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

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN F JLiel ields spent a year in George White's Scandals after the Follies and then decided that he was ready for a starring role. At first he sent out feelers, through Grady, through friends, and through other channels less direct, to see how the news might burst upon Broadway. His message was, in essence, that Fields was willing. Like the carter in Dickens' story, he stood alerted, but he shrank from an open statement. Although in years past he had begged for a dramatic part, he had grown too big for favors. His system worked admirably. Philip Goodman, a producer, was preparing to cast a musical comedy by Dorothy Donnelly called Poppy. He saw quickly that it had a part almost miraculously suited to Fields. This insight of Goodman's was not basically complimentary, since the role was that of Eustace McGargle, a preposterous fraud, whose livelihood was gained by milking the citizenry at small country fairs. When Fields got the offer from Goodman, he overlooked the tribute to his character, and said, on the telephone, "I'll give the piece a reading." Goodman had explained the part briefly, and Fields began to experiment with the elegant syllables of the high-sounding name. "I think it was Eustace McGargle that attracted him more than anything else," one if his friends of the period says, "for the money was less than he could get from Ziegfeld." 181