W. C. Fields

William Claude Dukenfield (January 29, 1880[1] – December 25, 1946), better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer.[2] Fields' comic persona was a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist, who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children, and women.

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

Broadway In America, Fields found he could get more laughs by adding dialogue to his routines. He developed his trademark mumbling patter and sarcastic asides during this time. (According to the A&E Biography program about Fields (1994), when he was young his mother would sit with him on the front steps and mumble comments about the passersby.)

From 1916 to 1922, he starred on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies revues. Therein, he delighted audiences with a wild billiards skit, complete with bizarrely shaped cues and a custom-built table used for a number of hilarious gags and surprising trick shots. His pool game is reproduced, in part, in some of his films, notably in Six of a Kind (1934).

In addition to starring in multiple editions of the Follies, Fields starred in the Broadway musical comedy Poppy (1923), wherein he perfected his persona as a colorful small-time con man.

Films Silent era Fields starred in two short comedies, filmed in New York in 1915; his stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924. He reprised his Poppy (1923) role in a silent-film adaptation, retitled Sally of the Sawdust (1925) and directed by D. W. Griffith, after which he starred in It's the Old Army Game (1926), which featured his friend Louise Brooks, later a screen legend for her role in G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929) in Germany. Fields' 1926 film included a silent version of the porch sequence which would one day be expanded in the sound film It's a Gift (1934). Fields wore a scruffy clip-on mustache in all of his silent films, discarding it after his first sound feature film, Her Majesty Love, his only Warner Brothers production.

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

He often contributed to the scripts of his films, under unusual pseudonyms such as the seemingly prosaic "Charles Bogle", which appeared on most of his films in the 1930s; "Otis Criblecoblis", which contains an embedded homophone for "scribble"; and "Mahatma Kane Jeeves", a play on Mahatma and a phrase an aristocrat might use when about to leave the house: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves". In features such as It's a Gift and Man on the Flying Trapeze, he is reported to have written or improvised more or less all of his own dialogue and material, leaving story structure to other writers.

In his films, he often played hustlers, carnival barkers and card sharps, spinning yarns and distracting his marks. He had an affection for unlikely names and many of his characters bore them.

Freemason: E. Coppee Mitchell Lodge No. 605, Philadelphia