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

measure of suspicious toughness to his outlook on humanity. Also, it gave him an even livelier caution about contracts. Despite the stunning rebuff of his musical-comedy debut, he recovered his composure and his self-confidence quickly. Two days later he appeared in Gene Buck's New York office, his appearance jaunty and his manner slightly bellicose. His pale blond hair was parted in the middle — "like Hoover's," as noted once by Geoffrey T. Hellman in The New Yorker — and he was wearing a fake mustache which clipped into his nose. Fields had fashioned the mustache himself, and it gave producers trouble for years. He liked to wear it because it looked offensive, according to Director Eddie Sutherland. "Bill turned up with it on one day in a movie we were making," Sutherland says, "and I said, 'What the hell is that dreadful appliance in your nose?' " Fields replied, with some heat, that it was a mustache, and Sutherland said, "Well, remove it immediately and we'll get on with the picture." "The mustache stays," said Fields. "What's the matter with it?" "It's the nastiest-looking thing I ever saw," Sutherland told him. "It's making everybody sick." Fields insisted on playing one scene with the mustache on, saying that it was "well known in the show world" and that it was widely viewed as "handsome," but Sutherland and a film cutter later got together and quietly tossed the scene out. In Buck's office Fields took a chair, without explaining why he had chosen to wear his fake mustache for the interview, and said indignantly, "Did you catch me in that turkey?" (Watch Your Step had a successful opening, both in Syracuse and in New York, and played to large audiences for months, but Fields always described it as a flop.) Buck expressed regret that Fields had got mixed up in such a H7