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

W. C. Fields bone; the act was getting over well. In the wings, Fields responded to the manager's congratulations with a broadside of profanity that, he decided late in life, he never quite came up to again. He said he matched its length on two or three occasions, but he never equaled its rich imagery or comprehensive zoological allusion. Once, when he was in Madrid, the Spanish treasury had recently recalled some currency issues and hard coin was the tender of the day. Fields juggled for two weeks, then went to get his money. "Where's your basket?" said the manager. Fields expressed confusion, and the manager said, "I'm paying off in fivepeseta pieces. No basket, no salary." With $750 due him, Fields rushed to the nearest grocer's and bought a durable bushel basket. His salary just filled it, the peseta being worth, at the time, around eleven cents. Fields pulled, carried, kicked, and otherwise cajoled the basket back to his room, where he nervously stood guard over it all night. The next day, at his wit's end, he removed it to a bank, where he opened an account, as he told a friend, under the name of Senor Guillermo McKinley, a half-breed from Guatemala. Unless he or an agent of the late President picked it up, it probably rests there yet, accruing pesetas, baffling its handlers — a worn footprint of a long-departed clown. 130