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W. C. Fields
show that they had been friends in Philadelphia. He mentioned the Orlando Social Club, alluded to the "bunk" where Fields had crouched miserably, and ended on the rather wistful note that he wished he'd sought out a bunk of his own. Fields wrote his old chum a long, nostalgic letter rapturously affirming their friendship, and signed it, with a grandiloquent flourish, "Whitey Dukinfield."
Fields' vaudeville opening took place, for some reason, in Columbus, Ohio. He juggled a number of tennis balls and hats, nearly dropping several, as the audience saw it, but comically retrieved them, to great applause, just in time. He balanced some sticks on his toes and fingers, and then did the act he had been working on with the cigar boxes. As one writer viewed the latter routine, it was "his masterpiece — a trick of juggling twenty-five cigar boxes, end on end, with a little rubber ball on top. First the ball was dropped and caught in his other hand; then each box followed in succession, the top one falling with machine-like precision without disturbing the boxes beneath it. It was a wow !"
Although Fields had previously appeared in Columbus, the town had never seen him juggle. It was acquainted with his work in a different capacity, that is, as it was brought to bear on the role of a rascally sawmill operator. During his first road tour, the man who normally played the part suffered an attack of poisoning, in a saloon, and Fields took over, temporarily foregoing the juggling. For once he was splendidly effective as a straightaway dramatic performer. In the scene, a notably luscious ingenue found herself strapped to the usual conveyor belt of the period, and Fields, as the rogue, was intent on dividing her into slabs of a more convenient size. It happened that the girl in question, offstage, had not only consistently repulsed Fields' advances for weeks, but had once threatened to summon the police. Fields handled the saw with finesse. It was only of wooden construction,
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