W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

Record Details:

Title:
W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes
Date:
1949
Publisher:
Garden City, NY : Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Volume:
W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes
Leaf #:
00015
Language:
English
Subjects:
Motion Pictures, Motion pictures--Biography
Collection:
Books
Format:
Books
Contributor:
Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
Date Added:
March 28, 2024
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BOOK ONE: PART ONE CHAPTER ONE T .he life of W. G. Fields is a striking endorsement of Shakespeare's thought, "Sweet are the uses of adversity." There is no reason to believe that the Duke's philosophical utterance, in As You Like It, was calculated to prepare the world for Fields, but a knowledge of Fields5 career would certainly have made things easier for the Duke. From infancy Fields found life laborious sledding, and he took extraordinary measures to triumph over all. Nobody in our recent history absorbed such a buffeting as a child and emerged so relentlessly successful in after life. By the time of his death, on Christmas Day, 1946, he was widely acknowledged to have become the greatest comic artist ever known. In his tempestuous youth he had achieved comfortable billing as "the greatest juggler on earth," but the title irked him — he was determined to establish his mind on a parity with his hands. For ten years the theater's best entrepreneurs assured him that he was a fine juggler and refused him parts in shows. The overwhelming unanimity of these rebuffs convinced Fields that he was a comedian ; he had come far by rejecting the opinions of others. His perseverance and his evolution into the funniest man in the theater, in the movies, and in radio, proved him right.