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grounds in billiards. At times the orchestra members were compelled to drop their fiddles and take cover. Fields himself, as the act dissolved, was roaring like a bull. It was a new and fresh entertainment for patrons of the Wintergarten. To his astonishment, the comedian was told afterward that the routine had gone over wonderfully. "They iss laughing and laughing," the manager explained, greatly pleased. Of this incident, Fields was once quoted in an interview as saying that "the opening night in Berlin in those days usually set your bookings for the rest of the Continent. All the agents were on hand to watch me and I can say honestly that they had something to watch! Practically nothing went right, but the net result was that the act was so much funnier all of them offered me dates."
Another time at the Wintergarten the management had just installed a beautiful bank of bright lights in the ceiling. Fields had never felt better in his life, he said, but when he tossed up some balls, and looked aloft, all he could see was a kind of white, blinding hell. He tried it again, this time adding a couple of Indian clubs and some hats, with the result that a number of objects came down and banged him on the head. From the time of his birth Fields had been no man to give up easily, on large projects or small, and he dug in, determined to get his hands on the flying props or be carried off on a stretcher. Neither of these eventualities came to pass exactly. He got his hands on several items, mostly by accident, since he still couldn't see anything but a milky blur, and his head on several more, but he never really caught anything. Instead of hissing and booing, or requesting his removal, like a well-bred American or English audience, the Wintergarten patrons took the disaster in fine spirit. The native teutonic mind approves strong entertainment, involving fractures, and the spectators felt that Fields was sacrificing his skull for their diversion. Windy, gratified blasts greeted every ring of wood on
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