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

Fields' servants came and went, spurred into transit by his peculiar ways. Dell, the cook, outlasted several regimes. During one period he discovered that another butler he had was a former private detective; from then on he was convinced that his staff was spying on him. His panacea for this was to try to play them against one another, to divert attention from himself. He would draw his cook aside and say, "I know there's nothing in this, but that damned butler told me you were stealing canned goods. You'd better keep an eye on him." Later on, to the butler, he would say, "Mind you, I'm on your side, but the cook's been carrying tales about you and the upstairs maid." His house was in perfect running order, Fields considered, when his servants had quit speaking to one another and were in a condition bordering on collapse. After Toluca Lake he rented a house and seven acres at Encino, a sort of ranch house with an orange grove. It was a beautiful place and had a big tile pool, which Fields never used, and a tennis court, which he used a great deal. When he was home, he played almost every day with Sam Hardy, a giant of a man, an actor friend of Fields from the Follies days. Also much in evidence at Encino was a stooge of Fields, a vastly shorter fellow named Tammany Young, who appeared in pictures with him and looked after his martini glass off the set. For some reason, Fields always had a fancy for people out of the common run physically. At one time on the West coast he employed a stooge with a head about the size of a number-two grapefruit. "With that head he'll own Hollywood," Fields told several friends. He and Sam Hardy played tennis by the hour. Hardy played stripped to the waist, but Fields, whose skin was sensitive to the sun, wore a shirt, a sleeveless sweater, and a linen cap. His nose was generously larded with Allen's Footease. After considerable 255