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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN R 'arly in his Follies career, Fields met Billy Grady, an agent, who was to represent him and travel with him off and on for fourteen years. Grady retains many vivid impressions of Fields, most of them quite sour. "Bill cheated me continuously throughout our association," he says. "He was the closest man with a dollar I ever met." Despite their endless wrangles over money, Grady stayed on, he thinks, because he was fascinated by the bizarre character of his client. "For sheer, unadulterated gall, Bill stood alone," Grady says. "He wasn't happy if he wasn't involved in a scrap of some kind. He thought everybody was trying to skin him, so he tried to skin them first. But he had class — I'll say that. Bill had class. His most larcenous acts were marked by a sort of brilliant dash." During one period, when he was between contracts, Fields began to get uneasy. He had a mortal fear of unemployment; the threat of it almost drove him crazy. At the time, he and Grady were living in a sizable suite at the Hotel Astor. As he pondered his situation, Fields quickly saw that his salvation lay in accident insurance. He dropped into an insurance office and took out a big policy, with a remunerative clause about unemployment. Then he returned to the Astor, called the company doctor, and went to bed. *57