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

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE O f fields' several peculiarities, his drinking aroused the widest interest and misinformation. By the middle of his movie period his need for alcohol had crystallized into a habit pattern from which he deviated only slightly until the end of his life. On the radio, in interviews, often in the movies, he was pictured as a frequent drunk, a rip who enjoyed wild excesses and spent a lot of time under tables. It would be difficult to imagine a more erroneous conception. Fields drank steadily, but he abhorred drunks. Drunken visitors in his home seldom came back a second time. The signs of drunkenness— thick speech, unsteady gait, rowdiness, overemotional confidences — filled him with unease and disgust. Of one of the best-known figures of the American stage, after a party at Fields' house, Fields said to his secretary, "Never let that fellow come through these doors again." The comedian once sulked for weeks at John Barrymore, of whom he was particularly fond, because the great lover, in elevating his feet to relax, scratched up Fields' favorite sofa. "All that Romeo stuff's gone to his head," Fields told his secretary as he telephoned some inexpensive upholsterers. In his later years, he started a day off with two double martinis before breakfast. He arose about nine o'clock, took a shower, came downstairs, and drank the martinis slowly, on a porch or 240