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W. C. Fields Is an Old Hand at the Comedy Game — Which Accounts for His Perfect Pantomime. He Believes in Keeping Pace With the Public by Presenting Some New Ideas
By Dunham Thorp
nothing against the past; I am not advocating a con sthutional amendment to prohibit it by law. It's all right in it> place. If one makes of it a place
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new treatmr: • old i. Iras if a comedian would make a tiuccets of himself If th< I the slightest similarity, the crowd always mutters — "I've seen that before"
Here are Chester Conklin and W. C. Fields arguing the respective merits of :heir methods of fastening movie mustaches. Conklin attaches his walrus appendage with glue while Fields recommends hanging it on his lose with a hook-and-eye arrangement. \t the right the comedian demonstrates now a domesticated family man handles a large cake of ice
where one has been — a place of other manlers and customs, like a foreign country — and not a citadel in which to fight to the ast gasp the savage horde of new ideas, it nay oven come in handy.
And so it does with Mr. Fields. As a wise-cracker and clowning juggler, there ire very few places where wise-crackers md clowning jugglers cause amusement that lie has not been. England, France, Germany, Russia — but no editor would iccept an article that is merely a list of manes.
Pantomime for All Languages
A no no hidebound and unchanging act could withstand the differing demands if these different countries. A*, for instance, in countries where his audience could not understand a word of English
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"I )f course, where I couldn't speak the language, I had to do im act in silence."
And so, the great silent Stretches of the films did not awe him — he had air end , plored the solitudes, and found them m d( solate.
And, also, because he has written most of the sketches he has used in musical comedy, he hasn't that self-conscious feeling of the newcomer in pictures when it comes to the talking over and working out of scripts.
"I'm egotistical enough to give them a battle when they want to make a character do a thing I dont think he would do naturally.
"And besides that, if you do something you dont think you — as a certain character should, you cannot chase it from your mind. Days and days later, your mind will still return to that action — it become* a perpetual mental irritant for the life of the picture.
"Even if the actor is wr it's almost worth while letting him have his way so that he'll keep his peace of mind.
'"The happy medium we should try for is a well-worked out story without too many restrictions on character development."
"But wasn't 'It's The Old Army ( iame' made without a detailed script ?" "Yes — and there I see one of the defects of the industry: not enough time is spent in preparation — especially in the working out of stories.
"For instance: in a picture where you just 'ad lib' you may have to bring in an extra character towards the end. And then you look back and see a' least a dozen other places ■■ »t pna,
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