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

W. C. Fields indulged in some of his humorous juggling, in one part of which he employed mucilage to aid his dexterous manipulations ! It was in his smiling counterfeit of the ancient vagabond, however, that he was most deft and most amusing. We suspect him to be the funniest man in town since Will Rogers went away." Fields was distressed to note that by this point in his account the Tribune man was beginning to go to pieces, though toward the end, in the comedian's opinion, the writer rallied slightly, concluding with, "Poppy is a sweet mess out of the everlasting musicalcomedy honey pots, and savored considerably by Mr. Fields' luxurious clowning and by Miss Kennedy's eager and very good acting. You can go to it, if you have nothing else to do, without being too much ashamed of yourself." The other papers were equally impressed by Fields, the Herald calling him "as adroit and astonishing as ever at his tricks and more comical far than ever. We had seen him do every one of the vaudeville stunts before, but had never before come upon him when it had occurred to someone that he was also an enormously amusing comedian who might be entrusted safely with a role in a play." One of Fields' happiest scenes in the play — somewhat similar to a skit he was to do later in the movie Mississippi with Bing Crosby — revolved around a poker game in which he condescended to take a hand. During rehearsals Fields had insisted on the scene, helping to put it together, he said, "from experience." As he developed the sketch, he gave out that he had participated in some of the most earth-shaking poker sessions in American gambling history and that he had unmercifully trimmed the cleverest sharpers in the game. "Where did you do most of this, Mr. Fields?" one of the young actors asked him. 186