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W. C. Fields
man or beast!" upon which an invisible extra would pelt him in the face with a double handful of snow. He varied this shrewd observation on the weather with miscellaneous declarations of policy. "The time has come," he said at one point, "to take the bull by the tail and face the situation." It was a noble and uplifting study of Northern life, and while it didn't settle anything, it was uproariously funny. His meteorological note, though not exactly original, caught on and swept over the land. It was a popular mot of the impoverished thirties and is still a lively part of the language.
Chester Conklin, then a Keystone cop and featured comedian, and who still plays occasional comedy parts for Paramount, recalls Fields' predilection for wearing the clip-in mustache. They appeared in one film together. "We were on the set one day," he says, "and they brought Mae Worth out — she was one of the great bareback riders of that time, with Ringling Brothers. The publicity boys wanted some pictures of the three of us. Bill refused to take off his mustache, and I remember Miss Worth looking at it with dismay. He'd had a few during the morning and was enjoying life. He kept telling her the mustache was real. 'All the men in my family were bearded,' he said, 'and most of the women.' Then he went into details about an aunt of his — she had some impossible name he'd made up, I disremember what it was — who had a red beard down to her waist. 'She wore it tucked into her vest,' he told Miss Worth. Later on, between stills, I heard him explaining that he'd got his red nose by bruising it on a cocktail glass in his extreme youth. I think she was a little shocked."
In posing for the pictures, Fields cut up so energetically that Miss Worth never got quite into them. One of the clearest shows Fields, again wearing his cutaway and silk hat, and with the mustache clipped in, holding Conklin in a fierce travesty of an acrobatic stance. Miss Worth nearly made it ; about three quarters
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