Fields for President [UC] Read online

  Published by

  DELL PUBLISHING CO, INC.

  750 Third Avenue New York, New York 10017

  Copyright 1939, 1940 by Dodd. Mead it Company, Inc. Copyright renewed 1967, 1968 by W. Claude Fields, Jr. Copyright © 1971 by Michael M. Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

  Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co, Inc.

  Reprinted by arrangement with Dodd, Mead it Company, Inc.

  New York, New York 10016

  Printed in the United States of America First Dell printing—August 1972

  Acknowledgment by W.C. Fields for Original Edition

  Without the aid and suggestions and collaboration, the hammering and shoving of Charles D. Rice, Jr., this book would never have been written. If there are any complaints, please address them to Mr. Rice personally.

  Acknowledgment is made to This Week for the portions of the text which ran in that magazine.

  The Editor wishes to thank the following for their cooperation and assistance in the preparation of this volume: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood, California; the special collections library of the University of California at Los Angeles; the film department of the Library of Congress; the movie history library of the University of Texas; the New York Library for the film at Lincoln Center; Mr. Donald Deschner; MCA Entertainment, Inc., for permission to use the many photographs from movies produced by Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; and finally Ilze Kupris who put up with my many moods through most of this.

  M. M. T.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 : "Let's Look at the Record"

  2 : My Views on Marriage

  3 : How to Beat the Federal Income Tax—and What to See and Do at Alcatraz

  4 : "Fields, a Man of Firm Resolve"

  5 : My Rules of Etiquette

  6 : How I Have Built Myself into a Physical Marvel

  7 : The Care of Babies

  8 : How to Succeed in Business

  Introduction

  TODAY W. C. Fields is considered one of the greatest of comic geniuses, although during his own lifetime he never received such just acclaim. He appears in movie houses, on television, in books, on records, posters, post cards, and sweatshirts. T.V. and radio, advertisers for an airline, a peanut company, and a coffee manufacturer have joined the rush to capitalize on the present recurrence in popularity of the pompous, cantankerous, blatantly larcenous, but endearing anti-hero—The Great W.C.

  Part of the current Fields mania is that the Great Man is recognized as one of the original antiheroes so currently in vogue with today's "let it all hang out" generation. Despite the possible repercussions Fields uses his humor to kick society in the groin and with a fervor gratifying to all mankind. When he snarls at little brats, punches obnoxious inlaws, or outfoxes sly con men, he is rebelling against the impositions of an unreasonable society, hitting back in his own inimitable manner—right smack below the belt. And the gratified fans feel he is doing it on their behalf. Modern-day audiences are also more receptive to Field's brand of anti-establishment humor, because they tend to identify with and idolize this rasping misfit, aggressively at odds with society, who not only refuses to knuckle under, but brandishing his caustic wit, mounts an assault of his own.

  From early childhood W. C. Fields showed that fanatical drive and dedication towards a goal, which separates the great from the mediocre and leads to success no matter what the chosen field. Although his formal education ended before he finished the fourth grade, he taught himself in the same determined manner which became the pattern for all he attempted:

  "I thought of offering a young college graduate a trip (with him on a world tour) in exchange for teaching me. But after considerable thought, I decided it was cheaper to buy books. My reading matter started with a dictionary, next several different varieties of readers and books on grammatical construction. Then there were translations of Ovid and Virgil, then Dickens, Thackery, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Milton, Washington Irving, and Thomas Paine."

  For many years after leaving home he lived virtually on the brink of starvation and at the mercy of the elements. At first dependent on friends to keep him in food and clothing, he was gradually forced to survive by his wits, pilfering from vegetable carts, Chinese laundries (where the language barrier made police protection difficult), butcher shops and from anyone who cared (or not) to help further the boy of destiny. But these were not idle years. It was about this time that Fields first became interested in juggling:

  "I was 15 years old (other accounts place the age nearer 13) when the juggling urge first asserted itself. I was watching a vaudeville performance from the top of the gallery and the juggler came out to do his stuff* A glow came over me, a glow that still lingers in the famous Fields nose. I went out and started practicing and believe it or not, it was not long after that I managed to get a job juggling on the stage."

  From then on most of his spare time was spent practicing this newly discovered art. Unlike other children of his age, while they played and slept, W. C. pursued his destiny.

  "I still carry scars on my legs from those early attempts at juggling," he disclosed in a press release from The Big Broadcast of 1938. "I'd balance a stick on my toe, toss it into the air, and try to catch it again on my toe. Hour by hour, the damned thing would bang against my shinbones. I'd work until tears were streaming down my face. But I kept on practicing, and bleeding, until I perfected the trick. I don't believe that Mozart, Liszt, Paderewski, or Kreisler ever worked any harder than I did."

  His determination, combined with his more than marginal skills, soon bore fruit, but as his success as a juggler grew, Fields* act began to undergo a change. It became more dependent on comedy for its appeal:

  "You see, although my specialty was juggling, I used it only as a means to an end. I didn't just stand up tossing balls, knives, plates and clubs. I invented little acts, which would seem like episodes out of real life; and I used my juggling to furnish the comedy element. Somehow, even though I was only a kid, I had sense enough to know that I must work with my mind and not just my hands. If I hadn't realized that, I'd be laid on the shelf today. People would be saying, 'Bill Fields? Oh yes, he used to be a juggler, didn't he?'"

  From comic juggler, Fields moved to traveling road shows and a world tour, playing privately before King Edward VII and other crowned heads of Europe, all before he was 21. The legitimate stage and vaudeville were next, and a starring role in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 to 1922 followed.

  Films came next. His excellent comic pantomime got him roles in silent pictures as early as 1915, but he explained it in a different way:

  "As long as I did pantomime, the silent motion pictures wouldn't give me a tumble. But the moment I began to speak on the stage, I got an offer to go into silent films. Probably they wanted to keep me quiet."

  After one or two supporting roles, he was signed with star billing to a three year contract with Paramount.

  But he wasn't content to be "laid on the shelf" here either. When his contract expired, he left Paramount and the East, and together with all his worldly belongings (340 one thousand dollar bills pinned to the lining of his suit and three steamer trunks—one filled with clothes, the other two with booze), he headed for Hollywood.

  When he reached Hollywood, he wasn't received with the great enthusiasm he had anticipated! "Talkies" were a whole new field with their own super stars, and the film moguls were not interested in taking a chance with a semipopular comic. They were interested only in the tried and proven greats—Gr
eta Garbo, Wallace Beery, the Barrymores, etc. So for 18 months Fields roamed Hollywood searching in vain for a break. This was one of the hardest periods of his career. Old fears of hunger and poverty began to haunt him. He was constantly badgered with offers for stage roles and other comic spots, and he began to question the merits of his decision.

  In a later press release he discussed that period: "I was so broke that people were picking up stray pieces of Mr. Fields all over Hollywood and trying to put them together again. Unable to get work, I evolved a plan. I went to a certain studio—which will remain unnamed as I do not wish to embarrass them—and made a proposition. I had an idea for a film. I would direct it and act in it myself. And I would not ask a single morsel. All they had to do was put up the money, and a cheap two-reeler it would have been. I was confident that it would be successful and that they would hire me for more two-reelers.

  "I thought it was a swell proposition, but they didn't. They turned it down flat. My, my. I'll bet their faces are red now!"

  But his confidence held out and his chance finally came in 1930 when he made a two-reeler, The Golf Specialist, for R.K.O. From there his fortune was made. His pantomime along with his perfect voice, with its nasaled wheeze and implied highhandedness, combined to make him a film star from the beginnings of talkies to his death in 1946.

  One of the most striking features of Fields' struggle to survive and succeed was the amount of deception and chicanery he fell victim to. Life is certainly bound to be hard for a young lad making his way through the world alone, but Fields suffered uncommonly harsh treatment. It was just this unique and sometimes tragic fight, however, which shaped the character of the man and influenced his attitudes and his portrayals on stage. And he drew heavily on these experiences from his hard fought youth as source material for his humor, quite possibly to get some personal revenge, with his most effective weapon, satire, on those who had taken advantage of him during his vulnerable years. It was in the beginning of his show business career when Fields was most abused (which accounts for his frequent characterization of the shady-roadshow-con man ). The following is a quotation of his from a theater magazine.

  "I got an engagement (his first) at a summer park, through a booking agent. I'll never forget the name. It was Flynn and Grant's Park, at Norristown, N. J., and it was a twenty-five cent trolley ride from Philadelphia. I was paid five dollars a week. I got the five dollars, but I had to pay a dollar and a half commission to the booking office (who was incidentally the show's manager) and it cost me over four dollars to ride back and forth to the park."

  Fields felt that despite a loss of more than fifty cents per week, not to mention living expenses, the exposure was well worth it. To add insult to injury, at the end of the engagement Fields was docked two-weeks' salary by the unscrupulous manager as sort of a reversed severance fee! His next job was for ten dollars a week and "cakes" (meals).

  "A favorite way to fill up the place was to work a fake rescue. One of the performers would go out in the surf, pretend to be caught in the undertow, and shout for help. We would all be ready, rush into the water, and drag the rescued person into the pavilion. Naturally, the crowd followed, and if it was a woman we rescued, the crowd was particularly large. Once inside they bought drinks, and we were supposed to be entertaining enough to keep them there."

  Aside from the abundance of water (to which he later attributed his distaste for that beverage), another problem in this job was that although the negotiated wages were acceptable, they were frequently not collectable. Fields quickly left this grueling and unprofitable position for a better one.

  "It was a one-night affair, owned by a man named Jim Fulton. Here was another step upward. I got twenty-five dollars a week, but it was rather precarious and some weeks we did not get our salaries."

  Fields was soon promoted to one of Fulton's road show companies. The road manager, however, was as slippery a character as Fields ever portrayed later. He left the company stranded, running off with all the back salaries and Fields' total life savings which he had been lending to the fellow at a promised interest rate of fifty percent! ("Fifty percent interest was a cruel temptation," Fields remarked later, "especially for a lad of 16.")

  In a press release from a movie he wrote and starred in, The Old Fashioned Way (Paramount, 1934), which like many of Fields' movies, is based on just such early encounters, he spoke of a typical experience with a "tank-town" sheriff:

  "The sheriff and his partner were going to beat us up or vice versa. I hid in the coal tender of the train. The train pulled out just in time. Many times a drain pipe was the only means of ducking unpaid hotel bills.

  "Yes, I've been through it all—even to dodging overripe tomatoes. The audiences' aim was remarkable. It's nice to be safe in a motion picture."

  After many hard years of struggling, W. C. finally made it. But the impressions of life and people he had formed never left him, and he handed them right back to audiences whenever possible. In the characters he portrayed on stage W. C. Fields embodies his own personal solutions to life's obstacles. The man on stage and the man off stage were one and the same, which made his performances so much more believable and realistic. He is secure in the knowledge that, with a little bit of chicanery, victory will eventually be his. He is confident that one of his elaborate schemes is bound to pay off (as long as he can brazen and bluster his way through the temporary inconveniences ). His only slight doubt is that when his ship inevitably does come in, he will be stranded at the railroad station.

  When success ultimately comes to the Great Man, usually from some unanticipated and unlikely source, he receives his rewards with unquestioning confidence and nonchalance, as if it were all an inevitable part of his masterly scheme. He proceeds to wallow in the glory of his prevaricated success story, embellishing it further with each of the frequent recountings.

  Finally, when he almost has us convinced, he slowly assumes that larcenously, confident leer, and as the camera fades, we sense his final uncompromising message to the world: "You can't cheat an honest man, never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump."

  W. C. Fields was not only an exceptional comedian, he was an excellent comedy writer. During his career, he wrote numerous short comic essays, newspaper articles (usually consisting of extremely one-sided reviews of his own act), and most of his material for vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies. Under assorted pen names, he wrote many of his motion pictures, some of which have become comedy classics of all times such as It's a Gift and The Bank Dick. And in 1939, he wrote Fields for President, his one and only book in which he takes the golden opportunity to settle, in the lasting medium of print, with many of the institutions and groups he found most offensive.

  When the manuscript was originally published in 1940, it was only mildly successful, although today an original copy is a rare collector's item. The problem was that it was received as an ordinary book written by a novelist, which it definitely is not. It is an anthology of humorous gags, sketches, and comic situations laced together with a hint of a plot line, only for appearances. As Fields' stage humor was heightened by a well-timed concise delivery with many short throw aways and innuendoes lecherously rasped under his breath, his manuscript should be rendered in the same manner. To get the full effect of the humor, it should be read slowly and with all the nasaled asides which the Great Man would have used himself. Don't let paragraphs or sentences dictate the flow of the material. Follow the situations and punch lines themselves, and for the best results, mix vigorously with a quart of good gin.

  Michael M. Taylor

  CHAPTER 1

  "Let's Look at the Record"

  Tramp juggler and distinguished comedian starting at age 15

  Fields is imminently qualified for the post of the world's greatest comedian:

  1. Tramp juggler and comic starting at age 15.

  2. Played for the crowned heads of Europe before he was 21.

  3. Starred in and wrote for the Ziegfeld Foll
ies from 1915 until 1922.

  4. Starred in the Broadway play Poppy in 1923 and 1924.

  5. Began his silent film career in 1915 as the star of The Pool Sharks.

  6. Starred in nine out of the ten silents in which he appeared between 1925 and 1928.

  7. Appeared in twenty-nine motion pictures from 1930 to 1945, starring in more than half of them.

  8. Wrote many of his motion pictures, some of which have become all-time comedy classics (Man on the Flying Trapeze and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break).

  9. Performed on radio (Chase and Sanborn and Lucky Strike Hours), recorded for Columbia and Decca, and even wrote this book.

  And so remember, my friends, a vote for Bill Fields is a vote for one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived.

  "Responding to an automatic alarm signal, police apprehended an unarmed marauder in Schmackpfeiffer's Cruller Works tonight"

  Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (© 1941, Universal Pictures)

  NO DOUBT most of my gentle readers were both amazed and delighted when the news of my candidacy for the chief office of this fair land blazed forth on the front pages from coast to coast. I remember one particularly colorful account in an important California daily:

  LOS ANGELES MAN HELD IN CRULLER-FACTORY BREAK

  Los Angeles, March 25 (AP)—Responding to an automatic alarm signal, police apprehended an unarmed marauder in Schmackpfeiffer's Cruller Works tonight. The accused claimed that he had attended an Episcopal strawberry festival earlier in the evening and had lost his way home, ending up in the cruller factory by some strange twist. He gave his name as W. C. Fields, a comedian and a candidate for the Presidency in 1940. Officials expressed the belief that he might well be a Presidential candidate, since half the crackpots in the country were running, but they had serious doubts that he was a comedian.