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W. C. Fields
When Fields went to the studios, he took an outsized cocktail shaker full of martinis. From the day in New York when he bought his first Cadillac, he kept expensive cars (at one time in Hollywood he had three Lincolns, two Cadillacs, and a smaller station wagon ) and he was always driven to work by a chauffeur. The comedian arrived in some state at his places of employment. Often he and the chauffeur would make several trips from the car to his dressing room, carrying refreshments, clothes and other gear. Fields kept up a pretense, which the studio was willing to endorse, that his giant cocktail shaker was filled with pineapple juice. A joke which went around Hollywood arose from this flimsy deception. One afternoon some wags gained access to the shaker, when he was absent from the set, and poured in a quantity of authentic pineapple juice. When he returned, a few minutes later, he took a hearty draft of the liquid and roared, "Somebody's been putting pineapple juice in my pineapple juice."
During the day's shooting he consulted the shaker with regularity. He was never drunk, never noticeably affected, but around 4 p.m. he hit a low spot. "He had a little dodge he always worked," says Eddie Sutherland. "He would act confused about the story and call a conference. We'd put all the chairs around in a circle, and he would regale the actors, writers, directors, and technicians with stories about his work and his travels. Then, when somebody else took up the cudgel, he'd drift off to sleep." Fields' caved-in condition lasted no longer than half an hour, after which he was good for a couple of hours' work before knocking off.
The other actors and employees lunched in the studios' commissaries, which serve good food at reasonable prices, but Fields always took his noonday meal in his dressing room. Even after his skimpy breakfast, he ate very little. His staple lunch was crabmeat salad washed down by two or three martinis. As a rule, he took a little nap during the lunch hour, too. Though martinis
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