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

orated with semi-hysterical warnings such as "Quiet!" "Not Responsible for Stolen Overcoats" "No Spitting on Thursdays" and "Watch Out!" Sennett took a line, much appreciated by his employees, that clear-headed adults could pretty well be trusted not to destroy their livelihood, and he suspected further that in the case of most Americans, signs only remind them of potential pleasures and are in general an incitement to mischief. In the course of their harangues, Sennett and Fields used to tick off their triumphs, to build sound cases. They spent hours discussing theories of comic technique, getting nowhere. "I might remind you," Fields would say, "that in addition to being the biggest name in international vaudeville, I have starred in the Follies, the Scandals, the Vanities, and in musical plays." As rebuttal, Sennett would mention, with diffidence, that he had discovered and started both Bing Crosby and Charlie Chaplin in movies — Crosby when he was singing, after his Whiteman period, at the Ambassador Theatre in Los Angeles, and Chaplin when he was an obscure performer in vaudeville. "You'll forgive me for adding," he'd say, "that Frank Capra and Leo McCarey, the comedy directors, both broke in with me. You've heard of the Keystone cops? Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin, Ben Turpin?" At about this point in the dialogue, Fields would disgust Sennett by saying, "You don't know anything about comedy, you dumb Irishman. You'd never have got to first base if you hadn't dressed up a bunch of big-busted floosies in tights and called them bathing beauties." The injustice of these remarks made Sennett stamp with anger. The aggressively moral tone of his establishment was a byword in movie circles. He was so sensitive on the subject that he had his bathing beauties guarded by police matrons, as a boarding school is governed by its heads. "Why, damn you," he'd yell at 2IJ