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

esque, including one valise which seemed to be leaking and others plastered with promotional labels on the order of "W. C. Fields, Greatest Juggler on Earth." He was wearing his cutaway and morning trousers, into which he had slipped in the lavatory of the filling station, and he was carrying a gold-headed cane. His step was jaunty; as he trod the flowered carpet he lifted a frayed and dented silk hat to various startled persons in the lobby, one of whom, an elderly lady in a wheel chair, sniffed suspiciously and broke into a rolling sprint for the side exit. At the desk, Fields rapped with his cane and asked for "the bridal suite." The manager, recoiling slightly, causing Fields to start and clutch his hat, informed him that the bridal suite was usually reserved for gentlemen with brides. "I'll pick up one in town," the comedian told him. After a lengthy nasal harangue, during which Fields spoke familiarly and even patronizingly of all the crowned heads of celluloid, he obtained a medium-sized room. His next move was to consult a local real estate dealer. He wanted a house, a pretty large house, he said, where he could relax without molestation after his daily grind at the studios. The house, a mansion at Toluca Lake, materialized shortly, but the daily grind at the studios held off for eighteen months. In that period — one of the most anxious of his life — Fields tried every device he could hit upon to get back into the movies. For the first time in years he humbled himself completely. "I even went to one studio," he said, "and made them a proposition. I offered to write, star in, and direct a two-reel short for no money whatsoever. If the comedy got over, the studio was to give me a contract. They turned me down cold." The word had gone around Hollywood that Fields' pictures, though funny, were not money-makers, and the men who made 213