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

W. C. Fields in pursuit carrying spears. The implication was clear in his reports that he had evacuated each community only in time to escape serious damage. Fields' reminiscences were stimulating, but, as his friends point out, many of them were probably lies. He was gratified to find himself, raconteur-wise, in a situation wherein it was difficult to check up on him. In Fields' favor, it must be said that his anecdotes centered mainly on troubles rather than triumphs. Every place he went, painful things happened to him. He established the foundation, in fact, for a persecution complex of competitive dimensions. For example, he rarely found a boardinghouse, in the outlands, that was not marred by some lethal flaw. He stopped with one woman in Australia whose establishment, in the early morning hours, quickened to various, odd jungle cries. Chilled to the bone, Fields sought out his landlady and found her in bed with her young son Clark and a leopard. "I keep a few animals," she said. "The leopard's sick." Fields thanked her politely, then withdrew to his chamber, encountering on the way, he said afterward, two water buffalo and a Kodiak bear. Three weeks later he returned to the house and found his hostess in a charming mood. They exchanged notes about the weather, and Fields said, "By the way, how's the leopard?" "Oh, much better," she replied with a pleased smile. "He flew at Clark this morning and bit him in the shoulder." Fields sat up overnight in the railroad station. One of the most distressing facets of his trips was the fact that he seemed to get jailed more often than is common. He had spent much of his childhood in jails, and the habit lingered. In exceptionally relaxed moments, Fields gave out comparative notes on jails, criticizing the cuisine, the cots, and the turnkeys. His remarks about French detention were disparaging in the extreme, though possibly tinctured with bias, while he spoke expansively of the 126