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

of her right arm is on view, pushing against Fields' elbow and holding a black handbag. Conklin, a St. Louis baker who got sick of making pies and became a comedian, after which he had pies thrown at him daily for years, believes that Fields always wanted to steal a gag from him. "Ches," Fields would say, "I've been thinking about that skit of yours with the taxi meter. I may switch it around a little and use it." "How do you plan to switch it, Bill?" Conklin would ask, and the reply was always, "Only slightly, Ches, only slightly." "He was just sounding me out," Conklin says. "Bill was a wonderful comedian — he never stopped gathering material." Conklin now remembers his taxi-meter gag chiefly as an illustration of how easy it is to get typed in pictures. As a taxi driver, he was taking a fare on a longish haul, overland, and got caught in an overflowing river. The cab, with the easy extravagance of those days, submerged for quite a space and Conklin, without the cab but carrying the meter, finally walked out on the opposite bank. His agitated efforts to locate his fare, as the meter continued to tick, met with amused approval by movie audiences everywhere. From then on into middle age he was cast predominately as a taxi driver, whether the part was funny or not. Fields enjoyed loafing around the sets where the Keystone cops were at work ; his attempts to loaf near the bathing beauties were discouraged by the police matron. He was interested in the fact that Conklin often feigned cross eyes, for comedy purposes, and that Ben Turpin's eyes actually were crossed. The abnormality struck him as an intriguing comic device. To help directors handle Turpin, whose high spirits sometimes made him intractable ( actually, he saw eye to eye with very few directors ) , Fields suggested a simple but effective device. Turpin, an ardent Catholic, depended on his angular vision for his livelihood, and when he 223