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

managers duly took note. The latter action was largely superfluous, since Fields, after a hearty claque, usually looked in on the manager to describe the racket and ask for a raise. Once, headlining a bill at the Tivoli, that pleasant outdoor playground in Copenhagen, he organized his paid disciples and remained in his dressing room, after the show, to square up. One of the group, a curly-headed youngster in the throes of honest hero worship, refused the money and asked for a photograph instead. Fields, much pleased, gave him one, signing it with a grand flourish. Many years later, in California, he became acquainted with a Danish actor named Carl Brisson, who occupied a dressing room next to his on the Paramount lot. Fields invited him to dinner, and during the relaxation after dinner, Brisson offered to entertain. He stood up and imitated several of the juggling tricks, with familiar gestures, that Fields had featured in the days of his old European tours. Then Brisson produced the signed photograph Fields had given him at the Tivoli. Fields was touched and flustered. Twice at the Folies-Bergere, in Paris, Fields had top billing. Charles Chaplin, a young Englishman just getting started in show business, was on the program both times but in a subordinate capacity. Chaplin's contribution at these shows consisted principally of sitting in a box, like an ordinary patron, and shooting putty wads at the actors, a form of intramural entertainment with which Fields was not wholly in sympathy. Several of Fields' friends believe that he saw the stirrings of greatness in Chaplin very early, and grew hostile accordingly. "I hope Chaplin's picture [Monsieur Verdoux] is as bad as everybody says it is," he was to write one of them not long before his death. Fields never saw the film and so was happily unaware of the many fine moments it contained for Chaplin followers. Also on his bill at the FoliesBergere was a young song-and-dance man named Maurice 10$