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

W. C. Fields Before he saw the movie, Fields had never been a promiscuous youth, fixing his attentions on one girl at a time and then only if she weren't likely to interfere with business or cost him anything. Afterward he became notably chaste. During his vaudeville years he was often "going with" some girl, invariably an actress or other theatrical performer, but he never pursued women indiscriminately. Fields was, in fact, far from a lecherous man. Despite his brassy latter-day publicity as a gaudy spirit and allaround rip, he had many quaint and old-fashioned ideas about women. For instance, he preferred that women wear petticoats. One time when he was ill and hospitalized at Las Encinas Sanitarium, in Pasadena, he took exception to his nurses' attire. Lying in his bed, and keeping a watchful eye on what went on around him, as was his custom, he had taken note of various patches of pelt when the young ladies leaned over for a swab or a bottle of pills. He called in the superintendent. "See here," he said, "I'm paying this place fifty dollars a day and I want you to put all the nurses that come into this room in petticoats. My mother wore them, and her mother before her — it's the only decent garb for a woman." The sanitarium agreed, and his nurses self-consciously put on petticoats. Fields was always painfully embarrassed whenever anybody told off-color jokes in the presence of women. Dirty stories bothered him at any time; he considered further that a reliance upon manufactured anecdotes of whatever kind was positive indication of a crippled wit. His face underwent awesome changes at the accursed social preamble of "Here's a hell of a funny story I picked up the other day." In a mixed gathering, if some man, stimulated by gin and the dubious charm of his own narrative style, began an uproarious sex joke, Fields often retired to the bathroom, or began a vacant search for matches. He could never abide loud, vulgar women, and he was vastly uneasy around a 78