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

W. C. Fields work in the comedian's garage, they fitted out a coaster wagon with two decks and used it as a kind of rolling bar, on which were carried ice buckets, mixes, a dozen or so bottles, and both cocktail and highball glasses. Fields often played tennis with a racket in one hand and a martini glass in the other. He was a competent player, accurate, powerful, and ruthless, though disinclined to chase a ball that looked out of reach. He had a vicious chop shot that landed just over the net, with reverse English, and bounced back on his side, much as he had made tennis balls behave when he was juggling. His years of precision work and split-second timing had given him an uncanny eye ; like Dempsey and a few other sports champions, he could read the printing on a revolving phonograph disk. His drives at the base line raised lime often enough to keep Sam Hardy, like Fields' doctor, hard pressed for cash. In one way, Fields had more peace of mind at Toluca Lake than at Encino. During much of his residence at the first place he was unemployed; in addition, he had established the myth of his disaster in the stock market. By Encino he was making big money again and his thoughts had turned to kidnaping. He began to be a little touched on the subject. Quite often he would quiz his staff as to whether they had heard eerie noises during the night. He often carried one of his two blackjacks, either an ordinary one that he had bought or a streamlined one a policeman had given him for "evening wear." Fields was positive that villains were frequently aprowl downstairs in the small hours of the morning. His device for frightening them off made sleep impossible for everybody near by. He carried on loud conversations with fictitious bodyguards, punctuating his remarks with grisly laughter provoked by thoughts of the carnage to follow. "All right, you ready, Joe, Bull, Muggsy?" he'd yell around 2 a.m. "Let's go down and get 'em, then. Take 256