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

Fields replied that he'd rather "wait it out." "I'll duck him," he said. "You'll see." Half persuaded to call a psychiatrist, Sennett left, to Fields' hoarse entreaties of "Tiptoe! Tiptoe!" and put the matter out of his mind. The next day about noon the comedian appeared at the studio wearing dark glasses and a beard so patently false that he would have been arrested on suspicion by any alert policeman. "How's it going?" asked Sennett, recalling the bushes and the loan. "I've got him," said Fields. "I rolled right by him near Sepulveda and Sunset. He didn't know me from Adam." Sennett wanted to know how long the masquerade was likely to continue, and Fields said, "Till the bastard gives up." "He was obviously having a very fine time," says Sennett. "Later on I heard that Carroll finally caught him at home but that Bill got in bed and sent word down that he was 'just beginning a long illness.' " Fields' separation from the Keystone Studios was accomplished only after the most elaborate and indirect preliminaries. In his two years with Sennett he had achieved an important transition in his popular reputation. Instead of being a funny actor in a funny movie, he had become an individual, an institution unto himself. Whereas a fan of his earlier movie period would have said, "Did you see So's Your Old Man with that fellow Fields?" he might now say, "Did you see W. G. Fields' latest comedy?" The former juggler was being talked about, and the big studios began to listen. "I could feel a slight chill coming into the air," says Sennett, "and I realized he'd had a better offer. But knowing Bill, I didn't imagine he could come right out with it, so I just sat back and watched." Fields' manner shifted. Nothing quite suited him; he was able 229