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

fered harkbacks to the starvation periods of his youth. William Le Baron once visited a Fields show in Chicago, hoping to sign him for a movie, and stepped to his dressing room while the comedian was onstage. "The door was open to a public corridor," Le Baron says, "and one of his suits was thrown carelessly over a chair. In plain view, protruding from a pocket, was a sheaf of bills several inches thick. I looked closer; most of them were hundreds." Another time, in Hollywood, Gene Fowler visited Fields' house and found the proprietor at work in his upstairs study. He was dressed in a bathrobe and said he was composing a movie script about an idiot widow who kept a boa constrictor farm. In one pocket of his robe there was visible a roll of bills that was eminently eye-catching, even in Hollywood. "What's that in your pocket, Bill?" asked Fowler. Fields inspected the pocket, presumably just then aware that it was filled. "Appears to be bank notes," he said. "Looks like a lot of money," said Fowler, who was curious and determined to get at the truth. "It's four thousand dollars," said Fields, with a stiffening in his manner. "What's it for, Bill?" "It's getaway money," said Fields, and his tone suggested that the subject was closed. The Follies people knew him as a careful man who was given to sudden, inexplicable burst of generosity. But after each one a reaction usually set in. One time Fields and Will Rogers and Chic Sale attended a big Lambs Club Gambol and went to an expensive restaurant later. Fields footed the bills. Then they got in his Cadillac and headed toward Long Island, where some friends were living. Fields got on a smooth road and accelerated his much-prized car to sixty miles an hour. He was basking in *79