for it . . . then, in another picture, I kicked a little dog. . . . The No-men said I couldn't do that either. But I got sympathy both times. People didn't know what the unmanageable baby might do to get even, and they thought the dog might bite me."*

The conniving and bibulous character Fields developed caught the public imagination at a time when the nation was deep in the throes of the Great Depression and the sale of liquor was still prohibited by law. He appeared on the scene as the embodiment of public misbehavior, a man not so much at odds with authority as completely oblivious to it. He drank because he enjoyed it and cheated at cards because he was good at it. Fields wasn't a bad sort, but rather a throwback to a time when such behaviors were perfectly innocuous and government wasn't quite so paternalistic. Harold Lloyd called him "the foremost American comedian," and Buster Keaton considered him, along with Charlie Chaplin and Harry Langdon, the greatest of all film comics. "His comedy is unique, original, and side-splitting."

Fields had the courage to cast himself in the decidedly unfavorable light of a bully and a con man. He not only summed up the frustrations of the common man-he did something about them. Unlike most comedians, he never asked to be loved; he was short-tempered, a coward, an outright faker at times. Chaplin was better known, Keaton more technically ambitious, and Laurel and Hardy were certainly more beloved, but Fields resonated with audiences in ways other comics did not. He wasn't a clown; he didn't dress like a tramp or live in the distant world of the London ghetto. Indeed, for most audiences he lived just down the street or around the corner. He was everyone's disagreeable uncle, or the tippling neighbor who warned off the local kids with a golf club. People responded to the honesty of Fields' character because, like Archie Bunker of a later generation, everyone knew somebody just like him. They admired him in a grudging sort of way, and saw the humanity beneath his thick crust of contempt for the world.

"The first thing I remember figuring out for myself was that I wanted to be a definite personality," he said. "I had heard a man say he liked a certain fellow because he was always the same dirty damn so and so. You know, like Larsen in Jack London's Sea Wolf. He was detestable, yet you admired him because he remained true to type. Well, I thought that was a swell idea, so I developed a philosophy of my own: Be your type! I determined that whatever I was, I'd be that, I wouldn't teeter on the fence."

The childhood Fields exaggerated for interviewers was vividly Dickensian, and his run-ins with his father had the brutal energy of Sennett slapstick. Yet the humanity he always strived for in his film treatments failed him when dredging up details of his own early life. He invariably described his father as an abusive scoundrel, his mother as ineffectual and sottish, and his younger self as a Philadelphian version of Huck Finn. He sprang from immigrant stock-his father was British-and however American Fields seemed, there was always an element of the outsider in the characters he played. He embraced the nomadic spirit of his grandfather, whom he never met, and although he was married to the same woman for the entirety of his adult life, he was always at odds with both her and the world, embattled and solitary.

Fields moved through a career that lasted nearly half a century, acquiring slowly the elements of the character by which he is known today. Onstage, he perfected what can best be described as the comedy of frustration, building one of his most popular routines on the petty distractions a golfer encounters while attempting to tee off. His seminal pool act was similarly constructed, leading him to conclude that "the funniest thing a comedian can do is not to do it." In films, he found his voice after an abortive career in silents and became, in the words of James Agee, "the toughest and most warmly human of all screen comedians."

His time as one of Hollywood's top draws was brief-barely six years-and by 1941 his audience had largely abandoned him. Radio, where he could still find work, drained him of any subtlety, due, in large part, to his boozy exchanges with Edgar Bergen's sarcastic dummy, Charlie McCarthy. In spite of his own best efforts, he was constantly at pains to justify a character that had become so fixed in the public mind that he was widely presumed to be the same man he portrayed onscreen. The day he died, Bob Hope made a joke about him on NBC. Hope implied he had seen Fields drunk: "I saw W. C. Fields on the street and waved, and he weaved back." The audience laughed; Fields was by then the most famous drunk in the world. It no longer mattered that he had never played a drunk in his life.

In 1880, travelers approaching Philadelphia from Delaware County and points south would generally pass through the tiny borough of Darby on their way to the Quaker City. Less than a mile square, Darby was a mill town and a transportation hub, home to 1,779 permanent residents and a cluster of paper and textile factories that fairly dominated the landscape. Every day, fifteen thousand workers flooded the town, making the central business district, which ran four blocks along Main Street between Tenth and Mill, second only to Chester in terms of size and importance. There were taprooms and cafés, a funeral parlor, a dozen churches, an Odd Fellows lodge, and one of the oldest free libraries in the nation. Both the B&O and Pennsylvania Railroads passed through Darby, and trolleys connected the Philadelphia line with Wilmington and Chester. Just beyond town were cattle and horse ranches and a vast blanket of farmland that stretched toward Media. Wealthy buyers in search of prime racing stock would put up at the Buttonwood Hotel, at the terminus of the Chester Traction Co. line, or sometimes at the Bluebell Tavern, up near Grays Ferry, where George Washington was said to have stopped on his way to Philadelphia for the second inaugural. Of Darby's several inns, however, only one actually catered to the horse trade-a simple stone building at the southeast corner of Main and Mill Streets known as the Arlington House.

Older than the Buttonwood and less historic than the Bluebell, the Arlington stood directly in front of Griswold's Worsted, the largest and most modern of Darby's numerous textile mills, and a block and a half west of the town dock, the central receiving point for freight and supplies brought up the Delaware River and inland via Cobbs Creek. At the noisiest and dustiest intersection in town, the Arlington was a stopping point for dockhands, mill workers, clerks, tradesmen, and tourists on their way to or from Philadelphia. Atop its three modest stories was a fire lookout, a box-like room with windows on all sides that afforded a panoramic view of the mills along the two tidewater streams, Cobbs Creek on the east and Darby Creek on the west, and the main arteries leading off into Lansdowne, to the north, and Sharon Hill, to the south.

Locals and guests pausing at the bar on the ground floor were likely to be served by James Lydon Dukenfield, a robust Brit in h...

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375402179
• ISBN 13: 9780375402173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 595