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

W. C. Fields like Macbeth's, of all obstruction, earthly or supernatural. Though castles toppled, though pyramids sloped to their foundations, even if destruction sickened, he would, someday, make a thousand dollars a week. The day at length came to pass. It seems quite possible that no sane man would have seized the opportunity that Fields here regarded as golden. In New York, the Palace offered him his usual $500 a week; uptown, the Alhambra offered him $500 for a late show. It was a regimen that might have killed an ordinary performer, but its symbolism, for Fields, was too significant to deny. Triumphant, he undertook the dual grind. But his contentment, he once observed later, proved evanescent. He found that old dreams fulfilled, like old summer resorts revisited, are apt to have lost their flavor. From his fleeting, rueful enjoyment of the moment, with its nostalgic harkback to the time of Fulton's burlesque, he looked on to the green pastures. His dissatisfaction had been steadily growing. He was the best-known juggler in the world, but he was athirst for larger glories. 142