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it a little easy — I know you boys are former prize fighters and gunmen but I'd rather you didn't shoot to kill. Try to get them in the spinal cord or the pelvis. Ha ha ha ha ha — this ought to be good!" His servants would curse and toss in their beds.
The Encino residence was rented for only a year, from a family that was taking a trip. So great was Fields' fondness for the house that, when they returned, he tried to double the rent and keep it. But they preferred to move back in, and he engaged a mansion at Bel-Air, a fashionable section near Beverly Hills. Among the first things he did in the new house was to get a carpenter and an ironmonger and put heavy bars on both the outside and the inside of the upstairs doors. The owner called one day on business and was clearly peeved at the new decorations. "But it seems so unnecessary," he kept saying. Fields gave him a mysterious look, to indicate that there was more here than met the eye, and tried to reassure him. "I'm going to leave them for you," he said, "and I'm not going to charge you a dime."
At Bel-Air, more than at any of his other residences, Fields lived a social life. He was deep in the movie swim, and he gave occasional parties, with the most lavish attention to food and wines. Several of his soirees were complicated by domestic trouble. He had one butler at BelAir, a small, wizened man, whom Fields suspected of being an international poisoner. It was the comedian's unflattering custom to inspect fancy dishes handled by this butler, and to have somebody, such as a maid or the chauffeur, come in and taste them. If the guinea pigs didn't fall over and die, the master went ahead and dined. The butler being a thinskinned fellow, all this led to bad feeling. In rebuttal, Fields refused to pay his salary. One evening during a dinner for sixteen people, the butler came in and demanded to be paid. Fields continued imperturbably to eat, though a number of his guests gave positive indication of tension. The man finally became so vocifer
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