We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
W. C. Fields
the big time. By happy chance a friend of the Germans', Sliding Billy Watson, already a favorite and soon to become legendary, was on the bill. The Germans arranged a meeting, and Fields went through his routine. "You've got a great act, my boy," Watson told him. "You're going to be famous." Fields agreed, and awaited developments. On Watson's advice, the manager of Fortescue's signed the juggler on, but with reservations. His duties transcended ordinary juggling ; besides doing his tricks, he was required, by contract, to swim out and drown several times daily. "Iss a great chance," one of the Germans told him. "You haff arrived." Though skeptical, Fields accepted the job. He soon found that major-league vaudeville was not child's play. By comparison, the stint at Plymouth Park seemed like a vacation. At the end of his first day's work, he was in a state of almost total collapse. Activities on the Pier had begun early, with the arrival of the first swimmers on the adjoining beach. Fields and his colleagues went through their routines a couple of times, and then interest slacked off. At this point, prodded by the manager, Fields changed to a bathing suit, swam out about a hundred yards, sank, arose, thrashed around, and began to bawl for help. Fortescue's life guards were prompt and efficient; he was towed in fast and the bilge pumped out. The incident attracted large crowds, and shortly afterward Fields resumed juggling. A drowning appeared to have a salutary effect on the Atlantic City crowds; it made them both hungry and thirsty. Fields' double-barreled offering was repeated every hour or so until late in the evening, at which time he staggered damply to a room he'd rented and fell into a troubled, aqueous sleep.
One of the inducements of this job, in Fields' eyes, had been the substantial salary of ten dollars a week and, in the trade term, "cakes." All in all, it looked like a pleasant situation, and the employees were an agreeable group. Fields and a cornetist in the
42