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

Then, incensed at the appalling change in conditions, he would retire to the kitchen and bawl out his cook, having somehow become convinced that the whole thing was her fault. Early in the spring after his fourteenth birthday, Fields read a notice in a Philadelphia newspaper about the opening of an amusement park, variously called "Plymouth Park" and "Flynn and Grant Park," at nearby Norristown, Pennsylvania. According to the ad, the management was negotiating for some of the most celebrated talent on two continents. Fields interpreted this as a clear call to action. He spent sixty cents for a round-trip ticket on a carline, and rode out to make application. He said later he was by no means surprised that the management hired him promptly. However, when he inquired about his salary, the manager fell into a violent coughing fit, and Fields withdrew. He returned in two weeks for the gala opening and performed several tricks he had perfected. "I was nervous," he wrote a friend long afterward. "I wasn't sure Norristown was quite ready for me." His contribution was well received, and the park retained him on an indefinite basis. At that time Fields' routines were similar to those of the Byrne Brothers, whose act he had frankly imitated. Among other things, he juggled five tennis balls, periodically pretending that one was getting away from him, and catching it, with comic gestures, as it flew off at an angle. Another trick involved the use of three hats, which he kept putting on his head, knocking off, and spinning into the air, meanwhile fixing his face in alternate expressions of abstraction, bafflement, dismay and belligerence, as the hats seemingly refused to obey. Fields, by now, had become practiced at a phase of juggling whose value rested more upon humor than on skill. In this period he was a remarkable all-around juggler and he had also learned an elementary but significant truth: though juggling was 37