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

W. C. Fields stud game in which he manages to deal himself four fours and to win a thousand-dollar pot without having undergone the burdensome necessity of putting up any money himself is the most hilarious minor episode of the new season." The Robert Woolsey mentioned in Broun's review was a young comedian who, a few years later, would come to be known as one of the most popular players in the movies. With Bert Wheeler and Dorothy Lee (now Mrs. John Beresbach of Chicago) Woolsey was to have a vogue in musical comedies somewhat comparable to that of Eddie Cantor and Danny Kaye. At the time of Poppy, though, he was struggling in the best tradition of impecunious juveniles everywhere. The Herald review tendered him a classic left-handed compliment, saying that "Miss Gear was helped enormously through the 'Mary' matter by Robert Woolsey, one of those complacent, sledge-hammer comics whom, up to then, a good many of us had rather intended to kill." Despite the Herald, Woolsey was to go ahead and ride a crest of Hollywood fame at a time when Field, his superior comedian of the Poppy cast, was having movie troubles of the direst kind. Poppy ran for more than a year and Fields got to be a big man around town. He was sought out by celebrities and socialites, nearly all of whom made him nervous. He had a not-uncommon personality quirk : persons in the upper social brackets made him ill at ease. He was never at his best, for a while, with people who were in any way exalted. He was diffident, and a little tense, until he got to know them well, and then, having their number, he would re-establish his usual condescension in an excessive degree. William Le Baron, who was to employ Fields for Paramount soon after Poppy, recalls a party the comedian gave at a house he'd taken for the summer in Bayside, Long Island. Hot summers bothered Fields; the sun plagued his nose, causing it to turn red and expand. When he went to bed at night, he had to rub Allen's 188