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

W. C. Fields to find fault with nearly everything on the set — the script, the dressing accommodations, the brashness of the employees ( including Sennett), and even the geographical location of the studio. He acquired a heavy martyrdom, a peevish melancholy that suggested the follies of sacrificing his colossal gifts on the altar of Keystone insufficiency. Sennett, enjoying himself, let him sulk for a while, then he said, "Bill, I've been thinking over that contract of ours. I'm not going to hold you to it. We're just a small outfit, and I don't want to stand in the way of progress. You've outgrown us." Fields looked both shocked and distressed, but his spirit perked right up. He finished the current two-reeler with cheery dispatch, then bought an enormous ham and invited Sennett to dinner. They continued friends. For Paramount, which had made him the better offer, he now began the string of pictures that was to build him into a national phenomenon. The studio itself thinks that Fields "started on the backtrack in a picture called // / Had a Million, which dealt with what ten different people did when they suddenly inherited a million dollars." Paramount's publicity department still speaks lovingly of the "roadhog sequence" in that film. By his next one — International House, with Peggy Hopkins Joyce — he was firmly established in command. Eddie Sutherland directed him. They had innumerable quarrels, chiefly over ideas of Fields that went far astray from the plot. International House had a sort of plot, about intrigue in China, but it was filled, in addition, with Fields' observations on life. At one point he and Sutherland and Rudy Vallee, who was also in the cast, had a warm wrangle over a commentary Fields had worked out on crooners. It was Vallee's thought, and a viewpoint not difficult to understand, that no commentary on crooners was necessary. Sutherland agreed, with genuine fervor. But Fields was immovable, 230