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

film's comedian, who jumped the gun on nearly every cue and covered the sets like a Great Dane. In a calm way, Crosby is a hard man to steal scenes from (he could scarcely have survived a string of co-starring pictures with Bob Hope otherwise) ; he gives the impression of abetting the thefts, but in doing so he radiates such disarming geniality that the felon is caught red-handed. In Fields he met a scoundrel of exceptional powers. With all Crosby's natural charm he seemed inadequate to the comedian's artistic assaults on the limelight. Midway through Mississippi, Eddie Sutherland drew Crosby aside and said, "See here, Bing, I'm worried about this thing. Bill Fields is walking off with it. The old devil's stealing every scene." "Well, say, boy," said Crosby, "that's good for the picture, isn't it?" Sutherland shrugged, and they continued the work. When Mississippi was released, Fields went to see it, in one of his cockiest humors. He was happy to note that, as predicted, the ferocity of the comedian was the dominant chord in the over-all production. Toward the end, however, he got the uneasy notion that somehow none of this was detracting from Crosby. In the lobby afterward (he told a friend) he heard a girl say to her companion, "Wasn't he wonderful?" Fields coughed modestly, and she added, "I could listen to him sing forever." Thereafter, Fields implied to several people that Crosby was a pretty underhanded sort of fellow, who churlishly relied on the illegitimate device of singing. The complainant's tone suggested that the practice ought to be stopped. Eddie Sutherland feels that the peak of Fields' perversity was reached during Poppy, a second cinema version of the stage play, which they made together in 1935. For years Fields had been trying to introduce his old wheezes, such as his golf and pool acts 237