W. C. Fields
William Claude Dukenfield, 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, in which he played a colorful small-time con man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters.
Among his trademarks were his physical comedy, raspy drawl, large nose, and grandiloquent vocabulary. His film and radio persona was generally identified with Fields himself. It was maintained by the publicity departments at Fields's studios and was further reinforced by Robert Lewis Taylor's 1949 biography W. C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, with the publication of Fields's letters, photos, and personal notes in grandson Ronald Fields's book W. C. Fields by Himself, it was shown that Fields was married, financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren.
Early years
Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of a working-class family. His father, James Lydon Dukenfield, was from an English family that emigrated from Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, in 1854. James Dukenfield served in Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War and was wounded in 1863. Fields's mother, Kate Spangler Felton, was a Protestant of British ancestry. The 1876 Philadelphia City Directory lists James Dukenfield as a clerk. After marrying, he worked as an independent produce merchant and a part-time hotel-keeper.Claude Dukenfield had a volatile relationship with his short-tempered father. He ran away from home repeatedly, beginning at the age of nine, often to stay with his grandmother or an uncle. His education was sporadic and did not progress beyond grade school. At age 12 he worked with his father, selling produce from a wagon, until the two had a fight that resulted in Fields running away once again. In 1893, he worked briefly at the Strawbridge and Clothier department store, and in an oyster house.
Fields later embellished stories of his childhood, depicting himself as a runaway kid nicknamed Whitey, who lived by his wits on the streets of Philadelphia from an early age, but his home life is believed to have been reasonably happy. He had already discovered in himself a facility for juggling, and a performance he witnessed at a local theater inspired him to dedicate substantial time to perfecting his juggling. At age 17, he was living with his family and performing a juggling act at church and theater shows.
In 1904 Fields's father visited him for two months in England while he was performing there in music halls. Fields enabled his father to retire, purchased him a summer home, and encouraged his parents and siblings to learn to read and write so they could communicate with him by letter.
Entry into vaudeville
Inspired by the success of the "Original Tramp Juggler", James Edward Harrigan, Fields adopted a similar costume of scruffy beard and shabby tuxedo and entered vaudeville as a genteel "tramp juggler" in 1898, using the name W. C. Fields. His family supported his ambitions for the stage and saw him off on the train for his first stage tour. To conceal a stutter, Fields did not speak onstage. In 1900, seeking to distinguish himself from the many "tramp" acts in vaudeville, he changed his costume and makeup and began touring as "The Eccentric Juggler". His juggling act is reproduced in some of his films, notably in the 1934 comedy The Old Fashioned Way.Fields's first biographer Robert Lewis Taylor described a succession of dishonest, fly-by-night managers who victimized Fields while in his teens, which hardened Fields and made him more cautious, vigilant, and cynical about show-business people. Fields joined the Irwin Bros. Burlesquers, a touring troupe of variety artists under the management of Fred Irwin. Fields was pleased to find that Fred Irwin was actually reputable, respected by professionals and patrons alike. "Manager Fred Irwin has long been in high favor with the patrons of the People's by reason of the excellent programme he invariably offers." That August 1899 quote from the Cincinnati Enquirer contains the earliest known mention of "W. C. Fields" as an entertainer; the 19-year-old juggler was listed fifth among the eight acts announced on Irwin's bill. The earliest surviving appraisal of his act dates from September 1899, where Fields is now listed first: "The prominent features of bill are the finished work of W. C. Fields, the tramp juggler..." The Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette elaborated on the Irwin show, "W. C. Fields, the tramp juggler, being the drawing card. His makeup is ideal with that of the up-to-date tramp, and his juggling of rubber balls, hats, boxes, and various other articles, while the orchestra kept time with him, is a unique feature."
Fields left the Irwin ensemble in May 1900 and embarked on a solo career as a vaudeville headliner, "the world's greatest juggler." He lost no time in the attempt; by June he was starring at the prestigious Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York City. By this time, he had stopped calling himself Claude and now answered to Bill.
He remained a headliner in North America and Europe, and toured Australia and South Africa in 1903. When Fields played for English-speaking audiences, he found he could get more laughs by adding muttered patter and sarcastic asides to his routines. According to W. Buchanan-Taylor, a performer who saw Fields's performance in an English music hall, Fields would "reprimand a particular ball which had not come to his hand accurately" and "mutter weird and unintelligible expletives to his cigar when it missed his mouth".
Broadway
In 1905 Fields made his Broadway debut in a musical comedy, The Ham Tree. His role in the show required him to deliver lines of dialogue, which he had never before done onstage. He later said, "I wanted to become a real comedian, and there I was, ticketed and pigeonholed as merely a comedy juggler." In 1913 he performed on a bill with Sarah Bernhardt,, first at the New York Palace and then in England in a royal performance for George V and Queen Mary. He continued touring in vaudeville until 1915.Beginning in 1915, he appeared on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies revue, delighting 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 in 1934. The act was a success, and Fields starred in the Follies from 1916 to 1922, not as a juggler but as a comedian in ensemble sketches. In addition to many editions of the Follies, Fields starred in the 1923 Broadway musical comedy Poppy, wherein he perfected his persona as a colorful small-time con man. In 1928, he appeared in The Earl Carroll Vanities.
His stage costume from 1915 onward featured a top hat, cut-away coat and collar, and a cane. The costume had a remarkable similarity to that of the comic strip character Ally Sloper, who may have been the inspiration for Fields's costume, according to Roger Sabin. The Sloper character may in turn have been inspired by Dickens's Mr Micawber, whom Fields later played on film.
Fields versus "Nibblers"
In the early years of his career, Fields became highly protective of his intellectual properties that formed his acts and defined his on-screen persona. In vaudeville, burlesque, and in the rapidly expanding motion picture industry, many of his fellow performers and comedy writers often copied or "borrowed" sketches or portions of routines developed and presented by others. As his popularity with audiences continued to rise after 1915, following his initial work in films, other entertainers started to adopt and integrate parts of his successful acts into their own performances. In 1918, he began to combat this by registering his sketches and other comedy material with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.Nevertheless, the practice continued and became so frequent by 1919 that he felt "compelled" to place a prominent warning that year in the June 13 issue of Variety, the most widely read trade paper at the time. Addressed to "Nibblers" and "indiscreet burlesque and picture players", his notice occupies nearly half a page in the paper. In it, he cautions fellow performers that all of his "acts are protected by United States and International copyright", stressing that he and his attorneys in New York and Chicago will "vigorously prosecute all offenders in the future". The concluding attribution, "W. C. Fields", is printed in such large letters that it dominates the two-page spread in the publication.
Fields continued personally and with legal counsel to protect his comedy material during the final decades of his career, especially with regard to that material's reuse in his films. For example, he copyrighted his original stage sketch "An Episode at the Dentist's" three times: in January 1919 and twice again in 1928, in July and August. Later, 13 years after its first copyright registration, that same sketch continued to serve Fields as a framework for developing his already noted short The Dentist. He also copyrighted his 1928 sketch "Stolen Bonds", which in 1933 was translated into scenes for his esoteric satire The Fatal Glass of Beer. Other examples of Fields's stage-to-film use of his copyrighted material is the previously discussed 1918 Follies sketch "An Episode on the Links" and its recycling in both his 1930 short The Golf Specialist and in his feature You're Telling Me! in 1934. "The Sleeping Porch" sketch that reappears as an extended segment in It's a Gift was copyrighted as well by Fields in 1928. A few more of his copyrighted creations include "An Episode of Lawn Tennis", "The Mountain Sweep Steaks", "The Pullman Sleeper", "Ten Thousand People Killed", and "The Midget Car".
The total number of sketches created by Fields over the years, both copyrighted and uncopyrighted, remains undetermined, but may exceed 100. Between 1918 and 1930, he applied for and received 20 copyrights covering 16 of his most important sketches, which Fields biographer Simon Louvish has described as the "bedrock" upon which he built his stage career and then prolonged that success through his films.