A Flask of Fields: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Films of W.C. Fields

William Claude Dukenfield (1880 – 1946), better known as W. C. Fields, was an American actor, comedian, juggler and writer. His career in show business began in vaudeville, where he attained international success as a silent juggler. He began to incorporate comedy into his act and was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies for several years. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy “Poppy” (1923), in which he played a colorful small-time con man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. This book of visual and verbal gems from the films of W. C. Fields – a unique film book. It includes over 700 illustrations. All the photos in the book are frame blow-ups taken directly from the original negatives of the films. Editor Richard J. Anobile has faithfully reconstructed the classic scenes from the films of W.C. Fields and coupled the blow-ups with the original dialogue as spoken on the screen. The introduction was written by Judith Crist (1922 – 2012) who was an American film critic and academic. She appeared regularly on the Today show from 1964 to 1973 and was among the first full-time female critics for a major American newspaper, in her case, The New York Herald Tribune. She was the founding film critic at New York magazine and became known to most Americans as a critic at the weekly magazine TV Guide and at the morning TV show Today.